Screenwriter Justin Marks has been described as the “most gainfully employed professional fanboy on the planet right now.” Understandably so given the fact Justin has written such projects The Raven, Super Max, Suicide Squad, Shadow of the Colossus, Hack/Slash and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo.

The Hollywood Reporter recently featured this guest column Justin wrote called “My Life as a Screenwriter You’ve Never Heard Of.”

Justin has written over 20 movie projects. This interview in 6-parts offers an informed perspective of the craft from Hollywood’s front lines.

Today in Part 2, Justin talks about Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun‑Li, adapting comic books and his work on “The Raven”:

Scott:  Your first writing credit on a feature length film I believe is Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun‑Li.  What did you learn from that experience?

Justin:  [laughs] Oh, I learned so much from that experience. [laughs] One is, it’s all about everyone in the process believing in the same mutual vision.  Which that movie did not have.  But I was lucky, I guess. That was the second assignment I ever had.  It paid me money and I could continue my writing career.  At a certain point when you sign off on a script, that’s it.  You leave your hopes at the door.  I know that they did some things on that movie… let’s just say I can’t get all the way through.  But it was exciting at the time.  It seemed so easy, when the second thing I wrote got made.  It’s like wow, this must be what it’s like.  The batting average is going to work like this.  Then, seeing it for the first time, seeing what it became, it was mortifying.  You want to rewrite the movie in real time.  I felt so helpless.  Street Fighter was tough, it was my first real scar.  But I’m glad I have it.  I’ve always been candid in my opinion of that movie, as my friends know.

Scott:   You’re drilling down here into two points. One is that it’s really hard to get a movie made. The second thing is you want to get that produced credit. Not only about getting a production bonus, it’s having a credit, getting residuals and all that other stuff.

Justin:  That would be great, except I wasn’t in the Writer’s Guild at that time. [laughs] I get no residuals for that movie.  As much as my friends think they’re helping me by renting it on DVD so they can make fun of it, I get none of that money, which is heartbreaking.

Scott:  Someone once described that getting a movie made is like a space shuttle launch. A million things can go wrong. Is that your experience with the process of getting films made?

Justin:  Yeah, I think it’s even harder than that.  I mean, as a writer at a certain point you have to let go, because that’s not why we’re doing this.  We’re doing this because we love what we do.  I love getting up in the morning, walking my dogs, having my coffee, thinking about movies, and then sitting down at my computer and getting to write.  Everything else becomes secondary.  Obviously, you get hooked into it when people say hey, the movie’s going to get made.  But I’ve had enough of those, I mean, I could go through war stories of movies that were cancelled at the last minute, movies that were greenlit, and then the head of the studio was fired on the very same day.  Things like that just go on.  It makes you cynical, it really does. But the best thing a screenwriter can do, is just don’t let it faze you.  Just keep writing, because that’s what you’re doing it for.  You’re not doing it for the money, you’re not doing it for the name in lights.  You’re doing it to keep working.  The fact that people pay us for this is crazy.

Scott:  A lot of projects you’ve worked on are based on comic books including “Green Arrow,” “Supermax,”" Suicide Squad,” “Hack and Slash,” as well as the video game “Shadow of Colossus.” How did you get on that list in the movie development circles?

Justin:  David Goyer was a mentor to me very early on.  I was lucky enough to work with him on Green Arrow: Escape From Supermax.  He was a producer on that movie.  He must have grown up in a house made of comic books.  I never had that.  I grew up on those shows, and played with those action figures, and read comics just like any boy in the 1980s.  But really, I just try to look at those properties and say, what about this would this be interesting to someone who had never heard of it?  How do you bring the best parts of these characters and translate them to an audience?  Fans will dispute this, but I think that’s what The Avengers did best.  The Avengers was so pure and so true to those characters.  But it also found the best aspects of those characters, and managed to make them play to everyone.  That was always my strategy in terms of those branded things.  Nowadays I’m trying to do that less. I like original things better.

Scott:  That segues into what are the advantages and disadvantages for being known as a writer who specializes in one particular genre or type of writing?

Justin:  Well, the advantages are… I think it may have been John Swetnam who said this to you.  People say you don’t want to be put in a box, and he said of course you do.  You want them to put you in that box because then they will call you for that box and you will be hired for that box.  I completely agree with that.  It is absolutely the best thing that a screenwriter can do.  If they’re making an action movie, and they’re putting together an action list, they know that your name is on an action list.  A comic book movie, they know you’re on a comic book list.

But I do think, or I personally feel this way after eight years… eventually the real job is to find your way out of that box.  To find a way to surprise not just the marketplace, but yourself, in terms of the choices that you make.  I think it’s really dangerous to just write the same thing for your entire career.

I look at the writers whom I consider heroes of the screenwriting trade, and none of them stayed with the same thing all their lives.  They always kept themselves stimulated by doing things that were outside of their box.  It’s important to flex your muscles and to continue to grow as a writer, otherwise you run out of things to say.

Scott:  There’s a project, “The Raven” based on a short film. Is Mark Wahlberg attached to that?

Justin:  Mark is producing it, yes.

Scott:  Let me read a description from the video site where you can actually still screen the six minute video.”Chris possesses a power that could lead to the destruction of the current regime. They will stop at nothing to destroy him. The chase is on as Chris runs for his life in this sci‑fi thriller set in an alternate and futuristic Los Angeles.”

What can you tell us about working on “The Raven,” and what’s its status?

Justin:  “The Raven” came about because of Ricard De Montreuil.  He was actually my next-door neighbor in Los Feliz.  We met at a barbecue when I moved in.  How’s that for reasons to live in LA?  He was a great independent filmmaker, he wanted to break into commercial films, and he was talking about doing this short.  It was just an idea that I loved about this character.  So he went off, and did this short film.  I visited him on set, it looked really great.  And then suddenly, the short blew up. It was like, “Oh, so this is real.”  It happened very quickly, which was really exciting.

Here was the thing about The Raven.  Writing that script was all about, “How could we find a way to make this huge, cool sci-fi movie, for no money?”  I mean, who knows what they end up making that movie for someday, but it’s not a 100 million dollars.  We looked to The Terminator as a great example of a guerrilla style movie.  Ricardo, and I had to construct a story that was all about, “Look, we can only afford this many action scenes.”  But we can’t make it feel limited, or claustrophobic.  That’s one of the advantages of working with a director when you’re developing.  We always had to be intelligent with the choices we made.

Scott:  I think you hit that sweet spot, making a low budget action film. Because then you open yourself up to not just the seven, or eight, or nine major studios who can afford to do 100 million, or 150 million dollar movies, you’ve got 50 to 75 financiers out there that could, you widen your scope of opportunities.

Justin:  Yeah.  It makes people comfortable.  What I hope to see in the future of sci‑fi, I look at Looper or I look at Monsters, I look at a movie that I just love, Trollhunter, and I say, “These are really clever ways of making movies”.  They’re doing them for so little money.  I think if you want to do sci‑fi, that’s the way to do it, and to give yourself the freedom to push the boundaries a little.  Otherwise you’re always going to be accountable to too many people, the more money you spend.

Tomorrow in Part 3: Justin discusses his original screenplay “Earth Prime” and how a spec script can have value even if it doesn’t sell.

For Part 1, go here.

Please stop by comments to thank Justin and ask any questions you may have.

Justin is repped by CAA and Madhouse Entertainment.

Filmmakers Brian Netto and Adam Schindler have an interesting story to tell about getting their movie Delivery produced and soon to debut at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Here is my Q&A with them:

Scott: So you two were buddies in the 6th grade when you picked up a camera, and it’s been all about making movies since then. Legend or fact?

Adam: That is indeed fact. We actually met in fourth grade and became instant friends. We were bored one summer day in between fifth and six grade, this was 1989 I think, and we ended up picking up one of our parents VHS cameras. I have no recollection of where the idea of making a film came from, but we spent the entire day filming our little movie. It just steam-rolled from there. Filmmaking has been our passion ever since.

