2014 Screenwriters Roundtable (Part 3): 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 3:
Scott Myers: Another spec that sold was Frazier’s Berliner, back in July. Logline: “As the Berlin Wall is being constructed at the height of the Cold War, a veteran CIA agent searches for a Soviet mole that’s already killed several fellow agents, including a young agent he’s mentored.”
Scott, what inspired you to write this particular story?
Scott Frazier: It started many years ago, actually. It’s probably the longest length of time I’ve ever worked on any one script. It originally started with that I wanted to do a play on Hamlet. I was actually just going to straight‑up do Hamlet in Cold War Berlin.
In researching the worlds, I realized that there were very few movies or any pop culture entertainment about The Wall going up. Even to this day, there’s still a lot of arguments and a lot of… nobody really knows what the final straw was that caused the East Germans to put up the wall.
It caught everybody by surprise. The CIA just woke up one morning and The Wall was up. 10,000 engineers had come into Berlin and put it up overnight. I thought that was fascinating. I wanted to make that the fulcrum of the story from that point on. From there, rewriting it over the course of three years, it grew into the story it is today.
Scott Myers: You’re getting feedback from some of your writing group when you’re writing the script?
Scott Frazier: No, this one I didn’t show to a lot of people. I was always embarrassed by it, my first draft was 210 pages long, and it was very, very bad. It never worked for over the course of three years. Literally, I would write a draft and I’d read it, I’d know that it didn’t work, I’d put it aside and work on something else, and then go back to it.
Early last year, I had an epiphany. There were two things that I switched around in the script. Big things within the script that I switched around, and were like the “Aha!” moment, once they clicked into place, I did a couple more drafts, and I was happy with it. That’s what we ended up going out with it — but no, I was always embarrassed by it.
It always seemed like I wasn’t good enough to write it yet. Every time I’d write it, I’d always have that shame of, “I know that something good is here, I just haven’t found it yet.” I never showed it to a lot of people until early last year, when I was happy with where it was headed.
Scott Myers: This is a new paradigm for successful screenwriting. Shame and embarrassment.
[laughter]
Chris McCoy: Scott, out of curiosity, if you refer back to our 2012 screenwriters roundtable, I talked about a coffee that you and I had where we resolved to name all of our scripts either like Berlin or Istanbul for foreign value.
[laughter]
Scott Frazier: That’s hilarious.
Scott Myers: Do you want 10 percent, McCoy, off Scott’s spec sale?
Chris McCoy: Yeah, I feel like I should get 10.
Brian: McCoy needs to write Istanbul.
[laughter]
Scott Myers: “Berliner” sold to Universal. That was a big deal.
Scott Frazier: It was always a passion project for me. Maybe that’s the way to go about it. It’s a thriller — it’s not a big action movie, it’s not a franchise, and it takes place in the ’60s in Berlin. It was never about hitting those checkboxes that the studios are always looking for. It was shocking to me, honestly.
I couldn’t be happier with the result, I have a number of projects with the guys over at Universal, and they’ve been great to me. It’s the perfect home for it, honestly.
Scott Myers: Does anybody else have a spec in mind for 2015?
Chris Borrelli: Yeah, I have one, about ready to go out, third week on this month or maybe first week of February, right in there. Something that I banged out and I am excited about it. It was one of those things where it didn’t take that long to do. That thing where you just have an idea and it flows, it doesn’t happen nearly enough.
I’d started several scripts. Two scripts clicked after page 30 on both of them, so I put them aside as I like to say, to make myself feel better, and banged this out, and everybody likes it, so far. I am looking forward, hopefully, to starting it off with a bang, and we’ll see this time, next year, how it goes.
Scott Myers: Chris, you had a movie produced in 2014, Eloise.
Chris Borrelli: Yep.
Scott Myers: Starring Eliza Dushku and Robert Patrick, directed by Robert Legato. “Four friends break into an abandoned insane asylum in search of a death certificate which will grant one of them a large inheritance. However, finding it soon becomes the least of their worries in a place haunted by dark memories.”
Chris Borrelli: That sounds great. Who wrote that?
Scott Myers: It’s on IMDb. How did that project come about?
Chris Borrelli: That came about only two years ago, which sounds short to me. These guys in Michigan, who were financiers and have their own studio, wanted to make a movie about the insane asylum there that’s fascinating. It’s been closed for a long time, it was the biggest asylum in the world, at one point — even had its own post office and fire department.
They flew me out there, we talked, and it’s been a great experience, because they let me create, and they had a lot of great ideas, but I came up with the idea. There is a little bit of inspiration being there, in Michigan. We were around mostly the ruins now of where the asylum used to be.
I was seeing some bad looking houses, and ruined roofs, and all those things — that’s when I got the idea. I wanted the characters to, not in the way of The Others, but to be ghosts, in a sense. If you haven’t seen The Others, I am sorry for ruining the twist.
[laughter]
Chris Borrelli: The basic idea is, I wanted to have these four people going nowhere, it doesn’t matter to most of society, if they lived or died, those kinds of downtrodden characters.
Scott Myers: Like screenwriters.
Chris Borrelli: Yeah, screenwriters before… it’s that kind of feeling, certainly, sometimes. When they go in there, they have nothing to lose. I wanted to answer why they go into, so to speak, a haunted house, even though it was an asylum. When they get in there, the asylum’s a fifth character, and plays tricks on them, and wants them to stay.
It’s a very psychological film, it’s not very slasher-y. But, the spec that’s going out, is actually surprisingly slasher-y. I surprised myself.
Scott Myers: Were you involved in the production at all?
Chris Borrelli: There is this natural course of events. They liked what I wrote, gave a few notes and I rewrote it, and then they had me out there, had a good time, but it is funny. It’s in the business. You create something in your pajamas, and then, you show up to the set, and you’re this oddity. A quick Eliza Dushku bit: I was watching the scene where she is almost being tortured as a character.
They took a break, she came out and I hadn’t met her yet, and she said, “What’s your name?” I said, “I am Chris.” And, she said, “Oh. Chris who?” I go, “Borrelli.” And, she said, “Oh, the screenwriter.” I was impressed she knew who the screenwriter was, and I said, “Yeah. I love what I am seeing here, on the monitors.” She goes, “You should, you wrote it, you sick fuck.”
[laughter]
Chris Borrelli: But it was with love — it was a very Massachusetts ego. We are both from the same area.
Scott Myers: That’s great. Do they have a release?
Chris Borrelli: We don’t have a release yet. It’s still being edited, but hopefully, late this year. The Vatican Tapes, that you’ve all been hearing about, comes out in May. That’s going to be fun.
Each day this week, I’m going to highlight one of the writers. Today: F. Scott Frazier.
Scott Frazier’s credits include THE NUMBERS STATION, starring John Cusack and Malin Ackerman. His latest movie, AUTOBAHN, starring Nicolas Hoult, Ben Kingsley, and Anthony Hopkins and directed by Eran Creevy will be released by Relativity in the fall. His spec script BERLINER made the 2014 Black List and is in development at Universal, with Chris Morgan producing. He lives with his wife and son as far north as you can possibly get while still remaining in Los Angeles county.
For my March 2012 interview with Scott, 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.
Part 2, 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 4 of this exclusive screenwriter’s roundtable.