Interview (Part 6): Rob Meyer and Luke Matheny

When I saw the trailer for the movie A Birder’s Guide to Everything, I immediately sought out its filmmakers: Writer-director Rob Meyer and writer Luke Matheny. It’s a wonderful story starring some terrific young talent as well as Oscar winning actor Sir Ben Kingsley. The movie comes out in theaters and on VOD this Friday, March 21.

In Part 6, Rob and Luke share their thoughts about how to break into the business:

Scott: A few more craft questions. How about theme? How important is that for you? I remember reading somewhere in my research where, Rob, you talked about the “restorative power of nature”. Was that a central theme for you?

Rob: Yeah, I think that was certainly important for me, personally. What’s great about being a writing team is I think Luke and I have different themes and perspective on this. Mine was certainly the importance of nature. I have a little bit of an agenda in that I think people should be more in touch with the natural world. I think people would find it helpful in their lives, from a psychological perspective. But actually for me, the central theme of the film is coping with loss.

Scott: Speaking of you as a writing team, what’s your actual writing process? Do you get together? How do you write?

Luke: Well, Rob came in with the idea that it would be three friends going on a quest to find an extinct duck. We already had characters because he had that short. We spent a few weeks outlining the movie.

We wrote it in four days where we each wrote about twelve pages a day, splitting up the outline. We had about a 90-page script of the other four days. Then, we spent several years rewriting that 90-page script.

Rob: Including going back to the outline a lot. It wasn’t just tweaking the script, it was like cutting out whole chunks of it or whole concepts and starting from scratch. The outline got more and more involved and complex.

We used a program called OmniOutliner. I don’t even know if it’s a writer’s tool, but it does a great job. You can add lots and lots of notes under each heading and you can choose to hide them or not.

It’s very hard for me to get my head around the whole feature. I also have trouble memorizing things, and I have a terrible sense of direction. I’m not good at that stuff. Having a skeletal outline of each beat and each story that could fit in a page or two, that was really important.

Luke: It’s easy to wrap your brain around that. Whereas, a document that has everything about the movie in it is going to be 30 pages long. It’s too hard to organize it in your mind that way.

Rob: I’d say what we learned from this was, there seems to be two parts to your writing, the free association, shooting the shit, going off and writing in tangent/brainstorming direction. You don’t want to be thinking too much about structure and constraints. You want to let your mind go because that part of your mind tends to come up with better stuff than your conscious part of your brain.

Then, you have the part that’s almost the producer side thing — the thing has to work. It’s a blueprint for a building that’s got to stand. That’s a pretty constraining part of your brain.

Luke: That part always comes afterward. You usually start from a more intuitive standpoint. That’s where you have the merits of writing that first draft as fast as you can. Although it did change drastically over the years, there’s a good chunk of it that we kept from that first draft.

Rob: Finally, I think the thing that we are still learning is the proportion. How long should we stay in that chaotic, brainstorming, subconscious realm? At what point should we say, “We’ve got to stop that now and try to get this into a structure.”

Scott: It sounds like you’ve got a healthy respect for the organic nature of story. You’re not into the formula thing, which is great. God knows we don’t need any more formulaic writing in Hollywood. Finally, I’m sure you get this all the time, what advice could you offer aspiring screen writers or film makers about learning a craft and breaking into the business?

Luke: I would say have faith in the idea that if you write a really good script, things will happen. There’s a little bit of a myth that it has entirely to do with access, which is a little untrue. If you write an amazing script, someone is going to take interest whether it’s from a studio level or on the Sundance level. Don’t get distracted by things that aren’t related to writing a good script. Make that your main goal.

Rob: It’s easy to spend a lot of time worrying about how other people are doing, why you’re not succeeding, and so on. Obviously, that stuff’s a real enemy to making it. Another key is finding people who are going to give you honest feedback when you’re script’s not great — yet. They might not know why it’s not. You don’t have to listen to what their solutions are because they might not have them. But it’s very hard to get perspective about whether what you wrote is really good.

Luke: You have to use that well of readers very judiciously just because it’s a long process. You’re going to write many drafts. So you’re going to be asking people to read several drafts.

Rob: It’s a big ask to have friends read for you.

Luke: Keep people in your back pocket for later because it’s going to take a long time.

Rob: At a really practical level, I’d also recommend going to the Austin Film Festival.

Luke: That’s true.

Rob: We went recently. They have a great writer’s conference there. It’s a pretty economical way to learn a lot of the stuff that we learned in film school and a great setting where you’re surrounded by aspiring writers and also really established writers.

The takeaway for me is that we’re all in this together. The Academy Award winning screenwriters feel just as lucky that they’re still working today, and are just as frustrated with trying to get their passion projects made. That’s an executable piece of advice I’d have.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Great NYT review of A Birder’s Guide to Everything.

Rob is repped by WME and Apostle Management.

Luke is repped by Paradigm.

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