James Mangold has carved out a fascinating place in Hollywood as a director and writer who really can do it all—he’s elevated genre films into compelling character studies and tackled everything from Westerns to hard-hitting dramas to romantic comedies to comic book adaptations.
He made one of the best superhero films in history (2017’s Logan), then a couple of years later told a true motorsport story in the brilliant Ford v Ferrari. He’s twice Oscar-nominated, once for each of these films, but fans will also recall the much-feted Walk the Line, which in 2006 captured a slew of awards across acting and technical categories. We could go on and on.
It’s fitting that Mangold has come back around to music with this year’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. Starring Timothée Chalamet as Dylan, the film follows the musician’s early years—his arrival in New York City, finding his place in music, and then turning the Newport Folk Festival upside-down when he chose not to play acoustic.
Mangold and his lead actor just received the Visionary Tribute at the 2024 Gotham Awards, not to mention a couple of Golden Globe nominations. Final Draft chatted with the writer/director the day before those nominations were announced, and Mangold laid out some vital writing wisdom for us.
Mangold co-wrote the script for A Complete Unknown with Jay Cocks, working from Elijah Wald’s book Dylan Goes Electric! When approaching Dylan’s story, one early consideration was song selection, where to place them and how much would be included.
As they began writing, he didn’t want to fall into the expected beats of a biopic and rely on cliches. He hoped the story would be experiential for the viewer.
“I was really curious about, with a character as unique and guarded as Bob, who has told so many different stories about his life, whether there was a way to avoid some of the trappings of biopics,” he said. “The historical markers, this sense of different scenes being historic tableaus or recreations of a famous concert. Just letting it feel like you’re watching it happen, as opposed to feeling like this collection of important moments in music.”
Instead, he’s focusing on what he calls “the trauma of genius,” exploring Dylan’s impact on music through the eyes of his colleagues.
“So much of what I tried to structure in the screenplay was in some way understanding that I thought the best way we could learn the most about Bob was, instead of just focusing on Bob completely, was to allow the movie to examine the effect he had on those around him,” he said.
The director’s approach draws inspiration from another music biopic (and a personal favorite of mine).
“A movie that really inspired me was Peter Schafer’s Amadeus, that my mentor, Miloš Forman directed,” Mangold said. “I really felt that that too was a movie where although the title character is Mozart in many ways, you don’t get to completely understand Mozart because he’s kind of a miracle.”
Mangold has given advice in the past about paring down writing on the page, so we asked him if that note still stood and what advice he would give. He said yes, but offered to “sharpen” it. Descriptions shouldn’t be overwrought, he said, and there’s often no need to include information about camera angles or shots (if the writing is strong enough).
“What I find is that the jargon of filmmaking gets in the way of telling a story,” he said. “You can get everything you need even to communicate shot size by just—if you’re describing the clouds above the house, it’s clearly a wide shot. If you’re describing his nostrils flaring as he sees his enemy coming, it’s clearly a closeup.”
He boiled the advice down to one hypothetical approach.
“Write like you’re sitting next to a blind person at the movie theater, and you’re describing a movie,” he said. “If you take too long to describe what’s happening, you’ll fall behind because the movie’s still moving.”
Essentially, you can’t get caught on an unimportant detail if the story’s about to get away from you. This keeps the narrative flowing and prevents the pitfall of overwriting.
“I’ve read so many scripts that’ll go, ‘The red house with dilapidated shutters sits on a dreary street called blah, blah, blah. The brown grass slowly moistening…’ I’m already—” He lolls his head and pretends to snore. “None of that’s making it in the movie.”
Instead, he advocates for a leaner, more purposeful style that naturally suggests camera movements without resorting to technical jargon. This streamlined approach serves two crucial purposes.
“The number-one role of a screenplay is, one, it’s a recipe for making the movie. That’s really important. It’s like architectural drawings for the movie,” he said. “But, two, unlike architectural drawings, it has to be sexy, or it’s never getting made.”
Keeping your writing lean allows you to get into your action more quickly—and keep your reader around.
Most screenwriters probably know that the opening pages are crucial to establish direction and tone. Some industry folk say that your very first page should have a clear hook. What does Mangold think?
“Most decisions about whether your movie is getting made will be made before the person even gets past page three,” he said. “So if you are bogging me down, describing every vein on the leaf of a piece of ivy, and it’s not scintillating—it isn’t the second coming of the description of plant life—then you should stop, because you’ve already lost your potential maker of the movie.”
Maybe a tough bit of advice to hear for the verbose, but he wasn’t saying this to disparage that type of writing. It’s simply that your reader will probably be impatient, and that verbosity isn’t benefitting your screenplay.
“You’re just wasting their time,” he said. “Because those veins on the leaf of the plant are not going to matter in the movie unless the plant’s coming to life in the next scene, eating the person in the bedroom.”
He characterized his own writing process as following that earlier metaphor, describing what’s happening to a viewer “before the movie vanishes and it’s onto the next scene.”
“When I do that, I write like the dickens,” he said, fingers dancing over an imaginary keyboard. “You have to keep up with the picture.”
Oh, and that dreaded wall some of us experience as “writer’s block”? Mangold doesn’t technically believe in it, at least for himself.
“I don’t accept this thing called writer’s block. I don’t accept it. Whoever invented the term, it’s just an excuse,” Mangold said.
Instead, he advocates for a more practical approach to the creative process.
“Don’t sit down to write if you don’t know what you’re going to write,” he said. “Go take a walk, go shopping, do the dishes. You can think about your script while you’re doing all those things. In fact, having your hands or mind half busy with something else will free you to think about it in a better way.”
Since he was in the metaphorical kitchen already, he stayed there as he continued his advice.
“It’d be no different than going into a kitchen and going, ‘What am I making for dinner?’ and standing in the kitchen and staring at the fridge. It’s paralyzing. You should decide what you’re making for dinner and then go to the kitchen and make it.”
A Complete Unknown releases in theaters Dec. 25.