Exclusive GITS Q&A: Justin Rhodes (Part 1)

Back in July, I posted this:

Warner Bros. acquires sci-fi spec script “Second Sun” from writer Justin Rhodes. Per Hollywood Reporter:

Story is an adventure set on another planet with twists.

Rhodes is repped by ICM and manager Kevin Donahue.

Recently I caught up with Justin who agreed to do a GITS interview, my ongoing focus on screenwriters who write and sell spec scripts. In this three-part interview, today we cover Justin’s background:

How did you become interested in screenwriting?

I’d always been obsessed with movies, but growing up I never considered it as a career because it sounded way too grandiose and vague to actually pursue. I think somehow I’d equated “I’m gonna join the movie business!” with “I wanna join the circus!” So I began college as a mere film geek pursuing something more practical.

Then one day my roommate gave me a free ticket to hear Robert Rodriguez speak about making EL MARIACHI and two things happened: I was presented with a piece of indie filmmaking that struck me as something an average person like me could achieve with enough determination, and the guy who made it was up there was saying he thought someone like me could achieve it, too. And this guy had a viable career as a studio filmmaker.

And so this light went off in my head. It was the first time I understood that filmmaking was more about willpower than connections. I called my parents that night, waking them up late after they’d gone to bed, and proudly declared that I would be dropping my architecture major and switching to film.

A decade of unmitigated fear and self-loathing followed.

How have you learned the craft (i.e., formal training, personal study, books, courses, lectures, etc)?

I got a BS in film from The University of Texas, and an MFA in film directing from The American Film Institute. But aside from a one-semester writing course in undergrad, I did everything I could to avoid having to write. Writing is hard. Writing hurts. I was much more interested in the technical side of things, and spent all my time studying lighting and editing and thinking up the kind of camera angles that would let me go to sleep impressed with myself. I edited other people’s work. I post-supervised a feature. Directed a few shorts. I’ve crewed features as a grip and as a juicer, worked as a machine room operator at a post house, and even worked a few weeks as a special effects PA.

None of this was strictly speaking screenwriting, but on the other hand I was able to get a pretty deep education of what the full spectrum of the filmmaking process looks like. I feel the advantage to this is that I think in terms of shooting rather than in terms of words, which helps ensure that the expression reads with the rhythm of something being filmed rather than a more literary cadence. At any rate, film is the only headspace I feel comfortable writing in. I’m not sure I could imagine myself ever writing a book.

Once I graduated from film school I tried very hard to find some brilliant writer who’d give me all their best scripts (I really hated writing), but it turns out that brilliant writers are too smart for that. It’s hard to direct a movie without a screenplay, though, so I found myself forced to either get serious about learning screenwriting or watch my brilliant career in the movie business die a slow death of loneliness.

I read pretty much every screenwriting book I could get my hands on. I found the books to be helpful as a start, but in the end I think putting all your faith in them amounts to attempting to become a deadly Judo master by reading a textbook. Mostly I just had to get my bad scripts out of the way before the good ones started to come.

How did you land representation with ICM and your manager Kevin Donahue?

About a year out of film school an independent producer saw a short film I’d made as a finalist for a contest, and he offered me a chance to direct a low-budget action movie in Trinidad. I had some misgivings about the script, but a trusted film professor advised me to take the job for the sake of my career and worry about making it good later. Low-budget filmmaking is hard, but low-budget filmmaking in a third world country without any kind of support infrastructure is a leading cause of male pattern baldness. We could talk about trying to shoot car chases with broken vehicles incapable of moving under their own power, but that’s a conversation for another day.

Once the movie was done, the production had an industry screening in LA where some producers who also had a management company saw the film. Knowing what little it cost, they were impressed enough to set up a meeting and ultimately they offered to become my managers, with Kevin as my point person. Career-wise, this was huge for me because it was the first time I truly had an ally who didn’t share my last name. And it didn’t hurt that Kevin is phenomenal at what he does.

We all sat down to figure out what my next move should be. At the time we were positioning me as a director who could also kind-of-sort-of write, so we hatched a plan where I would write and direct another low-budget action movie that my management company would produce. As the script developed, however, the notes I was getting kept asking me to make things bigger, and I eventually ended up with a script that would cost around twenty million dollars to make. In other words, I wrote myself out of the director’s chair by scaling things beyond any budget I could be trusted with.

So the producers optioned the script and set about submitting it to agencies to see if someone would take me on as a client to try and sell the screenplay as a spec. We took a few meetings, and ended up really loving everyone at ICM. I truly couldn’t ask for better agents.

The spec market being what it was a couple of years ago, ultimately the screenplay didn’t sell (although we still use it as one of my primary writing samples). Eventually Kevin left the management company to hang his own shingle, and he was gracious enough to hang onto me.

How many spec scripts did you write before you crafted something that managed to get you representation? What was it about that script as a writing sample that caught the eye of your agents and manager?

My path was very strange. During my first year out of film school I wrote my first screenplay, a spec called PAPER GODS. At the time I was paying the bills by working in development for a director. One day he gave me a stack of books to read with a mind toward optioning one as a directing vehicle for himself. I ended up being blown away by this political memoir, and wrote some very passionate coverage urging him to buy it and try and make it. As fate would have it, he’d just read PAPER GODS and liked it, so when he pulled the trigger on the book option he hired me to adapt it for him.

Meanwhile I got offered the chance to direct the action movie I mentioned, but by the time my producer got approval to hire me there were only nine days left before the production needed to lock the script. I wasn’t very happy with the shape the script was in, and so I ended up doing this frantic rewrite over the course of a week to try and get it handed in on time. It was the second feature I’d ever written.

So to answer your question, by the time I was talking to managers I’d written three screenplays. One spec and two projects for other people.

Once I had a manager behind me, together we developed the screenplay that got me an agent. That script wound up being a sci-fi action story. Despite the far-out concept, I took a very grounded approach with it and I think that’s what the agency responded to. “Grounded science fiction” is something an agent can pitch as a brand, which helps position you to potential producers or studios as someone they can hire to deliver a specific result.

Tomorrow in Part 2 of the three-part interview, Justin talks about how he wrote and sold the spec script “Second Sun.”

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