STC! and “Machete”
In this week’s blog, Save the Cat! workshop alumni Alvaro Rodriguez and Melody Lopez discuss Robert Rodriguez’s explosive new action movie, Machete. Featuring an all-star cast including Robert De Niro, Jessica Alba, and Michelle Rodriguez, Machete tells the story of an ex-Federale (Danny Trejo of Desperado) caught in a war between the forces of corruption on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Alvaro co-wrote the screenplay (he had previously penned From Dusk Till Dawn: The Hangman’s Daughter for executive producer Quentin Tarantino) and Melody used her firearms expertise (research for her own screenplay about a sniper) to land a production internship on the Machete set at Troublemaker Studios in Austin, Texas. Both attended Blake’s Austin Beat Sheet Workshop in July 2008.
The "Machete" poster
Melody Lopez: I have read some of your original work, including your produced co-writing project, Machete. It is clear to any reader that you are a strong and terse writer. Can you tell STC! members how your professional writing background has informed the way you write creatively today?
Alvaro Rodriguez: Absolutely. Once you get into screenwriting, you learn fairly quickly that it’s an economic style of writing. You have to get to the point with very little window-dressing. The two things that helped me the most in that regard were journalism and writing poetry, frankly. It’s a combination of “just the facts, ma’am” and distilling a visual or sensory image down to its essence. It’s a hard thing to do sometimes, because writers have a tendency to want to create a complete world, draw a super-detailed picture. But even when I was writing short stories, I felt it was important to “play less notes and leave more space.” Let the reader bring something of herself to the material. That translates pretty well into screenwriting.
ML: You have several screenwriting credits for projects written before you attended the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet Workshop. Can you describe how the STC! principles influence your current writing process?
AR: Blake Snyder, more than anyone else, really gave me the encouragement and validation I needed. I’m not alone in that experience, because I think most writers he came into contact with felt his excitement for storytelling and his ability to “see the movie” you might have had a hard time formulating fully in your mind or on paper. The great thing about Save the Cat! is that it so readily identifies signs and guideposts along the story path in such a way that you as a writer can say, “I know what ‘Bad Guys Close In’ means to my story,” or “the problem with my finale is that there’s no High Tower Surprise.”
What Blake and the other great teachers of story have done is given us the guidebook and invited us to make our own way with new characters and new situations. Now you have a map to help you if you get off track or lose the plot, and pretty soon you find out you’ve internalized it and made it a part of you. That’s an incredible gift.
ML: Can you give an example of something very “STC!” (aka, very “Blake”) that is written into Machete that students of STC! would really get?
Alvaro Rodriguez
AR: I know one moment we struggled with would be what Blake would identify as the “debate” beat. Will he or won’t he do the deed? The original trailer for Machete has a line: “They made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” It’s an interesting problem because Machete isn’t the “average Joe who becomes a hero,” although he certainly is that on the level of outward appearances. But he’s also a “hero with a buried past,” so does he actually debate the moment after the catalyst comes, or not? You’ll have to see the movie to find out.
ML: What do you think is the most common part of a movie-going experience that inspires you as a writer to say, “I can write just as good, if not better, than that?”
AR: It’s not so much “I could do it better” as it is “how would I fix that?” Blake always said it was easier for us to see the flaws in other people’s stories and still have a blind spot when it came to fixing our own, which is a great reason to workshop things and get feedback from other writers. You can spend a long time with a script in your own writer’s vacuum and lose perspective: Is this joke still funny? Does this line of dialogue work? Am I hitting the beats strongly enough? Get a read from someone you trust, someone with experience. It’s often invaluable.
ML: Is there any particular line of dialogue that absolutely has blown you away when you first heard it brought to life by an actor? If so, what is it?
AR: There are a few moments like that in Machete. There’s a quiet exchange in The Hangman’s Daughter between leads Marco Leonardi (Like Water For Chocolate) and Ara Celi (Machete) that I always liked, right in the middle of the first act. “Where will we go?” she asks. “What do you mean we? You go that way, I go this way.” I don’t know. Robert De Niro, Don Johnson and Jeff Fahey get some meaty lines in Machete. “I can’t stand around like a piñata waiting to get whacked.”
Melody Lopez handles a prop gun on the set of "Machete"
ML: That day we were both on set of Machete, the week that Robert De Niro was filming, you were cracking him up about something. What was so funny? I’m dying to know!
AR: I thanked him for putting the hurt on me to come up with some halfway good lines for him! He got a kick out of that. He plays a shadowy state senator in the film, and it was a role that evolved and really grew once he came on board. I was so humbled to be in his presence and he was very gracious. I remember talking to him and Don Johnson both, because these were two actors I had long admired, and I had had a hand in creating their roles, imagining the characters’ voices and typing out their lines on a laptop or whatever, and here they were, flesh-and-blood, bringing those roles to life. Definitely a pinch-me-I’m-dreaming experience.
ML: The Austin Cats! are so proud of fellow Cat! Alvaro Rodriguez’s work on Machete. He has been invited to be a panelist at the 17th Annual Austin Film Festival, October 21-28, 2010. Way to go, Al!
Melody Lopez leads the Austin Save the Cat! writing group in monthly meetings, including table reads and workshops. For more information, check out the group’s Facebook page.
