PAUL WAYNE

ALSO ON SITE

1. What is your one page screenplay about?

The title of my screenplay, "Freedom" almost telegraphs the plot. It's about a nagging wife seeing her husband off to jail, where, once the bars are slammed shut, he experiences his one chance at freedom.

2. Why did you decide to write this screenplay/What influenced you to enter the WILDsound One Page Screenplay Contest?

It's enormously difficult to tell a story on one page. Much better to have the luxury of 120. So this is written as an exercise - to see if I could communicate an interesting theme, with all the elements of story-telling including interesting character and conflict, in as short a time as possible.

3. How long have you been writing screenplays?

I've written screenplays since my early twenties, beginning with a TV drama "Kiss Mama Goodbye" for the CBC. (It was adapted from a stage play, origianlly mounted in Ottawa.)

4. What is your all-time favorite MOVIE? (name only one)

To Kill a Mockingbird

5. What artist in the film industry would you love to work with?

Stephen Spielberg.

6. How many screenplays have you written?

Four

7. Ideally, where would you like to be in 5 years?

Living.

8. Describe your process; do you have a set routine, method for writing?

I never write unless I have somewhere to go. My first play began with a single line which I thought would make a wonderful first act curtain. It was ten years before I figured how it would all work out - what kinds of characters would lead to this result - and how these characters conflicted - and then and only then did I feel I had the ingredients to begin. After the first draft, at least fifty-five followed.

9. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about?

Music. I find that both arts are tremendously similar. The dynamics of a Beethoven symphony, if one structures it with dialog and stages it, would have the total essense of a theatrical work - for stage or screen. See how the instruments battle with each other; how the harmonies conflict and echo each other; see what dialogs develop between strings and woods. It's all the same, it's action in time, and it's all heart-stirring.

10. Why should people vote for your screenplay?

I think because it fits perfectly into the framework of your one-page scenario. There is not one word, not one comma that it needs to explain itself. That can improve it, or take away from it. It says exactly what it has to say. Period.

11. Any advice or tips you’d like to pass on to other writers?

See above.