Go Into The Story Interview: Kieran Turner

My conversation with the 2022 Black List writer.

Kieran wrote the original screenplay Black Dog which landed on the 2022 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Kieran about his creative background, writing a Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Sadly, Kieran died of cancer in December, 2024.

Scott Myers: Kieran, great to have you here and congratulations on making the 2022 Black List. To start off, how did you develop an interest in writing for movies?

Kieran Turner: I’ve actually been in and out of the business in one form or another since I was about six years old. I was born and raised in Florida. I started as a child actor at about the age of six, mostly doing commercials. I worked a lot in New York. I worked a little bit in LA. I did that for about 10 years.

I was just finishing up my time in acting thinking I was going to continue as an actor when I went into college. I went to NYU. I started as a drama major at Playwrights Horizons, which was one of the studios at NYU,

At Playwrights Horizons, they made you do everything. Every week you had to write a new scene. You had to direct a scene, cast it, stage manage it, art‑direct it, and all that kind of stuff.

I realized two things. One, that I really enjoyed the writing and directing aspect of it. Two, that I was really a terrible actor. What I was able to coast on and get away with as a child was not going to serve me as an adult. I didn’t quite have it as an adult.

Thankfully, I realized that fairly early on and realized how much I loved doing the behind‑the‑scenes. I stayed at Playwrights for the first year, was also a massive party boy.

This was tail end of the Club Kid years in New York City. I had been living in New York since I was 16, so I was already used to going out and doing all that stuff, going to Tunnel, The World, Mars, Nell’s, and all those places.

My first year at Playwrights, I was flunking out. It was really hard for me to get up and get to school by eight o’clock in the morning, because I was just coming off of being out at four o’clock.

I rehabilitated myself, my grade‑point average, in the second year, and then was able to get into film in my third year. I fell into the radio department at NYU.

I wound up having my own show, which was something called “Headphone Theater,” which was a weekly, half‑hour show of radio plays, skits, and pieces. I had to write a lot of my own stuff.

By the time I graduated as an undergrad, I knew what I wanted to do. But because I had fucked around so much, I didn’t really know how to do it. I decided, “Oh, shit. I have to actually go back to school now. I have to go to grad school and actually go to grad school for film.”

I applied and got into NYU as a film major. That was where my focus was. I knew I wanted to make films.

Scott: A lot of professional screenwriters question the value of film school. What’s your take?

Kieran: If I had it to do over again, I don’t know that I would have done it, I mean, going to grad school, or I might have looked into something like SUNY Purchase, which was a little less money.

Also, when I was at NYU, it was a really bad time. I got in interviewing with the producer, Jerome Hellman, who had produced “Midnight Cowboy” and “Coming Home.”

Because I kept falling through the cracks in undergrad, the way I was able to do my undergrad thesis was producing it, producing somebody else’s film. When I got in and interviewed with Jerome, we talked about producing.

He was so excited that there was somebody who had producing experience and was interested in doing that, as well. I walked out of there going, “I’m not certain about a lot, but I am certain that I got it.”

I did, and I was so excited. I was like, “It’s so awesome. Jerome Hellman, I’m going to have him as a mentor.” I walked in to find out that he was no longer there.

He had wanted to make a bunch of changes to the program. They basically told him, “No, you’re only here as a figurehead.” He was like, “Fuck you. I’m Jerome Hellman.”

We never had a real chair for the department for the entire three years that I was there. The program was just in complete disarray. I just don’t think that we got the education and the help, I guess, the support that we should have gotten and might have gotten if it was another time.

Scott: Clearly, you’ve somehow managed to learn the craft of screenwriting. What were your major influences in that regard?

Kieran: I actually look back to the radio part of it because, with the radio part of it, I had to come up with so many pieces every week. There was no time to wonder or worry about whether they were good. You hoped that they were good. You hoped that what you were writing would strike a chord with somebody, but it was, “We got to get this done. We got to get this done. We got to get this done.”

Through that, I actually learned what was bad and what didn’t work. That was the most amazing training ground because when you’re doing that for a year and a half, you have to understand that what you’re doing isn’t going to be good.

You can’t sit there, do that for a year and half and go, “Oh, everything I write is golden.” I knew it wasn’t. I could tell, but I could recognize what I was doing wasn’t working or what was working. That helped, I think, hone my craft and to be able to figure that out and take it to another place.

When I got into grad school, I was writing a lot. Of course, in NYU, you have to do a certain amount of short films every year. Then your second year, you do a certain amount of stuff. Of course, there’s your thesis. I decided that I wanted my thesis to be a feature. I had been working on this feature for a while and rewriting it and reshaping it.

One of the things that I like to do, and maybe it’s because of not being able to do it as much when I was doing the radio stuff, is I love to rewrite. I love to figure out what doesn’t work. I love to give people stuff, have them read it, get their feedback and then figure it out from there.

I find that getting that kind of feedback is so helpful because even if it’s not something you can use, you never know what’s going to spark you. That was helpful.

Scott: It sounds like a lot of learn by doing, right?

Kieran: Definitely. NYU was very much learn by doing.

Scott: This feature film, this thesis, it was 24 Nights? Is that the one?

Kieran: Yeah, that was 24 Nights.

