Interview: Carter Blanchard (2012 Black List) — Part 1

Carter Blanchard is a great example of talent meeting persistence. His first writing credit is a short film he directed in 1989. Since that time, he has landed numerous writing assignments and sold multiple spec scripts including “Virus” (1994), “Frigid & Impotent” (1995), “Bedbugs” aka “Dead Asleep” (2004), and “Near Death” (2007). For anyone working in the entertainment industry, that is a long stretch of time. However it is with his most recent spec script “Glimmer” that Carter’s fortunes took a quantum leap, the script selling in a bidding war and making the 2012 Black List and Hit List.

Today in Part 1 of our interview, Carter recounts how he got into the business and his early days as a writer:

Scott: When did you first become aware of the fact that there are these people know as screenwriters who actually write movies?

Carter: I always knew people wrote movies, but I became more keenly aware of it in film school, when I started to think about how they were actually put together. I basically started writing as a way to become a director and then I just ended up loving writing and ran with it from there.

Scott: You were at Boston University, is that right?

Carter: Yes.

Scott: You didn’t start out in film studies, you made a switch.

Carter: I was raised by a very artsy family. My father was an artist. My mom was always writing. My sisters were writers and artists. I grew up around this atmosphere, of not only artists, but hard-working artists. My parents dedicated all their free time to pursuing their creative endeavors. Yet I was always seen as a kid who knew how to make money.

I collected coins with my dad. We went to coin shows together. Something that never occurred to him was to actually haggle with people… get a better price. I started doing that, then he started telling me what coins to buy and sending me to tables. I’d play my poor kid routine, pretend I only had $3 if the coin cost $6. They’d give it to me for $3. So he wanted me to go to business school as I got older. I was creative, too, but I don’t think he saw a future in it. He underestimated his own value and his own lifestyle, so he pushed me to that. About two and a half years into college he took his own life. That was a big wake‑up call for me.

I had been unhappy with business school at that point and decided…when that happened it suddenly freed something within me to pursue an artistic career. I just came to realize life’s too short, for one thing, to do what you don’t like. I happened to be at a college that had a decent film program. I applied for an intra‑university transfer and I got in. Then I took to it like a duck to water.

Scott: That must have been quite a shock to the system, what happened to your father. It reminds me of Joseph Campbell talking about the Hero’s Journey, how oftentimes we’ll find ourselves on a path that seems pretty well laid out for us, but the easy path is probably not the one we’re supposed to be on. It’s another path we’re supposed to carve out on our own. Does that have any resonance with you?

Carter: Oh yeah, absolutely, and on both ends of the spectrum. My father’s death gave me a lot of drive. I would safely say my film school friends would agree, I probably was a lot more focused and driven than most of them were at the time. I went to school with some pretty talented people who have done well, but later on as the roller coaster career of writing went up and down, there have been times — as recently as 2011 — when I didn’t make any money. Where I looked back and wondered if this was all a huge mistake. [laughs] Maybe I should have stayed in business school, and right now I’d be doing whatever I wanted because I would have made money on Wall Street or something, which I’m glad I didn’t do.

But you go through hard times in this business and sometimes you can’t help wondering where the other path would have led. I can safely say now that it was the right path. It was definitely a very dramatic calling at that point in my life too, the way it happened.

Scott: So you have that experience. You change to film studies at BU. You come out to Los Angeles. As legend has it, you landed a gig where you were given like 150 scripts to cover in three months. Is that true?

Carter: Yeah, more. It’s probably more scripts and less time. That was at 20th Century Fox with a company called Grantwood Productions. When I went in for my first day of work my boss had stacks of scripts all around his desk, three feet high, a lot of them. He was like, “Okay, I’m a little behind on my reading. I need you to do coverage on these as soon as possible.” I think I was reading 15 to 20 scripts a week and doing coverage on them, while also working as his assistant. But that was the best way to learn how to not write.

Scott: That’s funny. The best way to learn how not to write.

Carter: There was so much crap. This was a small company so they were getting scripts from every agency out there. A lot of old scripts that had been floating around forever. But one of them I read, I got so excited over the weekend. It was the best thing I ever read. I came in, wrote my coverage with a big recommend. Well, it was “The Silence of the Lambs” by Ted Tally, which wasn’t yet in production. I didn’t know anything about it because I wasn’t reading the trades as much as I should have been at the time. I remember giving it to my boss. He just looked at me like… you idiot. It was just a writing sample.

Scott: I’m sure you probably have some pretty strong feeling about the value of reading scripts in terms of learning the craft.

Carter: Oh yeah. I’d highly recommend doing some script reading, especially for new writers. Like I said, you learn what not to do. You have an act to grab the readers, especially in this town where people are so busy, and everyone has ADD. If you can’t get their attention, if they’re not excited at the end of act one and want to see where the story’s going, they’re going to put it down most of the time. It’s amazing how many of those scripts I had to read didn’t grab my attention, but as a reader you’ve got to read the whole thing and then write up a synopsis and do coverage.

You really learn, “OK, why didn’t this script get my attention?” and you have to analyze it and you have to explain why it’s not good. Is it the characters? Is it the story? Did it start off slowly and just never really take off? Is it disjointed?

The more you’re reading scripts that don’t work and writing coverage and telling your boss why they don’t work, it sticks when you sit down to write your own. Suddenly you’re looking at your blank page, and you’re like, well, I don’t want to start off that way because that’s like the other script I read and that was terrible. I need a big character moment in the first scene, I need to get people’s attention. My act one turn really has to propel the story into a new direction with great purpose.

That all became very obvious very quickly by reading that many scripts.

Tomorrow in Part 2, we go behind the scenes with Carter into the creative process of writing a top selling spec script like “Glimmer.” For the record, Carter has parlayed his success with that script into a high profile writing assignment, adapting the best-selling video game “Spy Hunter” into a movie for Warner Bros.

Please stop by comments to thank Carter and ask any questions you may have.

Carter is repped by Paradigm and Madhouse Entertainment.

You can follow Carter on Twitter: @CartBlanch.