The Art of Screenwriting: Gonzalo Maza

By Shalini Adnani

Gonzalo Maza likes women—especially complex ones: they give a character layers, dualities and intriguing id and super ego clashes. Both Gloria and his latest film, Una Mujer Fantastica, for which he was awarded a Silver Bear at Berlinale, celebrate female endurance and resilience. So it was no surprise that Gonzalo, when I met him at the dimly-lit cafe at the London Film School, proposed - apologetically - that I lead the way and keep myself happy as long as I bought him lunch, since the cash machine just swallowed his card. It was the least I could do for him in his frazzled state, which I soon came to realize was a constant for this prolific screenwriter who is always fighting against the next deadline. His playful demeanor disguises a strong desire to understand the inexplicable and mysterious nuances of human beings. To talk of Gonzalo Maza’s life, and work, is to speak of a man who is on a quest to understand the human condition, risking reason and traditional story structure in doing so. In his eternal mission, one still sees a teenager in the forty two year old who exclaims he loves "the contradictions of melancholy and cheery beats of Britpop"—a juxtaposition that runs through his work.

Born in Valparaiso, Chile a port city not far from Santiago, he spent most of his childhood in the beach town near Valparaiso, Viña del Mar. A cinephile since he can remember, Gonzalo’s first job was working as a clerk for the VHS store his mother owned, but it wasn't until he did an exchange program at the University of Texas in Austin that his hope of pursuing screenwriting was solidified. Since his powerful collaboration with the Chilean director and good friend Sebastián Lelio, Gonzalo has decided to pursue a Masters in Screenwriting at the London Film School and a PhD exploring the use of current events in screenwriting.

I first encountered Gonzalo’s work in my early twenties when I was back in my hometown Santiago, Chile, and experienced what some refer to as post-graduation existentialism. I walked into the national cinema buried underneath La Moneda, the national palace, to watch El Año del Tigre (The Year of the Tiger), the only feature film Gonzalo has been the sole writer for. I left the cinema that day deciding I wanted to tell stories that were simple and poignant and since then have observed Gonzalos’ work and knack for tragicomedy with great admiration. I sat down with Gonzalo in a quiet courtyard in Central London to have a chat, Gonzalo immediately steering the conversation to myself and my own inner conflicts.

SA — When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

GM — I wrote a short story once and showed it to a teacher. He didn't like it. He wanted to change the end. Then I showed it to my father, he didn't like it either, or he didn't totally understand it. So I ended up dedicating myself to math, but I always liked journalism - I wrote for a school paper, I had a column, I took workshops and so on and I was also part of a theater group. When I joined the theater group I wanted to be an actor but I quickly realized I had no talent for that - which was very liberating. But one day I wrote a play. This was all when I was about 12. I wrote the play in one evening, showed it to my professor, he liked it - it was very funny. So we got together as a class to make this play happen.We went on to win some awards and went to a national theater competition.

That was my only ‘dramatic’ event. Then I just dedicated myself to journalism, studied it and continued onwards in that career path. Until 1999 when I did a year abroad at the University of Texas where I took lots of film classes, because I was always very much a cinephile. In these class I realised that I really liked this medium, and it was what I wanted to do, but I had no idea how to go about it. I had a friend who worked for TV in Chile, so I started writing for TV where I learned lots about docu drama and melodrama. I worked on one TV series that would take real life events and sort of have a talk show, it paid very little but I started with that, they would take articles written in magazines and sort of create fictionalized cases on them. 

That was really good for school for me, because they had pretty low expectations and it gave me more liberty. No one ever told me I was any good, but that was my melodrama school - in its purest form, very Latin American. Then I quit journalism completely and joined a production company that did shows for children. I was a producer on this show and got to write episodes. This is when I met Sebastian Lelio, who was finishing up his first feature film, and I wanted to know if he wanted a screenwriter. He didn't want a screenwriter but at the same time he needed one because he didn't really know how to take on some elements of writing. I told him I wasn't a screenwriter with much experience but thought we could get together to work on certain things and bounce ideas around and talk. So we would literally get together and just talk about films.

