Exclusive GITS Q&A: Jeremiah Friedman & Nick Palmer (Part 2)

Back in September 2010, I posted this announcement about newcomers Jeremiah Friedman and Nick Palmer who sold their spec script “Family Getaway” to Warner Bros.. Turns out the guys are fans of the blog and have been reading it for some time. Seeing as they are living out the dream of millions of aspiring screenwriters, I asked if they’d be up for a Q&A and they graciously agreed. It turned out to be an excellent dialogue back and forth, so much so I’m going to break up the interview into four parts. Yesterday we got some background on Friedman & Palmer and the sale of their script “Family Getaway.” In Part 2,

You mention doing a “number of drafts” of “Family Getaway” based on feedback from some AFI connections, then “two additional rewrites over the next several months” in conjunction with your managers at Mosaic, all the time while holding down day jobs. How did you manage your time to enable you to write all those drafts?

NP: It was tough and honestly, it was really hard for me at first. Because we both had day jobs, it meant working nights and weekends and basically giving up our social lives.

JF: Our friends can tell you we essentially disappeared for about a year and a half.

NP: Our schedule had been writing maybe three nights a week, 7 to 10-ish, and then usually one weekend day.

JF: And we should say that was at the point where there was no light at the end of the tunnel. We were a year out of grad school, we had kind of humiliating day jobs, we weren’t repped and we really had no idea how long we’d have to maintain the lifestyle.

NP: Yeah, by this point I had to stop telling people I’d just gotten out of grad school because that had become, you know, a lie and I just started telling them I was a Lego Robotics instructor.

JF: We were both getting pretty depressed but we knew our only way out was really to keep writing and push through.

NP: So we just kept working nights and weekends. Then, once Mosaic got involved, it basically became a second full-time job and we were writing till 11 every night after work and then writing 12 hour days Saturdays and Sundays.

JF: It was never hard to stay motivated, but it was hard to stay disciplined, especially when we had no reason to think the script would go anywhere. But I remember, we’d taken a break from writing to go see Funny People and Apatow did a Q & A after and one thing he said, which really stuck with us and which we still talk about today is that the people who make it are the people who work the hardest.

NP: There’s always going to be somebody out there who’s got a better idea or who’s more talented, but you can be the guy who works harder.

JF: And that’s something we always keep in mind so, for instance, when we were doing the rewrite for Warner Brothers and they’d asked to pitch them four new ideas for a scene, we came back to them with ten.

NP: Right now while we’re answering these questions there’s somebody out there, probably not repped, but she’s writing her ass off and she’s eventually going to break through.

What were some of the story areas you focused on in those last two rewrites?

NP: Most of it was really streamlining the plot and sharpening the characters.

JF: Our development exec at Mosaic, George Gatins, would always talk about turning it from a script into a movie, which sounds pretty simple and obvious but is actually hard to do.

NP: It was really Mosaic pushing us, even when we thought the script was great, forcing us to be as hard on the script as they knew the studios would be, that eventually got the project sold.

JF: Yeah, we had to become pretty ruthless, particularly about pacing and logic issues and it without a doubt made us better writers.

It’s unusual for “first-timers” to sell a spec script. It’s even more unusual nowadays for a spec to sell without a director or actor attached. What was the thinking behind Mosaic and your agency’s (UTA) decision to go out with the script the way it was as opposed to trying to get an attachment?

JF: UTA actually wasn’t involved at this point. We didn’t sign with an agency until after the script sold so when it initially went out it was just Mosaic repping us and on board to produce.

NP: Yeah and the initial plan had been to attach talent because you’re right, it is really difficult to sell a spec today, especially from first-time writers, with absolutely no one attached.

JF: But we were lucky in that our managers, Dawn Saltzman and Emily Rose, had done a really amazing job building interest around town as we were still rewriting so that by the time the script went out, it was already on the radar at a number of studios, which no doubt helped.

“Family Getaway” is ranked as the #11 best unproduced script in Hollywood per the most recent edition of The Black List. What is your reaction to making the list and has it benefited you as a writing team?

