2014 Screenwriters Roundtable (Part 2): 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 2:
Scott Myers: Before we jump off this, Justin, Greg, and Brian, I’d like to hear what’s been your reaction to the success you’ve been carving out the last few years, and in particularly, last year. Is it easier for you? Harder?
Greg Russo: You learn to adapt. When you start out, you think you’ll only be working on one thing at a time. You soon realize that you need to develop an ability to switch on a dime, from one project to the next.
This was my first year developing for television. TV wants your attention all the time, and I welcomed the challenge. Enjoyed it really.
I know what my comfort zone is in terms of the amount of work I take on and I stick to it. If that means turning things down, then I will.
Whatever I decide to work on, I make sure that I can give the proper amount of time to each project. The work is better for it, and I never feel overwhelmed.
Scott Myers: How about you, Justin?
Justin Rhodes: The funny thing is, the more I learn about how to do this, the harder, the slower I get, because I feel like there’s more things I see.
The writing process for me, gets slower the better job I do, and at the same time, what the other guys were talking about, where I’ve had three different projects, this year chasing each other, hopefully towards production, and there’s rewrites that jump out of the grass, when you least expect it.
I am over here doing this, and some director comes on, or a new actor comes on, and suddenly you are doing this whole new complicated rewrite that they need in two weeks, that you didn’t even know was on the table.
Meanwhile, you’ve got clocks ticking, and there are two or three other things. It is a challenge, and what Greg said was right. My fantasy is to do one thing at a time, and that’s what I try so hard to accomplish, and that ends up being five and six, completely against my will.
Scott Myers: Duffield, how about you?
Brian: I loved 2014. It was great. It was good for a weird reason, in that I was nervous to take on a studio job, because I was getting married. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to devote all of my attention to the job. I had all these nightmares of getting a studio job and then just completely airballing it.
So I just wrote specs all year and I felt like it was the best my writing’s been. And I made no money, but creatively, it was really great. Since I had sold my first screenplay, I had always done the studio thing, sending specs in to studios and seeing what could happen. But the specs I wrote this year, we sent to one director at a time and tried to build them carefully from there.
With The Babysitter, we didn’t send that to studios or the typical kind of studio too much. At least, the focus for me was always the smaller places that don’t necessarily need movie stars to greenlight a small movie. So it was a great year, I felt like I learned a lot. In fact, I didn’t know what kind of career I wanted to have in 2013, and now I do.
Scott Myers: Let’s jump ahead to some of the individual projects you’ve had. Brian, why don’t we start with you? Because you talked about The Babysitter, which was a spec that sold in November. Here’s the logline: “A lonely 12‑year‑old boy in love with his babysitter discovers some hard truths about life, love and murder.”
What’s the story behind that spec?
Brian: I’ll give you a few things. I’m a really big haunted house fan, and every time I would go to Universal Horror Nights or any of those things, I was always struck by how none of the villains were women, unless they were possessed or zombies, so not even bad by choice. I felt that was a huge bummer.
On top of that, my wife and I have a puppy, and we had let her stay with some friends of my wife’s when we were gone once. I came back and picked her up, and I walked into this hilarious comedy setting, where you walk in and your dog is stoned off her ass and there’s weed everywhere.
It was a completely different situation than I thought it was going to be, and it got me thinking about how terrible of a parent I’m going to be, because I’m just going to assume everyone’s out to destroy my kid.
So like most things, I thought my fears would make an entertaining movie. So it came from wanting to come up with a great female villain and my fears of parenthood, I guess.
Chris McCoy: To cut you off, is it weird that you got married and came up with a great female villain in the same year?
[laughter]
Brian: No. I mean, I had that and then I have a movie I’m directing, Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately. I wrote it while I was dating my now wife, and so I think she has concerns.
[laughter]
Brian: Having those experiences was always something that just stuck in my head. Then walking around L.A., in general, afterwards, for me, I started noticing there is a huge slant towards Freddy and Jason and all these horror characters.
And if it’s a woman who’s a horror character, it’s like she’s possessed. It’s like Evil Dead or The Exorcist. You don’t have too many great women villains. Or if you do, typically the air is very campy, someone being really convicted about being terrible.
That was just something that I thought would be a lot of fun to play with. Even the stuff I wrote earlier in the year, it was very non‑commercial. Even as a business, I wanted to make sure people didn’t forget me or just remember me for the wrong reasons.
So The Babysitter felt like it’s a contained and fun movie, hopefully. It felt like it was a good way to combine a lot of the things that I really like writing about in a way that was hopefully very audience‑pleasing.
Scott Myers: Well, it pleased somebody because it got bought, and then also made The Black List. What was that like?
Brian: The Black List or just getting bought?
Scott Myers: Bought. Let’s talk about that because you’ve done The Black List before.
Brian: Yeah, its old news.
[laughter]
Brian: It was great. We set it up in Wonderland, which was always a place that I had being eyeing. I really love Steven Bello over there, their exec. They have money to make movies now, so that in and of itself is really exciting.
Even beginning to talk with McG and everyone over there, it was just, “Hey! We’re not going to give you notes until there’s a director. You’re going to be involved the entire way. You can produce it, and we’ll go make it as soon as possible. And we don’t need stars because the two characters are 12 and 17.”
It was great because it was everything you are hoping to hear, and you rarely do. Everything else I’ve set up, you have that euphoria of setting it up, and then you sit down and they say the one note that you aren’t even thinking someone’s going to say because it’s so bad, typically.
So far this time, it’s been great, and they’re all amped. I’m enjoying it so far.
Each day this week, I’m going to highlight one of the writers. Today: Brian Duffield.
BRIAN DUFFIELD (Screenwriter), firstborn of Brian and Brenda Duffield of Pennsylvania and eventual missionaries to the pagan land of Ireland, got into screenwriting by not being allowed to watch television or movies while growing up due to Evangelicalism. To cope with this, Duffield snuck film novelizations, Harry Potter, and Stephen King books into the house the way most kids sneak in porn. He eventually began writing his own movies that he would never be allowed to watch if they became real movies. He graduated from Messiah College & Temple University in 2008, and has been a professional screenwriter since selling his 2010 Black List screenplay “Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch” to Skydance Productions while working at a clothing factory in Vernon, CA.
In addition to writing the screenplay for THE DIVERGENT SERIES: INSURGENT, his other recent credits include JANE GOT A GUN starring Natalie Portman. Most recently, his screenplay “The Babysitter” was bought by Wonderland Sound and Vision at the end of 2014 with a shoot scheduled for later this year.
Next up is his directorial debut “Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately”, a horrific romance produced by Before the Door. He currently lives in Los Angeles, has a super-hot wife, and a mind-blowing puppy named Millie.
For my June 2014 interview with Brian, 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.
For Part 1 of the Roundtable conversation, go here.
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 3 of this exclusive screenwriter’s roundtable.
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