February 13, 2012

Jessica Bendinger Brings It On

by Rebecca Pahle | Published November 4, 2009

(Page 2)

JB: That can be true, but by the same token you are conveying it to your cast and your crew and your financiers, so you can’t be too indulgent. That would be wonderful if you’re financing it yourself and making it yourself and you don’ t have to be accountable to anybody, but when you’re managing a $28 million asset, unfortunately that’s really unrealistic. You have a high degree of accountability. You’d better be pretty articulate about exactly what you want or at least be able to articulate what you’re going for to hire the people who can help you articulate that, because it is a monumental undertaking.

MM: I’ve read that your screenwriting technique goes back and forth between writing things down as they come to you and really going with your inspiration, and then having a more disciplined approach. Has your process changed at all from when you started out and maybe now that you have more experience.

JB: Oh yeah, for sure. I’ve been working steadily for the last 13 years, so you definitely grow and learn tricks of the trade. You know where your strengths are and you know hopefully how to write around your weaknesses. In the case of script-doctoring you take the patient, this screenplay that is usually broken and/or suffering, and you have to stitch together multiple points of view into a cohesive whole to get it made. So that’s a very different art form from generating an original piece of material.

Script-doctoring is when you’re stitching together five different viewpoints: The studio, the producer, the development executive, the director, the star. You’ve got to take those five opinions and kind of put a hierarchy on those opinions, and then stitch that together into a cohesive whole that works for them. That’s a very different skill set than writing an original script where you don’t have to worry about all those points of view. I’ve definitely learned over the years. I’m much better at stitching together seemingly non-cohesive perspectives and making that a unified whole, so Frankenstein doesn’t look like Frankenstein. It actually looks like a movie.

MM: Have the skills that you’ve gained in doing script-doctoring transferred over to writing your original material, like when you’re going back and doing second and third drafts?

JB: Absolutely. You learn what’s affordable and realistic in terms of budget. If you’ve been in on pre-production meetings and development meetings, you know what’s going to be heavy lifting. If you are pragmatic, and I consider myself to be a pretty pragmatic lady, you’re going to take that into account, because making a movie is such a process of heavy lifting to begin with. If there’s a pragmatic way to do something, why wouldn’t you want to benefit from that? When it comes to moviemaking, for all the excess of mistakes that we see and hear about, I’d say there’s a lot of smart cookies and if you keep your eyes open and your ears open, you’re going to learn a lot. So I’ve certainly learned a lot from studio executives, directors, producers and actors alike. Jeff Bridges was an amazing teacher on the set of Stick It. He was incredibly generous and the net of his years on films are that he knows what works for him and he knows great shortcuts. I was certainly the benefactor of that, as was the movie. I will apply what I learned with Jeff in all the movies I direct from now on, because it was just so unbelievably helpful.

MM: You’re working now on a sequel to The Seven Rays, is that correct?

JB: I’m actually working on my next movie. I have the sequel to The Seven Rays outlined, but I definitely needed a little break after three years. I think writing the novel was the equivalent of doing about 16 screenplays back-to-back in terms of the sheer volume. I definitely know what the sequel is going to be. I’m really excited about it but I also need to take a creative break for a second. So I’ve been working on my next movie, which is kind of my genre of filmmaking. I jokingly call it “comma”: Comedy with a little drama. It’s set in the world of music. I’m really excited. We’ve been working on this project pretty steadily the better part of the last year. We should have a screenplay and a deal set up shortly.

For more information on The Seven Rays, visit TheSevenRays.com.