Interview (Part 1): Ben Jacoby

This week I’m featuring an interview I did with Ben Jacoby. This has a particularly unique hook in that I have an email thread with Ben dating back to July 30, 2013. Every several months, Ben would contact me with the latest development in his writing life, so in effect the emails are a living history of his emerging screenwriting career. The fact he has been a longtime GITS follower makes his story especially satisfying.

Today in Part 1, Ben discusses how he found his way into screenwriting as an interest and some of the resources he used to start learning the craft:

Scott: As I understand it you were born in New York City. Is that right?

Ben: Yes, born and raised.

Scott: How did you find your way into writing as an interest?

Ben: I’ve always gravitated to the arts, and been completely obsessed with movies pretty much as far back as I can remember. I went through a lot of artistic stages growing up, always had a different interest. Painting for a while, music for a while. I tried to do music professionally in New York after college, writing and recording songs and playing out with a band. But I eventually realized I enjoyed the composing a lot more than the performing.

So, I retreated. I wrote prose fiction which I hadn’t done since high school. And I suddenly remembered how much I loved it. I wrote a novel, and even though it’s pretty much unreadable, it was important for me because it helped me prove to myself just that I could do it — write something long form.

The next idea I had felt better-suited for a movie. So, I tackled screenwriting format, and it just felt right, mainly because I’ve always been such a movie guy.

Scott: Let’s talk about that obsession with movies. Do you remember some films when you were a youth which inspired you?

Ben: Sure. When I was younger, the standard fare that any child of the ’80s loved. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, Die Hard, and Stripes were all amazing. I remember hitting adolescence though and something happened, I started seeing movies differently. I watched 2001, and other movies, like The Godfather, and Goodfellas, and it was like a whole new world opening up to me. I thought, movies can be art, they can say something, be challenging, not just fun entertainment. They can take you somewhere else. That’s when I started getting into Kubrick, Scorsese, the Coen brothers. As a New Yorker, Woody Allen and Sidney Lumet were both huge for me too.

Scott: That’s interesting you played music. I did that for a while, too. What was the name of your band?

Ben: Oh, we had many names.

Scott: Many names. [laughs]

Ben: Yeah, that was the problem, many names, many members. It was kind of like “Spinal Tap.” Drummers imploding on the chair, and new members replacing them all the time. I worked at a recording studio, too for a while — the Hit Factory in New York, when it was still a recording studio. Now it’s a condo.

Scott: Did you go to college?

Ben: Yeah, I went to University of Rochester, upstate New York.

Scott: Take any writing classes there?

Ben: I was an English major, music minor. I didn’t really take any creative writing classes, but I always had an interest in that. I took a couple of film classes, but not as part of a major. A lot of the students signed up because they thought they were going to be throwaway classes, and honestly most of them were. Things like “Gangster Movies, “ and “Scorsese Movies.” I mean, fun, they were a lot of fun, but not too challenging.

There was one much more film-schooly class I took. We watched The Shining, no joke, every single time the class met that semester. And then talked about a different aspect of it each day. That was fun too though.

Scott: You said you started off writing a novel. How old were you when you wrote that?

Ben: Mid‑20s or so.

Scott: It was after college.

Ben: Yeah.

Scott: The very first screenplay you wrote, as I understand it, attracted some attention. What’s the backstory on that?

Ben: I was reading a lot of non-fiction then, and I discovered Howard Zinn, “A People’s History of the United States.” He gave this very brief mention of an event during the Great Depression, a coal miners’ movement in Pennsylvania, where the miners were out of work, and essentially broke onto the coal corporation’s property and mined it for themselves. At first just to cook food and keep warm in the winter.

Eventually these out-of-work miners ended up building a mini-empire, and became wealthier and more powerful than the actual coal companies. I read this and I just thought, this has to be a movie. So, I did a lot of research and I wrote a fictionalized account of that event.

Scott: And what happened with that script?

Ben: Eventually, nothing. But it was a great learning experience. It got me a manager, and we got a producer attached, and it went out around town to a few buyers. But it fizzled. Honestly, I wasn’t ready for it to sell. It was my first screenplay and I really just didn’t know what I was doing. I realized that if I’m going to do this seriously I have to take a step back and really learn the craft. Read screenplays, study movies from a writer’s perspective, and learn how to become a storyteller.

Scott: As it turns out you and I go back a ways. In fact, we have an email thread dating to July 2013 when I received my first note from you. If you don’t mind, I’d like to quote from that because this email thread is really fascinating, the experiences that you’ve had. You wrote:

“First, I want to say I’ve been following your blog for a few years now. I really can’t express in email how much it’s meant to me. Of course, you’ve posted a tremendous amount of insight and information without which I and other writers would be lost. There’s also a celebration of movies and creativity unlike any other blog out there.

“Most importantly, there’s the motivation you’re continually doling out to us hungry dreamers. People like you, John August, and Craig Mazin are my screenwriting mentors and the best teachers I could have ever asked for.”

First of all, thanks for that. But, tell me. here you are. You write this first script and you realize, “I need to develop my chops here and understand, learn the craft as much as possible.” You were using online screenwriting resources primarily. I’m curious, how did you do that? What were they and how did you apply what you were reading online to your writing process?

Ben: I was just hungry for information, and there was very little even just five years ago. You would go to the bookstore and see these horrible books about How to Sell Your Screenplay for a Million Dollars and they’re just so incredibly unhelpful. I never read any of the screenwriting guru books because I just don’t think you can approach art that way. But, to listen to advice from people who had been there, who are actively doing it, advice about the craft and the life, the struggle… that’s what’s helpful.

The online screenwriting advice landscape has evolved so quickly, exponentially. When I first started it seemed so esoteric, so closed off to outsiders. The business and the craft, both.

But when I found John August’s blog, Craig Mazin’s old blog which isn’t even up anymore, and your blog, suddenly it was all accessible. So I just read everything I could, listened to as many podcasts as possible about the craft, the business, the life. It was more comforting than anything, I think, just knowing that there were people out there who had done it, who had succeeded. Being able to read how they’d done it, how they overcame hurdles and accomplished milestones — that kept me going much more than any tactics or craft advice could have.

Scott: It really is a sea change. Thinking back to when I was breaking in in 1987 there were just literally a couple of screenwriting books, and that was it. It was almost impossible to get a hold of scripts, you had to literally beg agents’ assistants to get printed copies for you. Now there’s so many resources online. It’s amazing.

Ben: I know. Now it’s unlimited. Frankly, there may even be too much out there. I wouldn’t have even known who to call and beg for a script back in the day. In New York when I was growing up, they had those tables on the street where you could buy printed scripts. I don’t know if they were real or just transcripts, but I bought them as a kid, and that was pretty much all I had.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Ben talks about two indie features he wrote which got produced including one starring Bruce Dern and Peter Fonda.

Ben is repped by Verve.