Go Into The Story Interview: Spenser Cohen and Anna Halberg

My conversation with 2013 Black List screenwriter and his producing partner.

On December 15, 2011, I received this email:

Hey Scott,

I’ve been following your website since I can remember and I wanted to let you know that your help has been invaluable to me as a writer/filmmaker. I just got my first movie picked up as a writer/director. Check it out.

All Best,
Spenser Cohen

That deal was an action-thriller spec script “The Driver” acquired by Voltage Productions and Solipsist Films. In 2012, Cohen wrote and sold another spec script, an action movie called “High Value Target”, picked up by Millennium Films. Then in January 2013, Spenser sold another spec script: “Pantheon”.

A writer who sells 3 spec scripts within 2 years is someone we need to hear from, so I’m pleased to present my interview with Spenser and his producing partner Anna Holberg.

Scott: Let’s start with the producing side of things. You two met at USC film school.

Spenser: Yeah. That’s correct.

Scott: How did you both end up at USC and what were each of your goals?

Spenser: Ever since I was seven years old I wanted to make movies. I saw “Jurassic Park” and I knew what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. I made close to forty short films by the time I got out of high school. I was just obsessed with movies. I knew the one school I wanted to go to was USC. It was the one college I applied to, and I was lucky enough to get in. A lot of great filmmakers, writers, producers have come out of that school, so obviously they do something right there. It was great to be in an environment where you basically just got to make movies, write, and not have to worry about real life things.

You never really get that once you get out of school. You become an adult, and you start working. I think the biggest thing I got out of going to USC was meeting some really great people, especially Anna, but some really great DPs, editors, production designers, and people that I still work with.

Anna: I’m from a small town in Minnesota, and grew up in a household where the arts were really important. My parents would rent a movie every weekend, and whenever a new play came to the Guthrie or the Ordway we’d go see it as a family. I was encouraged from a young age to be creative and tell stories, and I always knew I wanted to be a storyteller in one form or another. I started out acting when I was a kid, and loved being in front of the camera, but I didn’t really understand the process of making movies or what went on behind the camera, and I was fascinated to learn. I only applied to film schools in California, and when I was accepted to USC, it was the obvious choice.

Scott: How did you both get into producing?

Anna: I think that I’ve always known I wanted to produce, I just didn’t know what a producer did necessarily, or that there was a name for it. I’ve always been extremely organized and good at problem solving. When I got to USC I learned the definition of a producer, and it really combined all of my interests, and my strengths into one job. I started taking more production classes and applied for internships at production companies and in production at various studios. I loved it and knew that producing is what I wanted to do.

Spenser: It’s very left brain, right brain. Anna handles a lot of the business…strategy, planning…all that stuff, which allows me to focus on the creative. But Anna is really creative as well, and will come in and help me develop all our ideas. She just has the ability to step back and really see the big picture to give us the Google Maps view of what we’re doing.

Scott: How would you describe the way you work together during the script development and writing phase?

Anna: I think it depends if we’re developing something that Spenser’s attaching himself to direct or if it’s something that we’re developing to produce or if it’s something that we’re going to go out and try to sell. But I think when Spenser and I sit down to develop a script, it’s really important first and foremost that we’re both passionate about the idea. Then we’ll usually sit and talk about the characters and their arcs, and the major beats of the script. We’ll do this for a few days or a few weeks or a few months. Whatever it takes until the idea makes sense and has a structure that’s working. Then Spenser will go away and write a treatment or an outline and we’ll keep talking about it and making changes until it’s in a place where he’s ready to write.

Spenser: Yeah, and it’s nice to have that person who you can bounce ideas back and forth with. A lot of times writing is very lonely, and you sit in a room all day by yourself. You don’t often know if what you’re doing is good or if it’s on the right track. Just in the initial developing stages to be able to sit with someone and spend two or three weeks bouncing an idea and kicking it back and forth, that to me is invaluable because when I get into writing there’s a confidence I feel in the material. I never stop to go, “Is this working?”

Scott: Your production company is called Six Foot Turkey Productions…

Spenser: It’s a line from “Jurassic Park.” That movie had a huge impact on me, and I knew when we were thinking of company names that I wanted it to somehow tie into that film.

