This is a transcript of the Final Draft Insider View, a podcast that takes you inside the screenwriting industry to talk with screenwriters, television writers, executives, and industry influencers.
Pete D’Alessandro: This is the Final Draft Insider View, a podcast that takes you inside the screenwriting industry to talk with screenwriters, television writers, executives, and industry influencers. Hello, I'm Pete D’Alessandro. Welcome to another edition of Insider View. Today we're going to be talking to the writers of Birdman. Our first guest is Armando Bo—his credits include Beautiful and The Last Elvis—along with his writing partner Nicolas Giacobone, also from Beautiful and Last Elvis, and another writer who was also involved in Birdman, Alexander Dinelaris, who is a stage play writer – credits include Red Dog Howls, The Bodyguard, American Rapture among lots and lots of others. Guys, thank you so much for joining us.
Nicolas Giacobone: Thank you.
Alexander Dinelaris: Thank you.
Armando Bo: Thank you.
Pete D’Alessandro: So first I'd like to start out with how you guys each kind of got started in writing. Maybe Armando, we'll start with you?
Armando Bo: No, start with Nicolas.
Pete D’Alessandro: [Chuckles] Okay, Nicolas, let's start with you.
Nicolas Giacobone: [Laughs] How I started on writing. I mean, I basically focused…when I left high school I studied literature and I began writing stories and novels, but you know that mainly here in Latin America living from literature is very difficult, and I love cinema, so I slowly began to learn how to work in screenplays.
Pete D’Alessandro: And Armando, I know you started out pretty young, right?
Armando Bo: Yeah, but I really come from another…like I started working in film like since when I was a kid, 17 years old, so I was a bit earlier. I really like work with these guys, I really think in the structure in scenes, but I really don’t consider myself like a pure…like a writer, you know? So yes I worked a lot in these and I…but, well, that's my…I still working in that side, you know?
Pete D’Alessandro: Sure, of course. And Alexander, I understand you started really acting in high school and that was where you kind of broke into…
Alexander Dinelaris: Yeah, I started as an actor. I wanted to direct theatre soon after that, so I really started to be a theatre director sometime after that in between, you know, working restaurants to pay my living and everything else. You can't really do a lot of directing while you're working all day and all night. So I wrote something for somebody who was in the Stella Adler Studio and it seemed to work, and I was encouraged to write again. I wrote a play called Folding the Monster that eventually Danny Aiello and Rosie O’Donnell would do, and some stage readings, and from then on I was writing. And then Alejandro found me through a play of mine called Still Life and we worked together, and then I met these guys on Birdman.
Pete D’Alessandro: Wow. Okay. What were some of your early influences? You said you wanted to get into directing especially for the stage. What did you see that made you want to get into that?
Alexander Dinelaris: I mean, I think it's the same thing that ends up making me eventually a writer is that I was fascinated by structure, I was fascinated by methodology and by theory, so I would devour things like, I was influenced by everything from Stanislavski to Aristotle to Clurman to Shaw, anything that had to do with theory or methodology. And you study all that to sort of be able to direct, and when I finally fell into writing, I found that it became a great asset for me because being so familiar with the idea of structure and method helps an enormous amount. So that’s sort of where I started and what helped me make the conversion.
Pete D’Alessandro: That’s great. Okay. And Armando, how about you? What were some early influences for you? Because I know your whole family was involved in show business for generations now.
Armando Bo: Yeah. We have some soft erotic porn. [Laughs] Yes, I really was born in this in a way, like…my influences are so really mixed in a way. Like I really…I think that my biggest influence is like working and doing stuff by myself in a way, you know? Like of course I always seen a lot of movies because I really think that you learn seeing them, but yes, I consider myself like more like a maker than…like a good viewer in a way.
Pete D’Alessandro: Sure, okay. Okay. And Nicolas, how about you? What were early influences on you on your screenplays, on the idea of screenplays and stories?
Nicolas Giacobone: I would say that my main influences belong to literature and I spend most of my time reading. I mean, in college of course I loved Dostoyevsky. I had a big crush with Samuel Beckett for five, six years, [chuckles] but mostly ruined me as a writer. But mainly, yeah, mainly literature.
Pete D’Alessandro: Okay.
Nicolas Giacobone: I mean, to movies I'm...a little schizophrenic. I mean, I love Michael Haneke and his sparse Austrian narrative, but I also like genre movies very much.
Pete D’Alessandro: Sure.
Nicolas Giacobone: So, yeah.
