Interview: Anthony Grieco (2015 Nicholl Winner)

Anthony Grieco wrote the original screenplay “Best Sellers” which won the 2015 Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. Recently Anthony and I had an excellent hour long telephone conversation about his background and the craft.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “I wrote from an emotional place and part of that emotion was definitely fueled by a big ‘fuck you’ to style versus content, which I feel Hollywood is guilty of.”

Part 2: “I think this is one of the reasons people enjoy reading the script or have given me favorable feedback. There is something that they connect to emotionally. I think that’s what we’re in the business of doing.”

Part 3: “I believe that your lead character has to look up at you from page 25 and say, ‘You know what, Anthony? Fuck you for making me go to page 30, I hate your guts.’”

Part 4: “One of the things you start to realize when you get into the world where you’re hired to do something is that there’s no more of, ‘I’ll work on this when I feel like it.’ There’s no more of that.”

Part 5: “The script should start telling you what it wants. At some point, when you get to the second and third draft, it’s this organism that’s trying to push out all the infection.”

Part 6: “Your screenplay is your calling card. If it doesn’t get made it still gets you meetings. It can still get you jobs. Write what you love. What does that mean? It means write what you think best expresses you and your attitude toward the world.”

Anthony is repped by Paradigm and Aperture Entertainment.

Twitter: @SwimCharlieSwim.