Anna: Yeah, and it was also one of my favorite movies growing up. It seemed like a good movie to base our production company’s name off of.

Scott: It seems like for your generation, that’s the big movie. Maybe “Star Wars” for the generation before, but for yours, it’s “Jurassic Park” as an inspiration for so many people to pursue filmmaking.

Spenser: “Jurassic Park” was one of the first movies to have believable CGI characters at a time when no one really knew what CGI was. The illusion was so great it was beyond an illusion. It was real to me. And that’s why I think it resonates so much with our generation.

Scott: With your production company, you mentioned that you’re involved in scripted projects, unscripted TV, music videos, commercial projects. What are some of the projects you have in development?

Spenser: We do commercials and music videos. We do less of them now, but we did a lot of those getting out of school. That’s basically how we paid the bills and survived — shooting a lot of content for people. In terms of what we have in development, we have a ton of stuff. I’m working on new specs. We’re putting pitches together. We are out with a TV pitch right now. We’re taking out another feature next month. We have a digital project. Just constantly generating material.

Anna: We just shot a pilot for E! that’s going to air around Mother’s Day, that we created and are executive producing. We’re out to directors on a spec that Spenser wrote. It’s a lot for two people, but we’re trying to fire on all cylinders.

Spenser: We’re workaholics. We have like a million things going on at once.

Scott: Well, you’re young, you should be. [laughs] What are your long term goals for Six Foot Turkey Productions?

Spenser: We love Bad Robot!

Anna: Love them! I just really admire the working relationship that JJ Abrams and Bryan Burk have, and I think it’s such an asset that they can generate their own material and develop projects internally. Spenser and I cover a lot of bases for two people, but we’d like to expand our company and continue building out on all platforms, film, television, digital and we’d be ecstatic if we could have a company that even remotely resembles Bad Robot.

Scott: Shifting over to screenwriting, Spenser, at USC you were one of four students in your class chosen to direct a thesis film. Was that “Shattered?”

Spenser: Yeah, that was.

Scott: I featured “Shattered” on Go Into The Story in January of 2010.

Spenser: I’ve been a huge fan of your site. I saw some shorts that went up and sent you “Shattered.” I think that’s how it happened.

Scott: Yeah. I have that series I do every so often “Movies You Made,” to promote independent filmmakers. What was that experience like doing “Shattered”?

Spenser: It was great. We were the last year to shoot on film, so it was fun to be able to have that experience before everything switched over to digital.

But the thing about USC that I didn’t realize at the time was they use the thesis experience to prepare you for the real world, and they design the program to mimic how Hollywood really works. There are 50 kids in each class, and anyone that wants to direct has to pitch the faculty on their vision, on the characters, the story, the visual design, and the execution, but only 4 directors are chosen. Even though I didn’t know that’s what it would be like when I got out of school, it was great training for the real world. Nothing is ever handed to you. You have to fight for it.

This was also the first time that I was working with a full crew so it was a great lesson in navigating personalities and running a set. I really feel like people feed off the director’s energy so it’s important to encourage teamwork and collaboration and keep a positive attitude even when problems arise, and problems will always arise. And I learned that it’s important to be prepared. People follow the director’s lead and they want to know that this person is confident, has a vision and a plan for what they’re doing.

Scott: How much of the screenwriting craft did you learn in film school, and how much had you learned before you went to USC?

Spenser: I wrote one script in high school, but most of the things that I wrote were short stories. When I got into USC, I took a few classes, but I feel like it’s so hard to teach what screenwriting is. You get the basics in a day, but there’s just so much you really learn by doing. You have to just throw yourself in. You can’t necessarily be taught what to do. I had some teachers who said, “You should never outline,” and some teachers who said, “You HAVE to outline.” I spent a lot of my time sitting alone in my room figuring out what worked for me.

I deconstructed movies like “The Sixth Sense,” and “Aliens.” I’d have the script in front of me, and I would watch the movie and see how the writing translated. I learned more from doing that than I did in any class. The stuff that I started out writing was just awful…I was just trying to figure it out. Then you start to get a rhythm and you’re like, “Oh, this is feeling right,” and you start to understand character, and structure, and you realize the importance of the architecture beneath everything.

