Interview [Part 1]: Brian Duffield

In Hollywood development circles, Brian Duffield is a popular figure. As evidence, two of his original screenplays have made the Black List: Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch and Jane Got a Gun, putting him on the 10 Screenwriters to Watch in 2013 list. In addition, he sold his spec script Monster Problems to Paramount in 2012 and has written on a big budget franchise movie: Insurgent. And if that’s not enough, Duffield is slated to make his debut as a director on his own script Vivien Hasn’t Been Herself Lately.

Brian is an active presence on Twitter (you should definitely follow him: @BrianDuffield) and we’ve gotten to know each other over the years, so I was pleased to have the chance to interview him.

In Part 1, Brian talks about how his experiences as a youth influenced his approach to writing:

Scott: Let’s start with your background. As I understand it, you have an interesting geographical thing going in that as a youth, you grew up in Pennsylvania, then you moved quite young to Ireland. Is that right?

Brian: Yeah, totally.

Scott: What was that like being a young person there? What memories do you have of that?

Brian: It was kind of miserable. In ’95, my parents decided to move to Ireland to be missionaries and so they took me and my two sisters along with them. We lived like an hour outside of Philadelphia growing up.

The transition to farm country Ireland, we were in County Kildare for a while, was pretty jarring. For instance, the school I went to there had three grades in one room with one teacher. So it was very much “Little House on the Prairie”-esque.

There was never a point where I wanted to stay in Ireland. I graduated high school and instantly moved back to the states the first chance that I got in 2004. I definitely had an unusual upbringing. I delivered lambs, which was crazy. At the time I did not enjoy it but thinking back on it, it was pretty interesting. I think it shaped me to be the person, writer, I am now.

Scott: Can you look back to specifically some ways in which that experience did affect the way you approach writing?

Brian: Yeah, absolutely, I think about it a lot. In terms of craft, I think what happened was when I was in Pennsylvania I was very much into pop culture, so I was a huge Jurassic Park nerd, a huge Star Trek: The Next Generation nerd, and then we moved to Ireland; both because of how conservative my parents were but also because it was Ireland, there was like a huge vacuum, in terms of pop culture that was getting to me or movies that were getting to me. I think there were at least four or five years between going to the movies when I was in Ireland just because there were so few theatres and I think what happened then was the school library, they had those junior novelization books and I would get those a lot.

That was kind of how we went to the movies, it was sneaking in those Junior Novelization books. I remember I snuck in Lost in Space. They had one for ET and Jurassic Park. Then eventually I began writing my own Jurassic Park sequels, and even if I wasn’t writing them, I was coming up with them.

It’s like learning the guitar, where you learn three or four chords, and you play Bob Dylan and Oasis songs. Then eventually start to realize that you can put your own chords together and make your own songs. That’s how I slipped into screenwriting.

So that’s how it kind of came about. I think most writers obviously are watching movies all the time, so I think I developed my voice by accident because I had nothing to mimic.

With regards to how Ireland effects my writing today, throughout all of my stuff there’s definitely a theme of loneliness. People have picked up on that. I think that has always stuck with me and I can see traces of that in everything that I write even if I don’t intend on it. Probably just because I’m a sloppy writer.

Scott: You know that’s interesting because you really do have a distinctive voice in your scripts. Even the fact of the choices you make, the spec scripts you’ve written, they’re such divergent genres. I wonder whether having grown up in that kind of unique Petri dish over in Ireland, not like typical Americans living in suburbs that have access to movies all the time, that experience allowed your voice to emerge in its own unique way.

Brian: Yeah, I think that’s true. I didn’t realize my genre hopping was a little unusual until after “Bridesmaid” sold. It was never something I was aware of. It was definitely an interesting moment when I realized that everyone just thought I was going to keep doing rom-coms. I think “Bridesmaid” is still the one and only romantic comedy I ever thought about writing. But you know, I love all different kinds of movies and books, and I’ll watch and read every genre. So it never really popped into my head that I couldn’t go from one genre to another.

I think how I start off writing from a scene or from a character, and then kind of figure out which genre best suits that. I’ve never thought of just writing a rom-com or a monster movie as a starting point. I think I’d be really bad at that.

Scott: So is it fair to say then that you have more of an instinctual approach in terms of the material you choose when you develop stories, as opposed to studying business trends, what’s selling, that sort of thing?

Brian: Yeah, I definitely think about the business. I mean for me it’s a matter of… For instance, like for Monster Problems, the process of that was that I had been single for a three or four year stretch basically. It was like the three or four years where I just moved to L.A. It was like a Friday night and I was with my friends and it was like 9 p.m.

And they all started doing the “We’re tired, we’re going home” thing. I realized that they were all married and I was the one single guy, and it was 9 p.m. on a Friday night and I had no one to even hang out with.

So I was miserable in my own life and I thought that was a really interesting idea for a character and a movie. It was also a theme that I was living through. And being single can effect your self-worth a lot. I thought that was really interesting to write about.

So for a few weeks I was figuring out this character, but it was set in modern day L.A. It was basically an avatar for me trying to work out my single problems. I hated him so much as a character in modern times because I just wanted him to do all the things I was too scared of doing like online dating or going out and meeting people.

So while I was trying to figure out how I could get to like him more and make him fit in a genre where I wasn’t frustrated with him for not getting on the Internet, I quickly started trying to think about different worlds that don’t have the Internet and don’t have easy access to dating.

That’s how the world of Monster Problems came up. It’s the same kind of quest this guy had in the original, about a guy who is single who goes through this journey to get a girlfriend and then realized his self worth on his own.

Putting him in a world where there were giant monsters which gave him this ability to have these really physical obstacles to overcome instead of just overcoming things inwardly. Then I think I pitched it to my managers as a John Hughes movie with giant monsters. I remember I wanted to call it Raptorpocalypse just because.

That’s how all of my processes for spec have always been, just starting off with that theme and that character and figuring out what’s the best place to put them with the most dangerous obstacles.

I never learned how to do that. I think it’s just always how my brain has put things, for better or worse.

Tomorrow in Part 2, we dig into Brian’s script Monster Problems.

Brian is repped by Gersh and Circle of Confusion.

Twitter: @BrianDuffield.

Instagram: http://instagram.com/briancduffield.

Comment Archive