Scott: Let’s talk a bit about that. I think the premise is a gay‑themed romantic comedy about a grown man who still believes in Santa Claus, right?

Kieran: Correct.

Scott: Maybe unpack a little bit about that story and the process of getting the film produced. It eventually got distribution, if I’m not mistaken.

Kieran: It did. I don’t remember how I came up with the story. It was something that I was just noodling on. It’s so funny because so many people asked me when I was on the festival circuit and after the movie came out, “Was this an autobiographical story?”

Not so much about the Santa Claus thing but because the main character’s parents die when he’s very young in an accident. His mother has instilled in him this belief in Santa Claus. It’s a way of both keeping them alive for him and keeping him a child and not having to mature and become an adult and take on responsibilities.

I would have people come up to me. They would say, “Oh, I lost my parents at a young age,” or, “My parents are both dead. I really got what you were trying to say here. That must’ve been awful for you.” I felt terrible having to say, “It has nothing to do with me. I just made it up.”

People always want to seem to attach whatever it is that you write and assume that everything that you write is autobiographical. That was a weird lesson to learn. People expect that kind of thing from you.

I just saw the kind of money that people were pouring into their shorts. They weren’t really doing anything with them. I thought, “If I’m going to take the time and the money to make this, I want to have something that I might be able to sell.”

I wanted to do a feature, and I did. Yes, it did sell. I wasn’t particularly proud of the end result for several reasons. The biggest one has to do with sort of trashing another member of the crew. I don’t want to do too much of that. I’ve spoken about it before.

Ultimately, it was my responsibility. I was the person who was in charge. The fact that I didn’t stop it when I could have and was forced to continue on with it and finish it ultimately falls on me.

People seem to have loved it. It did really well on the festival circuit. I sold it. I made quite a bit of money from it for what it was, I should say. The minute that my contract ended with the distributor, I took it out of print. It will never, ever go back in print again.

Scott: Wow.

Kieran: Yeah, just because I don’t want to people to think that that’s all I can do. In terms of the way that it looks, it just doesn’t look good. It’s not a good‑looking film.

Scott: You did a documentary, Jobriath AD.

Kieran: Yeah. I never thought about making documentaries. I actually had sold a project to a company, I don’t know, in mid‑to late aughts. It was another gay‑themed film. It was a time‑travel comedy. I had been financed. Everything was great.

We were about four weeks away from me going to New York to start casting. The money fell through. All of a sudden, I had nothing to do because I had sublet my apartment out here, out in LA. I had to quickly be able to undo that because I had nowhere to be.

Jobriath was this glam rock musician from the ’70s, who was the first openly gay rock star. He was supposed to be the American version of Bowie. I had always heard about him, even though he was a little bit before my time, because I’m very into gay history and music history, and ’70s history.

His music had been out of print for a long time. I’d never heard any of it. I just always saw the photos of him and thought he was a joke.

Morrissey was a big fan of his. Morrissey had put out a compilation CD of some of Jobriath’s music out on his own label. I found it on Amazon. I thought, “I’m going to order this. I’m going to make fun of this. I need to hear it. It’s going to be really horrible. I’m going to have a good laugh.”

I played it. I thought, “Holy shit, this is amazing music. I have to know what happened, why this guy didn’t succeed.” The more research that I did, the more that I realized that the story needed to be told and that this person was quite amazing and was a groundbreaker in a lot of ways. No one knew who he was. Those who did thought he was a joke.

I was like, “OK. I’m going to do this. I’m going to make a documentary.” It turned out to be quite a success. All of his music got back in print, thanks to the documentary. A lot of people have discovered him. He’s still being written about and discovered 10 years after the movie was on the festival circuit.

We did about a year and a half on the festival circuit. Then Factory 25 picked it up, released it theatrically in early 2014, put it out on DVD and digital. We did a special release for Record Store Day, where we did a combo vinyl LP of tracks that someone had given me, that no one had ever heard before or been released anywhere.

Now I’m working on a screenplay for a biopic for his story. People are actually interested, which is amazing. I feel very protective of him and of his story.

I want to make sure that it’s told correctly with the reverence but also with the razzle‑dazzle that it deserves as well because it’s a really great story. Not only is the music terrific, but even if you don’t like the music, the story is pretty phenomenal.

Scott: That must be inspiring. In a sense, you resurrected this musician.

Kieran: It is. It’s weird. You don’t want to take credit for it. It’s weird because I never knew Jobriath. I wasn’t a long‑time fan of his, yet I’ve now found myself in the position of being the keeper of his legacy. It’s a really weird thing to think about it like, “Wow, why me? How did I become the person that has that responsibility? Am I worthy of it? Should I be the one that’s doing it?”

Then I think to myself, “Well, you know what? Nobody else gave a shit.” Nobody stood up, walked up to the plate, and decided, “OK, I’m going to be the one to do it.”

That’s always how I’ve looked at the work that I’ve done. If you wait for the permission of somebody else to do something, you may never get anything done. That’s how I’ve always approached everything I’ve written and everything that I’ve produced.

Scott: That probably is the same spirit and attitude for the project, Ghost Lights?