Scott: Like I tell people on the blog: watch movies, read scripts, write pages. It sounds like you pretty much adapted that as a personal mantra in learning the craft.

Spenser: Oh, 100 percent, and the first thing on there is “ass in chair,” which is the most important thing of all. I think literally sitting down, turning your phone off, and saying, for the next 10 hours, 8 hours, whatever it is, I’m not leaving here until I figure this out. Even if you write nothing, just being able to sit there consistently, that’s really what screenwriting is. It’s boring to sit in a chair and not do anything, and you really have to get past that, and realize that once you get into a story it gets really exciting. But just the act of sitting in a chair, I feel like that’s half the work.

Scott: It seems to me that there are two different paths for writer‑directors. There are the writer‑directors who are primarily focused on directing, and they write in order to service and find the material they want to direct. Then there are writer‑directors who come out of the writing background, who get into directing, because they want to protect the vision of what they write. Where would you fall in those two approaches?

Spenser: I think definitely more of a director who writes. I picked up a camera before I wrote stories. Like I said, since I’ve been making short films since I was seven years old, but I didn’t really fall in love with writing until high school. I probably had ten years before that where the camera was my pencil, my typewriter…that was what I used to tell stories. Even if it’s a project I’m not directing, I still approach everything visually.

Scott: Your first big splash in Hollywood, I believe, was the “The Driver,” a script you co‑wrote and sold that Voltage Pictures and Anna, your producing partner are producing. The log line for that is: Centers on a man whose life suburban existence is flipped on his drive to work when he finds himself coerced to be the wheelman of an assembled group of criminals. The man learns that thieves were not randomly assembled and that the heist leads to a larger mystery. What’s the chronology of events that led to that deal?

Spenser: “The Driver” placed in the top 30 of the Nicholl Fellowship. I was repped at WME at the time, and Brooklyn Weaver, who’s my manager now, read “The Driver” and called me and said, “I love this project. I want to be involved.” I had a bunch of manager meetings lined up, but I sat down with Brooklyn, and in two minutes I knew he was the guy. He totally got the material and he got me. I loved his attitude. He’s a go‑getter. I let him run with the script, and we ended up partnering with a friend of mine, Stephen L’Heureux, who’s a great producer and championed the project. Together we sold it to Voltage.

Scott: How did you get to WME? Was it through your short films?

Spenser: Through short films, and the work that Anna and I were doing in TV. I directed some pilots and a few show opens after graduating. Then we were asked to start and run a television production company. The company was repped at WME so the agents saw our work and we got to know them. We left the production company after a year and we signed with WME.

Here is the short film “Shattered” that Spenser directed while at USC.

Scott: Let’s move on to another spec sale, “High Value Target.” Here’s how the trades described the story: “The film chronicles Mantis, a lethal weapons special operations unit that attacks a boat operated by Somali pirates. It’s been described as Black Hawk Down meets The Raid: Redemption. The vast majority of the film covers the raid, which transpires in one location, the boat.” What was the genesis of that story concept?

Spenser: After we set up “The Driver,” Brooklyn and I were kicking ideas back and forth trying to figure out what my next project would be. I wanted to do a contained thriller. I wanted to do something that felt like it was ripped right out of the headlines.

This idea just came up, of doing a contained action/thriller, using Tier 1 operators. These are the guys doing the off-the-books missions that the nightly news can’t report, will never report. There is a secret war being waged, a chess game happening behind the scenes that’s shaping the world for tomorrow. We all know it’s happening. But there’s not a lot of info out there. That was part of the genesis. There had been things in the news about the government using kill squads. We combined a lot of real world events, things that were in the headlines. Stripped that down into a contained thriller.

Scott: That contained thriller component, do you think that was driven more by cinematic considerations or from a producing standpoint, a way to keep the budget lower?

Spenser: Both. Right now, I think the movies that are getting made are either “The Avengers,” these giant tent pole movies or “Looper,” the smaller, $30 million and under movies. You’re either in one of those two categories. I’m a first time director. I want to come out of the gate with a project I can control. The lower the budget, the more control.

