Interview: Chris Borrelli (2009 Black List) — Part 1

Christopher Borrelli, who wrote the 2007 Universal / Gold Circle horror thriller Whisper and co-wrote the 2009 Fox / WWE action film The Marine 2, sold the spec scripts “The Vatican Tapes” [Black List] to Lionsgate and Lakeshore in 2009, “Wake” to Hammer Films / Exclusive Media Group in 2010, and “Sad Jack” to Code Entertainment in 2011. In addition he has worked on the remake of Bad Influence for MGM, an adaptation of the French horror film ILS (“Them”) for Gold Circle, a live-action series “Necessary Evil” at the Cartoon Network with partners Jonathan Davis and Max Burnett, and has a blind deal at Focus / Rogue. Also “Twittering from the Circus of the Dead” with Todd Lincoln attached to direct.

In April “The Vatican Tapes” was greenlit for production with a July 15th start date. In May, Chris agreed to terms on the sale of another spec, the announcement is forthcoming.

Today in Part 1, Chris discusses how he found his way into screenwriting including his work on the development side of the creative process:

Scott: Have you always been a movie fan?

Chris: Yes, when I was ten years old I saw a film on TV with Mark Hamill that changed my life. That was called Corvette Summer, where Mark Hamill goes across the country chasing after his awesome 70s tricked out Corvette. I didn’t know until I saw the movie that you could just pick up and go places. I thought there were all these rules in life. I didn’t think you could just chase after your awesome Corvette.

It got me thinking about California. It got me thinking about movies and I just got to love them more and more as I got older.

Scott: Where were you living at the time?

Chris: I’m from Massachusetts. I’m from a suburb south of Boston and I get back there three times a year. It kind of helps. There’s something great about Boston that it’s kind of a blue collar, white collar mix of a city. You really have people of different financial strata or whatever, they intermix more. There’s something about Boston that is conducive to writing, and Massachusetts in general. There’s also a heavy, heavy dose of sarcasm there. When I’m home, I pick up all these little gems. It helps me. Frankly, it helps me write dialogue, funny as that sounds.

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

Chris: I always did a little research and I was always interested in how it all came together. The first things I wanted to do were either produce or direct. Then I realized I could actually make a living as a screenwriter when I was much older. But it’s all storytelling to me. I’m not naive, and I’ve done different aspects of that, and I want to continue to. I want to move into directing soon here, but it’s always storytelling to me. It always starts with the script. Everyone always is interpreting the script, which comes from the screenwriter. I’ll never not be a screenwriter. I believe I’ll do this from now on…that’s where it starts, and that’s what I’ve grown to love so much.

Scott: Foraging through your IMDB Pro page, there are some intriguing clues about your career in Hollywood.

Chris: I did whatever it took to learn this business. I worked on low‑budget features, then I worked in visual effects for almost five years, which I loved. I started as an assistant, but I was soon promoted to being a photographer and videographer for all the big movies. The company I worked for was bought by Disney, so we did all the Disney movies for that period of time. It was just a wonderful learning experience. You sometimes want to have 200 people on the set, and sometimes you want to have 3 people shooting plates or shooting miniatures in the background, and I did everything from editing to being a full‑time staff member, and it was a really great education. It still helps me now, when I can talk visually, and I have an idea how things are shot, that I have edited a lot of EPK, stuff like that. It was a really well rounded education. I’d already been to film school, but it was kind of like a second film school.

Scott: And that’s including movies like Con Air and Armageddon?

Chris: Yeah, and a whole bunch of other movies, as well. It was a really good time and I met a lot of great people. It’s very different from screenwriting, but I got to really live in the physical production world, and it was a great benefit.

Scott: You had a stint where you were working on the development side of things?

Chris: That came later. For nearly five years I was a DOD [Director of Development] at a small company, and we had a fund and I read whole lot of scripts, and bought scripts, and optioned books. We had a couple of movies made, but it was another great education. When I was finally laid off from that, things seemed kind of dark. I had this one script I had written, and I had met a manager, who is still my manager. He sent it out for me, and six months later we’re filming a Universal/Gold Circle film. That was a thrill. At that point I felt I knew what I really wanted to do.

Scott: What are some of the key things you learned from those variety of experiences in the business that you brought to screenwriting?

Chris: Especially when I would read several scripts a day in development, I could sometimes spot when I writer didn’t understand how a film actually is put together. That doesn’t mean once in a while I don’t break a coupe of those so‑called rules, where I’ll write down an emotion a character might be feeling, so on and so forth. But in general it’s really trained me to think visually. Starting with photography, starting with editing, and video, and then moving on there to sitting on the other side of the desk, what comes in, gets communicated, how short people’s attention spans are. All these things really add up to really help me understand.

And to think of the customer. You know, we finish a script, our first customer is a small audience of 100 or 200 people, really. People are going to read our scripts. And then from there it grows and grows bigger.

I’m always trying to think about, am I communicating, am I doing the job of communicating the emotions on the page that the person is gong to be reading it? Trying to almost look in the future, imagine that person opening my script. They’re seeing it all for the first time.

During the writing, we write draft, after draft, after draft, and we can really forget things we assume that are easy for the audience to understand or they already know were lost drafts ago, or were never there to begin with, but unfortunately stayed in our heads

I’m always thinking about the way I can communicate that emotion, what I’m trying to get out of that scene, or sequence, or the entire script. How can I communicate it to the first customer, which is the reader?

Of course, as we know in this business, it’s not like you learn it and it’s done, it’s a process and you’re always growing, but it definitely helped me cement the foundation of what it’s like to get to read several or more scripts a day, or read ten scripts on a weekend. And then to think how we can stand out, how to get across that emotion. That’s really what we’re doing. I think, to me, film is really about an unspoken contact between the person going to the movie or watching television. They’re looking for some kind of emotion, they’re searching for it. Comedy, it can be, it can be reflected in horror, to feel something in drama, no matter what it is. And then we are supposed to fulfill that part of the contract. It doesn’t mean there won’t be surprises, or that a film has to be just one of those emotions, hopefully it has several or more of those emotions.

I’m always thinking about that person reading, and then, I’m trying to think about how it translates into the actual film.

I don’t go down to the micro of exactly how it’s going to be filmed. I do think a shot list should be on it sometimes, to be honest…for action scenes, and the like. We write these things in our rooms, in the dark. They’re, hopefully, going to reach millions and millions of people. You’ve got to think of that process, of the first group of customers, second group of customers, and how it goes from there. I’m always trying to think beyond me sitting in that little dark room.

Scott: You have a lot of pragmatic, hands‑on experience, working in various aspects of filmmaking. Was there anything else you did to augment your understanding of the craft?

Chris: I really couldn’t write, for a long time. I’d even made short films, myself, and I’d worked…but I really couldn’t write. I think I had the knowledge, but I hadn’t tied it all together. I read, Linda Seger, I believe, “Making a Good Script Great.” I read that book. I remember everything, kind of, connecting in my head, of how I’d been so close, for so many years. It really did help, and now I’ve read quite a few screenwriting books.

My belief is that you should learn the rules, and then you learn them well enough where you can break them. It was a big help when I finally started to research into different aspects of the list that comes together. I think there’s a wonderful art in it.

I’m not beholden to the rules, I’m just glad to know them. That idea that you should have as much knowledge as possible…I think you should learn as much as possible anyway, and then you can feel free to work your own system into them.

Tomorrow in Part 2, we begin a discussion of Chris’ script “Sad Jack”.

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

Chris is repped by WME and DMG Entertainment.