NP: A year ago we weren’t even repped, so yeah, just to know that many people read our script, let alone liked it, is pretty surreal.

JF: Last year at this time I’d just gotten a job as an assistant at a TV production company and one of the first things I had to do was track down and cover scripts off the blacklist so yes this is kind of crazy. In terms of whether it’s benefited us as a team, I think Nick might have gotten a girl’s number.

What writing projects are you working on now?

JF: One of the best things about selling a script is that people around town read it and then you get to go around and meet everybody, bounce ideas, talk about projects so pretty much every day you’re talking about new ideas, which is fun and exciting.

NP: Right now we’re starting to prep our next spec and then there are a couple of other things brewing, which we’re hoping might pan out. There’s a remake we’re pretty excited about and then we’ve got another idea we’re getting ready to pitch.

Finally for this part of the interview, I would be remiss if we didn’t pause to ponder the marvel of this fact: “Family Getaway” is your second script. Larry Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Body Heat) supposedly wrote ten scripts before selling anything. When you sold the script, were you aware of how remarkable an achievement that is, not only the sale itself, but selling just the second feature-length screenplay you wrote?

JF: The truth is that while Family Getaway is the second script we’ve written together, Nick and I have both been at this on our own for a long time and have had suffered plenty of rejection along the way. I took my first crack at writing a feature when I took a year off after high school and I would up with a 240 page “psychological thriller”, which a writer friend told me never to show to anyone. Over the years though I kept at it and kind of just tried to learn from my mistakes. It wasn’t really until I started working with Nick, though, that I really hit my groove so to speak.

NP: Similarly, I’ve got a couple of horror scripts sitting in a drawer somewhere and yeah, while they didn’t go anywhere, what they did do was help me learn to write. But working with Jeremiah has really raised my game and kind of forced me to stop writing scripts and start writing movies.

JF: We definitely don’t want to downplay our good fortune. We’ve caught some lucky breaks and are incredibly grateful for the opportunities we’ve had. But while it might look like an overnight success, we’ve had years of set-backs, challenges, false-starts, pretty much every discouraging failure an aspiring writer can encounter but we tried to keep our eye on the ball and just keep writing and moving forward so that when the lucky break came we’d be ready.

Tomorrow and Friday, the attention shifts to how Friedman & Palmer approaches writing a script. Here is more background on the duo:

Nick and Jeremiah never worked together at AFI, but they became fast friends, and after graduating decided to try writing together. Their first script, an Olympic sex comedy, convinced them they were on the right track and should continue pursuing their creative partnership. Family Getaway was their second script. They began writing it in November of 2008, working mostly nights and weekends since by this time both had taken day jobs to pay the bills. Nick taught lego robotics for an after school education program. Jeremiah first delivered catering for Joans on Third, then worked as an administrative assistant in the minimally invasive urology department at Cedars Sinai Hospital before putting in a year as the assistant to the president of a production company focused on TV development. With the help of notes from some trusted AFI friends, Nick and Jeremiah completed a number of drafts of their at-the-time untitled action-comedy and eventually decided to show the script to a friend, who worked as a creative executive at Imagine. She passed it along to Emily Rose, a young manager at Mosaic, who thought the script still needed a lot of work but liked it. Emily, however, needed another manager to come on board before taking Nick and Jeremiah on as clients. At that point, Jeremiah’s friend/mentor Mark Bomback called Dawn Saltzman, his former agent who had just left Endeavor and started as a manager at Mosaic. On Mark’s suggestion, Dawn read the script and in April 2010, she and Emily signed Nick and Jeremiah as clients. With the help of Dawn, Emily and Mosaic development exec George Gatins, Nick and Jeremiah completed two additional rewrites over the next several months while still writing around their day jobs. By August, the script was finished and Mosaic was attached to produce. In late September, the script sold to Warner Bros., where it is currently in development.

Jeremiah and Nick have kindly agreed to look at some follow-up questions, so if you have a good one, please post in comments.

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