Scott: Could you describe the process of how you developed “High Value Target”?

Spenser: It was just a ton of research. Meeting with Navy SEALs. Talking to operators who’ve been on real missions. I wanted to saturate the project in authenticity. It developed organically from the inside out.

We initially took the project out as a pitch, and I put together a 45 page look‑book, which is my directors statement, concept art, character bios, the technology we were going to use to do it, the weapons, the real world events, and the news that tied into it. It was basically a visual pitch that you could lay out, and you could see the whole movie right in front of you. We probably pitched it 30 places.

Scott: I’m assuming it didn’t sell, then you went ahead with the spec?

Spenser: Exactly…we got close to selling it. But I went back, while we were still talking to various companies, and I wrote the script. After pitching it dozens of times I knew the characters and the story inside and out. We took it back out a few months later and set it up at Millennium.

Scott: Much of it is about that comfort level, isn’t it? They’re buyers, they’re all basically in positions where almost by default, their instinct is to say “no” to projects because it’s the safer position. So to get them to say “yes,” you’ve got to hit their comfort level.

Spenser: Right, no one gets fired for saying “no.” You get fired for saying “yes.” But every director’s a first time director at some point. I think writing my own material, and coming in with a very strong vision of what I wanted to do put everyone at ease.

Scott: The protagonist of “High Value Target” is a young man named Matthew Cross. How would you summarize this character?

Spenser: Tonally I looked at a lot of westerns and samurai movies, and I really saw him as a Ronin… a masterless samurai, with no war to fight. I looked at a lot of movies, like “The Searchers,” “The Seven Samurai,” “The Magnificent Seven,” “Unforgiven”…so that was what I was drawing from. Matt has a lot of pain and guilt inside. His brother was killed following in his footsteps. Matt blames himself for his brother’s death. When we first meet him he’s a broken man, he’s in pieces, and over the course of the story we get to watch as he puts himself back together. We get to watch him heal.

Scott: For an action movie, how important was it for you to create a protagonist who had those compelling human dynamics at play?

Spenser: I think that’s everything…stories are an emotional medium. People always say, write what you know, and I think it’s, write what you know emotionally. Sometimes I’ll start with a story, sometimes I’ll start with a character, but ultimately, it always comes down to character.

It was interested in creating a hero who isn’t perfect. But a human being who is flawed. A touchstone for me was Clint Eastwood’s character in “Unforgiven.” He was a very interesting character to create, because I felt like it drew a lot from real experiences and a lot of things that really aren’t talked about, that a lot of soldiers come back from war and it’s really hard to get back into a normal life, get back into a normal rhythm. I wanted to explore his psychological and emotional scars. We needed a sense of this guy’s history and his past, there’s a lot of weight behind it, and a lot of baggage when we first meet him.

Scott: Matt teams up with eight other members of the Mantis operation. Two questions about that. First, how’d you go about developing nine different and unique characters?

Spenser: That was very tough. It’s hard to write an ensemble piece like this. You really have to approach the material like each character is the main character of the story. Ultimately, when I got into later drafts, I did a complete pass from each character’s point of view. It really comes down to just putting in the hours and doing the work. It took a lot of time to really flesh those guys out and really make them believable. This film moves at a hundred miles an hour, and it doesn’t let the audience breathe, and I knew that was the point. For me, characterization had to happen on the go.

I love characters that define themselves through their actions, rather than having them sit down and have a ten‑minute dialogue sequence that slows down the move. I didn’t have the luxury to do that with a story like this even if I wanted to. It was tough. Up until the very end, that was the stuff I was always working on.

Scott: The second thing: How do you introduce these nine characters so that each becomes distinguishable and memorable to a reader? Was that a challenge?

Spenser: It’s tough. You can’t do it all at once. It needs to happen slowly so the audience has time to meet each character. The most important character is Matt. He pulls us through the story, so it was important that he be well defined up front. As for the rest of the characters, it’s a multinational team, so everyone’s different. Everyone has a different worldview. Everyone needs to have his or her own voice. I tried to establish that right off the bat. You have to approach each character as if they are the lead. Each character has a journey, a past, a future, goals, etc. And I did my best to establish that throughout the first act. The best way to understand someone is through conflict. And because the characters are all so different, there was built in tension and conflict right from the start.