Kieran: Yes. Ghost Lights is a four‑episode docuseries about how the AIDS crisis altered the landscape of theater. It’s about how the theater community rose up at the beginning of the AIDS crisis, when no one else was doing anything, and said, “Oh my god, we have to get the word out. We have to write pieces that talk about the AIDS crisis, like plays, and put them on.

We have to figure out how to raise money for the people in our community who don’t have any health care and aren’t able to take care of themselves and are so sick that they can no longer work. We have to figure out how to build this network of support.”

They were the first community that did it. Other people followed by example. I really truly, honestly believe that if it wasn’t for the theater community, alongside the gay community, doing this, it would have taken a lot longer for AIDS awareness to really have reached the peak that it did.

Also, there were close to a thousand theater artists who died before their time and whose work, because it was in the theater, because it was so ephemeral and it gets performed and then it disappears, so many people don’t know about. There’s this legacy of this amazing art and these artists, who should have been handed down to the next generation and the next generation.

Those generations are not aware of these people and the work that actually is accessible to them if they know how to find it and where to find it. I’ve been working on that. I can’t talk too much about it because it hasn’t been publicly announced.

We signed with a company to finish it and to take it out for sale. We’re hooked up with an agency to help us take it out for sale. Things are moving along really well with it. I’m really excited about it and thrilled that we were able to make it happen, especially with COVID shut us down for a year now.

Scott: Let’s move to the script Black Dogs, which is a terrific read, the script that got on the 2022 Black List. Here’s how it’s described:

Based on the novel by Jason Buhrmester, 1973. Led Zeppelin was robbed of nearly a quarter million dollars, that’s about a million dollars, I guess, in today’s…in cash, while playing a series of concerts in New York City. The case was never solved. We follow four young friends from the streets of Baltimore as they attempt to pull off what is possibly the most brazen heist in rock‑and‑roll history.

How did you discover this book?

Kieran: I’m a late‑in‑life but big Led Zeppelin fan. When I was first starting to get into music, and I got into music very early in my life, Zeppelin was on their way out. The first Zeppelin I remember was “In Through the Out Door,” and I was a little kid. It took me until the ’90s to get into it.

I saw the book on Amazon, and I thought it sounded fun. I was familiar with the situation, and I knew that it had not ever been solved, the case. I wanted to see what this Jason Buhrmester had come up with.

I read the book, and the book is so different than the screenplay. It’s told not linearly. The characters are very different. It’s more about the heist than it is about the characters. That’s not to take anything away from the book. The book is really terrific, and I sparked to the book immediately.

I think the book is a fantastic read, and I urge anyone who’s reading this to go out and get it, because it’s a really, really fun read. It’s so different than what I did with the screenplay.

I immediately saw it as a film. This is back in 2009, and I’m in the midst of working on “Jobriath,” the documentary. I really don’t have much to prove myself, but I got in contact with Jason. He put me in touch with his agent.

Somebody else was in the midst of trying to option the book. I don’t know who they were. They were obviously a lot better established than I was, and so they went with them. I totally understood it.

I stayed in touch with Jason. Every couple of years, I’d be like, “Hey, what’s going on,” because I was paying attention. I was like, “I’m not seeing anything happening with this, and I want it so badly. I know I can do this. I know I can do this.”

It took several years later. Finally, I emailed Jason, and I was like, “Hey, what’s going on?” He was like, “Hey, I finally got the book back, so it’s available again. I’m like, “Oh my god.” He was like, “Well, I live in LA now. Why don’t we meet up?” We talked about it. I told him what I wanted to do with the story and how I saw it.

I felt like it was much more of a character‑driven film. Not that he doesn’t have very clear characters in the book, but like I said, the book is much more plot‑driven.

I gave him a bunch of notes and told him what I wanted to do. He agreed. I started writing it. Initially, I was thinking this was going to be something that I was going to direct. It was going to be much lower budget. We were going to try and do it for five million.

We got with a company who was like, “Hey, we love this. We can finance this, but you’ve got to bring us names. We don’t expect you to get names for the four leads because they’re guys in their early 20s. If you can get us a good supporting cast…”

The thing is that I’m a documentary director. Just trying to get something off the ground like this, it’s difficult. The business, the industry is in such flux right now. Even when I started trying to get this done, people were like, “Who the fuck are you?” I understood, but I kept plugging away probably longer than I should have, wanting to get this made with me as a director.

Then COVID hit. I threw it in a drawer for a year and a half and was like, “Well, fuck it. I guess nothing is ever going to happen with it.” I hadn’t had any representation for a while because I was in the doc world. I have an attorney, who handles all my contracts and everything.

Something came up with “Jobriath.” Somebody had wanted to option the documentary to talk about doing a narrative biopic. I thought, “Oh, I should have some representation working on this with me.” I started sending out to a couple of people that I had known, who were managers, trying to see if they would work with me. They were like, “No, no, no. Not interested.”

I just cold‑emailed Jeff Portnoy at Bellevue. The crux of the email was, “I made this documentary. I’ve got these people who want to option it. I really need somebody to help handle the deal for me and help me figure out if this is the way that I want to go. By the way, I’m doing these other things.” The last line I wrote, I adapted the script about the Led Zeppelin guys.

