Interview [Part 3]: Brian Duffield
In Hollywood development circles, Brian Duffield is a popular figure. As evidence, two of his original screenplays have made the Black List: Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch and Jane Got a Gun, putting him on the 10 Screenwriters to Watch in 2013 list. In addition, he sold his spec script Monster Problems to Paramount in 2012 and has written on a big budget franchise movie: Insurgent. And if that’s not enough, Duffield is slated to make his debut as a director on his own script Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately.
Brian is an active presence on Twitter (you should definitely follow him: @BrianDuffield) and we’ve gotten to know each other over the years, so I was pleased to have the chance to interview him.
In Part 3, we learn about how Brian broke into the business and start to analyze his first Black List screenplay “Your Bridesmaid Is A Bitch”:
Scott: Let’s jump back a bit in time. As I understand it, when you sold your first spec script which is Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch, you were working in a clothing factory in Vernon, California.
Brian: Yeah, I was working at Lucky Brand Jeans. The script was probably over a year old at that point and I was onto other scripts, and other projects. I didn’t think anyone wanted it or even liked it. I sent it out to several agents and mangers and I couldn’t even get them to read it.
I was thinking of just going home to Pennsylvania and shooting it on a DV cam, super cheap. But even the idea of shooting that script basically in friend’s homes and with a really crappy camcorder was so unrealistic financially because I was so in debt after the economy died. I was temping at Lucky Brand Jeans, it was barely paying for my commute to get there and back. It was a tough time but it really worked out in a really strange way. It’s really cool.
Scott: The script made the Black List. Here is a plot summary: “After agreeing to do this at his sister’s wedding he said Noah Palmer realizes he may have made the mistake of his life after finding out that the woman who broke his heart is also part of the bridal party.” I know you are fan of Woody Allen…
Brian: Yeah.
Scott: Is this an homage to or perhaps inspired by Annie Hall?
Brian: I think it was a matter of… The exact situation didn’t happen to me at all but I feel like there are four or five pieces that happened to me that I glued together for the spec. It was the first romantic comedy that I had written and I think that was just because I knew that character so well because I was going through so many ridiculous things in my own life. I think everyone going to weddings has a dread of seeing an ex there, and you have to put on this really happy brave face, even when this person that destroyed you is right there doing the exact same thing.
At the time it was my worst fear in the universe and I wasn’t trying to make a comedy. I think breakups are really devastating when you’re in them and then a few years removed they’re often really, really funny and that is kind of how it happened. So it didn’t even start off as a comedy because it was just me like brokenhearted writing and then people started saying it was really funny and I don’t think I expected it to be funny necessarily. I think my voice errs on the comedic side of things and then as I rewrote it I leaned a little more into that.
Scott: It quickly sold after your managers at Circle of Confusion found it, in a matter of about a month or so…
Brian: I didn’t realize it was going sell. A college buddy of mine named Matt Downing was friends with my now-manager and gave him the script. He really liked it and he wanted to run with it. He told me he thought it could sell and I was like, that’s hilarious, but go for it.
I thought that’s just what they told all new clients. So they started sending it out and as soon as my shifts at the factory ended, I would drive across town for drinks or dinner or whatever with these different production companies. And whenever someone tells me they really liked the script, I just assume my managers called them and got them to buy me a drink as a favor. Like, have pity on this poor kid we just signed. I was taking it seriously because I was really nervous and really excited to be having some kind of forward momentum, and to have free drinks and food while making $9 an hour. I don’t think there was ever a point where I thought, “Oh yeah, this is going to sell”. I didn’t think anyone had even read it, I thought they were just lying to be nice.
Then when I met with Skydance, who ended up buying it, I had this moment mid-meeting, while I was talking about it, that I realized that this was a very real situation, and it scared the crap out of me. Then it sold the next day to them, which was incredible.
But it was like this very weird… I try to talk to my parents in Ireland every couple of weeks. There was one call where nothing was happening in my life, and I was really in debt and kind of miserable. Then by the next call I had sold a screenplay to Skydance.
Scott: Let’s talk about the script. When I read it, I was reminded of an interview I did with Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber about 500 Days of Summer, when they wrote that script, their attitude was they were going to break as many of the so-called screenwriting rules as possible. Your script has something of that feel, like you just weren’t concerned with convention. For example, at some point, the Protagonist Noah is in some deep emotional pain, and he goes on a wonderful tirade in a bathroom that’s nearly two pages long. It’s like something Paddy Chayefsky would admire. But a script reader would probably look at that monologue and say, This guy’s obviously an amateur, right?
Brian: Yeah, again. That’s a scene in The 25th Hour that I just stole. Ed Norton’s in the bathroom and on the mirror, someone’s scratched in “Fuck You” and Ed Norton just goes, fuck you! And he goes on this amazing, scathing, blistering tirade about New York.
It’s my favorite Spike Lee scene, ever. It just goes through everything he hates about New York and it’s so passionate, and it’s so ugly, and the more it goes on, you kind of start to understand this guy is a guy who really loves New York. Then at the end of it, it has I think the same scene very similar as in Bridesmaid where he kind of turns the subject back on himself. For me, that’s what Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch, that whole movie was in a nutshell.
Again, that came out of, I was cheated on, and the next day I watched The 25th Hour. But, I related to it so much. Even though our situations could obviously not be more different. That’s kind of where that scene came from.
It’s funny, because at the end, I think it’s classic, petty boyfriend complaints. But hopefully by the time he finished it, you kind of realize how much this person actually meant to him beyond all the pettiness and all of the ugly things that they did to each other. He wouldn’t be so broken and angry if she didn’t mean the world to him. That’s really where that scene came from. It wasn’t a matter of me thinking I could breaking any rules, it was just a matter of me thinking I could rip off David Benioff.
It’s funny, not enough people have seen The 25th Hour. I think a comedic version of that scene is exactly my sense of humor. I feel like nothing there’s funny about Noah in Bridesmaid. The guy is not having a great time.
So as I wrote it, I didn’t want it to be a miserable break-up movie. So I just started re-appropriating really dramatic scenes and sneaking them into a romantic-comedy. There’s a scene where all the dialogue is from Saving Private Ryan. Because for Noah, he’s living a really, really serious, R-rated drama. And everyone around him is living a Nora Ephron movie. So I thought the juxtaposition of the two would be really fun, and hopefully keep Noah from being a whiny hero, which is an oxymoron. He just wants to avoid his problems and go home and sleep, but he’s still man enough to put himself in this situation of hell for a few days for his family, if that makes sense.
Scott: It makes perfect sense. It’s like a hero’s journey. He has to go through this catharsis. Again, it’s like the same sort of process you went through with Monster Problems, where you physicalized something that he fears the most in order to confront it. Unless he does that, he’s going to be stuck for the rest of his life. He has to have this experience in order to move forward.
Brian: Yeah, it definitely helped me move forward in my life. It’s this really weird bizarro, thing where writing Noah really helped me get to something, because I thought, “Great, I like this character just for trying” and I wasn’t really trying in my own life. So I wanted to be a little more like Noah and a little less like me. He got a little bit of hope about the future. It was like “This guy made it, so I can make it too.” It was so funny. To this day, I’ll get Twitter messages from people, somehow got a hold of the script, and they pour their hearts out to me about how they’ve been cheated on. It’s sad that I’m the person that they can talk to about it. It’s also very neat.
Tomorrow in Part 4, Brian talks about working on Insurgent, the sequel to the hit movie Divergent.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Part 2, here.
Brian is repped by Gersh and Circle of Confusion.
Twitter: @BrianDuffield.
Instagram: http://instagram.com/briancduffield.
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