Pete D’Alessandro: Okay. So how did you guys all wind up getting involved in Birdman, because I guess you guys have different stories of how you came to this project?
Armando Bo: I started…when I first worked with Alejandro, I did a little bit of research and helped with him on Beautiful at the very beginning, and later on Nico and Armando would go on to help him right that screenplay, but we'd already developed a relationship. So when Birdman came up he came up to me and said, “How would you feel about writing with me and these guys who wrote Beautiful with me?” and I said, “Absolutely, I would love to.” And so that's how I got connected.
Pete D’Alessandro: Okay. And how about you guys, how did that relationship develop for the two of you, your partnership and with Alejandro?
Armando Bo: It was really interesting. I mean, going from Beautiful to Birdman was the most strange thing that ever happened to me as a co-writer. I mean, after the experience of being with Alejandro in Barcelona, telling the story about a guy with cancer and children and all that intense drama that we have to, in a way, work in and live in for months, suddenly to receive a call from him, from Alejandro, saying that he has this strange urge to write a comedy in one shot about Broadway, and we were like…I mean, we thought it was a joke. But, I mean, it was fascinating. It was fascinating because we really—I speak for myself but I think they would agree with me—like we sort of had to learn in the process how to write the screenplay.
Pete D’Alessandro: Sure. I'm very curious as to how you guys wound up kind of selling yourselves to each other because a writing trio is pretty unusual and you guys weren't coming from the same place. It wasn’t like you started this together. But how did that wind up working? How did you guys start to connect and develop that relationship between the three of you? Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead, Alex.
Alexander Dinelaris: For me it was easy. I think Armando said it before. The dynamic is really interesting between the four of us because essentially you have two storytellers who are from a directing background and two storytellers are coming from a writing background, so meeting them, the language was fluid almost immediately. Nico and I had a similar way of thinking about writing scenes and what the sort of pace the dialogue would be because the premise, the style, was dictated. This was really form follows function because we knew it was going to be an unmolested take. And so that dictated what we would do and how quickly and what pace we thought the writing would come at. We came at the problems that were inherent in that situation, like not being able to do the things you normally would be able to do in an edited film like get in late and get out early. Well, when the camera’s leading you everywhere, it's very difficult if you're following the protagonist around to get in late.
And so we understood the challenges from a writing perspective, and I think that Armando and Alejandro really added the dimension of the language of saying “visually we can contribute because this is what it's going to look like.” And so they sort of stood in front of us with a flashlight and showed the dark hallways, and once we saw where we were going we were able to fill it in with character and dialogue and behavior and all those good things that we got to put in, and for me it seemed like a very natural, very easy fit from the very start.
Pete D’Alessandro: Wow. Armando, how about you? What was your side of this and how did you wind up forming new thoughts and new experiences with these guys from the beginning?
Armando Bo: Well, first of all, it was great to…again, as Nico said, it was great when…frightening but also great when Alejandro told us that he wanted to do a comedy. In a way, after Beautiful, I think that he and everybody felt like he needed a change and it's great to be part of that change in a way, you know. And also, in a way, being part of the Beautiful, it was more…for us it was like of course we were part of it but also it was really Alejandro’s feeling, and if you see Beautiful… And here I think that the three of us and myself…I don't know, the tone of the movie, it feels a lot more personal. It's more modern or…I don't know, it's great to be part of that change, you know.
Nicolas Giacobone: It was interesting, you know…in the collaboration aspect of it it was interesting to…when we first met in New York that the basic idea was, as Alex said, was more about form, was this urge to do something to mix these separate concepts like comedy, one-shot narration and that, and we had a little bit of the world was going to be like a Hollywood actor in Broadway, but that was it. So we spent a lot of time, yeah, like having fun and discovering the world and the story and everything, and that sometimes is unusual when you collaborate with a director, like sometimes they just bring the idea and the whole thing and you write it. This was a pretty fun…it was a whole discovery.
Pete D’Alessandro: Sure.
Nicolas Giacobone: I mean, out of the comfort zone like 90% of the time and readjusting our minds to what we were trying to do, you know…
Alexander Dinelaris: Yeah, this was a high-wire act the whole time up till post-production, you know?
Pete D’Alessandro: Mm-hmm. Sure.
Alexander Dinelaris: The thing about when you're talking about writing the script and you're thinking, “Oh, were not cutting.” Like Nico often said very well, he likes to say, “We tried to write a comedy and we failed and that’s why it works,” right? But when you are thinking about sort of how much dialogue there would be and how we had to really follow the sort of characters around, that we knew writing it that we would have to sort of imagine the editing in our heads before it started because we knew basically anything we were going to write was going to end up on the screen, and as a writer that’s a frightening place to be, you know what I mean?
