Interview (Audio): Mark Heyman, Craig Johnson (“The Skeleton Twins”)

The Skeleton Twins is a fine new indie film, one I highly recommend. The movie is co-written by Mark Heyman and Craig Johnson, also the director. Here is the movie’s trailer:

The pair did a recent interview as part of the Final Draft Insider View series which you can access here.

You may also read an overview of the interview at No Film School. An excerpt:

After hitting the wall at page 40 (twice) with no outline, Johnson and Heyman decided they should go back to the tools they had learned during film school. Once the tone of the film was set, the writers created an outline and beat out the story on notecards. Then, they sat in a room together, each at his own laptop, and took a notecard to write a specific scene. After they finished writing their scenes, they would share the scenes with each other, usually performing them. The other writer would give immediate feedback, which would then either go into the scene or sometimes they would trade scenes to rewrite them. The writers laugh about how going back to the basics of an outline and notecards really worked to put the story together, and they only had to suffer through two aborted drafts to realize this.

For the No Film School article, go here.