Interview (Part 1): Alisha Brophy & Scott Miles (2014 Nicholl Winners)

Alisha Brophy and Scott Miles wrote the original screenplay “The United States of Fuckin’ Awesome” which won the duo a 2014 Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. Alisha, Scott and I had a great interview which I will be rolling out in 6 installments this week.

Today in Part 1, Scott and Alisha talk about their respective backgrounds, their experience in film studies, and how they ended up writing together:

Scott Myers: Where did each of you grow up, and how did each of you find your way into writing as an interest?

Alisha Brophy: You want to go ahead, Scott?

Scott Miles: Sure. I grew up in pretty deep East Texas. It’s a fairly rural area of Texas, and there’s not a lot going on.

When you’re a teenager, there are two paths. There’s the, “I’m going to go out drinking and partying” path, or, “I’m going to stay in and watch movies with my friends” path, and I chose the movies path.

Alisha: — They’re not mutually exclusive.

Scott: [laughs] I got pretty obsessed with movies early on. I know a lot of people my age were really into Star Wars. A lot of my friends were, but I was the weird kid who was really into Raising Arizona and the Coen brothers when I was 10.

I would find those weird obscure movies, and that’s what set me down this path. Then when I was in high school, that’s when I suddenly made that leap to, “Oh, someone writes these movies,” and got really interested in the writing part of it.

My senior year, I took a class where you were able to work with a mentor in your chosen field. Obviously, in East Texas there’s not a lot of filmmakers, so I did a mentorship with a local TV station, but even just that really sold me on the idea of making short films, and writing to that direction.

After high school, I got my undergrad at a small liberal arts school in East Texas, Stephen F. Austin State University, where they had a really small but scrappy film program. What I liked about it is that the film program was part of the art department. It was not part of communications, which it is at most schools, so they really stressed film as an art form. I was taking film classes alongside painting classes and things like that.

We had a camera in our hand on day one. We were shooting on actual film. I did a short film where I got to blow up a car, which I don’t think you would get to do at a lot of larger universities. It was such a small program that we got away with all kinds of crazy stuff.

Alisha: Scott, tell them about when you went to get the stuff to blow up the car.

Scott: Oh, yeah. I was just telling Alisha this the other day. I needed the gunpowder to build the bomb to blow up the car. We had the fire department there. It was all a very controlled thing, but I still had to purchase the supplies.

It was just me, this 18 year old kid, showing up at a gun supply store asking for enough gun powder to blow up a car. But it’s East Texas, so no one bats an eye.

I originally was going to go the writer/director route, but then in the ensuing years I realized that writing was my actual strong suit, and so that’s what I decided to pursue.

Myers: How about you, Alisha?

Alisha: My whole life, people around me, family, friends, teachers, always assumed that I would be a writer. I had a little bit of a rebellious streak in me, and so the more people told me that, the more I decided I was going to be anything but a writer.

I grew up in a very small town in upstate New York. I was taking some college classes my high school senior year, and I was just over it. Where most people use college as their escape from a small town, I was already burnt out on college, yet I still needed that escape.

After high school, I actually ran away with a carnival and traveled through many states up through the New England area, going from small town to small town working for the carnival. Obviously, it turns out that it’s not much of a small town escape at all if you’re just going on to the next small town.

Once I got that out of my system, I traveled around a little longer, and then realized that I very much wanted to go to college. I ended up doing my undergrad at UC Berkeley. I was an English major, and started writing small creative non‑fiction essays, and thought that that would be my writing path.

I ended up catching a cold and I took a bunch of that daytime cold medicine. I don’t even take vitamins. I don’t take anything, and so it hit me really hard and I couldn’t sleep for like two days.

While under the influence, I sparked on a movie premise. I started talking really fast and I was like, “I got this idea for a movie. I’m going to write a movie.” And I did. In a couple days in this daytime cold haze I wrote almost an entire movie, and it was the worst thing ever. It was exactly what you would expect someone to produce who has no idea what they’re doing and has taken too much cold medicine.

But it gave me something to work on and explore. I started studying screenplays, reading books, learning about screenwriting and thought, “This might be something that…well, it’s less words than a memoir.”

I ended up spending a year rewriting it and used it as my sample for grad school. But, I was still not sure if I was going to be a screenwriter or a creative non‑fiction writer. I applied to programs in both and I actually accepted an offer at Columbia in New York City for their creative non‑fiction program. A memoirist in New York City. That was going to be my life.

But, at the last minute, I decided to go to UT Austin for grad school in screenwriting.

Really, that was my crossroads. I’ve been focused on screenwriting ever since, and that grad program is where I met Scott.

Myers: That’s what I wanted to get to next. I know it’s a very prestigious program, UT Austin. How was it you two found each other ‑‑ not like literally, but as writing and creative types, that you said, “Let’s start writing together”?

Alisha: The actual screenwriting graduate MFA program is only seven people a year. So we were —

Scott: — A pretty tight little crew right from the get‑go, and so just being in workshops for two years you would develop relationships. You know what other people’s strengths are. You already have developed a shorthand just in doing workshops with each other.

After grad school, we realized, “Oh, maybe we should give this a go writing together.”

Myers: So you hadn’t written anything together at UT Austin? You just figured afterwards that you were going to give it a shot?

Scott: We had just been fans of each other’s work in the program.

Myers: Both of you were writing primarily comedies?

Scott: No. I was writing primarily comedies. Alisha was writing more dramas and grittier TV pilots, like “Breaking Bad”‑almost‑style of grittiness.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Alisha and Scott discuss what it has been like to write while separated by a few thousand miles and what the origin was for “The United States of Fuckin’ Awesome”.

The duo is repped by Paradigm and Circle of Confusion.

Twitter: @alishabrophy, @scottmiles.