Iris Yamashita - 8/11/07
“So How Do You Get There From Here?”
Iris Yamashita Shares Her Journey from
Scriptwriters Network Member to Oscar Nominee
by Sylvia Cary, MFT *
The first Scriptwriters Network member to be nominated for an Academy Award, IrisYamashita, addressed the Scriptwriters Network in the Charlie Chaplin Theater at Raleigh Studios on August 11, 2007, to share her experiences writing LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA, which earned her a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination alongside co-story writer Paul Haggis (CRASH). The movie, directed by Oscar-winner Clint Eastwood, was also named “Best Picture” by the National Board of Review and the L.A. Film Critics Association. In addition, LETTERS received a Golden Globe award for “Best Foreign Language Film” of 2006.How Did Yamashita Get That Job?
Knowing that many of her fellow Scriptwriters Network members would probably be interested in the answer to this question, Yamashita started off her talk by detailing the steps she took as a screenwriter to put herself in that “Oscar nominee” position.
Her main advice, of course, is write, write, write. “Take classes, which teach you the basics and keep you motivated. Then, when you feel you have a polished script, enter contests – not just the big ones like Nicholl’s and Chesterfield, but enter some of the smaller ones in which you think you have a good chance of winning. There are many contests that are judged by managers and agents, so it’s a good way to get your material noticed.” Yamashita herself entered and won the Big Bear screenwriting contest with a script about Japan. “That’s how I was able to find representation. After you get your agent, keep your agent. It took three years before I got a job after finding an agent. In the meantime, like many agents, she was hard to get a hold of – until I got the IWO JIMA job.” She stresses that writers shouldn’t lose heart because of elusive agents: “Agents have so many clients. I’d give mine a script and it would take her several months to read it. She’d send me on a bunch of meet-and-greets which are basically ‘getting-to-know-you’ meetings. And then I’d go home and write more specs.” She adds, “Keep your day job.”
The Stats on Script Sales
Yamashita pointed out that you should keep writing specs even though statistically only about 5% of movies are made from specs. “Lots of specs are sold, not made.” Based on some Writer’s Guild statistics that she came across back in 2005, this is how the script sales figures break down: 5% are from specs; 3% from pitches; 13% from books; 7% are sequels and remakes; 1% are from comics; 4% are from stage plays and teleplays; a huge 58% are from non-spec assignments; and the rest are from other miscellaneous sources.
LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA was a “non-spec assignment.” Most likely that non-spec assignment wouldn’t have happened if Iris Yamashita had not done all those other things first – taking classes, entering contests, getting an agent, hanging in there and willingly going out on all those meet-and-greets, and writing all those specs. “Getting the job was a combination of having the right sample script, being at the right place at the right time, and having a niche. Mine is my heritage as a Japanese-American. The people behind IWO JIMA wanted someone who could write from the Japanese perspective.” She goes on, “Figure out where you stand out from all other writers. Even then, it’s still hard. One job doesn’t guarantee more. I know someone who sold a script at 18 and it took another ten years for him to sell another.”
The Research and the Writing Process
Since LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA was a non-spec assignment, Iris Yamashita had to approach the story almost from scratch. “They sent me a book of letters from the commanding Japanese general who went to Harvard, containing correspondence he wrote to his family, mostly from before the war -- and that was it. They didn’t hire anyone to research the material. I did all the other research myself. I read lots of book on Iwo Jima. I looked at documentaries. I also read a number of sources in Japanese with the aid of friends or computer translators, such as personal journals and Internet articles.” She subsequently met with Paul Haggis (who hired her after their second meeting). “I came into the meeting with a general idea of the storyline. I had General Kuribayashi as one of the main characters, but other than that it wasn’t based on that book. One of the themes I tried to carry over after reading Paul’s draft of FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS, was that of heroes, or in the case of my movie, heroes and cowards. The protagonist is a very nontraditional war movie protagonist, being very unheroic because he wants to live. In Japan, at the time, it was considered cowardly to come back alive from an unsuccessful battle. Paul Haggis and I worked for three months on a beat sheet (writing a sentence or two for what happens in each scene). The detailed beat sheet took longer to do than the script itself – but the beat sheet saves lots of time in the long run because you are doing the hard work up front.”
Like Having a Mentor
Paul Haggis oversaw the outline phase and then left Yamashita on her own to work on the script. Despite Paul’s busy schedule while working on post on the movie CRASH, the whole process went smoothly. “Initially, during the writing of IWO JIMA, I was still working a full-time job, but I was so excited about the script I couldn’t wait to get home to get to work. I’d do outlines and Paul would say Yea or Nay. He was like a mentor who taught me how to ramp up a scene. He’d show me how to have surprises in scenes: ‘Don’t go where people expect you to go.’”
Impact of Movie in Japan
One of the amazing things to come of LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA is the impact the film has had in Japan. “It was #1 at the box office in Japan for five weeks – better than it did here. In Japan, lots of young people don’t know about World War II, so this movie helped educate them because the older people who experienced it don’t like to talk about World War II. So the movie helped people begin to be interested again.”
The Academy Awards
In many ways, it’s all still surreal for Iris Yamashita. But she seems to have kept her feet solidly on the ground. The biggest change is, “I’m now doing a higher class of meet-and-greets.” And when she went to the Academy Awards, “I bought my dress at the mall. Somebody else had the same dress and everybody stepped on my train.” The lesson learned here is: Next time, no train.
How Has Life Changed?
Iris Yamashita has finally quit her day job. “I love not commuting or working 9-5 in a corporate environment,” she says. “I’m a night owl. I do my exercise and errands in the morning and then get cracking on writing in the afternoon and work into the wee hours of the night.” Even though it has taken her two years since IWO JIMA to get another assignment – “and even though I still have the same car and I might even lose my health insurance, what better life than to get paid to do what you love to do!”
* Sylvia Cary, MFT, has been an active member of the Scriptwriters Network for over a decade. Also a licensed psychotherapist, she is a screenwriter and the author of 4 published books, 5 produced educational videos and numerous articles in national magazines. She has a “book-doctor” business called Therapists Who Write which is focused on helping psychotherapists and others in the healing professions get published. Contact at: Sylvia@SylviaCary.com or go to www.TherapistsWhoWrite.com.