A Conversation with Joan Scheckel

I want to introduce you to an incredible, forward-thinking woman - Joan Scheckel - who is forging new grooves in the way we think about story and create content. Her visionary filmmaking labs have contributed to the development of over 384 films, earning 571 award nominations and 326 awards, including major wins at the Academy Awards such as Little Miss Sunshine. She has a couple of exciting announcements and opportunities to share with you, so read on below!

Joan Scheckel and her Filmmaking Labs are known throughout Hollywood and the international film world as the crucial force behind the most exciting films being made today. Over the past decade, Scheckelʼs work as a writer, director, actor, consultant and teacher has contributed to the development of 74 completed features. 72 went on to be released and have subsequently earned 571 award nominations, 326 awards, and over $1.2 billion dollars. 68 of the 72 features had no financing prior to engaging Joan's services.

She believes that a film's human and financial profit is exponential if the audience connects to the story. The process moves from investigating the meaning of the story, building a dramatic structure that contains the meaning, and finally exploring how that meaning is expressed on all the other levels of the mise en scene (acting, directing, visuals etc).

Karin: What inspires the work that you do with filmmakers?

Joan Scheckel: I've always been interested in the “new” and how what I'm doing is pushing forward the artistic continuum, and in particular, new forms. So I never wanted to repeat stories that were told before or the ways we had told them before. Because for a story to touch or be effective, to affect, it has to be relevant to the way that we communicate now and what we need to communicate now. Which means being societally, emotionally, personally, extremely present to the NOW.

What is “new” about your approach?

If you just think very simply about how we're taught acting or writing for the screen, it's all about conflict. And I thought, what is the technique for the 21st century? How are we going to be telling stories that have to do with relating, that have to do with coherence, that have to do with opening the heart? So there's a whole series of fusion-based models and techniques made out of that very simple idea that I teach in the filmmaking labs.

A story for me is a container for truth, and then how that truth is expressed kind of depends on who you want to talk to, what audience you want to reach. And that will change from movie to movie to movie. My primary goal is that stories connect us through feeling, and that's what a movie has to do. If you're connected to what something means to you as a driver, then the form of connection is effortless. 

What is the Master Class?

The Master class is really a scene gym. You put your stuff up on its feet on a weekly basis. What happens is I'll give a half-hour physical warm-up with a little bit of technique. Then everyone goes off and rehearses, and then we do the scenes. All the scenes get put up, and I coach them. I'll go into them from different angles: if it's a writer I'll get into something that needs to happen thematically or in the structure or with the beats; if it's an actor I'll take it from the performance point-of-view; if it's a director I'll take it from the mise en scene. We also shoot them all. They'll shoot on the street or on the roof. There are so many different locations in and around the building. It's an amazing class, because of all the people in there - they range from 19-year-old kids who are doing i-mapping at USC who just have these brilliant minds to Catherine Hardwicke who directed Twilight.

Tell me about the new community hub you're building in the Space.

Basically you take a Master Class for $500 a month, which means you get to put your scenes on their feet every week, and then you get a key to the Space, a 4,000 square foot warehouse. By doing that I can preserve it as an incubator for new forms, new stories, new talent, new thought. The creativity that this will engender is exponential--having the space and knowing that you have a key and can go over there and find a community of like-minded spirits. And it's beautiful. Spread the word! Because now is the time to announce it, make it available and get it going. It's the Master Class and then everyone is invited to everything else I do there - the parties, the art shows, the pop-up dinners, the think tanks - I mean, it's a circus over there. It's amazing. I just want everyone I know who is creative and exploratory - like you - to have a way to spontaneously and organically meet.

Can you tell the Spirit of Story readers about the upcoming storytelling event you're doing with Cindy Chupack on July 27th?

“Stories in the Space” curated by Cindy Chupack launches the inaugural Events Slate at the Space! I'm thrilled to kick off our artist curated hub with an evening featuring some of LA's best storytellers. A great story, compellingly told. That's the root from which everything at the Space springs.

What are you hoping to create out of this initial event?

I want to introduce people to the Space: the Joan Scheckel Filmmaking Labs fusion-based arts incubator. The Space is a raw space, a gathering place, a hub for creativity, a furnace for new forms in all the arts: film, theatre, photography, art, music, dance, tech, economics, education, and beyond. I'd love an ongoing storytelling series to be part of our multi-disciplinary events slate! I'm looking for partners to curate and finance our incubator as we expand our reach.