Scott: It seems like Matt has got a death wish of sorts, which is interesting because that adds an element of unpredictability to his behavior. Was that dynamic, he doesn’t really care if he lives or dies, one you hit on early in the character development process?

Spenser: Right. Yeah, that was something that attracted me early on. It’s an extension of how Matt deals with the loss of his brother. He’s alive but he’s not really living. He’s looking for a way to end his suffering. And dying is an easy way out. This gives him a great arc. A guy who doesn’t care if he lives or dies is forced into a situation where he’s fighting tooth and nail to survive. We all deal with loss in our own way. Some of us never heal, we keep those wounds open forever. The events of the film force Matt to put himself back together, force his psychological and emotional wounds to scab over.

Scott: The arch nemesis is a terrorist named Hassan, the object of a pursuit by the Mantis team. He’s a shrewd, manipulative figure. Because he’s being held captive, he really has to use weapons that aren’t physical in nature, he’s got to play mind games with his captors. Were there characters that inspired you in writing Hassan? Was it fun to write such a clever and devious character?

Spenser: Yeah it was. Obviously, I looked at the Joker. I think you can’t think about a movie villain and not think about the Joker now. He’s such an iconic character. What they did in “The Dark Knight” is just amazing. I really wanted a smart villain who could get his way, weave his way into our characters’ heads, and manipulate them and turn them against each other.

I love a character whose deadliest weapon is his words. I was excited about the fact that Hassan doesn’t pick up a gun the whole movie, and yet he’s the biggest threat to this team.

Scott: There’s a lot of talk in Hollywood about creating sympathetic protagonists, but equally important is to create a worthy nemesis. One key to that, it seems to me, is to create a nemesis character who’s got a worldview that they believe. Like Hassan, he’s a terrorist and a ruthless killer. We may not agree with his worldview, but somehow it works for him. How important was it for you, when you were developing his character, to see the world through his eyes?

Spenser: It was very important. Crucial. I did an entire pass from his point of view, and made him the hero of the story, and didn’t try to pass moral judgment or view him as a villain. You really have to believe in their worldview. I think you look at different villains in different movies, and depending on what the movie is, sometimes they’re very two‑dimensional. What they believe in and what they go for are things that we can’t relate to.

Then, you look at other villains who have a touch of humanity to them, and you could almost…at certain points, you’re not sure if you’re on the right side. I love that, when you’re an audience member and the villain can say something that actually makes you feel for him, or you understand why he’s doing what he’s doing. Every character is there to open up a piece of who we are and teach us something about the human condition. Especially the villains.

Scott: At several key points in the script, you have characters that are presented with tough moral choices. For example, one situation I remember, there’s a priority for them to guard Hassan, but if they don’t do what the bad guys want, them someone in their team is going to suffer a horrible fate. What’s your value as a writer in creating those types of critical plot points where characters are presented with these really tough choices?

Spenser: I think, for me, especially in writing a movie like this, you can’t stay at one level. You really have to ratchet everything up, and constantly up the stakes, and the tension. I love dilemma. I love giving characters tough choices, impossible choices. I love the idea that if you do option “A” something bad will happen to somebody, but if you do option “B” something else is going to happen that’s equally bad. So what do you do? It comes back to character defined through action. How a character reacts to this impossible choice often defines him better than a 10 page dialogue scene. It shows us who he really is.

Scott: Yes, it makes the action that much more meaningful, as opposed to just explosions, if you’re connected to the characters and you’ve got an emotional investment.

Spenser: Totally, 100 percent.

Scott: I won’t give away the ending of the story, but it’s set up to be a franchise. Was that something you knew you were going to do from the get‑go, or was that a possibility that emerged during the process of writing the script?

Spenser: We had talked about it when we did the initial pitch because the concept really lends itself to being a franchise. I actually knew what the last scene of the movie was going to be, before I wrote a single word. I knew how to set it up, and open it up into a sequel, and continue some of the questions and themes from this movie into the next. It was really a question of working backwards. I always knew that endpoint and how it was going to pay off for our main character, but also open up the door to another movie.