Not even half an hour later, I get an email from Jeff. He goes, “I’m the biggest Led Zeppelin fan.” He didn’t say anything about anything else. He said, “I have to read the script.” I was like, “Oh, sure, sure.” I sent it to him.

The next day, he calls me. “We have to talk about this. When do you have some time? Let’s get on a Zoom.” He loved it and was big on it. I was like, “Look, I have completely dropped the idea of wanting to direct this thing. I get it. I just want to see it done. I just want to see it get made. I’m so passionate about this.”

We talked a lot about the script. Jeff had some great insights into how to make it even better. There were some ideas where I was like, “Yeah, let’s do that. That’s such a great idea.” There were some ideas where I was like, “Yeah…” but then they got me thinking.

It got me to open up about the script in a way that I hadn’t because I hadn’t worked on it for quite a while. Just sitting down and having that one conversation with Jeff made me see that there was still work to be done. I actually can’t believe how much better the script is now. It’s like, “Holy shit, is that what a manager does?”

[laughter]

Kieran: It’s like, “Jeff, you are the best thing in the world.” We’re so on the same page with so many things.” We started taking it out in the fall, and we had some meetings. He’d said to me, I don’t remember when, but he was like, “The Black List is coming up.”

I don’t know how that thing is done. I know that there’s the thing where you submit, you pay, and they have the thing every month and I never did that with anything. I knew that there was this other one and I had no idea. He mentioned that it was coming up on the 12th of December.

This was before Thanksgiving, and I had completely forgotten about it. I was out early the morning of the 12th, and I started getting all these texts. I finally had to pull over to see what was going on, because I could see in my little nav system on my car, Jeff Portnoy, Jeff Portnoy, Jeff Portnoy.

Finally, I pulled over and he was like, “Hey, you got in the Black List.” I was just, it’s great. Then that blew up getting inquiries from everywhere. I’m hoping that the right place will come aboard and love the script and love the characters. To me the script is, I don’t know where it lives. I don’t know if it’s theatrical. I don’t know if it’s streaming.

I don’t think it much matters. Again, the industry is in such flux right now. Of course, any screenwriter will tell you that, what a thrill it would be to get to go see their movie on a big screen with audiences and get to experience that. Shit, I’ve been going to the movies since I was five years old and that’s all I would do for a long while.

I grew up worshipping the movies, but I feel like Black Dogs if it’s done correctly and the way that it’s written, is something that could endure that 10 years from now people will be going back to it because of the story, because of the characters, because of…It’s a story about people who have been told their entire lives that they’re nothing, that they’re worth nothing.

They may have a strange way of going about figuring out how to make themselves something, robbing Led Zeppelin. These are four guys who have decided that, we are each other’s family, and we need to stick together and we need to not listen to what everybody is telling us that we’re garbage.

It’s quite a lovely story about friendship despite the fact that it’s a “Heist” movie and it’s a “Rock N’ Roll” movie and it’s got a lot of cool fun bad guys and stuff.

Scott: The fact that you persisted in pursuing this over time, the project is an object lesson for people who read this, that you got to have that persistence. You say that the business is in flux and it absolutely is, and particularly trying to get original material made if it’s not some Marvel franchise thing.

You always look for that hook that thing that…I always tell my students, you’re in a bar in Los Feliz and you bump into a producer who says, “What are you working on?” You want to have a thing that’s going to… over the noise and whatever, hook them. You go, Led Zeppelin period, Heist period They’re hooked.

Kieran: Absolutely.

Scott: It’s been described, I saw it somewhere as Almost Famous meets Reservoir Dogs. When I was reading the script, I was thinking Ocean’s Eleven meets Airheads. I don’t know if you ever saw that movie?

Kieran: Sure. I remember Airheads. Yeah.

Scott: With Brendan Fraser, Steve Buscemi, and Adam Sandler. Let’s talk about the characters in Black Dogs. I’m really interested to hear your thoughts on this because The Heist is Act Three. The majority of the movie is the relationship between these characters. Let me get your impressions on these characters.

First, the Protagonist of the story is Patrick. Here in the script is how he’s introduced:

“Patrick 20, longest share army jacket. Unkempt in a tough but tender way, the leader, even if he doesn’t want to be.”

Could you talk a bit about the genesis of this character? Did that derive from the book?

Kieran: I would say that probably Patrick is the closest in character in the script to the book. He’s the leader in that he cares about these guys. Even though he goes away, disappears for a few months in the beginning of the story, because of a botched B&E at somebody’s house, he comes back wanting to make amends with the friends that he left behind.

He brings this idea of, I’ve come up with this great heist, and it will bring us enough money that we can go and do whatever we want and start over and we can do it together. I think that he’s always looked at himself as the dad figure, even though they’re all the same age, and the responsible one.

The other guys have always looked up to him. He was the one that taught them what to do in terms of how to steal, how to get away with it, how to look cool, how to skate by. Patrick always knew that even though Alex is the one that comes from the family of thieves.

Patrick’s always been the one that’s kept everybody in line. There’s something anal and uncool about Patrick as much as he tries to be cool. I would say that, I maybe augmented that.

It was in the book, but the thing about Patrick is that, he’s the…I don’t want to necessarily make it sound like giving him an attribute of a much older person, but he’s almost like the den mother of the group. He’s always worried that people aren’t going to do things correctly and he wants to make sure that you know your part and it’s drilled into you, yet, he is pretty fucking cool.

