Interview: James DiLapo (2012 Nicholl Winner, 2012 Black List) — Part 4
James DiLapo’s original screenplay “Devils at Play” not only won the young screenwriter a 2012 Nicholl fellowship, it also landed on the 2012 Black List, garnering 28 votes, the 9th highest total of any script on the list this year. In January, Warner Bros. hired DiLapo to write the futuristic re-telling of Homer’s The Odyssey.
In addition for those of you who happen to be in Marfa, Texas this weekend, there is this:
Ballroom Marfa’s distinguished Filmmakers’ Selection Committee has chosen Academy Nicholl winner James DiLapo’s script “Devils At Play” to be presented as the 2013 production of The Reading on Saturday, May 18 at the Crowley Theater in Marfa, Texas. Film director Julia Dyer (The Playroom and Late Bloomers) has been brought on board to direct the staged performance of “Devils At Play” for The Reading. Veteran film producer Carolyn Pfeiffer and Ballroom Marfa board member Nancy Sanders return as producers. As part of Ballroom Marfa’s continuing film program, “Devils At Play” will be performed by actors with scripts in hand, full stage direction, state-of-the-art lighting and sound for this year’s presentation of The Reading.
James was kind enough to agree to an interview and recently we had a wide-ranging hour-long conversation in which we covered a lot of territory related to screenwriting. I will be posting the whole interview over the course of this week, definitely a Q&A you will want to read in its entirety as James offers some terrific insight into the craft.
Today in Part 4, James discusses the theme of redemption in the script “Devils at Play”:
Scott: There’s a side of dialogue from Stepan, it’s almost exactly mid‑way through the script. It strikes me as a classic moment of transition, of what is going on with him, and this prisoner Dmitri, who Stepan desperately needs to break to get information critical to his goal of winning a competition. I’d like to go to that side, and break it up into three parts, and get your reaction to each. Stepan starts, he says, “I hate torture.” “I hate that torture has become the tool we use.” “Getting a suspect to confess with it is like cheating.” “I know that every suspect I tortured into a confession probably was innocent.”
Is this speaking on some level to the post 9/11 consciousness, and about the current conversation we’re having about torture?
James: As far as current events go, I wrote this without the intention of it being a parallel to any specific point in human history. I think you can draw from this connections to other moments, but there is a singularity, and a singular shame, to this period of Soviet history that makes it deserve to stand apart. I wouldn’t like this script to simply be an indictment of the war on terrorism. I think it hopefully speaks to a broader point about society than that.
Scott: Then the second part of this side is the process that, “but now for the first time, I know I have a guilty man sitting before me, a conspirator, a liar. His confession is the only way I will ever get out of here. “That seems to me to sum up very nicely his conscious goal, I guess you could call it, his warrant, to win the competition in order to get transferred out of this hellhole existence. That’s pretty accurate, right?
James: Yes, sir.
Scott: Then the third part, so he says, “So what am I going to do, Dmitri? Am I going to go down that path again? I’m not an animal, but this place, it wants to make me into one. I’m struggling, I’m struggling to stay a man.” That middle part really sums up his conscious goal. Isn’t this more of a summation of his need, in a way, to rediscover his humanity?
James: That line of dialogue is the exact midpoint of the film. Hopefully it speaks to the emotional stress he’s going through, but also that his goal is worth pursuing even beyond logic. He wants to convince himself there is only one version of reality in front of him. “This is an enemy of the state, this is an evil man. I have to do what I have to in order to break him.” That line is someone trying to trick himself into believing in his own cause.
Scott: It really concretizes very nicely a question that the reader carries with him for the script, which is, will he somehow find his humanity, or will he lose it? It is like literally in the middle of the script, right at exactly the midpoint, so it just struck me as being a terrific transitional moment.
James: Thank you. I think act structure is extremely important. The midpoint is very crucial. It doesn’t have to be as overt as it is in the middle of this script, but there needs to be that transition on an emotional level for the character, from reactive to active.
Scott: You mentioned that this is a story of redemption, and I absolutely picked up on that. In fact, would you say that at one level, this is a story ‑ at least metaphorically speaking, not theologically, necessarily ‑ it’s about sin and redemption, what Stepan has done and does some terrible things, but in the end, by saving the lives of a woman and her daughter, he is in effect saving himself?
James: Yes, absolutely. This was a period in Soviet history where there was a lot of militant state-sponsored atheism. I thought that was a very fascinating setting in which to tell with what is really a religious story of redemption without ever mentioning God. Theirs is a very interesting quote by Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He tries to sum up what he thinks went wrong in the Soviet Union, and all he can really bring himself to say is that they forgot God.
I think that, regardless of whether or not as an audience member you have religious views or belief, I still think that there is a sense of redemption, a sense of spirituality, which permeates any society. How it plays into Stepan’s transformation was important to me.
Scott: A transformation. He literally has…the denouement at the end is almost like a transfiguration moment, this kind of hyper‑reality, almost transmigrating to heaven kind of a thing. It’s spiritual, that way, isn’t it?
James: Yeah. I wanted to show the audience that he’s at peace. Heaven doesn’t factor into this, or damnation. His soul is just at peace now.
Scott: That works really well. One thing I always look for when I read scripts is, I want a lighter use of subplot to break up the action, but also to explore from a variety of angles story themes. You did that really well in “Devils At Play.” There’s one subplot in particular that I thought worked so elegantly, I guess you could say. I’m talking about the rabbit. The mystery box that I talked about earlier, that box, there was a rabbit inside, and it had been injured and it had been given to him to tend to because Stepan had grown up on a farm. The script keeps coming back to this rabbit, and I’m wondering, “How is this subplot going to pay off?” It does beautifully, with the daughter, whose life Stepan saves. Can you talk about the inspiration and the evolution of just that particular subplot?
James: I have a hard time unpacking the idea of a subplot. I think that subplots ultimately are just an expression of any story that is large enough to have multiple pieces within it. The rabbit is one of those pieces. I had to have a way to show Stepan passing the baton, so to speak, from one generation to the next, but I also wanted something that spoke to his humanity. To be honest, I didn’t even realize it was a subplot until now. It was just a piece of the story to me.
Tomorrow in Part 5, James discusses the high profile project “Odyssey” he is writing for Warner Bros. and its connection to Joseph Campbell and the Hero’s Journey.
For Part 1, go here.
For Part 2, go here.
For Part 3, go here.
Please stop by comments to thank James for taking the time for the interview and post any follow-up questions you may have.
James is repped by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.
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