Michael Regilio
speaker
2,071 appearances
9 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 12 Jul
Michael Regilio’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So I just put that script aside and then in the process of doing this video about... first acts, like I go, oh, now I know what's missing. And I went back and I rewrote the whole first act of that story. Now it works.
Like, I don't know if I'm ever going to go back to that script because it was so long ago, but it is interesting how just studying, studying, studying storytelling and story, you know, it's very humbling and it always makes you a little bit better. There's always more stuff to learn, always more stuff to learn.
Well, I would say that script is probably like eight or nine in line in terms of like things that I want to make. So, you know what? Actually, I won't say it's probably fifth or sixth.
Yeah. I mean, I'm at the point where I have more scripts than I'm going to have time to make into movies. And it's helpful. I was just saying, working as a script doctor, I went out and they gave me the script and I read it. And I was like, oh, based on the fact that I've been obsessing about first acts for the last couple of months, I know exactly how to fix a script.
Yeah, I think that writers tend to be kind of seen as disposable. You know, you can bring different writers in that have different strengths for things. After I wrote Little Miss Sunshine and then especially after Toy Story 3, I was working at Pixar and Disney Theater Animation was bringing scripts up to Pixar and screening them.
And also some Disney live action films were being brought up to Pixar. And they would screen the films and then we'd have a big story meeting and we'd talk and I was very vocal. I have lots of opinions about how stories should be told. So based on that, I started getting hired to come in and do a week or two of work on a script.
So script doctoring is... A lot of times, the script is... You can be writing... The script is about to go into production, or you're writing reshoots. So they've already shot the script. You're going to watch the whole rough cut of the film and go, oh, this story needs to be fixed here or there. So...
And usually you're brought in for, it can be one week, it could be two weeks, it could be three weeks. On Catching Fire, Catching Fire was actually a script doctoring job. So I was brought in for four weeks. So I did four weeks of work. And most of the time you don't get any credit for it. Most of the time you're just working kind of anonymously
And working as a craftsman, you're taking the story, putting it up on blogs and going, what's working with this thing? What's not working with the story? How do I fix it? How do I optimize it, right? The movie's trying to do something. How do I make it work better? It really is just sort of just trying to optimize what the story itself is.
Sometimes you'll be brought in to punch up characters, to warm up characters, get the audience to like a character. Sometimes you'll be brought in to fix up the whole thing. Wow.
I mean, usually... The script is heading towards production. Usually there's a consensus that the script isn't working. Sometimes it's already in production, sometimes it's in post-production. And I've been brought in for, you know, the longest job I did was on Hunger Games Catching Fire. That was a four-week job.
The shortest was I was brought in for one day on a movie and just told to warm up the lead character a little bit in a character's introduction. And that was in post-production. They had already made the movie.
Yeah, I think that, I mean, a lot of times you're very cost-conscious. You're just trying to figure out, like, if they're doing reshoots, what's their reshoot budget? How many days are they going to be able to reshoot? And then you're picking and choosing. You're going, like, big problems, medium-sized problems, and small problems, and trying to, like, address the big problems or not.
And then I'll just say that I won't name the film, but I was brought in one time. There was a film, big-budget film. It had a full cast, full crew. They had rendered the sound stages. They were just ready to start going, and the studio was not completely happy with the script. They thought the script could be streamlined a little bit.
And the director said to me, he said, we're spending three million dollars a week not to make this movie. Oh, God. Wow. You know, I come in and I'm just like cut 15 or 20 pages of the script. But cutting 15 or 20 pages out of script is like cutting 15 or 20 million dollars out of the budget. Oh, wow. You're always trying to be cost conscious.
You're always trying to find very efficient ways to make the script better. But a lot of times what you're just doing is it can't be cost conscious if you're just, you know, making a script better. My joke is that there's nothing more expensive than bad writing and there's nothing cheaper than good writing.
Totally. Totally. Totally. Totally. And if you can come up with a dynamite ending, I'm just telling you like four or five good jokes and that's going to get you an extra 20 million dollars like at the box office. Really?
Yeah. So, I mean, sometimes you're brought in to do a humor pass. Sometimes you're brought in to do a page one rewrite, start, finish, rewrite the whole thing. And then sometimes you're brought in to just fix certain characters or certain scenes.
So being a script doctor sounds like an incredible job, but a lot of your career has been actually writing original stories. In one of your video essays where you break down the philosophy of your storytelling and all the lessons that you've learned in your career, you say that the best metaphor you have for coming up with a story is you're trying to climb a mountain blindfolded.
It's hard because you don't know where you're going. You don't know where the top is. You can't see what's below you. But actually, you say the hardest part about climbing a mountain blindfolded is that you just can't find the mountain.
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