Scott: The script is loaded with action. What do you keep at top of mind when you write action scenes and action sequences?

Spenser: Always character, because it’s really easy for characters to get lost in the shuffle of everything that’s going on. I think action only matters when our characters are going through it, and those action sequences are really meaningless unless we care. When you’re doing those sequences, which can be very tedious, you don’t want long paragraphs. You want short bursts, and you want it to really paint a picture. You’re directing on the page.

I think if you write with the character in mind, the action is always more entertaining and more interesting to read, and always interesting to watch. Because character is the reason we care in the first place.

Scott: What’s the status of “High Value Target”?

Spenser: We are out to actors right now, so, fingers crossed.

Scott: What’s it like working with WME and Energy Entertainment? What do you, as a writer‑director, look for from them?

Spenser: WME and Energy are great. I’ll start with Energy. Brooklyn is awesome…He’s a guy who knows the marketplace so well. At the end of the day, the goal is to get movies made. Brooklyn’s a guy who really understands how to get out there and put the right spin on an idea, the right people to take it to, the right approach. He’s a great collaborator, and he has great taste. He’s a great manager, and a good friend, and Anna and I are both very excited to be working with him.

In terms of WME, we have a fantastic team. For television Jad Dayeh and Justin Ongert are some of the best people we’ve met in the business and are total hustlers. On the feature side I’m repped by Mike Esola and Solco Schuit. They’re both awesome. Solco is so hands on and such a go-getter. And a really great collaborator. Our whole team over there is great. It takes a lot of the pressure off, in terms of allowing me just to be creative. I know that when I’m done with a project or when I take something out, I have so many allies, and so many people that are in my corner, that I can’t lose.

Scott: Let’s shift if we can into some specific screenwriting craft questions. How do you come up with story ideas?

Spenser: I’m a workaholic, so it doesn’t matter if I’m in my car, or whatever I’m doing, I’m always, always thinking of ideas. I’ll text myself ideas, or email myself ideas. I think story ideas really come when you’re not trying to think of them, which is weird. But I feel like when you try to sit down and come up with an idea, you spend 10 hours and nothing happens. But, if you just go do something, if you go for a drive, all of a sudden you’re like, “Oh, that’s what it should be,” or, “That’s a great idea.” I really get ideas and inspiration from everywhere.

Scott: How important do you think the story concept is to the overall strength and marketability of a spec script?

Spenser: It’s everything. You need an idea that’s simple. I don’t mean boring or dull. I mean simple. Even movies that are complex have very simple stories at the core. Look at Inception or The Matrix or Children of Men. The stories and characters are complex, but the big ideas are simple. You can pitch The Matrix to anyone in a few sentences and they’ll understand it. I think you have to be able to explain any idea in a couple sentences, and if you can’t then I don’t think you have a movie yet. But, a strong, simple idea is really everything.

Scott: How much time do you spend in prep writing?

Spenser: A lot. I feel like most of the work happens before you actually start writing and not just in outlining. But for example, on HVT we had gone into so many rooms and I had pitched it to so many people verbally that I could just sit down and start writing. I mean, I probably spent 30 hours pitching it to people at that point. At least in my head I knew the whole story from beginning to end. But I think I’ve also written scripts where I just jump in, and on page 60 I’ll spin out and I don’t know where I’m going. I think you really have to know your end point. You really have to know where you’re going, and I think the more you do up front the better the process is going to be going through the first draft.

Scott: How do you go about developing your characters? Do you have any tried and true tools or tips that you find yourself using regularly?

Spenser: They sit in my head for awhile, and they slowly start to take shape. One thing that I do when I first start writing is to put the outline aside and just start trying to find the character’s voice. I’ll give myself space to explore, and I just let the characters go. No one’s going to see it. No one’s going to read it. There’s no pressure. It’s their story, and I let whatever happens, happen. I’ll often make up a scene that’s not in the outline and might not even make sense for the story. Other times I end up writing the first ten pages over and over again. Once I feel good about the first ten pages it’s easy to keep going. But if your characters don’t work in the first ten pages, then they’re not going to work on page fifty, or a hundred. It’s almost like a rehearsal before you jump in and start doing the real work. Just exploring. Often in these rough passes the characters start to take shape. And sometimes just getting through the first draft, gives me a much clearer picture of the characters. So there’s really not one way that I do it. It’s always different. I’m constantly adapting.

