Unveiling Jeffrey Lieber: The Untold Secrets Behind His Masterful Storytelling
Scott: Do you have any tips on how you go about developing characters when you’re writing a spec script? Any tools you use regularly?
Jeff: I used to be against cheating, but now I’m sort of for it. Which is, there’s all this stuff that’s in the screenplay that never will see the light of day. There’s sort of two scripts you write. There’s the one you write for people to read, and then there’s the one you write for people to shoot. They’re very different materials. The first draft I write to get greenlit is the reader’s draft, and I’m all for cheating in that. Which is the ability to say this character is like that person. This character is like Jim Carrey on a bad day if he weren’t funny so that you instantly connote an idea that somebody can latch onto and take with them in scenes going forward. Now, that’s never going to get shot. It doesn’t even have an actor. When you go to the shooting version, you pare all that back and just give them what they need to move forward. I think you have to be able to impart…
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