Scott: A lot of people get an idea they want to make movies and their interest wanes. A lot of childhood friends drift apart. Why do you think you two have stayed friends all these years and persisted in pursuing your interest in filmmaking?

Brian: We are friends first, but our common love is films and filmmaking… and of course the Minnesota Vikings. Growing up in MN, outside of the industry’s reach, just having someone else that had the same interest was a huge advantage. History has shown that business and friendship don’t mix well, but the best thing we can do is be honest and upfront with one another and remember that what’s at stake is a friendship that spans twenty plus years.

Adam: I consider ourselves extremely lucky to have found something we love to do very early on. I really think the reason our interest never waned stems from the fact that we did find this thing we were passionate about at such an early age. Also, our parents were supportive every step of the way, even if they originally thought it was a phase. Paying for film classes, reading our scripts, watching our little movies and cheering us on. That was huge.

Scott: One look at your IMDB profiles shows the word “assistant” multiple times. What are some of the more memorable assistant gigs you’ve had? Apart from making money, what lessons about the entertainment business have you learned through your various assistant positions?

Brian: The assistant gigs themselves are hardly memorable – but it’s the access they provide that’s invaluable. We’ve been able to sit in and/or participate in creative meetings, casting sessions, test screenings, marketing discussions, notes meetings, etc. It’s a trade off – your time and money (rather, the lack thereof) for the firsthand experience you cannot get anywhere else. The biggest thing we’ve learned from the people we’ve encountered as an assistant is that you – as a writer, producer, director – are the owner and operator of the (insert your name here) company. And your talent is this company’s product – so make sure you’re constantly displaying, promoting and improving that product.

Scott: You move to LA in 2002 and are managing to stay alive working in the business. Cut to 2009 when you say to each other, “Let’s make this movie called Delivery.” How did that come about?

Brian: We had been focusing on writing at the time, but ultimately we wanted to be filmmakers. The only way to do that was create something small enough that we could get off the ground on our own. A script can be optioned or sold, but even then there’s no guarantee it’s going to be made. So it made sense that we give ourselves our big break by writing, producing and directing a project ourselves. Easier said than done, of course.

Adam: Yes, it’s definitely a challenge, but we were very confident in the concept and our abilities to bring that concept to life in a very real way. We were also very forthright with each other at the outset and got all the contractual issues done right away. Since we’d heard all the horror stories about friends getting into business together only to have it ruin their friendship, we decided we’d handle the black and white details upfront. We would co-write the script, Brian would take the sole directing credit and I would take the sole producing credit even though everything was done 50/50. We signed contracts, filed them away and never had to worry about it again.

Scott: Here’s a description of Delivery’s plot: “A young couple agrees to document their first pregnancy for a reality show, but when unexplained events start to plague the production, they suspect something might be wrong with their unborn bundle of joy.” What is the genesis of this story concept?

Brian: The inspiration for DELIVERY came from, of all places, a Pixar film. There was a Pixar short that played theatrically before UP that followed the relationship between a storm cloud that birthed the world’s problem children and the stork that carried them down to Earth. The question about where evil or bad children came from grew out of that. And from the very beginning, the central conceit of the story and the format – that of a mockumentary/reality show mash up – was married to one another. Keep in mind that at the time, the only films in this subgenre that had made any sort of dent with audiences were THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT ten years earlier and CLOVERFIELD less than a year prior. There wasn’t really much of a track record or template for what we were trying to create.

Adam: We’re both huge genre fans. Most of the films we write take place within the genre space, so placing all these reality show characters in the backdrop of a classic ghost story obviously catered to the horror fans in us. Ultimately we decided to write something we would want to see, something we were fairly certain others would want to see as well.

Scott: You decide to write a script. Had you had any formal training in screenwriting? If not, how did you learn the craft?

Brian: No formal screenwriting training, but we’ve been writing screenplays since high school and joined a screenwriting group in Minneapolis after college.

Adam: Yes, The Screenwriter’s Workshop. We’d meet a few Saturdays a month and get feedback on scripts we were working on. The ability to have people critique your writing in a safe, creative environment was invaluable. We also spent much of our time reading scripts.

Brian: Finding the latest scripts online was a huge find. We read everything we could get our hands on. Besides that, just trial and error basically… emphasis on the error.

Scott: What was your writing process like for Delivery? How long did it take you to create a draft you felt you could shop around?

Adam: DELIVERY came together pretty quickly, actually. We were still feeling out our writing partnership at that time, so we tried numerous things. Writing separately and sending pages back and forth, each taking different sequences, but ultimately we found we wrote the best material with both of us in the same room. We both use Macs so we were able to connect our computers to a TV and one would write while the other one would sit back and offer thoughts. And then we’d switch. It made for a really interesting way to do it. Writing this way provided two perspectives to each scene. The person typing was very close to the scene, looking at it line by line, in close up if you will, whereas the person sitting back was able to see the scene from a much wider perspective. It’s almost as if we were playing the parts of the writer and the audience at the same time.

Brian: We would meet 2-3 days a week in the evenings and weekends and had a draft within two months. It went through another draft before being sent out, but it was sent out largely for feedback from friends within the industry as we still weren’t sure who we were targeting. It wasn’t for sale like a traditional spec… we were looking for investors rather than a production company to partner with, so our targets had to be carefully chosen instead of just casting a wide net. What we sent out was a “scriptment”. Roughly 60 pages, formatted like a screenplay, but not dialogue heavy. We knew we were going to improvise a great deal of the film and wanted to focus on crafting the character arcs and plot points. It was not something that you would consider a great read, but rather a blueprint. That said, we begin getting very strong responses and meetings almost immediately, so we knew we were on to something.

Scott: You’re repped by manager Marc Manus. How did that happen?

Adam: Marc came to us through a mutual friend. I used to work as an assistant for Producer Lawrence Bender and while there I became great friends (and still am) with his CE Janet Jeffries. After I had moved on from Bender’s office, we started to develop an idea with Janet for a horror script we wrote titled, SUNDOWN. Janet knows Marc and knew we were looking for representation and that he was taking on new writers. She sent him the script as a sample, he responded to it, we had several conversations with him over the next few weeks about the script as well as where we saw/hoped our careers would go and the rest is history. We’ve been with Marc now for five years. DELIVERY would not have been possible if not for all his hard work along the way. He’s been a great asset and is a great manager.

Brian: Yeah, he’s a straight shooter. He doesn’t blow smoke or overpraise – a compliment or a job well done from him really means something. It’s a tough love approach and it’s precisely what we were looking for in a manager.

Scott: Originally you tried to raise funds to make Delivery through outside sources, but then you met Oren Peli, the filmmaker who famously made Paranormal Activity for basically pocket change, and that altered your strategy.

Brian: The meeting with Oren Peli actually happened while we were writing the script. We were looking to get our hands on similar fare since again, mock/found footage films were nowhere near as in vogue then as they are now. So we requested our manager track down a copy of an Aussie mock/ghost story called LAKE MUNGO (excellent film, btw) and a then little known film called PARANORMAL ACTIVITY that was sitting on the shelf at Paramount. We could not get a copy of PA but instead got a chance to meet w/ Oren and pick his brain. Incredibly sweet guy – very open and helpful. Two months later PA opened under that brilliant marketing campaign and changed the landscape completely.

Adam: Needless to say, we were first in line at the midnight screenings of Paranormal Activity at the Arclight in Hollywood. What an experience. The audience loved it. After the screening, on the drive home we were really energized. I think in that moment we both envisioned DELIVERY up on that big screen. We looked at each other and decided let’s make this dream a reality.

Scott: You wrote, directed, cast, edited and produced the movie. What have you discovered are some of the most challenging aspects of micro-budget filmmaking?