Scott: You mentioned that there is an incident. That’s interesting to hear you say that the heist, in some respects, is a way of making up for something that happens.

Another character: Alex. Here’s how he is described. “20, slicked back hair, long leather jacket, smoking a Newport, white Soul Train, the cool one.”

Alex and Patrick are lifelong friends.

Kieran: Yeah, are lifelong friends. That was pretty much about it in terms of Alex in the book. Again, every time I say something like that, it’s not to denigrate it at all. Where I saw Alex was somebody who didn’t necessarily want to steal. In the script, we find out that Alex might have some ambitions of becoming an actor, of actually making something of his life.

That was something that was definitely not in the book at all. I wanted to give these characters reasons for wanting to do this and aspiring to something more because what they’ve basically been told their whole lives is, “You’re just going to be Baltimore gutter trash the rest of your life. You’re probably going to wind up in jail.”

If they don’t have any ambitions that you know about, it’s hard to root for them because then it all really does become about is stealing the money. When I looked at Alex, I thought this is somebody who is torn between wanting to do what his family thinks he should be doing and then also wanting to do what Patrick thinks he should be doing, whereas he doesn’t want to do either of those.

Scott: He wants to be an actor.

Kieran: He wants to be an actor. He’s really good‑looking. The book made him much more of a ladies’ man. I wound up cutting some of that stuff out because it wasn’t necessarily serving the plot or the characters. I found something else that I wanted to bring to his story.

Alex, in the book, was very much the sexy one that all the girls were after. He just exuded that rakish charm.

Scott: Then, there is this trickster character, Danny, who’s the uncle.

“Thirty‑ish, handlebar mustache, ex‑high school football star, now a small‑time crook who still has the swagger of his glory days.”

Kieran: Danny, in terms of character, he’s similar to what he is in the book. I just involved him a lot more in the story. He gets involved a lot more in the heist than he did in the book. He’s kind of a doofus.

I also wrote him to be putting more pressure on Alex. “You have to choose. It’s the family or your friends.”

Scott: He’s great because, as I said, he feels like a trickster, because there are times where he just really messes things up, including this first incident. There’s a house. People are away. The three of them going to go in, and they’re going to boost some stuff.

Then Danny fixates on a a moose head. The robbery goes south. The cops show up. Danny leaves these two guys. Alex gets caught, and Patrick gets away.

That’s this thing that you were talking about that later on…because Alex goes to jail for six months. This heist thing is, subtextual, underneath it all, is like, “Hey, I want to make up for what I did.”

Kieran: Yeah. Alex doesn’t rat Patrick out. Patrick doesn’t mean to leave Alex. I think the code is basically if you can get away, get away. You have to trust that your partner isn’t going to rat you out, and Alex didn’t.

Patrick didn’t necessarily have it thought out correctly, but he didn’t mean Alex any harm. He does come back. He disappears and goes to New York for six months until the heat’s off.

He comes back, and he brings Alex this idea. He’s been working for this catering company that services a lot of the bands that come through the New York area. He worked for Zeppelin for a couple of times in different places. He was able to put together this scheme.

He comes back and says, “You’re the guy that I need to do this with. I don’t want to do this if I’m not going to do it with you.” Alex is a little suspicious about it and he’s also got a bit of a grudge because he…Certainly, he’s got Danny in his ear every minute of the day saying, “It was Patrick’s fault that you went to jail. It wasn’t my fault, it was Patrick’s fault that you went to jail.”

Patrick feels guilty about it. Patrick, they’ve been friends for years and years and years and Patrick thinks, this is how I’m going to assuage my guilt, but we’re going to need shitload of money at the same time.

Scott: The catering gig he saw that Led Zeppelin they had cash and all that stuff, and so that’s where the idea came from. The two other characters of these four, if we can quickly go through them. Frenchie, this is how he’s introduced.

“Behind the counter sits Frenchie, 20, a scrawny music geek with a sloppy Keith Richard style haircut, noodling on a guitar.”

He’s the authentic musician here and actually quite good as a guitar player. Was that character in the book?

Kieran: That character was in the book and he had the music talent. We involved him a little bit more in the heist than he was. He goes to New York at the end, but he gets involved a lot more in the script and he becomes the stand‑in for the audience and he becomes the excuse.

I don’t want to say excuse, but he becomes the justification for these four guys robbing Zeppelin, because he basically tells you, “Zeppelin did this and maybe they borrowed a little bit.” When Patrick wants to say, “Oh, Zeppelin are thieves.” It’s like, “No, man, that’s how music is, and there’s nothing wrong with those guys.”

He gives the audience the permission to not hate these guys for robbing their favorite band.

Scott: It’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie, frankly, is this philosophical discussion they have coming with the rationale for it. Patrick’s like, “Yeah, OK.” Frenchie says, “Jimmy Page adapted the beginning of ‘Stairway to Heaven’ from the band Spirit.” By the way, I knew Randy California [lead guitarist and songwriter for Spirit].

Kieran: Oh, really?

