Exclusive GITS Q&A: Jeremiah Friedman & Nick Palmer (Part 3)

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.

Let’s start at the beginning of your prep-writing process. Where do you find your stories? How do you come up with story ideas? How important do you think the story concept is to the overall strength of a screenplay?

NP: It’s really a mix of things. A lot of times one of us will have a kernel that might have come from something that happened to us or something we read and we just sort of knock stuff around, building a story off a premise or a character we found interesting. A lot of it comes out of us just bouncing ideas back and forth and talking things through. It’s one of the great benefits of having a writing partner. You’re spending so much time together, you’re constantly in conversation so there’s just a lot of opportunity for developing new ideas.

JF: Again, for us it all really comes down to whether or not we can see it in our minds as a movie. Has it been done before? Is this something we know we’d want to go see? As far as finding those kernels Nick was talking about, a lot of it is a mix of luck and inspiration but we also try to go about life in kind of a hyper-aware state, always looking for new stories and characters we can build off of. We both read a lot — both fiction and non-fiction — and we make sure to check in with each other regularly and download ideas, most of which we develop a little and then file away.

NP: What we’ve found is that while we might get really excited about a character or a new take on a genre, a lot of our job is being able to pitch our ideas to other people and that’s where having a strong, clear concept really helps. A lot of times we may have a really clear sense of the movie we want to write but we’ve still got to find a way to communicate that to our agents and managers or executives at a production company or studio.

JF: Particularly in the space we work in — commercial, studio movies — concept is kind of key when you’re always trying to sell your idea. Studios want movies they can sell, for better or worse, and a lot of times that has to do with a concept they can wrap their heads around and see as a movie. They want something that’s new and familiar at the same time. What we try to do then is find the small story in the big idea that way they’ve got something big and flashy that they can get excited about and we’ve got a clear, character-based, emotional journey we can focus on.

How much time do you spend in prep-writing (i.e., brainstorming, character development, plotting, research, outlining)? Which of the aspects of prep do you tend to devote the most time and focus to?

NP: I think we really learned to appreciate prep coming off the first script we wrote together and we now dedicate a huge portion of our work time, probably close to fifty percent, to prep of one kind or another. When you have a writing partner, the most important thing is that you’re both telling the same story at every step of the way. The more you invest in prep at the top, the smoother and faster the actual writing will go. For us, it’s really crucial that we map out every scene, every beat really, before we ever sit down to write.

JF: We spend a lot of time talking about the characters and constructing character profiles, that probably comes first once we’ve already developed an idea enough to commit to writing it. At this point, we have a sense of the entire story and the major beats but we still take a fair amount time just to come up with a lot of stuff that frankly will never be in the script. And again, we formalize it and write it all down because we need to make sure we’re on the same page about who these people were before they show up on page one. Once we’ve got those down, we head into a pretty extensive outline and then we breakdown the script on a board using index cards so we can kind of see the entire movie and visualize the structure. We also devote a couple of days to studying whatever genre we’re working in, which helps us get a sense of the rules and conventions and also helps us talk about tone, which is pretty huge for us.

NP: Now that it’s not just us alone at my house writing after work but there are actually a fair number of other people involved in every project, prep’s become even more crucial. Because now it’s not just about the two of us being on the same page, but we want all these other people — the producers, the studio, etc — on board with us too. So rather than disappearing into a cave and then just dropping a finished script into their laps, we try to keep them in the loop throughout the whole process so that they feel ownership of the story too.

In terms of screenplay structure, is there a particular paradigm or methodology you use or do you have a more ‘organic’ approach?

JF: We write a certain type of movie, in the tradition of classical Hollywood, narrative films, so there are certain rules that we’re aware of and that we keep in mind throughout the whole process. We’re less dogmatic about any particular methodology than we are about finding ways to make our story work. We want to be new, we want to be fresh, we want to be interesting but we also want the story to deliver emotionally and that’s where the basic mechanics really help.

NP: We also spend a lot of time thinking about objectives and obstacles both for the script as a whole and for each scene. It probably seems obvious but it’s actually an easy thing to lose sight of and most of the time if a scene’s not working, it comes down to one of those two elements not being strong enough.

JF: We know that for us, when we were starting out, a lot of our writing was dominated more by exposition, dialogue and coneptual stuff and we’d lose track of the basic dramatic conflict and it’s really the conflict that’s going to drive the story forward and keep the audience engaged. A strong, clear conflict and a character whom you care about trying to overcome it is really all you need.

What are some of the tools and techniques you use to dig into your characters and develop them?

NP: Like we said, we do pretty extensive character bios and a lot of those are based on a list of questions we’ve put together. The questions range from trivial, everyday surface stuff to deeper, interior emotional/pscyhological landscape stuff. Mostly though, they force us to get specific and detailed and to really flesh the characters out as human beings.

JF: And a lot of what we come up with never ends up in the script, not even the first draft, but it’s there in the background informing how the charcters talk or respond to conflicts throughout the story. The biggest question we try to answer for every character is the pretty standard one. What does he want? Why? That really drives everything and then we just try to create a worldview that’s unique to the character and feels specific and human.

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

Comment Archive