Brian: Filming on a budget in LA is incredibly difficult because everyone here is so savvy to the business. A location or equipment rental that might be free elsewhere in the country is going to cost you here. Also, it’s very easy to get put on the back burner when you’re paying reduced rates for post services such as color, sound, visual effects, etc. You’re nudging people just enough to keep the work moving in the right direction but not so much that they’ll decide your little movie is no longer worth the trouble anymore. The thing I’ve learned while working on larger budgeted feature productions however – budgets which were many times greater than ours – is that there’s NEVER enough money. You’re always scrounging to squeeze something out of nothing.

Scott: I understand Daniel Cossu is the film’s musical composer. How did you meet Daniel and how would you describe his contribution to the final product?

Adam: We met Daniel almost nine years ago when we all worked at Border’s in West Hollywood. We were all doing the day job to pay the bills thing and he became a good friend. We worked in the music department of all places and during our down time we’d try to one up each other by coming up with the most high concept movie ideas we could. It became a real game and I admit I spent many a shift neglecting customers and daydreaming about movie ideas. Daniel would school me on composers, jazz and music theory. Once we all moved on from Border’s we kept in touch. And ultimately he formed his own company, Cinetrax, a successful trailer music house. Flash forward to 2009, we pitched him the idea for DELIVERY and were wondering if he’d be interested in scoring it. He agreed to do the music after reading the script and hearing our take on how we envisioned it coming together.

Brian: Daniel’s super smart and has a great sense of story so he was a really great sounding board for all aspects of the film, not just the music. It’s an unusual film in that it’s comprised of so many parts – part documentary, part reality show gone wrong, part found footage. Each format required it’s own signature sound – sometimes blurring the line between score and sound design. You might expect that Daniel, as a composer, might have reservations about creating something like a really low register droning sound to lay under a scene versus something that’s more noticeable or traditional, but he had absolutely no ego and wanted only to better the picture. He’s like a mad scientist, pulling sounds from some of the most unusual places and he was a great partner.

Scott: Delivery has been selected to screen at the Los Angeles Film Festival. How did that happen?

Adam: The whole festival process is really a world in its own. I guess, from the outset we were a little naïve as to how you actually get into the festival circuits.

Brian: I don’t know that anyone outside of fest programmers truly know how the selection process works. I think we went into this process thinking that if you know the right people, you can secure a festival spot – not the case. Have heard countless stories about people that knew programmers or festival founders, people they would consider to be friends… and their films still did not make the cut. It’s incredibly subjective and a huge coup just being selected.

Adam: DELIVERY is very much an LA film so we had always targeted LA Film Fest as a great potential spot to world premiere the film. We finished post on DELIVERY in mid-February and made a list of potential festivals and their deadlines and signed up with Withoutabox to lead the charge.

Brian: We submitted blindly to LA Film Fest and fortunately the film connected with their programmers. Our brethren in this year’s genre section are Adam Wingard’s YOU’RE NEXT and the latest from Takashi Miike, LESSON OF THE EVIL… so we’re in pretty great company.

Scott: When does Delivery screen in the Festival?

Brian: Our world premiere is Tuesday, June 18th, 9:50pm at the Regal Cinemas at Downtown LA Live. Our second and final screening is Friday, June 21st, 7:30pm at the same location.

Adam: Tickets go on sale May 21^st. Sooner if you’re an Film Independent member. Tickets available here. Sorry for the plug.

Scott: What do you think you will be feeling as you sit in a movie theater alongside an audience at the premiere of your movie Delivery?

Adam: I know for me it will be shear excitement. I’ll definitely be watching the audience and their reaction more than the film itself. I’m sure Brian will be a ball of nerves though.

Brian: It’ll be mix of relief, pride and extreme anxiety. For the select few that have seen our film, it never fails to garner a strong response, so I’m really looking forward to seeing it play for an audience.

Scott: What’s next for Delivery?

Brian: We have a domestic sales agent, XYZ films (producers on THE RAID) and are currently close to signing a foreign sales agent.

Adam: The next step is to secure that ever elusive distribution deal and get this baby out into the world.

Scott: What’s next for Adam and Brian?

Adam: We’re currently polishing up the script for our next project. It’s another high concept ghost story called METHOD we hope to find funding for and shoot next Spring.

Brian: Adam will direct and I will produce. After METHOD, we have two other projects outlined and ready to go, and of course the reception to DELIVERY will dictate how large of a sandbox we’re allowed to play in moving forward.

Adam: Also, our goal is to secure an agent.

Scott: Finally what advice do you have for budding filmmakers?

Brian: My advice is to make something… anything, and get it out there because you never know who’s watching. Also, that 30k or 50k you were planning to spend on short? Don’t – make a feature instead. There are plenty of great outlets for short films at festivals or websites, but it’s next to impossible for you see a financial return. Features have a better shot at distribution AND some sort of financial return and if nothing else, it demonstrates that you know how to tell a story over a full ninety minutes.

Adam: I still consider ourselves budding filmmakers, but what I would really say is perseverance. Believing in yourself even after that one-hundredth door has been slammed in your face. Study your trade like a class. Read tons. Write tons. Watch tons of films. Especially bad ones. Figure out what makes films work and what makes films fail. Support your friend’s endeavors so they’ll support yours.

The movie is a staff pick by the LAFF:

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Best of luck to Brian, Adam and everyone associated with Delivery.

Screenwriter Justin Marks has been described as the “most gainfully employed professional fanboy on the planet right now.” Understandably so given the fact Justin has written such projects The Raven, Super Max, Suicide Squad, Shadow of the Colossus, Hack/Slash and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo.

The Hollywood Reporter recently featured this guest column Justin wrote called “My Life as a Screenwriter You’ve Never Heard Of.”

Justin has written over 20 movie projects. This interview in 6-parts offers an informed perspective of the craft from Hollywood’s front lines.

Today in Part 1, Justin describes how he found his way to Hollywood as a screenwriter:

Scott:   When did you first realize that there were people known as screenwriters?

Justin:  I grew up with movies. My family moved to Texas because my father had a job down there. My mother didn’t know anyone and I was the oldest child, so I was the one who got dragged around with her. We used to go to movies. It was always the thing I knew I wanted to do.

Scott:  What were some of the movies you remember from your youth that inspired you most?

Justin:  I was remembering this on Twitter recently.  Top Gun for me was one of those seminal moments.  I had never seen a movie that sounded or looked or felt like that before.  I saw it six times in the theater – probably because my mother wanted to see it six times also.  It just left such a mark on me, in terms of what a movie could be, and how it’s not just a filmed stage play.  You look at it now and it still feels like a contemporary movie.

Scott:  How much fun is it for you to be working with Jerry Bruckheimer?

Justin:  Really nice.  In every project there’s a pinch‑yourself moment.  Growing up, movies were the language I spoke.  Every Thursday in elementary school, and middle school… I had a whole legal pad full of movies I wanted to rent for the weekend.  I’m always reminded… not to sidetrack, but I think this is relevant… I’m always reminded how easy people have it now, being educated about what are the good movies to watch, who are the great filmmakers. When I was growing up, and I’m not even that old, the only source was this book at Blockbuster Video.  It was a phone book‑sized thing.  I would open it up and they would organize it like IMDB now organizes things, by director, by actor.  That was it.  You couldn’t organize by screenwriter.  But I would go through it and write down these movies I had to see.  Of course, Blockbuster carried none of the good movies. But then I would find other video stores in the area.  Those would be my weekends.  Movies were my friends.  So now, working with the people who used to be just names in that book… it’s amazing.

Scott:   I notice a number of short films on which you’re the credited writer including “Fast Forward,” “The Stranger,” “Unbroken.”  What was your thought process or goal at the time on working on short films?