Scott: Yeah. That family, they had that famous lawsuit against Led Zeppelin which they lost. Then Patrick goes, “That’s straight‑up thievery. We’re stealing from thieves.” Frenchie’s like, “I said borrow. Borrowing ideas is how music evolves. It’s Elvis Presley covering Little Richard and Stones covering Chicago blues. I’m not talking about taking money.”

Then Patrick’s rejoinder, “But Zeppelin made money on all those ideas they borrowed. We’re just taking a little something back. Zeppelin is so rich, they won’t even miss it. We’ll be like Robin Hood.” Then I love this last part. Frenchie says, “Except we’re keeping the money instead of giving it to the poor.” Patrick says, “Frenchie, man, we are poor.”

Kieran: That was something that I felt needed to be in there because we had to give the audience a reason to go, OK. It’s OK for them to do this.

Scott: Then there’s Keith. “A customer approaches. It’s Keith, lanky with long dirty hair, ratty T‑shirt, and dirty jeans, joint tucked behind his ear. His T‑shirt bulges in the front.”

I love this guy, because I remember that whole Columbia Records thing. 10 records for a penny. He’s got like a thousand different aliases.

One of the nice things about Act Two is like, “Wow, you’d say you’re going to save the heist for the end,” but there’s so many complications and twists and turns and things that go wrong and one thing spiraling after another.

Scott: Keith has the unfortunate [laughs] experience of being, essentially, kidnapped and taken for ransom from…We’ll talk about this group a little bit later on. Maybe talk about Keith a little bit. Was he from the book as well?

Kieran: Very different. Not necessarily in character, except that I made him a little…There was a scene that I actually wound up cutting out, where you find out that Keith comes from a home where he, not necessarily abused per se, but his mother is pretty awful to him.

The rest of the trio wind up shooting for him, meaning to have him spend the night at their house, so that he can get away from his abusive mother. That wound up getting cut out. Keith was pretty happy, go‑lucky, stoner, and that was about it in the book.

I wanted to make him somebody who felt like he wasn’t worth anything. “If I get this money, I’m going to wind up blowing it. What am I going to do with this? What the fuck?” The initial story had Keith dumped in jail with the Holy Ghosts, and it wasn’t working. There wasn’t enough tension. I was talking with my co‑executive producer. I optioned the book with a partner.

She didn’t write the script with me, but we were talking about how to raise the stakes. I was like, “It’s got to be Keith.” Keith’s got to be put in a situation where they go from wanting to do this heist, to needing to do the heist.

Scott: Needing.

Kieran: It becomes this thing that’s like, “If we do this, we’re going to get money,” to, “Holy shit. If we don’t do this, our pal’s going to wind up getting killed by these murderous bikers.” We had to raise the stakes.

Scott: Let’s talk about these murderous bikers, Backwoods Billy and the Holy Ghosts. What’s up with them?

Kieran: Backwoods had a much smaller part in the book, but he was such a great role. It was such a good role for a name actor, that I definitely beefed him, and put him in a lot more. There are people who were like, “You want to bring him into the heist too?” It’s like, “I don’t know. The script is long enough as it is.” [laughs]

I brought in his religion a lot more into the script, and made him a lot more fair of a person, so that he’s not just this wild…You believe that he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do. The surprise is how fair he is, and how much he does believe in the words that he’s preaching. It makes him an interesting and different kind of character, that you wind up liking him.

Scott: Definitely, he has a pretty perverse, Old Testament view of God. Let’s put it that way. There’s a ’58 Les Paul that they steal. There’s a safe that gets messed up. They need to get $2,000. They need to get the safe back. They need to get keys freed. It’s like this Lebowski set of twists to the plot.

There’s one other element in the story. The guys aren’t really huge fans of Led Zeppelin, but Emily is. “19, Patrick’s ex‑girlfriend, lip gloss, gum‑popping, the best‑looking bad girl in any high school.”

She creates this little Led Zeppelin fan thing.

Kieran: Emily is barely in the book. She only functions as a way for Patrick to get information. There’s a whole thing in the book where they try to do the heist in Baltimore, when Zeppelin is playing in Baltimore. That made it into the script, and I wound up cutting it after a few drafts. They want to find out where Zeppelin is staying in Baltimore.

Patrick says, “This is what I’m going to do.” He puts down the flyer. “I’m going to go see Emily, and I’m going to infiltrate my way into the Misty Mountain Hoppers,” which is the Led Zeppelin fan club that Emily has started. Then, you never see her again. Maybe one more time you see her, after he gets that information. She’s barely a character.

I felt like the story was all guys. There were no other women in the script at all. Boogie, in the book, is a man. In the script, I made him a woman. Anyway, I wanted to involve Emily, have her be part of the heist, part of the thing, and have Patrick need to rely on somebody. He comes, and he brings this idea and this heist for all of his friends. Who does he have?

Who cares about him? I wanted him to be able to have that person who loved him and cared about him until we knew what was going on with the rest of his friends. Did they care as much about him as he cares about them? Are they all going to wind up staying together? I’ve loved, loved developing Emily because she’s been a fun character to write.

Scott: One of things I was so impressed with, because it’s a pretty complex set of setups and payoffs. You plant all these seeds, and then through what happens, it’s not just the heist, it’s that you’re seeing one setup being paid off after another. Even with Emily, for example, she creates this group. She’s got some sort of contention with some other woman.

