2015 Screenwriters Roundtable (8 Part Series): Jessica Bendinger, Lindsay Devlin, Stephany Folsom…

2015 Screenwriters Roundtable

My conversation with Jessica Bendinger, Lindsay Devlin, Stephany Folsom, Liz W. Garcia, Julia Hart, and Lisa Joy.

An extensive screenwriters roundtable I did in December 2015 with a group of talented Hollywood screenwriters: Jessica Bendinger, Lindsay Devlin, Stephany Folsom, Liz W. Garcia, Julia Hart, and Lisa Joy.

Here are links to all eight parts of the conversation:

Part 1: “Marvel has just been my complete world and life and I have been sleeping there. It’s just been 24/7 writing of Thor 3. I can’t talk too much about it though, because working for Marvel, they’re like the NSA of movies.” — Stephany Folsom

Part 2: “I’m lucky enough to be working with an incredibly talented cast and a fantastic crew [on Westworld] — and I’m co-showrunning with my husband, Jonathan Nolan. So it’s been a labor of love to work on it.” — Lisa Joy

Part 3: “One of my favorite stories is this HBO show I was doing. Like I said, it’s about a midwife and abortion doctor and I pitched on it and got the job when I was four months pregnant. And all of the producers are women and all of them are mothers.” — Julia Hart

“Ten years ago, when I was a young executive, I think I probably used to judge women differently. I judged mothers, or women, or breastfeeding in general like that until I went through it.” — Lindsay Devlin

Part 4: “We live in the most political town. It’s run like a weird oligarchy. It’s a very old school power structure, and they’re very reluctant to do things to change that. Studios and agencies are constantly making decisions that are against their best interest. It’s very odd.” — Jessica Bendinger

Part 5: “Women have a niche perspective because we’re 50 percent of the population which apparently is niche. I wanted to bring that up as one of the many narratives around women in this business that drives me nuts.” — Liz W. Garcia

Part 6: “I’ve been being paid to be a writer in this business since I was 24, and I only recently really understood in my bones that this is a craft.” — Liz W. Garcia

“Obviously, not every writer wants to direct, but for me it was huge… now when I’m writing a scene I’m picturing myself in the editing room cutting it. And it’s made me a much more efficient writer.” — Julia Hart

Part 7: “Nobody told me that a large part of being a screenwriter, other than all the craft you have to be amazing at, you have to be a little bit of a politician. That was a learning curve for me.” — Stephany Folsom

“You can’t win from within when you’re dealing with people who are inherently biased or sexist or fucked up. You have to find your people.” — Lisa Joy

Part 8: “Who are you as a writer? What do you want to write? What’s your point of view? Not as a diary but as a craft. How would you tell that story?” — Jessica Bendinger

“It becomes this… echo chamber of terror… I need to remember what we would say to somebody just coming into this business: just fucking write.” — Lindsay Devlin

Entire Roundtable Conversation

On Twitter:

Jessica Bendinger: @JBendinger

Lindsay Devlin: @DevlinLindsay

Stephany Folsom: @StephanyFolsom

Liz W. Garcia: @lizwgarcia

Julia Hart: @juliahartowitz

Lisa Joy: @lisajoynolan

Many thanks to Wendy Cohen for logistical help with the roundtable.

For more Go Into The Story interviews, go here.