Justin:   When I got to college I started to feel like maybe the film program…I went to Columbia University… I started to think that maybe the film program wasn’t the best way to pursue this career.  So I studied architecture.  I really love design, and it factors largely into things that I write.  But because I was doing that, I was still bitten by the bug of making movies.  So I started working in documentary houses, and I met other young filmmakers.  Brad Furman is one of those guys.  We made shorts together.  We came out to LA together.  He just wrapped on Runner, Runner with Ben Affleck.  Before that he did Lincoln Lawyer.  He’s actually largely responsible for keeping me motivated and keeping me hungry to pursue this dream.

Scott:  Would you recommend that aspiring screenwriters get involved in writing and producing short films nowadays?

Justin:  Oh yeah.  Anything that a screenwriter can do to be close to production is the best film school they can possibly have.  Look, I’ve only been doing the writing thing full time for less than a decade.  I’d hardly consider myself a veteran.  But having seen my work produced on a few occasions, the amount of learning you do in production, as opposed to what you do sitting behind your desk, it can’t compare.

Scott:  It also sounds like not only just the learning experience of being on the front line of translating what’s on the page onto the screen.  But in your case you actually worked with some people who moved up into the business themselves, so they become part of your network.

Justin:  Yeah, it’s not luck, it’s designed that way.  I never went to film school.  Those shorts were my film school. You go to film school because the people you work with will be your peers in the professional community.  It’s always great, you see another name or a director who sold a pitch or something— it’s like, oh I remember him.  We worked on a video together back in New York. That’s how it works.

Survival in this business is all about holding onto the branch until you finally find your place. That’s what everyone’s doing. When you do that, you start to form these communities with the other people who are holding on next to you.

Scott:  What was your first big break that led to an actual paid writing assignment?

Justin:  I was working as an assistant for three and a half years.  I worked in independent film at Single Cell Pictures. They did Being John Malkovich and Saved at the time that I was working for them. Through my boss, I met my first agent.  There was this script that became what I guess was a calling card.  This was before the days of the Black List, which has made it even easier to bring those calling card scripts into the world.  My agent sent it around to a bunch of people and it got me those, whatever it was, six months of meeting everybody in town.  Out of those meetings I met a producer who worked at the Mark Gordon Company.  He said that they were working on a project called Voltron.

Voltron was something I knew very well from childhood.  They were looking for takes.  They had some really great ideas.  This was before Transformers.  At that time no one wanted to do a giant robot movie.  No one knew what a giant robot movie would look like, which was fantastic, because I had no competition to get that job.  Nowadays if I wanted to go do a giant robot movie I’d be competing with the top tier screenwriters.  But I pitched Mark Gordon what my take was.  I actually used my drawings from architecture school, showing how the visual aesthetic of Voltron could look in the real world.  We took it around and we found an independent financier who paid me to write the script.  WGA minimum, which was probably twice as much as I was making at my day job.  I left my job, seven or eight years ago, and I’ve been writing ever since.

Scott:  When did you cross paths with Adam Kolbrenner and Madhouse Entertainment?

Justin:  Adam had actually been in my life since college.  Brad Furman introduced us, when we were trying to peddle our scripts around.  I came out to LA during spring break.  I told my parents I was job hunting.  Of course, there is no job hunting, you’re basically just meeting people.  I came out to LA and he introduced me to Adam who liked the script that I had written.  Because I was an architecture student, I didn’t have to write a papers.  So I could spend a lot of time writing scripts with Adam instead.  He’s the one who shaped me from somebody who wanted to write movies into someone who actually wrote movies.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Justin talks about Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun‑Li, adapting comic books and his work on “The Raven”.

Please stop by comments to thank Justin and ask any questions you may have.

Justin is repped by CAA and Madhouse Entertainment.

James DiLapo’s original screenplay “Devils at Play” not only won the young screenwriter a 2012 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2012 Black List, garnering 28 votes, the 9th highest total of any script on the list this year. In January, Warner Bros. hired DiLapo to write the futuristic re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “Emotional authenticity, even with a period piece, is more important than historical authenticity. If you can get the audience to feel as if they are there with the characters in that setting, experiencing the world that they are in- that’s the closest we can come to being there. We can’t recreate a world, but we can recreate the emotions of it.”

Part 2: “I said at the award ceremony that if anyone from Disney wants to bring me in to discuss working on a Star Wars film I will give them one of my kidneys. My manager wants me to negotiate on that, maybe start with a spleen and work my way up, but I disagree. Let’s show them I’m committed, I say.”

Part 3: “I’m a very big advocate of three-act structure. It doesn’t have to be terribly overt in your story, but I think it usually needs to be there, and the more you practice it the more it intuitively and naturally enters into your writing process.”

Part 4: “I think act structure is extremely important. The midpoint is very crucial. It doesn’t have to be as overt as it is in the middle of this script, but there needs to be that transition on an emotional level for the character, from reactive to active.”

Part 5: “My advice to anyone who wants to do this is don’t worry about networking, don’t worry about writing what the industry wants. Write what you want to see and write it as best as you can. If you do that with authenticity, in my experience that helps open opportunities that you would never have seen otherwise.”

Part 6: “I find that the entry point for me typically, is the setting, and the world. Getting a chance to live in that place, and flesh out the characters and story within it, is where I get the most rush.”

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

James is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.

James DiLapo’s original screenplay “Devils at Play” not only won the young screenwriter a 2012 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2012 Black List, garnering 28 votes, the 9th highest total of any script on the list this year. In January, Warner Bros. hired DiLapo to write the futuristic re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

In addition for those of you who happen to be in Marfa, Texas this weekend, there is this:

Ballroom Marfa’s distinguished Filmmakers’ Selection Committee has chosen Academy Nicholl winner James DiLapo’s script “Devils At Play” to be presented as the 2013 production of The Reading on Saturday, May 18 at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas.  Film director Julia Dyer (The Playroom and Late Bloomers) has been brought on board to direct the staged performance of “Devils At Play” for The Reading. Veteran film producer Carolyn Pfeiffer and Ballroom Marfa board member Nancy Sanders return as producers. As part of Ballroom Marfa’s continuing film program, “Devils At Play” will be performed by actors with scripts in hand, full stage direction, state-of-the-art lighting and sound for this year’s presentation of The Reading.

James was kind enough to agree to an interview and recently we had a wide-ranging hour-long conversation in which we covered a lot of territory related to screenwriting. I will be posting the whole interview over the course of this week, definitely a Q&A you will want to read in its entirety as James offers some terrific insight into the craft.

Today in Part 6, James discusses his approach to the screenwriting craft:

Scott: I’ve got some craft questions here. How do you come up with story ideas?

James:  It hits me. I don’t go looking for them, they come looking for me. I find that the entry point for me typically, is the setting, and the world. Getting a chance to live in that place, and flesh out the characters and story within it, is where I get the most rush.

Scott:  How much time do you spend in prep writing? You know, brainstorming, character development, plotting, research outlining?

James:  I spend a lot of time on that. I actually have a tendency to write my stories as novellas first. I wrote “Devils At Play” that way before I wrote the script it. I recently finished one for “The Odyssey.” After I write it out that way, I go back and structure it more clearly in an outline.

The amazing challenge of our profession is that you have from page 1 to 120 to tell a story. A little bit more, or less, depending on the genre. You have to be so economical when you get down to what you’re showing the audience, and what you can afford not to show them. Outlines are crucial for that.

Scott:  How do you go about developing your characters? Are there some specific tools that you find yourself using to do that?

James:  One of the things I find extremely helpful comes Robert McKee’s Story. He says that you have to try to inhabit the head of yours characters and live with him for a while, almost like how an actor would. Whenever I struggled with lines in “Devils At Play” I would stop and would run the whole story in my head from the characters perspective, trying to feel what they are feeling and thinking how they would.