Scott: What about dialogue? How do you go about finding the voices of each of your story’s characters?

Spenser: Again, I think that comes down to research and just having thought about these characters long enough. If you do enough prep work and understand the characters they start to speak to each other.

But you can’t just start and expect dialogue to come out that’s going to be great. A lot of times dialogue is the last thing that gets perfected. Even while you’re making the movie, you are reworking, rewriting dialogue. You should never want to be locked in on anything, especially dialogue. You always want to have flexibility on changing things and opening things up and coming up with other possibilities.

Scott: One aspect of screenwriting that I find a wide divergence of opinion about is theme. What is your understanding of theme, and how important is it to you when you’re writing a script?

Spenser: For me, theme is very important, but I’m never thinking of the theme right off the bat. I think the theme comes out while you’re writing. But I never go into a project thinking about it. Movies are there to teach us about the human condition, what it’s like to be in difficult or impossible situations. Theme is very important, but it’s definitely something that comes later in the process for me and is often times invisible. It reveals itself as I go. Every writer has their own life experiences, their own point of view, so the way they see the world often dictates the theme.

Scott: What do you think about when you’re writing a scene, crafting it? Are there questions you ask or points you want to make sure you hit when you approach crafting a scene?

Spenser: It’s important to know who your characters are, what their goals are, and what they want in each scene. Everyone wants something. Everyone is trying to get something from someone else. If your characters want different things, then the scene comes to life. There’s tension. It’s combustible.

Scott: It’s ironic that the one part of the scripts that script readers don’t like to read as much, is a scene description, and yet the bulk of a movie is the action. So how do you make scene description as entertaining as possible?

Spenser: I don’t think anybody likes to open up a script and see giant chunks of action. You open up a book, you expect that, but I think with a script, it needs to be sparse. If you’re writing huge paragraphs then you haven’t figured out what you’re trying to say there, and often times it can be summed up in a sentence. You really need to paint a picture visually and break up the action on the page.

Some of my favorite writers are people who write in an almost staccato style like Walter Hill’s stuff. The script for Alien is a perfect example of that.

Scott: You’re a writer director. What are your thoughts about breaking up individual camera shots into single lines, a line per shot?

Spenser: I love that approach. I think it allows the reader to visualize the sequence, the cuts, the progression of action. It really is directing on the page, and I think that’s very important because you want whoever’s reading it, to be able to see the movie. Not just any movie, but the movie that you wrote, the way you imagined it.

Scott: You finish a first draft, now you’re facing the inevitable rewrite process. What’s that process like, could you describe the stages that you go through in rewriting a script?

Spenser: Yeah, usually I’ll step away for a week, or jump onto another project just to clear my head, because obviously at that point I have no idea what’s good, what’s bad, what’s working, what’s not. I’ll print it out a week after I finish it, sit down, and read through it again. I’m really hard on myself, so I go through and really start cutting and making changes.

It really helps to have someone like Anna. She’ll read snippets here and there, and help me along the way, but she’s really the first person who will read it in its entirety. I’ll get her opinion, and either she’s like, “This is working, but it needs this, this, and this,” or she’s says, “You’re off target here,” whatever it is. It really helps to have that person who you trust, and who can really be there, because often times, you just don’t know what’s working.

After Anna reads it and gives me her thoughts, I’ll go through and cut everything up, and re‑outline things that aren’t working. Then I’ll go back in and do a second pass. Anna will read that pass, then usually we’ll make small changes and that pass will go to Brooklyn. Then there’s sort of a system, you keep showing it to people and you keep getting feedback. Again, rewriting is really just logging in the hours.

Scott: For example, how many drafts do you think you wrote on High Value Target?

Spenser: I probably wrote 12 drafts. It took me maybe two and a half months to do the first draft. Then I probably did 10 drafts within two weeks. That was when I was in the notes session of just getting people’s thoughts, getting feedback. The first draft came in at like 126 pages. We knew that it had to get down. I think our goal was to chop 15 pages out of that. We ended up cutting about 20. But I was really trying to keep it tight.