So, as you know, this journal treats screenplays as a form of literature in its own right. What do you think about ‘the screenplay’?

Well, that’s exactly it. I guess I’m not the right person for this interview then, because I do not think that screenwriting is a form of literature. It’s like thinking the map is the journey, which it isn't. What happens to me is that, I think the script is very important, and it’s essential, and in fact, if there is one element where human beings connect to art in film - it’s through the script. Therefore, we, are responsible, to make humanity or that the human condition be part of a film, that’s our job, our responsibility, or our proposal - and then directors and actors take hold of that proposal and interpret it in their own way.

The first human element between people and film is in the script. But I don’t think that taking this responsibility and being the sort of ‘coal miner’, if you will, is similar to literature. In the end, we are making something rough, dirty, we aren't 100% of the form, maybe in dialogue, but not in the rest. In fact, scripts are made to be handed to producers, so there is an intrinsic form of marketing in it. In the end, you want to write like a great writer and entertain producers so they want to pick you up. 

The same thing happens with dialogue, where one can really say - here is the scriptwriter’s literature. That is where I think one can really see screenwriting as literature. But I also think it changes, it’s modified, actors change it quite a bit, or a scene is cut in half and then one asks themselves, is this scene cut in half still considered literature?

It’s a map in the end - a very beautiful one, wonderful, one of those from the 19th century ones with drawings and all that, but a map nonetheless.

Do you have a process for developing a script or finding stories?

No, I don’t. I have ideas, initial ideas that then just start evolving. 

What kind of stories or characters are you attracted to?

There are two things I am very attracted to. One being people that try to seem  strong, externally, but are weak or emotional at heart. I think people hide emotion a lot. That get’s me excited - people who hide their feelings. And what excites me even more is when a person who hides their feelings, knows how to hide them, and really well. Those kind of characters are very touching for me. And I always find myself  gravitating to that. Even though we don’t know where that pain comes from, I like those kind of characters and they create this mix I really like. 

I like Britpop a lot,  the basis for which is  sad lyrics set against upbeat melodies. I think my spirit towards life is absolutely happiness, but in my interior I’m a very sad person. And that - which happens with me, I think happens to everyone. Which I always go back to if I am stuck. 

I tend to do two things if I am stuck. One is if the character is a man, I turn him into a woman and he becomes infinitely better and more interesting. If they are kind of flat, I just turn them into women and they automatically have problems or just come into being and have more shape. Or I go back to this premise of people who hide their feelings. 

In fact, at the moment I am editing a film I wrote and directed, my first feature I’ve directed where I think that is the main conflict I am embarking. How do you show that construct of happiness and sadness at the same time?I think it’s generally easier to do something like this through comedy rather than drama. I’m more attracted to comedy. I don’t know if my comedy is that funny, but I still laugh at it. I think I also belong to the school of anti-male. 

What do you mean by anti-male?

I guess it has to do with my upbringing. I went to an all boys school and hated it, I thought it was very prosaic and primitive. I just found it very primitive. I just don’t find men very interesting. What I find interesting is their blindness and not being capable of seeing themselves as they actually are. But I just find women more interesting. I’ve always listened to women, everywhere I go I want to talk to them, it’s the world I want to know and understand. I think they are funnier and entertaining and I admire them. In college, I would be in love with a girl and in my eternal insecurities and fear, I never told them anything. So I always liked being the friend that was close and could hear everything they had to say, rather than confess my love which wouldn't amount to anything, they would reject me and I would just be miserable. And on top of that, I wouldn't be able to hear the stories anymore. So, I preferred staying with the experiences these women would give me.

I read the script for Gloria, and it’s written in a very experimental way, can you tell me a little about why it was written that way?