It’s not always easy. I think that’s probably the hardest element of screenwriting. You have to find a way to stretch beyond your own understanding and become, for a moment, someone who is so foreign to the way you live your life. In my experience, however, the more you do it, the better you get at it.

Scott:  So then that’s probably, you would say, is the key to writing and good dialogue, is by immersing yourself in the characters, right?

James:  That, but you have to also be cognizant of the dictates of the narrative. You have four pages to do this scene, for example, so it’s a balancing act. You understand the people. You understand what they want and how they will go about it. But you also have to understand realistically how quickly you have to do the scene and where you move from there.

Scott:  How do you work with the idea of theme and how important is that to you in the writing?

James:  I think theme is immensely important, but for me, it’s not always readily apparent when I begin the process. With “Devils At Play” we were talking about the idea of redemption, that there can be angels and devils inside our own personalities and societies. That, for me, is the theme of the story, but I didn’t know it when I began. Eventually the story itself will tell you what the theme is.

Scott:  How about when you write a scene? Are there specific goals you have in mind or questions that you want to make sure that you answer when you approach writing a scene?

James:  Well, typically because I’ve done the outline first, I have an understanding of where the scene begins and where it ends. But I think it’s also helpful to break the scenes down into their own mini stories. Scenes can have a midpoint inside them. We were talking about the interrogation scene. That almost is a miniature story in itself with its own beginning, middle, and end.

When you approach scenes from that perspective I believe it reward the audiences. If you can give them a sequence in the story with it’s own obstacles, conflict, and satisfying conclusion, then it helps move the pages.

Scott:  How is scene description ‑‑ your script does such a great job of doing just enough to get us there and make us feel like we’re in that moment, and yet ‑‑ so it’s entertaining in that respect, and yet not so much that it creates this kind of cumbersome feel. What are some keys that you have to writing entertaining and good scene description?

James:  Poetry. Good poets are masters at breaking complex thoughts and themes down into the simplest forms possible. I think writing and reading poetry can really help you craft the prose of a script.

Scott:  Yeah, I’ve always said that too. I’ve said scene description really is more like poetry than prose, because you’re using these really strong verbs and vivid descriptors and economical use of words. And trying also to get people to be present in the moment, which poets sometimes do very well.

James:  Yeah, I agree entirely.

Scott:  When you finish a first draft and you’re faced with the inevitable rewriting process, right? What are some of the keys you have to rewriting this script?

James: Stephen King has some great advice, which is that each draft is the last draft minus 10% or 15%. I also think the key is to get some distance from the story. I don’t begin the second draft immediately. I take some time away to just watch movies and read and play video games. It gets my mind flowing with creativity from other sources and disconnects me from what my mindset was when I was writing.

Then, when I approach the story again, I try to approach it solely from the perspective of the audience. I try to build movie in my head, actually watching it while I read. It lets me see how it flows. It shows me places where I can push story faster, where I can clear up plot points that aren’t put together as coherently as they could be. I think it’s a good process to have.

Scott:  What’s your actual writing process like?

James:  I love noise. I listen to a lot of music. I like to be in public places. In New York City I wrote a lot of “Devils At Play” in taco shops in Spanish Harlem and in pizza places in the Village. For me, being around people, especially at night, helps a lot. It’s a lonely profession at times. Especially when you spend the whole day working in your room. So I try to get out and be some place else. Also, it gets you disciplined to it. You’re getting out of the house and going to a job like everyone else. I think traveling to and from work helps you stay in that mindset.

Scott:  What’s your single best excuse not to write?

James:  That’s a good question. Nowadays, it’s emails. Emails creep up on you, especially when you’re working in the industry. It’s a great problem to have, but it’s definitely a problem. They collect every day. So I’ll take time off from writing, and listen to some gangster rap, and just chew through emails for a few hours.

Scott:  Finally, what do you love most about writing?

James:  The biggest pleasure for me comes from when other people get to experience my stories and enjoy them. That makes it worth all of the effort I put into it. I haven’t been fortunate enough to see whether or not “Devils At Play” is going to me made into a film, but the fact that there were people read it and enjoyed it, that means the world to me. It keeps me going onto the next one.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go  here.

For Part 4, go here.

For Part 5, go here.

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

James is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.

James DiLapo’s original screenplay “Devils at Play” not only won the young screenwriter a 2012 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2012 Black List, garnering 28 votes, the 9th highest total of any script on the list this year. In January, Warner Bros. hired DiLapo to write the futuristic re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

In addition for those of you who happen to be in Marfa, Texas this weekend, there is this:

Ballroom Marfa’s distinguished Filmmakers’ Selection Committee has chosen Academy Nicholl winner James DiLapo’s script “Devils At Play” to be presented as the 2013 production of The Reading on Saturday, May 18 at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas.  Film director Julia Dyer (The Playroom and Late Bloomers) has been brought on board to direct the staged performance of “Devils At Play” for The Reading. Veteran film producer Carolyn Pfeiffer and Ballroom Marfa board member Nancy Sanders return as producers. As part of Ballroom Marfa’s continuing film program, “Devils At Play” will be performed by actors with scripts in hand, full stage direction, state-of-the-art lighting and sound for this year’s presentation of The Reading.

James was kind enough to agree to an interview and recently we had a wide-ranging hour-long conversation in which we covered a lot of territory related to screenwriting. I will be posting the whole interview over the course of this week, definitely a Q&A you will want to read in its entirety as James offers some terrific insight into the craft.

Today in Part 5, James discusses the high profile project “Odyssey” he is writing for Warner Bros. and its connection to Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey:

Scott:  Despite that litany of story aspects I mentioned earlier that go against the supposed conventional wisdom of commercial film‑making, Hollywood did respond to “Devils at Play,” and it made the 2012 Black List. How did you discover you made the list?

James:  I was actually sitting at my laptop working on the next script, “The Odyssey,” and I got a text from a friend saying I was on the Black List. I had been so focused on work that I hadn’t really been keeping up with what day it was going to be announced. So it took me by complete surprise. It was a huge honor. It is so gratifying to know that people have responded to the script. You work for so long writing something. You don’t really know what other people’s reaction to it is going to be. And the fact that there are people who enjoy the story, that means the world to me.

Scott:  Let’s talk about “The Odyssey,” a high profile deal for you with Warner Bros., the classic Greek myth as a futuristic tale set in space. Can you talk about how that whole process unfolded?

James:   It’s been an absolute pleasure working with the studio and the producers. They had a tone and direction they knew they wanted to take the story in, but they were also very open to me coming in with ideas. It’s been a great team to work with. They’ve let me throw my imagination into that world. I’d give my kidney to write Star Wars. I’ve been fortunate to get Homer. He’s the best writing partner you can possibly have.

Scott:  So I guess you’re a fan then, of “The Iliad” and “The Odyssey”?

James:  I’m huge a fan of Greek antiquity. It’s the history fan inside me.

Scott:  How closely are you planning on hewing to the source material? Can we plan on seeing the outer space versions of sirens, Cyclops and the like?

James:  I don’t want to give away too much. I will say that I have strived to find creative ways of incorporating elements of the mythology. So there will be sirens and a cyclops in the story, but they won’t be what you expect.

Scott:  Years ago in 1981, there was a science fiction movie called Outland starring Sean Connery, which was, in effect High Noon in space. So there’s a precedent for this type of thing. I understand Warner Bros. sees this as a potential franchise.

James:  It’s a very exciting possibility, but my focus right now is just on doing this story to the best of my ability. I will say that if you look at the source material, there are other great epics which could be told in that setting. But right now, I just want “The Odyssey” to stand on its own as the narrative of a man trying to get home.

Scott:  That brings us to Joseph Campbell, who referred to “The Odyssey” as one of the great examples of the cosmogonic cycle — departure, initiation, return. Are you are a fan of Campbell?

