Interview: Elijah Bynum (2013 Black List) — Part 4

The Black List is a pretty exclusive club, especially so for those writers who manage to land two scripts on the List in a single year. That’s what Elijah Bynum did in 2013 when two of his original screenplays — “Mississippi Mud” and “Hot Summer Nights”. I sought out Elijah to see what sort of creative mind could manage that feat. He was kind enough to give me an hour of his time in what turned out to be a great conversation about storytelling and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 4, Elijah digs into the two lead characters in “Hot Summer Nights” as well as some of the themes at work in the story:

Scott: Let’s talk about the two main characters in “Hot Summer Nights” — Daniel Middleton and Hunter Strawberry. Both of them have interesting names by the way. These are your iterations of the two kids from college you mentioned? You used them as a touchstone or a starting point.

What was important to you in developing them so that they were similar and yet distinct, because there are some similarities between them, and yet there are some substantial differences?

Elijah: We might look at a total stranger and figure they are completely different from us and in a lot of ways they are, but there’s something about all of us as human beings that can be universal.

Even though Hunter was the town bad boy and he got all the girls and he drove the cool car and everyone in town knew who he was, there was a loneliness inside him. He felt like an outsider, especially because he was a townie in a resort town in which every summer, people with money flocked in and made him feel inferior.

Every summer he was reminded that he was nothing more than a townie and that he probably would never be anything more than a townie. In that sense he was an outsider.

Daniel’s more obvious in the sense that he’s an old fashioned loner. His father had just passed away. He never really established great friendships or turned into anything that he could identify himself with. Didn’t do particularly well in school. Wasn’t great at sports. He couldn’t look a girl square in the eye without getting dizzy.

And yet, as different as these two kids seem to be on the outside, they shared a very powerful similarity that brought them together. They both wanted to belong. I think that is true about the real life characters I based the story off and it’s something that I wanted to maintain in the fictional versions of them.

Scott: Speaking of Daniel and that loneliness, there’s voice-over narration early in the script where he says, “I was an only child and was never one to make friends easily. Over the years I had become very good at being alone. Frankly, it was the only thing I was good at.”

As a starting point, that suggests his destiny is to find at least some connection, some community, right?

Elijah: Yes. Yes. He wanted to belong to something. I think there’s a piece of dialogue in there that said, “We both wanted to belong.” This is the scene when him and Hunter first meet. They both wanted to belong in different senses of the term “belong,” but there was again that very visceral feeling of not being part of the group and feeling inferior to everyone.

Scott: They share something in that both have lost a parent.

Elijah: Yeah.

Scott: And that’s important.

Elijah: Yeah. I think if I do another pass on the script, it’s something I want to tap into more, because right now, it’s never mentioned. It’s something that someone like yourself who has read probably thousands of scripts and is very attuned to what to look for has picked up on it. I’m not sure everyone will pick up on it.

It’s something that’s floating beneath the surface, but it’s not something I’ve brought out there and really addressed.

Scott: Yeah, I mean, you can deal with it with Daniel. He does this interesting symbolic act at some point about his father and burning some stuff that gets him into a bit of trouble or at least perceived to be like a cry for help.

That and in fact at a key point, he even thinks ‑‑ it’s in a scene description, I think ‑‑ that he might have seen an image of his father down the road. I think you know what I’m talking about. And so as the father hangs over him like a ghost in the way. He’s in the background, but it’s present.

With regard to Hunter, it’s not as much there. I was wondering, because he’s a very angry guy. He’s like a ticking bomb. How much of that anger do you think is spurred on by him being an outsider and how much of that do you think actually is tied to the fact that he did lose a parent, his mother?

Elijah: I think it’s both. I think there is that inferiority complex that kind of haunts him. There is the fact that not only did his mother die, but he realizes he wasn’t there for her. Now his sister won’t speak to him, because she has, whether rightfully or not, found someone to place blame on. And he’s become alienated from everyone.

But on top of that, it is the self‑fulfilling prophecy that for as long as he can remember, he’s always been told that he wasn’t going to amount to anything and he’s nothing more than the bad boy. He’s the guy who can sleep with a girl at night and sell the girl’s father weed during the day. Then the next day, when he runs into both of them, they look the other way, like they have no idea who he is.