To learn more about Joan Scheckel, visit joanschekel.com

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A Conversation with Cindy Chupack

As most of you know, I love talking with writers and learning about how different people approach and think about the creative process. So when I had the chance to have a conversation with best-selling author, storyteller and Emmy-winning TV writer Cindy Chupack, I thought you might like to hear from her, too.

When Cindy performed in Spark's “Trapped” show, I learned that she was actively sharing essays from her forthcoming book, The Longest Date, at various storytelling series in LA as a way to workshop them (in fact, she used the Spirit of Story site as a guide to finding the best places to read around town!). What a smart, creative way to develop material, I thought. So I encourage you to check out the interview below and glean some of her wisdom!

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Cindy Chupack is an author, storyteller and Emmy-winning TV writer whose credits include Modern Family, Sex and the City, and Everybody Loves Raymond. Her first book, The Between Boyfriends Book: A Collection of Cautiously Hopeful Essays was a New York Times bestseller. She followed up with The Longest Date (Viking, 2014), which is a humorous look at the reality of marriage and the trying nature of trying (to conceive, create, adopt or kidnap a baby).

Karin: Tell us about your new book!

Cindy: When I first got married I thought my writing career was over, because all I had ever written about was dating. I was worried there was nothing more to say, because who really cares about married relationships? It took me a while to realize that a wedding was not the end, it was the beginning of a whole new story, a whole other adventure. That's why the book is called The Longest Date. It wasn't that different to write about being married, I realized. You have the same sort of conflicts, you just can't break up.

How is live storytelling different from other kinds of writing you do?

I see first-person storytelling as you connecting with an audience and telling them what happened to you in your own words. Because they're hearing it from you, it feels very different and very intimate. It's more intimate than even writing a first-person essay, because even though that's you and your voice, you're not face to face with the audience, you're not hearing their concern or their laughter or their disapproval. So it's just a different kind of beast. You definitely feel more exposed, but it can also be very gratifying to get the feedback and the community of an audience being with you while you're telling a story.  

It's certainly different from the writing I do for television, because even if I'm drawing from personal experience, it is several times removed once you put it through the filter the character you're writing for. In fictionalizing the story, you're not publicly putting yourself on the line -- you're just using the story, or the experience, or how you felt -- as a starting point. The good news is, then you can rewrite what happened and let an actor do or say what you wish you'd done or said at the time!

What have you learned from work-shopping essays from your book at various storytelling venues around Los Angeles?

I've had people worry that my piece is going to be offensive or seem privileged or seem too harsh, and I can usually sell it with my personality. So I shoot for that now when I write, to get enough of my personality and voice in it that you understand where I'm coming from in the piece, even if I'm not there to sell it myself.

But also I've learned to tighten up jokes and to add more jokes. When you're reading aloud, you sometimes think of something funny off-hand in the pause between lines or in the laughter. I've seen that some pieces are more serious than I realized, and I've learned to be okay with that, to trust that the audience is still with me even when they're not laughing.

And then very basically, when I'm choosing a piece to read from my new book, there are certain pieces I think, “Nah, I don't want to read that one.” And then I think, “Why didn't I want to read that one? Is that one weaker than the others, does it still need some work? How do I make it better so I would want to read it aloud?”

Where do you draw the line when writing about your private life?

I'm pretty open, and it's been an interesting transition to go from writing about dating - which is usually failed relationships or just failed dates - to writing about a couple, which involves my husband also, and what he's open to me saying. I think that might be why there is not as much that's funny or current written about marriage.

There is a kind of closing of ranks once you're a couple that people respect, and I felt like that was a doing a disservice to women and really everybody, because there are still stories, and we still need some help, we still want to commiserate. And I think women (especially storytellers) should be able to talk about marriage in a goodhearted way that makes you (the narrator) equally culpable. It's not about male bashing or husband bashing, it's about laughing at all you go through as part of a couple, and trusting that those experiences and feelings are relatable to other couples.

I've definitely cleared everything I've written with my husband. My biggest dilemma now is just how to talk about what we went through to get a baby, because some day this will all be preserved for our child to read, and I want to make sure I'm writing about things I am comfortable with her knowing.

How do you approach writing a new piece?

One big thing, I guess, is that I always keep the audience in mind. I try to remember... even when I'm writing my book... I try to imagine I'm almost writing an email to a friend or something. I just really try to be myself, and be funny but honest. I think sometimes you forget the audience when you're writing and then you get lost, so I try to think of the audience as a friend, and I try to remember the story I'm telling is for an audience, not just for me.

To learn more about Cindy Chupack, visit cindychupack.net

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