Interview (Part 1): Andrew Friedhof (2015 Nicholl Winner)

Andy Friedhof wrote the original screenplay “Great Falls” which won a 2015 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently I had the opportunity to chat with Andy about his background as a writer and his award-winning screenplay.

Today in Part 1, Andy talks about growing up in Australia and how he’s gone about learning the craft of screenwriting:

Scott Myers: You’re from Australia. Where’d you grow up and how did you find your way into writing as an interest?

Andy Friedhof: I was born in Sydney. I lived here until I was about five. Then, my parents had what we call here a ‘sea-change’. Do you have that concept in America?

Scott: No. What is that, ‘sea-change’?

Andy: Yeah, ‘sea-change’. People leave the city and move to a coastal region or, if they move to a rural area they call it a “tree-change”. It’s basically when you move out of the urban area in order to have a better lifestyle for your children. My parents did that, moved to an hour and a half north of Sydney. I grew up there. It was a working class area at the time and the high school I went to was pretty bad, academically speaking

The best way to demonstrate that is that the student who scored the highest our HSC, which is Australia’s equivalent of the SATs, wrote the answers on her legs underneath her skirt and checked them while she was doing the test.

Scott: Wow. You have to admire her ingenuity.

Andy: Yeah, that’s true. I had some encouraging teachers there, but I never had any inkling that I could become a writer. I had an interest in books, but the fact of the matter is that I really felt like I didn’t have anything new or interesting to say at that stage and probably felt that way well into my 20s.

I was quite mathematically-minded when I was growing up, so I decided to study engineering. I went to university and did a double degree in Engineering and International Studies, which involved a year of study in Germany. After that, I ended up working at the railways here in Sydney as a civil engineer.

But, throughout that period, I never really lost a passion for writing. I kept writing. Mainly humor pieces. They were published in “McSweeney’s” or the university paper or on my blog. I was interested in humor like Woody Allen’s “Without Feathers” and that sort of thing. Then I came across “The Wire,” the TV series. I was particularly enamored with Russian literature when I was young and, this observation’s been made before, but that TV series has a similar structure to a serialized 19th century novel. The depth and richness of those books. I thought, “Oh, wow, there’s an avenue here to write that sort of expansive material in the television space.”

That was what initially sparked my interest in screenwriting. I read the bible and the pilot for that TV show. As I mentioned before, I’m fairly mathematically minded, so I think the form of the screenplay, with that mixture of literature and mathematical structure, lent itself to my abilities.

While I’d dabbled in writing short stories and novels before, a screenplay was the first thing I was really able to finish. I really enjoyed the process of doing that.

It definitely wasn’t a great screenplay, my first one, and neither were the next four or five, but it was something I was able to complete and feel a sense of satisfaction. It started out more as an enjoyable hobby while I was working as an engineer.

Scott: I’ve talked different writers who come from a variety of backgrounds and it does seem like people who have a scientific or particularly mathematical bent, they tend to relate to the narrative form of screenwriting, an emphasis on structure, compared to say novels. Engineering the same thing?

Andy: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people refer to screenplays as blueprints for movies. I guess that’s sort of true in my view. There is a natural form, a natural grammar to films, I think. If you’re able to wrap your mind around that, I think you can easily tackle the form.

Scott: So, you’re in Australia, you stumble on “The Wire”. I think you’re absolutely right, it is like a great piece literature, almost Charles Dickensian. You get the ‘bible’ for that. You read the pilot. That was one thing you used to delve into the craft.

But also in your comments in accepting the Nicholl Award, you thanked John August and Craig Mazin saying you considered yourself, “A proud alumnus of Scriptnotes University.”

Andy: Yeah. There are probably only three really useful avenues for people to learn the craft, and the first one is just to watch films obsessively. If you don’t enjoy watching films, I don’t think this is the area that you want to work in. That was something I definitely dived into, particularly over the last three or four years, when I started taking screenwriting more seriously

Before I go further, I should probably tell you a little about my background. Where I was working, we had a conservative government elected to the state parliament. I was working for a state organization and they said, “We want to get rid of all this dead weight,” and so they offered voluntary redundancies, just general redundancies, around the organization to anyone who was interested in leaving.

At the time I thought I could probably keep working in this very secure job for the next 40 years, or I could take a chance, and spend the next three or four years working solidly full‑time on developing my craft.

I took the risk and decided to do that. I went back and did my Master’s in Creative Writing at Sydney University. Over the last four years, I’ve really just spent my time focused on developing my understanding of the craft. Learning screenwriting is a little like learning a foreign language. You can read all the books you like but it’s much easier to become fluent if you immerse yourself in that world..

So, to return to your question, you need to absorb films, you need to read produced scripts, you need to listen to the experiences of working screenwriters. Those three avenues are the best ways to learn the craft. The beginning of Scriptnotes perfectly paralleled my decision to leave that job. I think John and Craig started their podcast a couple of weeks after I made that decision, so the timing was perfect.

From episode 1 to 200 plus, I’ve been listening along and as I’ve developed as a screenwriter, that’s been my soundtrack to that development. It’s been really useful. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about screenwriting, and a lot of forums where people want to present hard and fast rules about how you should do it, but there’s real value in listening working screenwriters.

The most useful thing I picked up from John and Craig was there are no hard and fast rules. You can develop your voice anyway you want. That gave me a feeling of freedom to do that.

Scott: It’s a terrific metaphor, learning the craft of screenwriting is like learning a foreign language, that you really need to immerse yourself in that cinematic culture, this idea of watching movies, reading scripts, and then paying attention to working screenwriters or professional screenwriters.

That last point in particular, why would you put your faith in someone who hasn’t worked in the front lines in Hollywood in particular, if that’s your goal, what they have to say, particularly the sort of gurus out there who have their rules and formulas, whereas like you said, John and Craig basically said, “No, there are no rules.”

Andy: I think Craig particularly bristles against the concept of the screenwriting guru who acts sort of like a gatekeeper laying down the laws from on high. Screenwriting is a very democratic craft. There’s no reason anyone can’t try their hand and see if they have the chops to make it.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Andy talks about what inspired him to write “Great Falls”.

Here is video of Andy’s acceptance speech at the Nicholl Award ceremony:

Andy is repped by ESA and Circle of Confusion.

Twitter: @andrewfriedhof.