Scott: OK. Here’s a fun question for you. What’s your single best excuse not to write?

Spenser: Everything, everything. [laughs] Facing the blank page is awful. You’re alone. You will do anything not to write. I’m the guy throwing my pencil at the ceiling, staring at the wall. It’s hard and it takes time to learn to settle in and love that process. But it’s never gotten easier. It’s very hard to sit there and do that. There’s a sun outside and there’s things happening. You’re locked in a room.

Scott: Apart from the experience of enjoying having written something, is there something you do love about the writing process?

Spenser: Yeah. I feel like for most directors…You don’t make movies all the time. You make a movie every two years, or three years, or four, if you’re lucky, if you’re constantly working. Especially now, it takes a long time to get movies up and going. I think there’s a part of you that, when you’re writing, you’re still directing, because you’re directing on the page, and you get to see the movie come to life. It’s a way to keep those muscles sharp. I really love when you get going, when you’re eight hours in and you have no idea that you’ve been sitting there for eight hours and you can’t stop. I love being in that zone and that doesn’t happen all the time, and it takes a lot of preparation to be able to get to a point where you can get on a roll like that. But it’s fun. It really is. It’s brutal, but it’s fun.

Scott: Where do you see yourself in five years?

Spenser: Anna and I are developing a ton of projects. I’m outlining several features, we’re about to take a TV show out, so I really think it’s just about continuing to maintain a certain quality of work, and really hold ourselves to a high standard with the material that we’re generating. In five years I really hope to just be doing the same thing that I’m doing now, but on a larger scale. I love movies. I love telling stories.

Scott: Finally what advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and breaking into Hollywood?

Spenser: You have to be diligent. You have to sit and do the work because no one’s going to write the script for you, and it’s not just going to magically appear. Maybe it takes you a year to write something, and that’s fine. Whatever it takes, you just have to log in those hours. You have to put in the time. The first pass might not be good…the tenth pass might not be good, but if you believe in it, and you keep reworking it, then you’ll get there.

I think another thing is really getting out of your own way, not self-editing, and not being a critic about everything that you do. But trusting that you have a voice, and that people are going to be interested in what you have to say, and how you see the world. You have to keep believing that you can do it. It takes a lot of courage to sit there, especially for years, and just keep writing and writing, hoping something will happen. It’s tough — you have to stick with it. You have to be persistent.

I followed up with a few questions to Spenser’s producing partner Anna Halberg and she kindly responded:

Scott: When you crack open a script to read, what are three top-of-mind things you are hoping to find in that story?

Anna: Well-developed, three-dimensional characters; a high concept idea; and good writing.

Scott: Both you and Spenser went to film school. What advice would you have for aspiring writers and filmmakers who do not have the resources to go to film school?

Anna: There are so many opportunities to learn. Capitalize on them. Read books and scripts. Watch movies. Write. Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Listen to interviews with filmmakers and industry professionals. Do internships. Apply to competitions. Generate your own content. Take risks, and make mistakes.

The rules of how you get noticed or how you get your work seen are really nonexistent anymore. There isn’t a right way to make it in this industry, and I think that’s exciting.

Scott: In this blog post, I suggested there are two broad paths an aspiring screenwriter can take: Write what they’re buying or sell them your dream. What’s your take on that?

Anna: My personal opinion is to sell them your dream. Trends come and go so quickly that it’s difficult to write what’s “hot” or what’s selling. I think it’s helpful to read the trades, understand the marketplace, and know what’s out there, but I don’t think writers should necessarily cater their ideas to what people are buying.

Like I said before I’m a firm believer that writers do their best work when they’re passionate about an idea. I think it’s the wrong approach to write an idea just because you think it will sell. Every writer has a unique vision, voice and set of experiences that nobody else has. If you can put that on paper that’s what I’m interested in reading. Plus, it’s such a long process that you need to love an idea and believe in it to be able to sit with it every day for months or even years.

Scott: Finally from your vantage point as a producer, what’s the single most important thing a screenwriter can do to learn the craft?

Anna: Write, watch movies and read scripts. I guess that’s three, but I think they’re all equally important.

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