Hollywood Screenwriter Jule Selbo’s visit to the University of East London

March 2014

By Emma Burles

Jule Selbo has extensive experience as an award winning playwright and screenwriter, having worked for Disney, Paramount, Columbia Pictures and Universal, and with people such as George Lucas, and Mike Newell. She visited UEL last week to talk about her career and give us an insight into writing for film and television.

Starting out as a playwright and actor working in regional theatres, Selbo first got into screenwriting after getting her first agent in New York. An agent she says is crucial as a writer, “You kind of need someone to do the representation for you because writers, for the most part, are not the people that put ourselves out there and go ‘Look at me! Look at me!’” The agent, who had asked to represent her after seeing a play she had written for Off-Off Broadway, suggested she might have a talent for film and television and asked her to write a speculative script. This script ended up being optioned and got her lots of work, including a writing deal at Paramount Pictures, various jobs on TV shows, and several films. It was during this period that she moved to LA, having been gaining experience working there, in order to put herself in a better position to find work. “My writer friends were saying to me, ‘95% of people writing for film and TV are living in LA, and you’re putting yourself in that 5% who try to get work while living in New York, so you need to come to LA’.” She settled in LA and, despite getting lots of work in film, decided to focus on TV for a while after becoming disillusioned with the film script, “you put your heart and your soul into what you are writing and you see every scene in your head and you work so hard to make every connection, and then you see someone else just tearing bits of it out – it is so hard”.

Not long into this period she was approached by George Lucas, who wanted her to write for the Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Initially, she was hesitant to take up this offer, having just started a family and being reluctant to leave them for long periods of time to work out at his ranch in San Francisco, however Lucas made it clear the set-up was conducive to family visits. She went on to work for him on this project for 3 years and describes a typical day’s work: “We [herself and the rest of the team of writers] would gather in George’s office every morning at 9am and discuss each episode thematically, some were dramas, some comedies, some romance, etc. but the main thing was to think about what young Indiana would learn in each episode. After lunch we’d go back and break down each episode, scene by scene. In America, TV episodes had 4 acts, and George’s method was 6 scenes an act to move the story forward, so we’d break it down that way. Then we’d divide up the episodes: each of us got the chance to pick the episode we wanted to write the most and we’d get assigned a second one too. At night we’d be given a stack of research to read over dinner, and the next day we’d do it all over again.” The best thing during this experience, says Selbo, was how indulged as writers they were, in terms of the end result, “He would hire the directors [who included Mike Newell, Carl Schultz and Billie August] and tell them ‘don’t change a thing, just shoot it.’ You get so spoilt you know? You’ve written this thing and then you see it get brought to life exactly how you imagined it.”

After going back to film, and continuing to be a writer for hire for both film and TV for several years, she eventually decided to go back to writing plays, which she still does, as well as heading up the Screenwriting Program at California State University. She has also just written a book called Film Genre for the Screenwriter. “Using genre to shape a story can be just as effective as structuring it around three acts, if you know the components of various genres you can structure the story around that. For example if you want to write a sci-fi movie, you know it has to be based on scientific fact, science has to turn the story the whole way through, which gives you more of a through line to follow.”

After advising us aspiring writers to just keep writing, submitting work and persevering through rejection without taking it personally, she urges us to join a writers group, in order to network and build a community. “When I first moved to LA, I joined a writers group – every week we would read each other’s stuff and within 2 years, some of us would get offered jobs and recommend another person in the group if they couldn’t accept it. You have to build a network and have your community to make it work. There are lots of people who don’t have wealth on their side, who can make it with their talent, but you have to go out there and make your own opportunities.”

Jule Selbo’s book Film Genre for the Screenwriter, will be published this summer by Routledge.

This article was originally published in March 2014 for UEL students at http://workinginthecultureindustries.wordpress.com