I would say pick and choose what you writing at. Extreme Measures sounds overstuffed. Inception and Black Swan are "mashups" but are very focused in what they're trying to do. Don't get too fancy.

I would also say that, along with hitting all the genre sweet spots, find ways in which your 2/3 genres interact and overlap. It's those moments, in which the scripts premises butt against each other, that will give your story that "original" twist that stands out.

Example that comes to mind: Inception. Heist movies have physical confrontations. Dream/cerebral movies have falling/reality warping moments. Put them together and you have Arthur's fantastic zero-g joust with the security personnel in the hotel hallway.

If you read the Moviemaker interview with Mila Kunis and Darren Aronofsky they specifically state that they just tried different things in Black Swan and sorted it out in the edit- and I think it shows. I'm sure the fans of the piece or director might think that's magically artistic, but I think that there's a serious lack craft there. (That and I'm jealous he has better toys, meaning actresses, to play with than I do).

I enjoyed this article. I think that the way to write a cross genre piece is to study, research and write a single genre piece and master that. That way when you add in the other elements as Scott mentioned you have a solid understanding and foundation for crossing into others.

I'm a huge fan of the old freakshow Dario Argento flick "Suspiria" and BLACK SWAN just seemed like a nice tribute to that so, overall, I enjoyed it. I think Aronofsky's prior film, The Wrestler, was a much more mature piece of work but still... always nice to visit the asylum once in a while, eh?

I fear ALL my scripts are cross-genre pieces. All of my horror flicks have been horror-comedies. All my mysteries have elements of horror. All my comedies have action elements.

Probably something I should address at some point. Why am I so afraid to commit to just one? Nice food for thought on this winter's night...

@Chucklz: Thanks for that heads-up. I checked it out and you're right. They shot scenes with multiple approaches in terms of tone, feel, mood so they could "play around" with it in the edit. I'll post excerpts from that interview in the OP. Thanks!

RE: That interview. I think it's a bit of a stretch to go from a director giving himself choices in the editing room to "they just tried to cover every possible potential story base on set and threw it together in the editing bay."

To bounce off that quote from Coppola that Scott posted, I would be willing to bet a lot of money that Mr. Aranofsky had a raaaather particular vision going into Black Swan's principal photography...Just because a director says that he had his actor play a scene a bunch of different ways on the day has absolutely nothing to do with some sort of scatter-shot vision. Ask any decent actor: I'd be willing to bet an equally large sum of money that they'd most likely say they want to give the director as many options as they possibly can for every given scene. That's not to say there's no vision, though! Options within the direction that Aranofsky (or whatever director we're talking about) gave, and within the ideas they've rehearsed, practiced, rewritten, spitballed in pre-production and talked about in their trailers between shots.

David Fincher can go up to 90 takes a scene if you believe the more ridiculous claims (I'd say 40 or 50 a scene maybe, but still), and I'd call Mr. Fincher one of our most singularly focused directors working today. If anyone has clear visions of a movie, it's David Fincher. Any actor is going to try any number of versions of a particular scene, and, in the same vein, any movie is going to be a product of getting pieced together in the edit bay, right? Unless you're on some tiny tiny budget, you're going to have hundreds of hours of footage. Ben Affleck talks about the different endings they shot for The Town, the different character beats they shot for how his character ended up at the end--I don't think that's any lack of vision or confusion of story types on his part, I think that's a director covering any artistic and economic bases. What director doesn't do that? Do you think Coppola only shot three takes per scene for The Conversation, with all three takes being focused on the same performance beat from Gene Hackman? Eh. Unlikely.

I also happened to have been blown away by Black Swan, so my opinion is not totally unbiased. Not really a huge fan of Aranofsky's movies in general, but I recognize his talent, and I thought Black Swan was in the top 2 movies of the year for me. It's really really hard to pull off a movie that's about art/performance, and I thought they knocked it out of the park.

@Nate: You'll notice I didn't say either approach (flexibility / focus) is necessarily better than the other. Just noting the difference as being of interest.

And of course directors typically shoot numerous takes of a scene to get as much coverage as possible for edit. How many of those takes go beyond, "Okay, let's do this one a bit faster" or "Now let's try it slower" or "This time a bit more" or "All right, now let's do it with a bit less," not so sure.

I'll concede this: There may be something of a generational gap re Black Swan. Nearly all of my college students love the movie. Many of my colleagues do not.

And I'll also note the movie is currently at #51 on the IMDB Top 250.

That said, Nate - and any others who think the movie is brilliant - I'd love to hear your take on this question: What is the story?

If I had to sum up "Black Swan" with a log line it would go something like this: "When a sexually-repressed ballet dancer must transform into a sensual being on stage, her obsession for perfection takes over."

Now using Nina's 5 character dynamics and the genres you applied to them - which was a great idea by the way - drama and thriller may appear the most out of the 5, but I would still put the essential story in the horror genre. My reason is that the most important relationship in the story is Nina and the Black Swan - which is a psychological horror plot.

I totally agree that the thriller elements exist because of Nina's paranoia that her role may be sabotaged by Lily or Beth. She even goes as far as taking Beth's jewelry to be more like her.

Nina's relationships with her mother and Thomas are the drama aspects indeed. I would argue that those dynamics both add more pressure and tension to Nina's desire to succeed. Thomas pushes Nina hard and verbalizes his doubts that she can be the Black Swan. And Nina's mother used to be a ballet dancer and is clearly living out her unfulfilled dreams through Nina.