They get in a fight. She gets kicked out of the group. Then, later on, that’s paid off when she’s got these tickets for the concert. There’s another one, too. Alex wants to be an actor at some point. He gets to impersonate with an English accent.

How did you do all these setups and payouts, so that they worked so nicely in the script?

Kieran: It’s funny. I do usually do the card thing when I’m working on my documentary work because that’s such a huge help. With this, I didn’t. I kept looking at how can I deepen these characters? How can I deepen these characters? Every time I did a draft, how can I deepen these characters?

One of the big criticisms or the feedback that I was getting from people, while I was working on the drafts of the script, was we lose Led Zeppelin. We lose the heist. We don’t hear about it again until the third act. It was trying to figure out how to streamline it, how to keep Led Zeppelin and the Led Zeppelin heist woven through, but not shooting your wad too early.

I felt like it wasn’t just about the heist, this story. This story was about these four characters. How they learned to depend on each other. How they think that they are these master criminals. They’re awful. They’re actually awful at it.

They get themselves tied up in the most ridiculous situations. Like I said, not only with Backwoods Billy but with Boogie and with this nefarious detective. It’s like, “Holy shit, if we don’t pull this off, our ass is grass.” They do wind up doing it, and the way that they wind up doing it I think is really kind of funny and kind of ridiculous.

They do finally realize and come to the conclusion, “You know what? Maybe we’re not so good at this. Maybe it’s time for us to figure out what else we should be doing.”

Scott: I thought the way that you handled that in Act 2 ‑‑ you mentioned it earlier. The heist becomes something moving from “want” to something they absolutely “need” to do because of all the different things this Boogie character’s tied to ‑‑ the safe…

I thought that that worked really well. It’s got that kind of classic ending. You literally have a thing where at one point, they think they didn’t actually succeed. That Hollywood ending, which is like, “Give them what they expect, and give them what they want.”

You do have some wish fulfillment because Frenchie gets to actually play with Jimmy Page.

Kieran: Yeah.

Scott: Let’s talk about the status of the script post-Black List.

Kieran: It’s been going great. I’ve definitely had meetings with production companies, and people are mulling it over, and more people are asking about it. Jeff’s been sending me emails and lists of people who are reading it or have read it and want to take it to the next step and set up some time with me, so I’m hoping that we’ll hopefully get a deal for it in the next month or so. Fingers crossed.

I know how difficult it is. I know that even if a deal comes off that, still, it will be a miracle if it gets made. I just feel like, again, as I said, if this gets the right package of people, the right director, and the right producers, and the right cast, it could be something special.

It’s a special story. I credit Jason with coming up with that story and writing that book, which is so great, and then being able to hand the ball off to me and me being able to adapt it and figuring out how to make it a cinematic story but have those characters.

I love that the stories are so different and are told so different because if you love the movie, you’re going to want to go out and buy the book. If you love the book, you’re definitely going to want to see the movie because they’re totally different experiences.

Scott: It’s a terrific read. It certainly feels like a movie. I wrote a book about character‑driven storytelling.

Kieran: Character is the big thing for me. It’s number one with me. To have you feel like the characters are solid and are there and somebody that’s important to you as well, that means a lot. I appreciate it.

Scott: The heist would mean nothing if it weren’t for us caring about these characters. You have a directing background, a doc background, and obviously a writer, too. Where do you see yourself going here?

Kieran: Actually, I did have a couple of generals recently. People read the script. It wasn’t necessarily for them, but they liked the writing. They wanted to meet with me. I thought that was great. I’m thrilled to meet with anybody.

Here’s the thing. I love to challenge myself. Just because I haven’t done something yet doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t totally be up for it. I love a challenge. I love trying new things. I never thought I’d ever be a documentary filmmaker, and here I am doing that.

I’ve talked to some of these people. They’ve told me some of the projects. I sparked to them. I can very easily get immersed in a story that I may not have ever thought of. Over the pandemic, I got hired to adapt a series of science fiction novels. Now I don’t know much about science fiction. I love ’70s science fiction, but I couldn’t say that I’m a big sci‑fi fan. I don’t watch it now.

The way that these novels were written, they basically needed to be torn apart and built up from the ground floor. I got the permission from the producers who had hired me to do that. The way that I did it was starting with character and figuring out who these characters were because they were not in the book at all. That just wasn’t what this writer was interested in doing.

I don’t know. I was writing it. I kept working on it and going, “God, this is the biggest piece of shit. I hope nobody ever reads this. I don’t think I know what I’m doing. I don’t know. But I’m also my biggest critic. I always say that.” I gave it to them. They were like, “Wow, this is really good, but here are some notes.” I was like, “OK, yes.” Then I started getting excited about it.

We got a director attached. It’s in no man’s land right now because of what’s happening with the streamers. I’m not part of it. I was just a writer for hire. I don’t know what they’re doing with it. It was a great learning experience.

I came to enjoy working on it and working on it with the director, him giving me his thoughts and me doing a rewrite based on what he felt about it and him also being very character driven. My feeling is whatever comes down the pike, man, I’m willing and able and thrilled to take on.

