Interview: Daniel Turkewitz — Part 6

It’s always interesting to interview “first-timers,” writers who break into the business by selling a spec script. Such is the case of Daniel Turkewitz, a proverbial overnight success who spent years of hard work before writing “Tranquility Base” which 20th Century Fox acquired in June 2013 for a reported mid-six figures.

Recently I had a wide-ranging conversation with Daniel about his background, “Tranquility Base,” screenwriting, and what it’s like to finally get that phone call: “They want your script.”

Today in Part 6, Daniel shares his advice to writers who are where he was just a few months ago — outside looking in:

Scott: What’s your actual writing process?

Daniel: I write at home. I write every day. Sometimes in the morning…I put in a couple hours in the morning, a couple hours in the afternoon, a couple hours at night. When I was an architect I always listened to music when I was working. I used to listen to rock music. When I started screen writing I found I couldn’t listen to that anymore. I can’t listen to somebody singing when I’m trying to come up with words on my own. That throws me off. Once I started writing my collection of jazz and classical grew tremendously. That’s what I listen to now when I work. It’s lots of Mozart, lots of Miles Davis and the like.

I write at home. There’s been some times when I’ve tried to go write at a Starbucks or the coffee shop at a Barnes & Noble. I can’t do it. It’s too distracting. I find myself listening to conversations and paying attention to the people around me. That doesn’t work for me.

So being at home alone and listening to music is the setting that I get most of my work done.

Scott: What’s your single best excuse not to write?

Daniel: [laughs] Single best excuse. I don’t know. There’s a lot. I go to the gym every afternoon. That’s one of the perks of being a writer and making up your own schedule. The plants need to be watered. The floor needs to be vacuumed. There is no one excuse. I do pretty well with the television. I don’t turn the TV on before six o’clock. I don’t sit there watching morning or afternoon shows. I’m pretty good with that.

I don’t think there’s one big excuse. There are a lot of little excuses.

Scott: What do you love most about writing?

Daniel: I love being able to be creative and get my ideas out and get them out in a way that I can share it with people. When I was an architect, I had my share of my ideas, but it got to a point where I realized I wasn’t going to have my own office, I wasn’t going to be the lead designer. I worked here in Manhattan in an office for 10 years. I said, “You know what? I don’t want to spend the next 30 years of my life being a draftsman and working on other people’s ideas. I want to work on my ideas.” Writing lets me do that.

Scott: You didn’t say, “Well, I’ll be an architect, and in my spare time, I’ll write”? No, you literally walked away from a career in architecture in order to pursue screenwriting?

Daniel: There was some overlap. I left architecture and started my own freelance business doing 3D computer graphics and animation for other architects. I started out at the very early stages of computer animation, when it was just starting to become something that anybody could do and not just big budget special effects companies. I did that for a couple years. It was while I was doing that that I was taking the screenwriting courses at NYU. After I got that first script optioned, that’s when I thought, “OK. Somebody out there actually paid me for my writing. They liked my ideas. Now it’s time to drop architecture altogether and go all in.”

Scott: Where do you see yourself in five to ten years? In an ideal world, what are you doing?

Daniel: Standing onstage at the Dolby Theater with a little statue in my hand thanking all the little people. [laughs] Still writing, still making movies. Whether I make the jump some day and become a director, I don’t know. I’ve made a couple of short films that have played in a few festivals. I really enjoyed that. But five years from now? Writing.

Scott: Finally. What advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters, people, such as yourself, who just recently were on the outside looking in?

Daniel: The best way to learn how to write screenplays is to read screenplays. You have to read and read and read some more. See what other people are doing. There’s no better way to learn than that. Over the last 10 years, while I was trying to break in, I had a couple of no‑pay jobs here in the city. I was doing script coverage for Goldcrest International for a couple of years. I read lots and lots of scripts. Good scripts. Bad scripts. It doesn’t matter. There’s always something to learn.

I did film coverage for Emerging Pictures. Again, you see what other people do. That’s a great way to learn. It’s fairly obvious, but you have to go see a lot of movies.

Of course, the biggest problem in trying to break into the film industry is it’s all about who you know. If you don’t know anybody then that can be one very big struggle.

Competitions are a great way to get noticed. Try and focus on the competitions in Los Angeles. Those are the most likely to have judges who can actually make things happen for you. I entered this tracking‑board competition. I didn’t win the competition. I was a finalist. I was top ten. But I didn’t win. But that didn’t matter because the judges were people who mattered and it caught the right eye.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Part 3, go here.

Part 4, go here.

Part 5, go here.

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

Daniel is repped by Energy Entertainment.