Pete D’Alessandro: [Laughs] Right. There's no leeway.
Alexander Dinelaris: So whatever we finally went to screen with that was going to be there and that's really dangerous. And of course, once we handed it over to Alejandro and Chivo and the actors, well, that became a high-wire act and the actors were all petrified because they knew we're in an eight-, nine-, 10-minute take – if we fuck up anywhere along the line, this whole thing is done and we're starting over again. So everybody felt the nerves and from the beginning conceptually to the point where they finally finished in post, I think that’s what’s exciting about it. It was a high-wire act and we couldn't go back and fix our mistakes.
Pete D’Alessandro: Yeah, obviously. I mean, you just have no leeway to make any sort of change after the fact.
Alexander Dinelaris: Right.
Pete D’Alessandro: I'm curious…
Armando Bo: Nobody’s hiding, no? Nobody’s hiding anywhere, you know. Not even the music. I think that that was great from Alejandro’s point of view. He took all the risks possible in a movie.
Pete D’Alessandro: Sure. Yeah. Yeah, he did. I mean, there's stuff breaking the fourth wall. I mean, there's a lot of really interesting stuff going on and there's no room to navigate out of that at any point.
Alexander Dinelaris: No. Yeah. I have a bunch of my writer friends who would come here. They're always very honest with me, you know? And they come to the movie and say, “Oh, this movie’s terrific. These two or three scenes are long. They should be over before…” I'm like, “Yeah, buddy, we know it. Like, we know it now. We just couldn't cut,” you know?
Pete D’Alessandro: Right.
Alexander Dinelaris: Anywhere else, in any other regular film, we could go back and cut the scene earlier and get out early, but when it's all done… So I tell my friends, “Yeah, I appreciate it, but screw you.”
Pete D’Alessandro: Now, how much were you guys actually on set, the three of you or any one of you? How much were you actually there while you're in production? Alex?
Nicolas Giacobone: Yeah, the interesting thing is that Alejandro did a long rehearsal on location with camera. I mean, we participated first in those weeks. How many weeks were there, three weeks or something like that for rehearsal?
Alexander Dinelaris: Yeah.
Nicolas Giacobone: Like he shot like almost the whole movie, like in rehearsal, to see where the actors were going to be so we know what we could do. In those days was very important because, I mean, in every take we will discover something new like we will have a dialogue that was written and suddenly we discover that the camera was like, I don't know, 15 feet away from the actors and you didn't hear anything. So it has a lot of restructure of the scenes that we did. We stayed together for a couple of weeks, and then Alex lives in New York so he was there all the time.
Alexander Dinelaris: Yeah, I was here but we were all on set at one time or another whether that was at the St. James or at the studio, but we were all there one time or another because there was always a piece of connective tissue that had to be rewritten or, like Nico said, things that had to be done on the fly, and then the actors were contributing their sort of brilliant ideas which were like, “Oh, let's keep that and incorporate that.” So it was a lot of participation on set for the very reason that there would be no editing, so it needed to be what we wanted at the end.
Pete D’Alessandro: Sure. Well, what were some of the changes you guys actually remember making when you were in the middle of this and you're discovering some of the things that we don’t see on the screen now that we might have earlier?
Alexander Dinelaris: It's a good question.
Armando Bo: A big one was after the light falls on Ralph.
Alexander Dinelaris: Oh, right.
Pete D’Alessandro: Ah.
Armando Bo: We had like a full discussion around the guy on the floor, on the stage, and suddenly we realized that the camera was already leaving with Riggan.
Alexander Dinelaris: Yeah. [Chuckles]
Armando Bo: Yeah.
Alexander Dinelaris: Yeah. So we had a moment where that actor gets hit in the table, and then there was that sort of circumstance of Zach’s character running up on stage and going, “Move!” and the actors saying, “What’s going on?” Riggan standing around and Chivo and Alejandro already gone. They were like, “We know you wrote a scene but we're already getting out of it.” So we had to sort of rewrite to get them out, and that's an idea of…that’s a good example, I think. That’s a good idea of having to rewrite because the camera’s on its own. The camera’s making the movie with or without your script.
Pete D’Alessandro: Wow. That’s great, that’s great. So what would your guys’ normal writing process be? I mean, Armando and Nicolas, I know you guys work together a lot. So what would your normal process outside of what this experience was?