James:  Yeah, absolutely Joseph Campbell gives you the template for mapping the emotional growth of a character, irrespective of what the genre it is. I think his lessons fit anywhere you want to apply them to. He is definitely in the back of my mind now, along with Robert McKee and Homer. They’re all sort of co‑pilots guiding me along this thing.

Scott:  Is it fair to say that none of what transpired in your life ‑‑ the WGAE Fellowship, the Nicholl, the Black List, the Warner Bros. deal ‑‑ would have happened had you not followed your passion to write “Devils At Play,” and is there a lesson there for aspiring screenwriters?

James:  My advice to anyone who wants to do this is don’t worry about networking, don’t worry about writing what the industry wants. Write what you want to see and write it as best as you can. If you do that with authenticity, in my experience that helps open opportunities that you would never have seen otherwise. Good luck with that. We’re all working with an industry that is a struggle to get into. My heart goes out to everyone else out there chasing the dream.

Tomorrow in Part 6, James discusses his approach to the screenwriting craft.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go  here.

For Part 4, go here.

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

James is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.

James DiLapo’s original screenplay “Devils at Play” not only won the young screenwriter a 2012 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2012 Black List, garnering 28 votes, the 9th highest total of any script on the list this year. In January, Warner Bros. hired DiLapo to write the futuristic re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

In addition for those of you who happen to be in Marfa, Texas this weekend, there is this:

Ballroom Marfa’s distinguished Filmmakers’ Selection Committee has chosen Academy Nicholl winner James DiLapo’s script “Devils At Play” to be presented as the 2013 production of The Reading on Saturday, May 18 at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas.  Film director Julia Dyer (The Playroom and Late Bloomers) has been brought on board to direct the staged performance of “Devils At Play” for The Reading. Veteran film producer Carolyn Pfeiffer and Ballroom Marfa board member Nancy Sanders return as producers. As part of Ballroom Marfa’s continuing film program, “Devils At Play” will be performed by actors with scripts in hand, full stage direction, state-of-the-art lighting and sound for this year’s presentation of The Reading.

James was kind enough to agree to an interview and recently we had a wide-ranging hour-long conversation in which we covered a lot of territory related to screenwriting. I will be posting the whole interview over the course of this week, definitely a Q&A you will want to read in its entirety as James offers some terrific insight into the craft.

Today in Part 4, James discusses the theme of redemption in the script “Devils at Play”:

Scott:  There’s a side of dialogue from Stepan, it’s almost exactly mid‑way through the script. It strikes me as a classic moment of transition, of what is going on with him, and this prisoner Dmitri, who Stepan desperately needs to break to get information critical to his goal of winning a competition. I’d like to go to that side, and break it up into three parts, and get your reaction to each. Stepan starts, he says, “I hate torture.” “I hate that torture has become the tool we use.” “Getting a suspect to confess with it is like cheating.” “I know that every suspect I tortured into a confession probably was innocent.”

Is this speaking on some level to the post 9/11 consciousness, and about the current conversation we’re having about torture?

James:  As far as current events go, I wrote this without the intention of it being a parallel to any specific point in human history. I think you can draw from this connections to other moments, but there is a singularity, and a singular shame, to this period of Soviet history that makes it deserve to stand apart. I wouldn’t like this script to simply be an indictment of the war on terrorism. I think it hopefully speaks to a broader point about society than that.

Scott:  Then the second part of this side is the process that, “but now for the first time, I know I have a guilty man sitting before me, a conspirator, a liar. His confession is the only way I will ever get out of here. “That seems to me to sum up very nicely his conscious goal, I guess you could call it, his warrant, to win the competition in order to get transferred out of this hellhole existence. That’s pretty accurate, right?

James:  Yes, sir.

Scott:  Then the third part, so he says, “So what am I going to do, Dmitri? Am I going to go down that path again? I’m not an animal, but this place, it wants to make me into one. I’m struggling, I’m struggling to stay a man.” That middle part really sums up his conscious goal. Isn’t this more of a summation of his need, in a way, to rediscover his humanity?

James:  That line of dialogue is the exact midpoint of the film. Hopefully it speaks to the emotional stress he’s going through, but also that his goal is worth pursuing even beyond logic. He wants to convince himself there is only one version of reality in front of him. “This is an enemy of the state, this is an evil man. I have to do what I have to in order to break him.” That line is someone trying to trick himself into believing in his own cause.

Scott:  It really concretizes very nicely a question that the reader carries with him for the script, which is, will he somehow find his humanity, or will he lose it? It is like literally in the middle of the script, right at exactly the midpoint, so it just struck me as being a terrific transitional moment.

James:  Thank you. I think act structure is extremely important. The midpoint is very crucial. It doesn’t have to be as overt as it is in the middle of this script, but there needs to be that transition on an emotional level for the character, from reactive to active.

Scott:  You mentioned that this is a story of redemption, and I absolutely picked up on that. In fact, would you say that at one level, this is a story ‑ at least metaphorically speaking, not theologically, necessarily ‑ it’s about sin and redemption, what Stepan has done and does some terrible things, but in the end, by saving the lives of a woman and her daughter, he is in effect saving himself?

James:  Yes, absolutely. This was a period in Soviet history where there was a lot of militant state-sponsored atheism. I thought that was a very fascinating setting in which to tell with what is really a religious story of redemption without ever mentioning God. Theirs is a very interesting quote by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He tries to sum up what he thinks went wrong in the Soviet Union, and all he can really bring himself to say is that they forgot God.

I think that, regardless of whether or not as an audience member you have religious views or belief, I still think that there is a sense of redemption, a sense of spirituality, which permeates any society. How it plays into Stepan’s transformation was important to me.

Scott:  A transformation. He literally has…the denouement at the end is almost like a transfiguration moment, this kind of hyper‑reality, almost transmigrating to heaven kind of a thing. It’s spiritual, that way, isn’t it?

James:  Yeah. I wanted to show the audience that he’s at peace. Heaven doesn’t factor into this, or damnation. His soul is just at peace now.

Scott:  That works really well. One thing I always look for when I read scripts is, I want a lighter use of subplot to break up the action, but also to explore from a variety of angles story themes. You did that really well in “Devils At Play.” There’s one subplot in particular that I thought worked so elegantly, I guess you could say. I’m talking about the rabbit. The mystery box that I talked about earlier, that box, there was a rabbit inside, and it had been injured and it had been given to him to tend to because Stepan had grown up on a farm. The script keeps coming back to this rabbit, and I’m wondering, “How is this subplot going to pay off?” It does beautifully, with the daughter, whose life Stepan saves. Can you talk about the inspiration and the evolution of just that particular subplot?

James:   I have a hard time unpacking the idea of a subplot. I think that subplots ultimately are just an expression of any story that is large enough to have multiple pieces within it. The rabbit is one of those pieces. I had to have a way to show Stepan passing the baton, so to speak, from one generation to the next, but I also wanted something that spoke to his humanity. To be honest, I didn’t even realize it was a subplot until now. It was just a piece of the story to me.

Tomorrow in Part 5, James discusses the high profile project “Odyssey” he is writing for Warner Bros. and its connection to Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go  here.

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

James is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.

James DiLapo’s original screenplay “Devils at Play” not only won the young screenwriter a 2012 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2012 Black List, garnering 28 votes, the 9th highest total of any script on the list this year. In January, Warner Bros. hired DiLapo to write the futuristic re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

In addition for those of you who happen to be in Marfa, Texas this weekend, there is this:

Ballroom Marfa’s distinguished Filmmakers’ Selection Committee has chosen Academy Nicholl winner James DiLapo’s script “Devils At Play” to be presented as the 2013 production of The Reading on Saturday, May 18 at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas.  Film director Julia Dyer (The Playroom and Late Bloomers) has been brought on board to direct the staged performance of “Devils At Play” for The Reading. Veteran film producer Carolyn Pfeiffer and Ballroom Marfa board member Nancy Sanders return as producers. As part of Ballroom Marfa’s continuing film program, “Devils At Play” will be performed by actors with scripts in hand, full stage direction, state-of-the-art lighting and sound for this year’s presentation of The Reading.