The script of Gloria, the final script, has the director’s touch and pass - essentially it’s a shooting script, so the final script belongs more to him. For example, he divides things in ‘songs’ and leaves some bits of the dialogue open for actors to interpret. But sometimes they become certain instructions. But that has to do with the way Sebastian Lelio works with his actors and allows them to find dialogue in their own words. 

The character is very much like the actress who played her, did you have her before you started writing?

We started writing Gloria when we found this character of our ‘mothers’, just this world of our mothers that no one pays attention to, or falls into the background in life. A women of a certain age, she’s an old lady; she has no more meaning in her life, and therefore is neurotic, and therefore, is everything we complain about. Someone that complains, is bitter. So we saw that and thought how unjust it was to view certain women this way, as a society. So based on that idea, we decided to make a film about our mothers, and then started investigating it and through  until we found Paulina Garcia.I remember being in love with Paulina when I was younger, when she was acting at 18, but we eventually thought of her and started looking through her Facebook photographs. And eventually we realized we kept talking about her and had to ask her because the film wouldn't exist without her. So she came over,  we told her about it and finally she was like ‘yea it sounds good’, she liked it. So it was a kind of mix between an idea that we wanted to explore and Paulina who was the character and actress we imagined. A kind of character we thought only existed in Chile and had no idea it would be a universal character.

Coming from a country that was strongly defined by its political history, did you specifically think about post-dictatorial Chile in your writing of Gloria?

I think that film and politics are inevitably intertwined, a film is political, because it belongs to a time and a place. And when you have a character in a specific space it is a document of that time and place, because we all live in a political moment and we are a consequence of that. So that was something we took into account. Seeing the generational difference between our mothers and the younger students who were going out and protesting in the streets and a very strong contrast between Gloria’s generation that didn't protest at all. I mean, they protested the government but because of that, the repercussions were to constantly think of others, especially if a family member was missing or killed, and put their personal needs second. These women were always putting themselves in the background of their own lives, never really having a moment for themselves, to liberate themselves, their moment of glory in a way. In that sense, the film is political. 

Tell me a little about the process of writing El Año del Tigre and your integration of current events into your writing?

The character in The Year of the Tiger doesn't talk as much, but his internal process is very interesting. Due to external circumstances, he escapes from  prison, goes looking for his family and ends up wanting to go back to jail. Which is something that happens a lot, where prisoners get out and come back banging on jail doors trying to get back in. It’s almost comedic. This film was combining two current events which I saw back to back — one was people escaping from prison after the Chilean 2010 earthquake and the other one was someone who found a zoo tiger loose and killed it. And then I thought about the tiger’s story—a tiger who has been incarcerated his entire life in a zoo finds his way to liberty through this earthquake but is eventually killed. So I saw those two stories and just thought - there is something here.  It’s a slightly mystical film.So I called Sebastian and told him about it and we shot the film about 5 weeks later - it was a fairly quick process. 

Tell me a bit more integrating current events into your writing?

I think most of screenwriting books are based on formulas and recommendations to improve your characters, structure or dialogue, and I think many of them can be very useful for your writing. But writers have to stop  and see ourselves as mere cooks, creating trendy recipes or architect's drawing buildings for someone else. I think we should explore different techniques based on other disciplines as acting, documentary and journalism. I believe in improvisation for writers, in the same way Cassavetes and Mike Leigh explored improvisation with their actors. But since we are not actors, I don't think we should explore ourselves. Actually, quite the opposite: we should hear the call from the external world. We need to explore the world. Right now, most of the writers I know like to compare their characters and their stories with books, films and TV series they like. And I'm totally against that. Actually, I try to watch the least amount of TV series I can. Because I think our call should be totally different. We should focus our storytelling efforts  on trying to portray and decode the outside world. The ’real’ world, but not in the sense of ’realism’ or ’Reality TV’. We have so many things to learn from real people, real events, real dialogue. Most screenwriting books, especially American ones, have this idea of reality as something boring, chaotic, indigestible and we, the writers, are the ones to make it edible for audiences. I'm totally against that. I don't think we work for the audiences. We work for the world, which is not the same. We are the witnesses of our time, and we are writing the chronicles of our way of living for the future. We are in charge of portraying our desires and fantasies. In a way, I believe in the old school of chronicles written by journalists. Since journalism became something completely different, we have to answer the call to fill that position in our time.

