Interview: Elijah Bynum (2013 Black List) — Part 1

The Black List is a pretty exclusive club, especially so for those writers who manage to land two scripts on the List in a single year. That’s what Elijah Bynum did in 2013 when two of his original screenplays — “Mississippi Mud” and “Hot Summer Nights”. I sought out Elijah to see what sort of creative mind could manage that feat. He was kind enough to give me an hour of his time in what turned out to be a great conversation about storytelling and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 1, Elijah talks about how he became interested in writing and found his way to Hollywood:

Scott: Just curious, do you follow Go into the Story?

Elijah: I do. I stumbled across it about a year ago and I found a lot of really interesting stuff on there. I’ve applied a lot of it to the writing process. Some of it consciously and some of it subconsciously.

It’s a wonderful tool for anyone, no matter how accomplished you are as a writer. There’s so much on there. Thank you for all the work you’ve put into keeping it and maintaining it.

Scott: I appreciate that. So let’s jump into this. How did you find your way into writing?

Elijah: It was a beautiful accident. I wish I could say I’m some kind of wunderkind and that I’ve been writing since I was four years old but that would be a lie.

I was born and raised in a little town in a little state 3,000 miles away from Hollywood. I figured I had a better chance of striking oil in my backyard than making a career in entertainment.

And then there I was in college. There was about two months left in my senior year. I was a marketing and economics major and although I had no idea what I wanted to do I knew staring at Excel spreadsheets was not it. I got to thinking…I had always had an interest in film and storytelling and I had what I thought was pretty decent taste. I figured, well, I don’t know how to write. I don’t know how to direct. I don’t like cameras stuck in my face, so I’m not going to act. I might as well try to produce (I had no idea what that meant either).

I found an internship at Mandalay Pictures. They sent me a script to cover. It was the first script I had ever read I really had no idea what I was doing but apparently I did a decent enough job that I got the internship. I came out here and that internship led to a position at CAA, where I floated for eight months. Then I was assigned a desk in the nonprofit arm of the agency.

Left and right my friends were landing the lit desks and moving on to work for a producers. My trajectory was looking less and less like it was going to work out that way.

All I could do at that time was educate myself on the writers around town so when the time came that I did finally have an interview with a producer I knew what I was talking about. I wanted to learn what good writing looked like — what it meant to have a “voice”, etc. I read everything I could get my hands on, the good, the bad and the ugly. I found there was a lot of ugly out there.

I think part of it was arrogance and part of it was naiveté, but I figured I could at least write something that ugly. That’s really where the confidence came from to try to write my first script. It was a total “F it, I can do this” moment. So I wrote the script right there on Microsoft Word and emailed myself the pages at the end of every day. I didn’t have Final Draft yet.

I realized after about 20 pages that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, so I ordered two screenwriting books. The two major takeaways were structure and dialogue. These are two areas that a lot of younger or newer writers struggle with, just because it’s so specific to screenwriting.

Once I got that down, I was able to somehow — by the grace of God — able to finish the rest of the draft. I gave it to the guy who sat next to me, another assistant. I could just imagine what he was thinking “Great, the kid from the nonprofit department who’s always eating bagels wrote a script…”

I followed up with him about once a week. Actually that’s a lie. I followed up with him about four times a week for three months until he finally read it. He came to me one day and said “Hey, man. This isn’t bad. You mind if I show it around?” He called up his old boss — Sean McKittrick at Darko Entertainment, an all around bad ass dude — and sent it over. Darko optioned it and that was that. An interesting thing happened — at first I was so ecstatic I could taste colors but almost immediately after I came crashing down once it hit me that I would probably never write anything that good again. I got a job on a lit desk and got back to being an assistant.

But I couldn’t shake the rush I had while writing. I became nostalgic for it. Like an old flame or something. As painful and soul crushing as it was at times the high from cracking a story line or nailing a piece of dialogue was unlike anything I had ever experienced. I had other stories I wanted to tell. I had other characters I wanted to write. I wanted to keep writing, damn it. I’m happy I followed that intuition.

Scott: When was this that you wrote your first script?

Elijah: I wrote that sometime in 2011. No one really saw it until late 2012, early 2013. It was a dirty little secret of mine for a long time.

Scott: What script was it?

Elijah: “Mississippi Mud”.

Scott: Let’s back up a bit. Where did you go to college?

Elijah: I went to UMass.

Scott: Were you a movie fan when you were a kid? Did you watch a lot of movies?

Elijah: I think there are people out there who would consider themselves cinephiles or film buffs who have a much wider knowledge of film that I had entering this world, absolutely. Coming out here I had — and still do have — this insecurity that I wasn’t ever classically trained. I never went to film school I never went through some writer program. I don’t even have a mentor. I knew I had to take it upon myself to self-educate.

Last year I watched upwards of 300 films and I’m trying to surpass that number this year. It’s certainly a commitment. There are times when all I want to do is sleep or go out with my friends or watch “Breaking Bad,” but I would force myself to watch as many films as I could. And not just watch them but really study them, break them apart, understand them. There was this quote that hung in my high school weight room that read, “Your competition got better today, did you?” Not that I’m Daniel Plainview or anything but that quote has a point.

Scott: You’re at Verve?

Elijah: Yes, I’m at Verve and Kaplan/Perrone for management.

Scott: How did that happen?

Elijah: I was hip pocketed at Anonymous Content before. And for a number of reasons, I decided to leave that company. As I was leaving, I had just finished “Hot Summer Nights.” I slipped it to a few friends of mine that worked in the industry. They took a liking to the script. It hit the tracking boards and spread rather quickly. It was one of those instances where it was a perfect storm and the script was being whispered about around town.

The word also got out on top of that that I was looking for representation, because I didn’t have a manager or an agent at the time.

There was this three or four day blitz where my phone would not stop ringing and my email box was overflowing and people were Facebooking me and tweeting me. It was nuts. It was probably the most attention I’ll ever get.

Kaplan/Perrone and Verve reached out to me and they had a great sense of humor and a great plan for what they wanted to do with me as a client. It felt right and I’m glad I made that decision. We’ve been partners in crime ever since.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Elijah and I start to analyze “Mississippi Mud”.

Elijah is repped at Verve and Kaplan / Perrone.

Twitter: @BynumElijah.

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