Interview: Barbara Stepansky (2013 Nicholl Winner, 2013 Black List) — Part 2
Barbara Stepansky’s original screenplay “Sugar in My Veins” not only won the filmmaker a 2013 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2013 Black List, so I was excited when she agreed to do an interview to see what we could learn from this talented young filmmaker.
Today in Part 2, Barbara shares a key inspirational moment in her life and what winning the Nicholl Fellowship has meant to her, both professionally and personally:
Scott: In your comments at the Nicholl Award ceremony, you tell a wonderful story about being at the Sundance Film Festival and an important exchange you had with writer-director Karen Moncrieff. I wonder if you could describe that incident? What happened there and how it inspired you in your writing?
Barbara: Well, I was at the Sundance Film Festival. I think it was 2002. I had just done my intermediate project at USC. I was very, very green and I watched Blue Car and just absolutely loved it, loved everything about that movie — the story, the writing, the acting.
I thought I wanted to keep a piece of that for myself so I went up to the writer-director, Karen Moncrieff, and asked her for an autograph. As I said in my speech, I really had never asked anyone for an autograph before and never again after. She signed my crappy student postcard with the words, “To Barbara. You can do it, too. Karen Moncrieff”. I had the postcard for the last 10 years, and I had kind of forgotten about it until I started writing “Sugar in My Veins” again, and I pulled it out and put it up on my wall.
I would look at it and it would give me encouragement because the material was very similar to what I was writing, also a coming of age drama. I was inspired by Karen. She made it happen and I believed that maybe I could, too.
Scott: “You can do this, too”. And of course you did. What was the process like in discovering that you won the Nicholl Fellowship?
Barbara: Oh, it was an amazing time. The Nicholl Fellowship moves in phases of quarter finals, semi-finals, and then finals. Every time I got one more phase further and I got the letter from Greg Beal that I’m in this round and then the next round, I was just so ecstatic and happy.
I remember telling my parents that I made the quarter finals of the Nicholl Fellowship, and so I’m the top 392 people. They didn’t understand what that meant so they were like, “That doesn’t sound great. There are 391 other people”. I said, “No, no. You don’t understand. It’s the quarter finals of the Nicholl! There’s like 7,000 scripts I’m competing with…”
I really wanted to get into semi-finals. And then I knew that the drop off was going to be really harsh, from 130 scripts to 10 so. I wasn’t holding my breath because my material was challenging. When I got the phone call that I’m a Finalist, I couldn’t believe it. I actually didn’t believe it. I didn’t tell anybody until I got the email the next day, because I wanted to make sure that I didn’t make it up.
Scott: What has winning the Nicholls done for you professionally?
Barbara: Professionally, it’s been a really big jump in my career because I was very much working under the radar as a director-for-hire. I’ve been doing well, but I really wanted to move up a notch. That’s what the Nicholl Fellowship allowed me to do — to meet more people, to get awesome representation, and to actually make it a legitimate profession. Which it sort of had been, but nobody knew about it.
Scott: Let’s talk about your Nicholl winning script “Sugar in My Veins”. Here’s the logline: “When a mutual attraction blossoms between a 13-year-old violin prodigy and her sister’s much older boyfriend, it leads to a risky, forbidden affair that has both liberating and disastrous consequences for their lives.” What was the inspiration for this story?
Barbara: There’s nothing personal that ever happened in my life that even comes close to that. I’m not a prodigy. I’m not really attracted to older guys. I don’t even have a sister that I lived with. It wasn’t based on a personal experience.
I love forbidden love stories and I wanted to tell a really good one. I wanted to tell a story about true connection that has the unfortunate, star-crossed element of an age difference to it that is almost impossible to bridge.
I reverted back to my teenage years when all you want is for somebody to just get you and look beyond outer shell there is, and I think that’s the yearning that story was born from. I also was a fan of Nabokov’s “Lolita” but I always felt like that Lolita was a bit dumb and coy. I wanted a girl character like that could kick ass.
Tomorrow in Part 3, Barbara delves into the main characters in “Sugar in My Veins” and the process of writing the script.
For Part 1, go here.
Please stop by comments to thank Barbara for taking the time for the interview and post any follow-up questions you may have.
Barbara is repped by ICM Partners and Hertzberg Media.
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