Will Write for Beer. . .

Mark Yturralde, Producer/Writer of The Five Stages of Beer, 
talks about writing a microbudget feature.

"The Five Stages of Beer actually began in my living room a few years ago. Some of us with ideas about 
writing a screenplay decided we would get together once a week and maybe try to pursue a joint project. 

"As you can imagine, with a room full of good friends, we ended up just talking, drinking, and cracking 
jokes. I'm not even sure how this came about, but I thought out loud, 'Hey, wouldn't it be funny if you had 
someone make a joke about having a beer for each stage of acceptance, like this one's for grief and so on.' 
Well, we had a good laugh, but, basically, we dropped it.

"As it turns out, we finished multiple scripts, but we all ended up writing expensive stories. Brian Mix 
[Writer/Director] kept saying he wanted to make a movie, not just write one, but when we'd do a budget 
breakdown we'd see how impractical these scripts were. Our budgets came in from 3 to 30 million dollars. 
(Did I mention we like science fiction movies?)

"One day, a bunch of our 'film type' friends got together, and somebody says 'Hey, I bet there's enough 
money in this room to make a DV feature.' That's when Brian turned to me and said, 'How about that five 
beers of acceptance thing you talked about?'

"Of course, now we had to write the script. I had some of it done, and by that I mean, a one-page outline 
and a bunch of dick jokes. That's where Brian comes in. We have different writing styles. Brian has 
structure; I don't. Brian writes story arcs; I don't. Brian's writing is usually pretty focused; mine isn't. I get a 
good idea who my characters are, put them in my head, and let them run amok. The end result isn't always 
'concise.' Like, for example, 180 page first drafts, but together, Brian and I make a good team. 

"Actually not having much of the script done proved to be beneficial on 5SOB because we were able to 
write with the knowledge that this had to be dirt cheap; only a few locations and a handful of speaking 
parts. This is the secret to shooting a feature in just nine days."