That’s something that…it affects every moment of his life. At times he gets off on it, like when he drives up to the gas station and he winks at the young mother and shudders and drives away. And at times, it makes him feel really shitty about himself. And what makes him so tragic is that he is aware of who he is and his place in the world and feels like there is no way out.

There’s a scene where him and Daniel are talking. It’s when Daniel asks him to be part of the drug business. And Daniel says something along the lines of, “You know when you’re told that you’re one way long enough you begin to believe it.” I think the screen direction is something along the lines of Hunter not responding, but knowing all too well how that feels.

And Daniel’s been told all his life, directly or indirectly, that he’s nobody. He is average, which is where I got the last name “Middleton.” He’s in the middle. He does not stick out of the crowd. He’s like, “I don’t want to be that way anymore.”

And Hunter, from a very different standpoint, doesn’t want to be what he’s been told anymore. There’s a point in the script where he starts realizing he doesn’t have to live the life he’s always been told that he has to live. Without giving away the ending, the sad part is that he becomes what everyone says he always would become…

Then when you look at McKayla, she is also a victim of this where she is the attractive, dangerous girl in town that is taken advantage of by these vacationers and then is left after Labor Day, when they go back to their lives. She can see the trajectory of her life as well. Although she doesn’t speak about it, it affects her in the sense that she’s like, “I know how my story ends. I know who I am and I know what’s meant for me.”

It’s the fear of becoming that thing that the world around you tells you that you’ll become. All of our characters fight against that. Some win. Some don’t.

Scott: There’s a real theme at work of destiny, fate. It’s even up top in the dialogue. Hunter at some point says early on in conversations with Daniel, “Walk on the edge long enough and you’re going to fall. Trick is to enjoy the goddamn view first.” And then he follows it up a little later saying, “Life is like gravity. It doesn’t matter who you are. We’re all going to end up where we’re supposed to, whether we like it or not.”

Could you talk a bit about this idea of destiny in the story, of fate?

Elijah: Well, one of the opening sentences in the script in a voice‑over is Daniel saying something about “every moment in life is a result of the moment preceding it.” Steve Jobs’ commencement speech at Stanford tapped into this when he said “It’s not until we look backwards that we can connect all the dots.”

Oftentimes in life we find ourselves in a situation where we go, “How the hell did I end up here?” But if you really go back and deconstruct every decision you’ve made leading up to there, it makes perfect sense. The problem is in the moment we’re blind. Although we always think, “Oh, I won’t make this mistake again” but as it says in the script, “Life is always one step ahead”.

I really was interested in the fact that Daniel was, for the first time in his life, living in the moment and letting emotions and instinct lead the day. And from the very beginning, I wanted to tell a story about a person who thought they had everything under control. And of course, life was one step ahead of him and he watched things spin out.

A movie that I probably watched 100 times when I was writing the script was “Goodfellas.” Structurally, it’s very similar, but it’s the idea of the romanticism of this time and how you can be swept up in it. Before you know it, you look up and you’re facing 50 years in prison and go “How did this happen?” Well, if you look at it, it makes perfect sense how it happened, but on a day to day level, on a granular level, you’re unaware of the path you’re leading yourself down.

Scott: There’s a moment where Calhoun, the sheriff, he’s sort of a mentor or a wisdom figure. He’s got a side of dialogue where he stops Daniel, then says, “You’re going to have a hard and trying summer. Looks like we all are.” Then he goes on. Just sort of raps about the summer and “the heat will change a man, Mr. Middleton. Make him do things he otherwise would not do. And as he yearns for cooler times, you know what it is that will tear him apart? Denying that which is inevitable.”

It’s almost like Calhoun is a prophet at that point. He’s literally saying look, this is the path you’re going down.

Elijah: Absolutely. I love stories that do this. They do it in Magnolia. They do it in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Again, this whole story I wanted to feel like there was a small layer of mysticism to it. It was fantastical in a way. And just working with the idea of the fable. Having a prophet that basically verbatim says the theme of the script and tells Daniel this is what your fate will be, it’s something from the onset that I knew I wanted to happen. I didn’t know how it was going to happen, but I knew I wanted to put it in there.

If only I made Calhoun blind. Damn…

Tomorrow in Part 5, Elijah reflects on his love/hate relationship with plot and what it was like to learn two of his scripts made the Black List.

To read Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Elijah is repped at Verve and Kaplan / Perrone.

Twitter: @BynumElijah.

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