Interview: Alan Roth (2013 Nicholl Winner) — Part 3

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 3, Alan talks about four other key characters in “Jersey City Story”:

Scott: There’s a second key character in the story, Ed Shenkel. In his 40s, a Pulitzer‑Prize‑winning author who, when we met him, can no longer write. His life has been stalled, essentially, due to a family trauma in his past.

Obviously you’re a writer. How did that feed into the origins of this character?

Alan: I’m Shenkel. But there was no family trauma — I had a happy childhood, and my parents were perfect in every way that was important. But there were other things, and I learned how difficult it is to carry on with your normal work when everything else is blowing up around you.

The key to it can be an external catalyst that you can grab onto. Shenkel and Poe were each other’s catalyst.

Scott: So I’m reading the story’s setup and I’m thinking, “Shenkel’s going to get involved in Poe’s life, and through their interview slash friendship process, that’s going to break down Poe’s emotional defenses.” But in one of the most inventive dynamics in the story, you reverse it.

Instead of Shenkel playing armchair psychologist and eventually breaking through to Poe, it’s Poe who opens up to Shenkel because he needs Shenkel to do one task for him, then another task, then another task.

It’s a very interesting twist in the narrative. Where did you hit on that idea?

Alan: That was organic in the story. Poe needed Shenkel to free him from the entanglement with the boy living in his old room. So he sends Shenkel to meet with him, and in the meantime watches Shenkel’s son. He senses the boy’s profound pain, and understands the source of it, as only someone who had suffered greatly could.

Scott: Yes, you mentioned Shenkel’s son, Danny, who, like his father, has been hugely influenced by this tragic event in their lives. Am I safe in assuming that your godson was, in some ways, an inspiration for Danny’s character?

Alan: My godson was the inspiration in parts for both Danny and Paulie, the boy living in Poe’s old bedroom in the projects. My godson lived in Jersey City projects. His father, my friend, passed away, and I became a fixture in his life.

I was able to protect him from a lot of things, but I couldn’t protect him 24 hours a day from some of the ugliness of life that he saw on a daily basis, once his father had passed away.

Scott: Let’s talk about Paulie, because he’s the fourth major character in the story, who lives in the exact same room in the projects where Poe grew up. He’s the character that, much like the story that you had, from your own personal life, wants to get this autograph of Poe.

It’s interesting, because you have Poe at some point talking about the psychological phenomenon of projection. I use that when talking about characters in stories. I oftentimes look at the protagonist and the characters around them, and I’ll say, “These characters can at some level be looked at as projections of the protagonist’s own psyche.”

For example, I look at Paulie, and he feels like a projection of the innocent child Poe was before certain things happened to him which robbed him of his youth. As a result, when Poe looks at Paulie, he sees a young, unscarred version of himself. Does that resonate with you?

Alan: Yeah, Scott, that’s a really great insight. One of the reasons Poe ultimately decides to be part of Paulie’s life, and part of the reason he decides he’s going to help fix Danny is that it’s his way of reversing time.

He wishes he could reach back and change the past, so that things could have turned out differently for him. But he can’t, so the deep seeded humanity in him compels him to try to change the fate of others.

Scott: Then, there’s a fifth character. Those four seem to really spring from that one moment in time that you had had. There’s a fifth character, Dr. Kelly, who probably emerges in a more indirect way.

She’s the woman who’s appointed by the courts to be Poe’s behavioral therapist after there’s an incident that he has. She has an interesting function in the story, in that she not only intersects with Poe, but there’s an eventual payoff with her, with regard to Shenkel.

I’m curious about how you came up with that character. Was that more of a functionality type thing, where you saw a need for that type of character? Again, how did that character evolve?

Alan: In some ways, she was a means to an end. Poe heals everyone around him, but he can’t help himself. He can help Paulie, and he can help Shenkel, and he can help Danny. He has the insight to even help Dr. Kelly, but he isn’t able to help himself.

So often, we are myopic about ourselves, and yet we have deep insights to those around us. We give advice, but don’t follow it.

Dr. Kelly was necessary, in terms of Poe’s anger management counseling, but she was also serviceable in demonstrating Poe’s vision into human nature.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Alan delves into some key themes and dynamics in “Jersey City Story” and what it has been like to win the Nicholl Fellowship.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

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.