Nicolas Giacobone: Well, as we said at the beginning and as Alex said, I mean, because we have different approaches, I mean because of what we do mainly…
Pete D’Alessandro: Mm-hmm.
Nicolas Giacobone: We meet a lot, we discuss a lot, but then the actual writing happens…I write or I met with Alex and we wrote a lot together. And so it's, yeah, I don't know, it's difficult to talk about it like in a precise detailed way.
Pete D’Alessandro: Mm-hmm. There's not necessarily a pattern that’s always repeated for you guys, so even when you're working on…
Alexander Dinelaris: Not necessarily. We would all get together and share ideas. We got together in person a couple of times. We're all three different corners of the world and we would share ideas, or we're going to Skype call and we'd all share our ideas and contribute to what the story would do, and then one way or another, whether it was on Skype or whether Nico came to New York, he and I would hide away and type words and get the scenes written and then bring them back to the next conference and say, “Okay, this is what we have,” and then get the contributions from Armando and Alejandro, figure out what that was, sort of go back and get another draft or another swing at the scene, and that’s basically how… You know, but he's right, you can't pin it down, but that’s basically how it functioned.
Pete D’Alessandro: Okay. Okay, great. So if we're talking about something other than Birdman, if we're talking about other scripts you guys have worked on, other stories you guys have worked on, how do you wind up defining characters and inventing characters as you write? How does that process work for you guys in a normal environment?
Alexander Dinelaris: Who wants that one first? [Chuckles] For me it's behavior, right? I mean, once you have the story…my writing process, whether it's plays or screenplays, is the same, which is I'll do nine months of research and laying the story down in a structure that makes sense to me, knowing sort of the real…a rough but a detailed sketch of what the story’s going to be, and once I know what I need to happen and the characters that come in, it's all about behavior. I mean, you just start and finish with behavior and try to incorporate that behavior into the story or the themes that you've sketched out, well, or I've sketched out in my head for the last eight or nine months. So the actual typing process for me generally, not this process with Birdman but generally, is eight months of sleeping on my bed, looking at the sky. So once I would actually put on my ceiling above my bed, my cards in a way, my structure so that I can lay down and look up at it like literally, and then when I went to type I'll do the script in about two weeks, go away somewhere where there's no Internet and no phone and just type the script in about two weeks. Now, that was very different for that, but getting to character for me is generally about how behavior fits into theme and sort of motifs and make motifs that'll run through the story that you've already created in your mind.
Pete D’Alessandro: Okay. Alright. Armando, do you want to…is there something that you have in terms of characters…?
Armando Bo: Well, from my point of view, it's like almost the opposite of Alex in a way. Like it's really a lot more like from the intuition and it's a lot more, a little bit more free in a way. It's like when many, many ideas, different, that…and then however to make them work together. Of course, whatever is the story that we are doing and which one fits and how we…I don't know, it's a little bit more chaotic in a way but, I don't know, that’s the way… I can't explain it very well.
Pete D’Alessandro: Okay, okay. So what were the biggest lessons you guys learned out of shooting Birdman which is so unusual and does present so many unique challenges? What were the biggest lessons you guys learned? Nicolas?
Nicolas Giacobone: I would say that for me it always has to do with collaboration. I mean, collaboration is such a special strange way of working, and in writing I would say most of all. Like you have to really sort of like learn to put your ego in a very special place. You have to learn how to expose your mediocrity in front of others like every minute of the day and waiting for that glimpse of something meaningful and… That’s the most difficult thing. Once you learn that and you can allow yourself to participate in the collective aspect of it, I mean, it's fascinating. It's fascinating. I mean, the results are so unexpected and something that you could have never done by yourselves. I mean, it's so particular and it's something that I cherish a lot…
Alexander Dinelaris: I agree with that entirely. I feel exactly the same way. There are moments when Nico and I would be on Skype because we're doing pages and it'd be two in the morning. And I remember one particular instance, I bring this up a lot because it's one of my favorite scenes in the movie that Nico had sort of imagined and thrown out there, and my job was sort of to polish the English of it because English is, believe it or not, as well as he speaks, is Nico’s second language.
Nicolas Giacobone: This is my third language. Spanish is my second. And I don’t have a first language.