James was kind enough to agree to an interview and recently we had a wide-ranging hour-long conversation in which we covered a lot of territory related to screenwriting. I will be posting the whole interview over the course of this week, definitely a Q&A you will want to read in its entirety as James offers some terrific insight into the craft.

Today in Part 3, we explore how James handled the protagonist in “Devils at Play,” a character capable of humanity… and monstrosity:

Scott:  Are you familiar with the idea that JJ Abrams talks about promoting the mystery box?

James:  No.

Scott:  He has a TED talk. Basically there’s this thing called the mystery box, literally a box that evokes mystery. JJ uses it to remind him to create mysteries in his stories, big and small. You do that really well with “Devils At Play,” especially at the beginning.

The script starts with this little snippet of a dream or a memory of this wintry field with a fence and barbed wire fence, and so immediately, we’re like OK, what’s that. Then your Protagonist is winding his way through the prison headquarters where he passes by some guys carrying a body bag, and there’s movement inside the body bag, but we don’t know what that is. And then quite literally a character gives him a box, the contents of which the script doesn’t reveal for pages, and again, it’s like what’s that? So I guess since you don’t know about the mystery box, that was kind of an intuitive thing on your part, where you’re planting these little mysteries, and pulling the reader into the story. Was that a conscious effort on your part, or was that an organic thing?

James:  It wasn’t something I did consciously, but what I wanted to do was get the audience to actively engage with the setting. I didn’t want to have a cue card of the opening that explains the backstory. I didn’t want to preface this with exposition. I wanted to just put us there with the characters and turn the audience into detectives during the first 15 minutes of the film, piecing together what is going in. You’re rewarded for it, I believe, because it makes you understand the setting and it’s politics, and that energizes your brain for the process of being in a detective story afterwards with a mystery at its core. Now you’re searching for the clues. Now you’re putting the puzzle together along with the protagonist.

Scott:  Yes. And it works very well. The story has a lot of twists and turns in the plot, and yet as I read it, it feels like a story of three acts. Act One, you set up a story world. Act Two, the commencement of a competition between two key characters. And Act Three, where all the threads play out to a final struggle and resolution. Did you consciously work with that as part of your approach, three act structure, or was that, again, an organic expression of your process?

James:  I’m a very big advocate of three-act structure. It doesn’t have to be terribly overt in your story, but I think it usually needs to be there, and the more you practice it the more it intuitively and naturally enters into your writing process.

Scott:  But speaking of this idea of the competition, it’s a rather twisted thing. It’s a race between Stepan and a character named Volkov, basically his rival, to be the first to land 100 traitors, or supposed traitors, in order to get the transfer of their choice. Stepan definitely wants to get out of this environment. Was that something you hit on early on in the story crafting process? Because it’s an important choice, it provides a spine to the plot, dramatic tension, and a ticking clock.

James:  It was on one of the earliest things I thought of. There are a lot of stories in the Soviet Union about workers being pushed into very crazy competitions, not so much in the police departments- but if you were in a factory worker, how much could you do in a day? If you were mining, how much could you mine per day, pushing people almost to an absurd level of exhaustion and mental trauma. I thought it could be very compelling to put that sort of strain into the mindset of the secret police. How it would warp them, how would it play off the sadism in their minds. It is a game they get to play now with human lives.

Scott:  Would you consider the story’s protagonist, Stepan, to be an antihero?

James:  It’s a redemption story, so I see him as a hero. He has a very dark road to go on, but it’s a quest to eventually absolve his soul.

Scott:  We hear talk a lot in Hollywood about giving a protagonist a flaw, but with Stepan, you go much deeper in that he’s a radically conflicted person. We see enough of him to learn that he’s capable of both humanity and monstrosity. What are you trying to get at in exploring his journey?

James:   I wanted to put the audience in his mindset. To show them that there is the possibility within the human spirit for both for great cruelty, but also for great redemption and acts of heroism. It became this high wire act. Can we root for him while he’s doing things that get more and more morally ambiguous? I didn’t want us to turn against him as a character. I wanted us to be capable on some level of sympathizing with him, even when he’s down the darkest path possible.

Scott:  That makes this story so much richer. You do such a great job of hitting that point of exploring the dark side of the character, Stepan getting in touch with his shadow self, but also dropping in these moments of humanity. You see human side of him, and we’re rooting for him to get out of this prison environment. It becomes a really interesting psychological experience for a reader to keep himself going on this journey with him.

James:  Yes, sir. You said it better than I did.

Tomorrow in Part 4, James discusses the theme of redemption in the script “Devils at Play.”

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

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

James is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.

James DiLapo’s original screenplay “Devils at Play” not only won the young screenwriter a 2012 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2012 Black List, garnering 28 votes, the 9th highest total of any script on the list this year. In January, Warner Bros. hired DiLapo to write the futuristic re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

In addition for those of you who happen to be in Marfa, Texas this weekend, there is this:

Ballroom Marfa’s distinguished Filmmakers’ Selection Committee has chosen Academy Nicholl winner James DiLapo’s script “Devils At Play” to be presented as the 2013 production of The Reading on Saturday, May 18 at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas.  Film director Julia Dyer (The Playroom and Late Bloomers) has been brought on board to direct the staged performance of “Devils At Play” for The Reading. Veteran film producer Carolyn Pfeiffer and Ballroom Marfa board member Nancy Sanders return as producers. As part of Ballroom Marfa’s continuing film program, “Devils At Play” will be performed by actors with scripts in hand, full stage direction, state-of-the-art lighting and sound for this year’s presentation of The Reading.

James was kind enough to agree to an interview and recently we had a wide-ranging hour-long conversation in which we covered a lot of territory related to screenwriting. I will be posting the whole interview over the course of this week, definitely a Q&A you will want to read in its entirety as James offers some terrific insight into the craft.

Today in Part 2, we dig into what attracted James to the script project “Devils at Play” and his approach to writing it:

Scott:  You’ve moved to LA now, right?

James:  Yes sir, I moved here about a month ago.

Scott:  And how has it been so far?

James:  Moving from New York City to Los Angeles is kind of a surreal shift. And spending all your time in cars is especially is a unique experience for me, but you get to drive around blaring hip hop, so it’s got its perks. I miss New York pizza, but the writing’s going well here so far, and that’s the most important part.

Scott:  I’ve heard a ton of acceptance speeches, but not one like yours where you spoke at the Nicholl ceremony, where you jokingly offered to offer up one of your body organs for the opportunity to write a specific movie. Can you explain what that was about?

James:  Yeah, so the offer still stands. I said at the award ceremony that if anyone from Disney wants to bring me in to discuss working on a Star Wars film I will give them one of my kidneys. My manager wants me to negotiate on that, maybe start with a spleen and work my way up, but I disagree. Let’s show them I’m committed, I say.

Scott:  So above and beyond the Al Pacino movies in the ’60s and ’70s, you were a big Star Wars fan, I take it?

James:  Oh, yeah, absolutely. The Star Wars films broke open my imagination as a kid. If you want to become a story-teller, I think one of the best things you can have is an creative world like that to engage with. As a kid I use to make up my own Star Wars adventures and characters. It was a perfect entry point to telling my own stories.

Scott:  Let’s talk about your Nicholl winning script “Devils At Play.” Here’s a logline I found for it:

“In the Soviet Union, 1937, a worker of the People’s Commissariat for internal affairs finds a list of traitors, which he thinks is going to be his way out.”

What was the inspiration for this story?

James:  I was cramming for a mid‑term for a Soviet history course at NYU. I was reading a book by Robert Conquest called “The Great Terror”. There is a chapter in there where Conquest breaks down what the arrest process was like. When you’re arrested, how many people could you expect to share your prison cell? What were the strip searches like? When you were interrogated, what were the sort of methods they would use?