Scott: You mentioned very early in the conversation, I think it was when you were talking about that radio show that you had, that you came to enjoy rewriting, which is an object lesson for aspiring writers because most of them is like, “Oh god, I have to rewrite this.”

Maybe talk about how does that work for you? How did you go about with the science fiction project? You said characters. What was that process like? Do you go to an outline? How do you go about doing that?

Kieran: I did. Actually, I wrote a treatment because I basically had to reinvent the story from the ground up, as I had said. They wanted me to keep certain elements and certain characters, most of the lead characters. I could basically do whatever I wanted to, otherwise. If they hated it, they would tell me.

I had written a treatment for them to make sure that I was on the same page with everybody and everybody liked what I was doing. There were no characters. Again, I don’t want to disparage anybody’s writing. That’s just not what he (the author) was doing. They were ciphers. That’s a bad way to describe it. I apologize for using that word. That’s what they felt like to me.

I wanted to find out why these characters were doing what they were doing because that wasn’t in the book, and so I did. I wanted to know who these characters were. I wrote down, “This is this particular character. Here’s where he comes from. Here’s why he’s doing what he’s doing. Here’s what he wants. Here’s what he hopes to achieve. Here’s what he’s afraid of.”

When I did that with all those characters, I realized how they interact with each other. I realized who I could get rid of, who I could bolster, who I needed to add in that didn’t actually exist, and figure out how they interacted with each other. There’s a lot of, like you talked about with Black Dogs, with having something happen at one point in the script and then having a callback to it.

A lot of that comes from that character work because you figure that out. You figure, “Oh, I’m writing something about somebody that I want to make sure the audience knows is important. I know I’m going to call back to it at this point, but how can I make that funny? How can I make that scary?” whatever it needs to serve. It’s working from characters and then trying to figure out, OK, these are these characters. Where does the story live now?

How do I make it interesting? How do I make interesting to me but not just me? I’m not a science fiction person. I don’t want to write something for people who aren’t science fiction people. I want to give them more.

Outside of slasher films, because you get that certain kind of charge from them, I think it’s difficult to find a film that’s really good, that doesn’t have interesting characters and characters that you can relate to.

Sure, there are slasher films that do have good characters, but a lot of the time, you know they’re fodder. That’s what you’re going for. You’re going to watch people become fodder. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s fun. It’s cathartic.

Scott: It’s interesting to hear you talk about that process because I tell my students that the interrelationships, you got to figure why the characters are in the story. They’re like a family. You even mentioned earlier that Patrick was the den mother or the dad.

Figure out those interrelationships, what each of them wants and needs, and all that stuff. The story starts to emerge from that, right?

Kieran: It does. I’m probably going to get in trouble for this. Early on, when I was writing the actual script for this, for the sci‑fi thing, I kept getting deadlines. It was like pulling teeth, getting me to write it because I just thought, “I don’t have it. I don’t have it. I don’t have it. I don’t know what I’m doing. I can’t do it.”

I kept making excuses. “Oh, I’m going to get to it. I just need an extra week. I just need an extra week.” Finally, when I didn’t have any extra weeks left, I was like, “OK, you’ll have it by X day.” It was three days later. I sat down. I wrote the entire fucking thing in three days.

I gave it to them. I thought, “I’m going to get fired. This is the worst thing I’ve ever written. It’s terrible.” Then for them to come back and be as pleased with it as they were, told me that the large work that needed to be done had already been done. All I needed to do was plug it in.

I love to write dialogue. Dialogue, for me, is easy. It just is. I enjoy it. I enjoy figuring out how people sound and what they’re going to say. That never bogs me down. It’s more story that bogs me down. But now I had it, so I was able to vomit it out and actually make something out of it. But I wouldn’t recommend doing it, taking on that particular practice as a screenwriter.

Scott: Let’s ask one last question. If there’s someone outside the business, they’re trying to learn screenwriting, they want to be a writer, director, or whatnot. What advice do you have for them in terms of learning the craft and becoming good at what they do?

Kieran: I would say the best thing to do is to take some kind of a class. When I decided that I wanted to figure out how to write for television, I took an adjunct class at UCLA. I took one of those 12‑week TV writing classes. I wrote a spec for “Gilmore Girls.” This was way back.

I learned so much not necessarily from the teacher, although I had a wonderful teacher. The teacher did teach, helped me a lot.

Getting to work with other people who are working on the same kinds of things that you’re working on, having a deadline, having to bring pages in every week, having to look at other people’s, having to learn how to analyze their work and give them feedback will help you figure out how to analyze your own work and will loosen you up, I think.

If you can’t take a class, see if you can form some sort of an online writing group, where you get six or seven people together. You read each other’s work every week or every two weeks. You give feedback. You’re responsible for coming in with a certain amount of pages.

I just think getting that feedback and hearing what other people think and looking at what other people are doing in a non‑competitive atmosphere is such a huge help. I’ve even gotten into classes recently just because I knew that I needed to kick myself in the ass to get something written and I wanted that structure.

I didn’t necessarily need to learn from the teacher, not that I didn’t learn from the teacher. I’m not saying that I’ve learned everything I’m ever going to learn. That’s bullshit. You’re always learning. I did it because I knew that it would give me great feedback. It would be a lot easier than just me living in this little box by myself.

For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.