Alexander Dinelaris: Right, it's his second. And he had this great scene, it's a scene where Michael Keaton is sort of going insane, eating his cold cuts with his mustard and talking about the plague tapping him on the balls with a tiny hammer, and as he was describing it we were just both cracking up. It was literally two in the morning or three the morning and we were both laughing so hard. And then when we were done I thought to myself, “Oh my God, that vision is so good,” I thought to myself, “Just don’t screw it up,” do you know what I mean? Like, I had to write—and that’s collaboration, you sort of have to crawl on its head and say, “Okay, I totally get it. It's making me laugh. Now, how do I…?”
So it's this real intimate relationship that we have wherein I would do the same, like I would give them a scene where they were flying around and we share a vagina. I think Naomi and Nico would be cracking up, and it'd be trying to constantly, like he said, exposing our mediocrities to each other but also, really, if we laughed at it or we thought it was moving or it gave us goose bumps, we sort of knew it was going to work. So learning that you could collaborate in that intimate way for me was an unbelievably wonderful experience as far as writing goes.
Pete D’Alessandro: Okay. I'm sorry that we have to wrap up here in a minute but I just wanted to ask, what’s next for each of you guys? Alex, are you working on a TV show next?
Alexander Dinelaris: Well, I'm sitting here in the office. It's our TV show, the same crew as Birdman.
Armando Bo: Nice office, man. [Laughs]
Alexander Dinelaris: Thanks Armando. [Laughs] Yeah, this is our office. The same four of us, Alejandro, Armando, Nico, and I are writing a show for the Starz network called The One Percent through the production studio MRC and it'll star Ed Helms and Hilary Swank and Ed Harris, and as you can see we're just putting the office together right now. The writers’ room opens on Monday and we're going to write the first season over the next few months and hopefully start shooting it…Alejandro will direct the first few and Armando will direct after that and we'll start shooting it we pray next summer, depending on how things go.
Pete D’Alessandro: That’s great.
Alexander Dinelaris: So we're all working on that together right now, and then I'm doing a couple of Broadway musicals as well at the same time.
Pete D’Alessandro: Great, okay. Guys, do you guys have any other projects besides the show coming up? Nicolas and Armando?
Nicolas Giacobone: The show is going to be a challenge enough for the next months and I'm always writing my unnecessary stories in the morning but, I mean, yeah, the main goal for the next months is focus on The One Percent. I mean, it's going to be similar to Birdman. I mean, we will learn how to write a TV show while we write it, so hopefully it ends well.
Alexander Dinelaris: Don’t tell the network.
Nicolas Giacobone: No.
Pete D’Alessandro: [Laughs] Okay.
Nicolas Giacobone: Got that part.
Pete D’Alessandro: We'll make sure they don’t get this.
Alexander Dinelaris: Yeah, make sure they don’t get this.
Pete D’Alessandro: So one last thing before we go, is there any piece of advice you guys would like to offer for other writers? From what you've learned, from what you've learned in your experiences before this, what one thing should writers take home with them?
Alexander Dinelaris: I mean, I like to say that, you know, because I work with students as well, I like to say that—and Birdman I think is living proof of this—is that dare to be your own…dare to have your own voice. I think too many people that I'm working with, the younger people, are trying to create something that has already been done, they're trying to fit into something rather than create something, and I think following your voice even as absurd as it sounds, as insane as it sounds, even though you know some executive somewhere is going to say, “You can't do that in film, you can't do that on television, you can't do that,” is to follow your heart and do it because I think what we're craving and I think what Birdman is proving, what we're craving more than anything whether it's…is originality. And so to be true to a voice that's only yours because only one person could have that voice, that’s the only advice I could…you know, I wouldn't listen to any other advice I gave except that.
Nicolas Giacobone: I agree 100% and I will add that in the practical aspect of it for me the only secret is to write, to write every day as much as you can. You will write 99% of bullshit to get 5% of something that is meaningful and that’s the only way to do it. I mean, it's just waiting for inspiration is stupid or not a…or thinking that you can learn how to write. Like study how to write and then see it for the first time and write something beautiful. I mean, it's only just writing and writing shit [chuckles] before you get to something that means something to you, no?
Pete D’Alessandro: Okay, yeah. Armando, any last piece of advice for writers out there?
Armando Bo: I don’t have advice.
Alexander Dinelaris: [Laughs] Quit now while you can.
Pete D’Alessandro: Alright. Well, thank you guys so much for being here. Birdman’s out in theatres, go check it out. Thank you guys and congrats on the new show.
Alexander Dinelaris: Thank you, Pete.
Nicolas Giacobone: Thank you.
Armando Bo: Thanks, man.
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