Interview: Alan Roth (2013 Nicholl Winner) — Part 1

Alan Roth’s original screenplay “Jersey City Story” won him one of five 2013 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. I caught up with Alan recently for an interview. Our conversation turned out to be both insightful and inspirational

Today in Part 1, Alan talks about his background, how for years he has balanced working in the family business and his commitment to writing, and the inspiration for his Nicholl-winning script, a compelling true life incident:

Scott Myers: Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up? How did your interest in writing emerge?

Alan Roth: I was born in Brooklyn, New York. While I was still very young, we moved to northern New Jersey, which is where I was raised, and where I still have family.

I grew up in a family of readers. Maybe it was because of my father’s admiration for his favorite authors that writers became my heroes. In the same ways some kids might wish to be Superman, Batman, or their favorite baseball hero, my aspiration was to be the next Tolstoy or Hemingway.

I started writing short stories in high school . The tone and language were very poor imitations of the authors I read. Making it worse, the authors were the classic English Victorian writers. And I chose themes way beyond my own personal experience. It had to be painful to read my work. Then a teacher gave me some advice. Write what you know, and with your own voice. That was an important early lesson.

I found that writing was a way to put my feelings down on paper. To this day, if there’s something on my mind, I really can’t put it to rest until I write it out, even if it’s a note to myself.

Scott: You attended Fairleigh Dickinson University. Did you pursue writing there?

Alan: No, I was a history major, but there was a third generation family business that it seemed inevitable I would join. And I did. But I kept writing. And intuitively, I felt like a writer. I loved the family business, but I held onto my dream.

Scott: I’m assuming, since you wound your way to screenwriting, that at some point, movies became an important part of your life.

Alan: Yes, and I had my dozen or so favorite movies, and those were the films that inspired me.

I kept watching them over and over, and committing the dialogue to memory.

Scott: What are some of those movies?

Alan: Movies like The Natural, He Got Game, and Nothing In Common, a Tom Hanks film from the 80’s, with compelling father-son themes, and movies with strong, but conflicted men, like Local Hero, are ones that resonate with me. Local Hero…you’re familiar with it, too, I can tell.

Scott: Absolutely. I’ve blogged about it quite a bit. In fact, people know how much I love that movie. When I was at the Austin Film Festival last year, a writer and longtime Go Into The Story follower brought me a hard copy of the script.

Alan: That movie hits me on every level. If I could count how many times I’ve seen it, it would be an embarrassing number.

Scott: You received an MFA in creative writing from Emerson, yet at some point, you found yourself working in the printing business. How did all that work out?

Alan: I went up to Boston with the vague notion that maybe I would pursue writing. There was a very hot comedy scene there at the time, and I started writing for some stand-up comics. I published a monthly satirical newspaper that received attention. But there were some issues in the family that prompted me to return to New York and join the family business. Writing had to take a backseat.

Scott: When in all this did you discover and start to write screenplays?

Alan: As time went on I felt that I needed to start writing again, if only for myself. I began with a series of short stories, and some were published.

Then a close friend of mine passed away. I was his son’s godfather. In an effort to take his mind off everything I took him to a game where his favorite player would be signing t‑shirts afterward. We waited in line for an hour and when our turn came I explained to one of the public relations people that my godson’s father had just passed away, and it it would mean a great deal if the player could say a few words to him.

But I was told that the player was just signing shirts and not interacting with the public, and they needed to keep the line moving.

We took our t-shirt and started to walk away. What I didn’t realize was that the player had heard my conversation with the public relations person. We heard this big booming voice from behind, and turned around. It was the player summoning my godson.

My godson looked up at his hero and walked over.

The player knelt down and spoke to him for a couple of minutes.

When my godson turned around he was glowing. The conversation sustained him over the next few months. It was almost transformative and what the player had shared with my godson was his own experience of losing his father at a young age.

By the time we were in the parking lot the whole thing was playing like a scene from a movie in my mind. I knew my godson had been affected in a great way.

And I wondered if the player in sharing this story with him had been affected as well. I couldn’t get the whole scene with the t‑shirts out of my mind. As I mentioned earlier, I can’t really let go of a thought unless I write it down, so I finally wrote it down as a scene from a movie.

Then I wrote a few scenes around that and suddenly a screenplay started to take shape. That ultimately became “Jersey City Story”.

Scott: One obvious lesson there is keep your eyes and ears open; there are stories all around us.

Alan: There are, if we’re open to them. I find that I cannot walk down the street and look at the faces passing me by without stories suggesting themselves to me.

And I’d add that when you write from personal experience it’s more powerful than writing about something you haven’t lived through.

Tomorrow in Part 2, we dig into Alan’s experience taking this moment in his life and transforming it into a feature length screenplay.

Please stop by comments to thank Alan for taking the time for the interview and post any follow-up questions you may have.

Alan is repped by Nate Miller and Dan Halsted at Manage-ment.