Where else do you get your inspiration?

I enjoy being around younger kids. I feel very part of this younger generation, but I get this feeling that it never changes. You are always going to be anxious, insecure, and it’s hard to write, and it never works the first time. I think the myth of a genius has damaged art a lot. They are artist and craftsmen and hone in their skills. So I think this idea that a genius can do it faster is just wrong and not right. I like Carlos Flores, he the director of Film at the University of Chile. He coined this phrase (chimbarongo) taken from Don Quixote called “unreflextive progress and ‘methodic relapse’. 

So when you want to make a film you just do it and go, go, go and do it. Then once you are done there is a retrospective progress and analysis. I think when it comes to cinema, too much thought is damaging. Too much consciousness in film. I think you need to be unconscious, I think it’s a mistake to live in a state of consciousness. It doesn't solve anything, just points out the flaws. I think you need to be unconscious. I think the solutions for a script come from somewhere we don’t really know, unknown. A second draft does not get fixed by looking at it mechanically, instead I think it’s by throwing in random elements or something weird that brings it to life. I think it’s important for something to make no sense, but taking hold of that and embracing it in the script. 

I started writing a script based on the idea of ‘primal scream’ and I started investigating. I started just with a word not even an idea. It was a psychological idea from the 70s where people don’t speak or go through consultations but emit sounds or grunts as a process of therapy. Although it’s completely discredited now, it was pretty popular in the 70s because John Lennon and Yoko Ono spoke about it. It’s based on our anxiety and the idea that your scream or yelling can liberate that. So I just liked the name and thought it was crazy and didn't know what it was about - so I ended up basing an entire film on it. And then when people ask what I wanted to say with this, I have absolutely no idea. I just channeled something I found interesting. I think that is the problem with British cinema today — it’s very conscious of itself.

Conscious of structure or society?

Conscious of itself of its social conditions, of its political climate, and it does not give itself to unknown territory and believes that doing so is pretentious. Almost French, or too artistic, or too artsy fartsy as well. And I think that kind of film is looked down upon. I do think sometimes it can be a very cryptic kind of filmmaking, I think the mix of both is great. Between knowing and not knowing. Life is like that, most of the things, we do not know. We live in a world of unknowns. So pretending like the scriptwriter knows everything and is a God is a bit unrealistic. So for me, that is very important - to always guide myself towards the unknown and mysterious things in life.

It’s curious, the English value intelligence from a perspective of consciousness when I think intelligence is not always conscious. The biggest genius of cinema is Hitchcock who is the most conscious person in the world, but he was very aware that the central aspect of his filmmaking was the unconscious, of a character, a murder asking themselves who am I? Am I a murderer, am I not? 

Who is your favourite filmmaker?

I love Hitchcock. I think he brings together everything I want to do. I think he is the best film school. Just watching all of Hitchcock - and you have narrative, I love Vertigo, Marnie. I always change my favorite Hitchcock film, but I just think with Hitchcock you get everything. I think if anything doesn't work - just do it the Hitchcockian way, add some suspense, add some element of the unknown and it will get better automatically. 

If you wish you had written any film, what would it be?

There are plenty of films I love its writing. I truly love Cassavetes films, specially OPENING NIGHT and LOVE STREAMS. I love perfect comedy scripts as the ones by Jeffrey Boam like INNERSPACE (a film I've seen at least 30 times), THE LOST BOYS and THE DEAD ZONE. I truly admire MEAN GIRLS (by Tina Fey) and everything written by Jim Taylor and Alexander Payne (especially, ELECTION, or as I prefer to call, Best Film Ever). I envy all these writers. Of course, I admire the classics,  all of them. Every good screenwriter should consider himself  a vampire of Hitchcock's storytelling techniques.