Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003) is a collection of tall tales about giants, witches, and the ubiquitous fish that got away after swallowing a gold ring. But it's really about writing. The central conflict is between two different styles of storytelling.

Edward Bloom (Albert Finney) likes to tell colorful stories embellished with absurd but comical exaggerations. His estranged son William (Billy Crudup) is a just-the-facts journalist trained in reporting nothing but the who, what, when, where and why of a story. Father and son haven't spoken in three years. Now Edward is dying of cancer. William tries to reconcile, but he feels like he doesn't know who his father is because he can't find the truth in Edward's style of storytelling.

I related to this movie because of my own rocky relationship with my father. I remember one time when I was having trouble with a character in a spec screenplay I was writing who was a World War II veteran. I realized that even though my father fought in WWII, I never heard him talk about it. So I asked him about his experiences. Just like William Bloom would have, I quickly became annoyed with the tangents my father's story took. I just wanted him to get to the parts that would answer my questions. It was later that very same night that I attended an advance screening of Big Fish.

I was reminded of this recently because my father passed away last month from cancer. Days later, I came across an envelope in his desk. It was dated 1956. Long before I was born. Before my parents were married. Inside were several drafts of a screenplay he had written called "The Big Doof." He never told me that he once tried to write a screenplay, nor had he ever taken my own screenwriting ambitions seriously.

If I were more of an Edward Bloom, I would be telling you "The Big Doof" was the most clever, hilarious screenplay I had ever read, and I showed it to my agent and within a week Warner Bros. and Paramount entered a bidding war over it and George Clooney and Mel Gibson challenged each other to an old-fashioned duel to the death for the right to play the lead role. But I do tend to be more of a William Bloom. His version would be that my father's screenplay wasn't quite finished but it showed some promise and might be shaped into an entertaining short.

Similarly, I could tell you that the long stories my father told when asked a simple question were as fanciful as Edward Bloom's, but in reality they were merely long-winded. Which version would make this a more touching tribute, and which would be more true?

The lesson William learns in Big Fish is to find a compromise between factual reporting and entertaining storytelling. The plain truth can be boring. The fantastical yarn can be rooted in a truth. That's what I think is meant by the expression "write what you know." Don't write your own personal life story in boring, exacting details. Instead, embed your life's lessons into stories that people want to hear.

Dan Margules has written over one hundred screenplays but has refused to allow any of them to be made into movies because they would change cinema as we know it and that wouldn't be fair to other movies. His award-winning short film, Begleiter, is available in a Special Edition from Amazon.com or happy-the-dog.com. He also co-founded, and was president of, San Diego Filmmakers.