None of these horror/drama/thriller elements felt unhinged or "islands upon themselves" to me. I would argue that they all assisted in magnifying Nina's pressure, fear, and transformation into a monster.

This quote from thewrap.com by Darren Aronofsky helps support my "horror movie argument": “I liked this idea that we were kind of making a werewolf movie except it was a were-swan movie,” joked Aronofsky.

I feel he did a great job showing her gradual change from the white swan to the black swan - on and off the stage. Her bedroom had more pink and stuffed animals then most grade school girls. It helped to show how her mother Beth wouldn't allow Nina to grow up and be her own woman.

Beth appears to not allow Nina to have company at their apartment either when she doesn't let Lily come in. Plus, any mother who only paints pictures of her daughter clearly needs a lover in her life.

Nina is essentially becoming just like her mother - fixated on one thing to the point of being crippled by it. Her mother's life is all about Nina's success and Nina's life is all about ballet.

You could even call "Black Swan" a Frankenstein-story. Nina's mother would be the mad scientist who created Nina's reoccupation with ballet that led to Nina becoming a monster. But at the end of the day -I believe "Black Swan" is a horror movie first, then a drama/thriller.

Thanks for a GREAT post Scott!

One other thing that comes to mind when setting up cross-genre stories is to establish all of the genres you'll be playing with early on, then use them consistently. It's a problem when, say, a melodramatic scene pops up at the beginning of a third act of a thriller. I loved Zombieland and Shawn of the Dead, but you knew those were horror-comedies right out the gate. What you are really guarding against is tone shifts.

I liked but didn't love The Black Swan and think the tone shifts may have had something to do with it. While the acting was great and the film was visually stunning, there was a herky-jerky quality to it - but that herky-jerky quality was so consistent in itself, it didn't wreck the movie. Instead, it seemed like being herky-jerky was a deliberate part of the plan, but one that didn't work that well for me, personally, while others may consider it cool.

I don't think there is really any "cross-genre" movies. There are movies that incorporate many facets of different genres, but they all (at least the better ones) all lean harder on one than the other.

I started to realize -- it happens a lot in scene transitions. For comedies many scenes transition on a "button." A joke. But all genres have their "buttons." Horror has a scare. Drama -- tear jerking moment, or the setup there of.

Take SCREAM for example. It is funny. But it's clearly a Horror movie.

Every single scene in that movie is constructed to have the viewer on the edge of their seats. It's about the scare.

As far as THE BLACK SWAN goes... I don't think the intent was to scare people. I think it was to be a drama. Some scenes are scarier than others. But scaring the audience doesn't seem like it is at the forefront of that movie's intent. The DRAMA is at the forefront. It's about Natalie Portman's character. And those around her. The story is somewhat problematic in that it is from Natalie Portman's POV and she is an unreliable "narrator." It becomes hard to tell what is real and what is in her head. That creates some suspenseful, thrilling, and scary moments. But it's all about the drama -- her inner plight.

Anyway, that's my two cents on genre. I really wish there was more discussion on the topic. Seems to be a big glaring whole in the screenwriting How to oeuvre.

@Scott: My response was aimed at Chuklz, not you :). Although, I would love to know how wide of a range Coppola covered when he was shooting The Conversation, even though he had such a fixed, singular vision about it in the interview. It seems crazy not to give yourself as big of a range as possible, regardless of how particular the image of the film is in your head--the editor always appreciates options, and actors always do too. That being said, you're very right. Comes down to personal preference for each director.

For the other end of the spectrum, hearing Fincher talk about how he shoots/assembles his scenes is absolutely unbelievable. That man's mind is sharper than diamond cutters. From COLLIDER:

http://collider.com/david-fincher-interview-social-network-girl-with-dragon-tattoo/67432/

@Nate: Thanks for that link. I recently watched the original Girl With a Dragon Tattoo. Found it to be mediocre. This is one of those instances where Hollywood (read: Fincher) will dramatically improve upon the original - at least we can hope!

Yeah, I was not blown away. I didn't think it was terrible, but I wouldn't have been happy if I had paid 12 bucks to see it (thanks, Netflix Instant View).

That material is almost tailor-made for Mr. Fincher, and I'm putting myself squarely in the excited category. Hopefully Rooney Mara turns out to be as amazing as Fincher says she is.

But reading about his shooting process for TSN just makes my brain hurt. Unbelievable to be reminded of just how much the AAA directors are juggling in their heads when they're on a set, cutting together the edit (mentally) from bits and pieces of the previous 25 takes he's done that day...And you wonder why they make a lot of money...

I think the most important aspect of cross-genre writing is ultimately the writer him/herself, ie, the writer's voice. It's like writing a piece of prose, how can one categorize the best piece of literature into a genre? It's almost impossible, if you look at the greats like Dostoevsky, the writer's output is beyond genre in terms of literature. Now, I think the same can be applied to films, its the writers voice, I think the best way to write a cross genre story is not to think about genre, and just to write the story you see in your mind- and give yourself no boundaries, maybe the first draft will be a half filipino, half chinese, half white, half african american, quarter russian, etc, etc. It might be a mix of everything, but then when you get to the fourth draft stage you'll slowly find out what it actually is. I like how studios now are looking for cross-genre stories, this means that it adds an extra challenge to the writers, to write better stories, because, arguably, cross genre writing is more difficult then one genre writing for the mere reason that you don't have as many historic templates to fall back on. But then again, the best plays, "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf, just as example, almost always intuitively crosses genres, the starting point, like Scott says, will usually be drama, interwoven with satire and comedy.