Interview: Daniel Kunka
Screenwriter Daniel Kunka wrote the 2009 movie 12 Rounds and has sold two high profile spec scripts: Agent Ox and Bermuda Triangle. In addition, Daniel is working on the project “Crime of the Century” with Chris Morgan producing.
Recently Daniel and I had an excellent conversation which I am happy to share here.
Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:
Part 1: “If you just want to write for yourself and don’t care about finding financial success, you can… But to try and find success and make it a career, it’s impossible to not know the game you’re playing. It’s like trying to be an electrical engineer and never taking a physics class.”
Part 2: “It’s literally one phone call and I go from sitting on my couch eating Cheetos to being on set in New Orleans with the producer of Saving Private Ryan and Speed and the director of Cliffhanger while a trolley car plows through trucks on Canal Street.
Part 3: “No matter what the concept is, no matter what spectacle you put out there, nobody cares if there’s not an empathetic way into the story and you only get that with the characters you tell the story through.”
Part 4: “You get the call, the script sells, you’re totally euphoric and then you hang up the phone and your kid is crying and you need to make dinner and it’s ‘all right, I get to be a professional screenwriter for another year.’”
Part 5: “My thinking is, if you’re going to take the time to write a spec, aim high. You want it to sell. And if it’s going to sell, the concept is key. It has to be a movie. To me that’s the path of least resistance to making screenwriting your career, by giving the buyers scripts they have to buy.”
Part 6: “What I try to do is paint a picture with as few brush strokes as possible. So instead of writing out an entire fight sequence between two guys, I’ll keep it very general except for two or three key moments that make the fight unique.”
Daniel is repped by ICM Partners and Madhouse Entertainment.
Twitter: @unikunka.
Comment Archive