Reading that, reading the details, I started to see flashes of the story. It was inspiring, but it was a script that I knew would take a very long time to research. I didn’t have the time to devote to this project until I graduated and received the WGAE Fellowship.

Scott:  Putting on a conventional wisdom hat, right? You’ve got a period piece set in the Soviet Union in the 30′s. You got a deeply flawed protagonist. There’s a lot of violence, and torture. There’s no real love interest per say. You used flashbacks, which some people in Hollywood aren’t fond of. The conclusion, which is beautifully realized, is definitely not your typical Hollywood happy ending. Were you aware that this script was cutting against conventional wisdom on so many fronts?

James:  To be honest, I didn’t think about that. I just tried to tell a story to the best of my ability. I think it becomes problematic for us as screenwriters to create only what we think is going to sell, or only what we think is going to attract attention. It’s better just to write as well as you can, and hope that it creates opportunities for you afterwards. At the end of the day, you just have to tell the stories you want to see on film. That will be your best writing.

Scott:  What about the story made you think this can be a movie?

James:   I think we have a tendency when we discuss this time period, whether it’s Nazi Germany, or the Soviet Union, to see it from the view-point of the victims. What it was like to be oppressed by these nations, for example. I think it’s more uncomfortable for us to tell a story from the other side of that perspective. What was it like to be the secret police? That involves us imagining that there are perhaps darker sides of our humanity. That was something I wanted to address with this story.

Scott:  You talk about this idea that Richard LaGravenese talks about emotional authenticity. For a historical piece, too, you also, one of the thresholds you have to accomplish is create a sense of plausibility about the world, a sense of realism there, too. You did that incredibly well. I mean, all these little tiny details, suicide nets and things like that. How much research did you do and what type of research was it to create that sense of verisimilitude?

James:  When it comes to the details of the world, I mostly read textbooks and historical non‑fiction. I tried to find as many specifics as I could, while also giving myself the creative freedom to build the narrative that I thought would best serve our story.

Tomorrow in Part 3, we explore how James handled the protagonist in “Devils at Play,” a character capable of humanity… and monstrosity.

For Part 1, go here.

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

James is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.

James DiLapo’s original screenplay “Devils at Play” not only won the young screenwriter a 2012 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2012 Black List, garnering 28 votes, the 9th highest total of any script on the list this year. In January, Warner Bros. hired DiLapo to write the futuristic re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey.

In addition for those of you who happen to be in Marfa, Texas this weekend, there is this:

Ballroom Marfa’s distinguished Filmmakers’ Selection Committee has chosen Academy Nicholl winner James DiLapo’s script “Devils At Play” to be presented as the 2013 production of The Reading on Saturday, May 18 at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas.  Film director Julia Dyer (The Playroom and Late Bloomers) has been brought on board to direct the staged performance of “Devils At Play” for The Reading. Veteran film producer Carolyn Pfeiffer and Ballroom Marfa board member Nancy Sanders return as producers. As part of Ballroom Marfa’s continuing film program, “Devils At Play” will be performed by actors with scripts in hand, full stage direction, state-of-the-art lighting and sound for this year’s presentation of The Reading.

James was kind enough to agree to an interview and recently we had a wide-ranging hour-long conversation in which we covered a lot of territory related to screenwriting. I will be posting the whole interview over the course of this week, definitely a Q&A you will want to read in its entirety as James offers some terrific insight into the craft.

Today in Part 1, we cover how James got into screenwriting:

Scott:  How and when did you become interested in movies?

James:  It’s something that’s been a part of my life since I was a little kid. Some of my earliest memories are watching films with my family. When I was growing up, my dad really gave me a film school education. He was a big fan of the old Al Pacino Robert De Niro films. He loves movies from the late ’60s and ’70s. So I remember from a young age watching Dog Day Afternoon with him. Serpico, Apocalypse Now, Bonnie and Clyde. I think that’s where the joy of this came into my life.

Scott:  When did you become aware of the fact that people actually wrote movies? What about that aspect of the craft that interested you enough to pursue it?

James:  I don’t know necessarily when I figured out there’s people who actually write them, but I was sort of just doing that in my own head as a little kid. I would come up with the ideas for movies, and work them over and over in my imagination. I would live with them, and I still do with some of those stories.

Scott:  I understand you moved like dozen times before you went to college.

James:  I moved around a lot. The longest was in Portland, Oregon. Then after that, I went to Columbus, Ohio and then New York City for college, then Minneapolis. So the longest part of my growing up was Portland.

Scott:  You went NYU and studied screenwriting and history. Is that correct?

James:  Yes. I had a major in screenwriting and a minor in history.

Scott:  Why that combination? What was the interest in history?

James:  They both have always just been huge passions for me. I didn’t take history classes for stories, I think it’s just important to try to branch out and find as many different things that fascinate you as possible.

Scott:  You were a recipient of the Michael Collyer Memorial Fellowship in screenwriting, from the Writer’s Guild of America East. As part of that fellowship, you were mentored by some professional screenwriters while working on your script, “Devils At Play”. Who were those writers and what was that experience like?

James:  My mentor on the project was Richard LaGravenese. He was great. He taught me some really important lessons. The one that sticks with me the most is that when it comes to story telling you have to strive for a sense of emotional authenticity at all costs. Emotional authenticity, even with a period piece, is more important than historical authenticity. If you can get the audience to feel as if they are there with the characters in that setting, experiencing the world that they are in- that’s the closest we can come to being there. We can’t recreate a world, but we can recreate the emotions of it.

Scott:  How did the chain of events play out, with regards to “Devils At Play” and the Nicholl Fellowship?

James:   I got the idea for “Devils At Play” during college, and I was fortunate enough to receive a fellowship from the Writer’s Guild East after I graduated to write it. So there was about a year after graduation when I was just reading very big red books on the Soviet Union, working crappy part time jobs in New York City, and writing “Devils At Play.” When I finished it I wasn’t entirely sure what the next step would be. I submitted it to Nicholl and waited. When I won it completely changed my life.

Scott:  What happened then to you professionally?

James:  The Nicholl Fellowship has crated opportunities for me that I would have never had before. I think that’s the real gift of the fellowship. It gives you the chance to reach out to this industry and find people who want to work with you. I was an outsider before this happened, and it’s completely changed everything. I’m very, very grateful for that.

Scott: You’re represented by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone. How did that come about?

James: I first met my manager first, Alex Lerner from Kaplan/Perrone, while I was in Los Angeles for the Nicholl ceremony. We clicked really well. Your manager is kind of like your partner-in-crime. You got to pick someone you trust, someone who will have your back. Alex is that guy.

Getting my agents at Verve is kind of a funny story. I went back to Minneapolis in December to visit my folks, and the guys at Verve called me up out of the blue one day and said they wanted to work with me. I told them I appreciated that, but wasn’t going to make a decision on picking an agent until I moved to Los Angeles in a few months.

“Okay,” they said. “We respect that.” They hung up.

A few days later they called me up again and told me that, respectfully, I didn’t have time to wait on picking an agent because the Mayan Apocalypse was coming. They told me that the world was about to end in a fiery explosion, so we had to act fast and sell a script before we all died. I told them that I appreciated that, but again I was going to wait.

“Okay,” they said. “We respect that.” They hung up.

A few days later they called again. This time they assured me that I had to sign with them because they were very handsome, far more handsome than any other agents I was going to meet. They just kept going at it. To be honest, I was really impressed with how much they were willing to hustle. They got a great sense of humor, but they’re also true professionals. It’s been amazing working with them and Alex. It feels like I’ve found the right people.

Tomorrow in Part 2, we dig into what attracted James to the script project “Devils at Play” and his approach to writing it.

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

James is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.