2014 Screenwriters Roundtable (Part 1): Chris Borrelli, Brian Duffield, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo
A special treat this week and next as I will be posting excerpts from an extensive screenwriter’s roundtable I did in December 2014 with a group of talented Hollywood screenwriters: Chris Borrelli, Brian Duffield, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, and Greg Russo. How good are they? Between them, they have sold more than a dozen spec scripts and have multiple original screenplays on the Black List.
This is the fourth GITS screenwriters roundtable with this group of writers, the first three of which you can read here, here and here. This has become something of an annual event as it’s a great way to take the pulse of what’s happening in the screenwriting universe, track the careers of these talented writers, and benefit from the many insights into the craft they share.
Here is Part 1:
Scott Myers: 2014 seems like it was a very good year for you, individually and collectively. I wanted to begin by running through generically what you’ve all managed to accomplish during the last twelve months.
A few spec script sales, pitch sales, Black List scripts, movies you wrote getting released, movies getting produced, a couple of first‑time directors, working with some of Hollywood’s top writers and producers. A couple of you added “producer” to your list of credits. Some of you are working in TV. McCoy, you’ve got a novel (“The Prom Goers Interstellar Excursion”) that’s coming out?
Chris McCoy: Yeah, in April.
F. Scott Frazier: Borrelli had a book (“Islands of Stone”) come out a month ago.
Scott Myers: That’s right. With all the success, the first question I want to ask you is, has the actual work of being a professional screenwriter gotten any easier for you or is it more challenging?
F. Scott Frazier: For me, the work, it’s become more about managing more plates in the air at one time. I think the nuts and bolts work of sitting down and writing a script is still the same as it always was.
The peripheral work, going to meetings and building relationships and pitching on things and taking your own ideas and getting things going is, I think, the more you work, the more work you get, at least for me.
For me it’s been more about, not that the work’s gotten harder, it’s just that the work that you have to do has gotten exponentially greater, the more success that you find.
Scott Myers: Do you mean in terms of the sheer quantity of stuff you have going on?
F. Scott Frazier: Yeah, exactly. My manager always refers to it as, you have plates spinning in the air and you hope that one or two don’t fall down at any one time.
Scott Myers: How about the rest of you?
Chris Borrelli: For me, I’m working a little better than I used to. I think when I first started this career, I couldn’t really figure out exactly how to manage it, how to do it. It’s interesting.
Someone can be totally capable of writing a movie. At the same time they can still completely flub it in becoming a screenwriter. There are so many things going on. I think I’m working a little better. I just got better at managing time.
On top of that, I’ve changed my days. I’m taking less meetings. I think a lot of them had been a big waste of time over the years. I’m just looking at my time and working pretty hard. “The harder you work, the better your luck gets,” as a friend of mine says. That’s what I’m finding.
Chris McCoy: Yes, I think it’s still about staying in the rhythm and treating it like a job, which is what I’ve always tried to do. As you diversify and try different projects, directing and so forth, it becomes a little more difficult to find the time to sit down and write.
Ultimately, I always feel that if I don’t do it, nobody will. [laughs] I carve out the time every day and approach it like a job. As long as I keep a mindset where I don’t say to myself, “This has been a really good year, therefore I’m going to rest on my laurels,” I find that I’m productive.
Brian Duffield: Can I ask you a question, Chris? Are you still going to write scripts for other people? Now that you’re a director, is that your career?
Chris McCoy: I still have projects for studios where the only thing I’m doing is writing. I’d like to do both. I look at Joel and Ethan Coen doing Unbroken, or something like that, and I ask myself, “Why not do everything you possibly can do?”
Directing requires a large skill set that I need to keep learning more and more about and keep sharpening, but I obviously want to keep the screenwriting muscle in good shape too.
F. Scott Frazier: I know a lot of directors, not the triple‑A level, like a Spielberg or a Scorsese, but there are definitely a lot of directors who have made studio movies who still do the open writing assignments and write two studio scripts a year when they’re not directing.
Just to keep the relationships alive, you’re working on something rather than just sitting, waiting around, as a director, for the next thing to show up.
Scott Myers: McCoy followed up on what Brian said. The fact that you have directed a movie and presumably are going to direct some more, would that affect the choices you make on projects you write for other people? Do you think you’ll show more discretion in making those decisions?
Chris McCoy: I have, to this day, not written anything that I would not watch. [laughs] Which is, hopefully, what I am going to continue to try to do.
The relationship of directing vs. screenwriting is interesting in terms of choosing projects, because directing requires you to think about things I didn’t necessarily think about before when I was sitting down and writing a script. I don’t often write transitions into scenes — the camera dollying over a table, or starting on an insert of an object. I would imagine that now having some directing experience will, at the very least, inform the scripts I am putting together to direct myself. Even if you know that you’re going to start a scene with an insert shot of a calendar or some such thing, when it comes to getting it on the page you still need to put on that screenwriting hat, because you don’t want what’s on there to feel dull to the reader or to the studio.
F. Scott Frazier: Have you ever read a Michael Mann script before?
Chris McCoy: Yeah.
F. Scott Frazier: Like Heat or Collateral? His scripts are 180 pages long, and there are paragraphs upon paragraphs of camera movements. It’s crazy.
Chris McCoy: In a script the main goal is to tell a story. A lot of the technical stuff about how to execute that story, you end up figuring out in pre-production. But even if you’re planning on directing the script yourself, you don’t want that goal to interfere with the writing. If you have a paragraph about using some condor shot, that’s probably not something a reader is going to be so interested in.
Scott Myers: Scott, is that the selling script? Or is that the shooting script?
F. Scott Frazier: I have no idea. Whatever is out there, I remembered reading Collateral, couple of years ago. Literally, the first three paragraphs of the script are close‑up, 35 millimeter lens, all of this technical stuff about how the scene is going to be shot. It’s Michael Mann, so it’s amazing, but it was startling to me that that’s how he writes his scripts.
Chris Borrelli: In Heat, he goes into detail on what leather vest a bouncer is wearing. It’s crazy, it’s so detail obsessed, and then, you have Clint Eastwood who is so anti-that.
Each day this week, I’m going to highlight one of the writers. Today: Chris Borrelli.
Chris Borrelli has two features in post-production. The horror film, The Vatican Tapes [Black List script] will be released theatrically on May 22, with the psychological thriller Eloise, following later in 2015. They are his third and fourth features, respectively.
Another spec, the action thriller “Wake”, shoots on March 23rd staring Bruce Willis and Ben Kingsley. Two other specs, “Rounds” and “Sad Jack”, have been recently optioned, with the latter moving into pre-production. Also, in December of 2014, Chris (along with screenwriter Matt Allen) sold an original pitch to Universal and Chris Morgan Productions.
He is the author of the sci fi novel, “Islands of Stone”. Its sequel, “Islands of Ghosts” releases in June of 2015.
For my June 2013 interview with Chris, go here.
Please take time to leave a reply with your observations and follow-up questions, and while you’re there thank these writers for taking time out of their busy schedules to do this roundtable for GITS readers and the wider online screenwriting community.
On Twitter:
Brian Duffield: @BrianDuffield
F. Scott Frazier: @ScreenWritten
Chris McCoy: @thatthere
Justin Rhodes: @twopointfour
Many thanks to Wendy Cohen for logistical help with the roundtable.
Tomorrow: Part 2 of this exclusive screenwriter’s roundtable.
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