Interview (Part 3): James Acker

Scott Myers
Go Into The Story
Published in
7 min readFeb 24, 2021

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My interview with the 2020 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

James Acker

James Acker wrote the original screenplay “SADBOI” which won a 2020 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with James about his creative background, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to him.

Today in Part 3 of a 6 part series to run each day through Saturday, James delves into some of the key characters in his Nicholl-winning script “SADBOI.”

Scott: You have a really interesting group of characters, young people in particular. I’d like to get your take on them. First, Edgar the protagonist. How would you describe his state of being at the beginning of the story?

James: At the top of this, Edgar is stuck. He is stuck in the middle of what should have been a healthy transformation for him. This was important to me because I wanted to hit a problem I have with a lot of coming-of-age stories. I read a lot of coming-of-age books. I live in that YA space and I consume just about every queer-centric Young Adult story I can get my hands on. When you read a lot of one genre, you get used to the same stories getting told and hold out hope for some interesting remixes.

For example, the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope is very present in gay YA, just with a different haircut. These stories center around an affable self-deprecating, self-titled nerd. He likes Harry Potter, coffee, and cardigans. This adorkable little nugget catches the eye of some new boy who’s slightly dangerous because he has brown hair but actually soft because he likes to cook or something. New Boy brings Coffee Dork out of his shell and fixes all these character flaws for him and no one really needs to do much of legwork on their own. The main guy just needs to realize that the answer is within him all along, fall in love, and come out to his mom over a cathartic dinner. That kind of story is all over the YA market, especially with queer characters.

I wanted to see if I could do a story that at least started that way. Something very precious and summer romance, something simple and easy. What if a kid met his perfect match, his soul mate, the one person who’s finally going to bring him out of his shell? Then I’d twist it. What if that magic transformation got cut off at the head? What if that one magic person didn’t get to finish saving him? What happens when your big revelatory summer romance transformation gets interrupted?

So, at the top of “Sadboi,” Edgar is coming off of that. He had his summer romance. He had his big transformative moment, and something has happened that has kept him stuck in development. It’s like when you pull out your power cord in the middle of a computer update. It just shuts the whole thing down.

At the top of this story, Edgar finds himself halfway through his change, then the world smacked him back down again. Now he’s existing in this weird in‑between of not knowing the right way to change on his own.

Scott: That’s a really interesting insight. It helps me understand the character even more. He’s stuck. This idyllic experience he had in the summer on the beach with this character, Peter Dang, I could see now he just feels like a version of a manic pixie girl, that thing. That was pretty early on in your story development process, this character, Peter?

James: Yeah. The relationship between Peter and Edgar, that was the kickoff. That was the first idea. Peter was always supposed to come into Edgar’s life at a formative moment and leave at the worst possible time. That was the core of the story when I started.

Scott: What about Sammy? This is back at home for Edgar. There’s this fellow named Sammy, like a kind of trickster character. He’s like a shapeshifter. They have a relationship, at least sexual in nature, but it turns out that Sammy’s not been telling the truth about a key thing. There’s even a physical altercation between them. How would you describe the Sammy character and what was his role in the story?

James: I’ve seen a lot of relationships like this, especially when I was younger, and namely in queer relationships because pickings are usually so slim. The main thing you have going for you in these early relationships is that you both share this big secret and it seems like that means you guys must have a lot in common.

I wanted Sammy and Edgar’s relationship to be solely that. They only have this secret between them. They have these meetups in Sammy’s shed and they probably don’t talk about much else. Before, during, or after. I wanted Sammy in that way to be as opposite to Peter as possible.

Where Peter had such a strong connection and communication with Edgar, Sammy only assumes they’re going through the same thing. Sammy thinks he struggles just as much as Edgar because Sammy’s only struggle in life is his gayness. But the more we peel it back, we find nearly everything Sammy’s told us is just an inflated version of struggle. His lies are almost competitive so he can act like he’s got more in common with Edgar.

But his parents know he’s gay. They’ve known he’s gay. It’s all a lie. When Sammy tells Edgar he has a place to stay if he ever comes out, he knows he’s lying. When he says his parents can’t know about Edgar, it’s not about being gay. Edgar’s just not the kind of boyfriend he’d want to show to his parents.

For Sammy, I wanted to show someone who is so the main character of their own story that they’ve got tunnel vision. Sammy thinks he’s doing everything right. By the end of it, I’d say Sammy’s the only people who does not grow.

Just about everyone Edgar speaks with over the course of his week-long journey are in some way changed by their interaction. Sammy leaves not learning much because he’s doesn’t think he has to.

This big drama between him and Edgar, he can take it or leave it. Edgar is having the worst week of his life, but it’s just another one for Sammy. At best, he’ll leave with a fun story that he can tell his eventual, more well-suited boyfriend and probably reframe it that he was the victim.

Scott: One character who goes through a pretty significant arc is Ronny. Could you describe the back‑story between she and Edgar, and what you were working with there in terms of that character?

James: With Ronny, I wanted to show someone who is very similar to Edgar in a lot of the worst ways. I wanted him to have someone in his life who, if they could only get out of their own ways, they would be very close.

I wanted to present Edgar someone with his same fundamental issue. To see if he could recognize it in somebody else. Because Ronny is also clearly in distress, quite vocally at times, but no one seems to be asking her about it. It’s the main thing they link on. Edgar seeing his own problem in her is the first step he takes in becoming that better kid.

Of all the friends Edgar reconnects with, I always imagine that they probably end up the closest. Even though Ronny is the complete opposite of Peter. But in a way that’s the point. Peter made changing easy. Ronny made Edgar work for it.

Scott: There’s an exchange I seem to recall between them. This is later on after they process some stuff. You mentioned earlier when people in high school were coming up to you and going, “What’s wrong with you?” She says, I’m paraphrasing, “One thing that I’ve always responded to you, Edgar, is that you never ask what’s wrong with me. You just say, ‘What’s wrong?’” Why is that so significant to her, do you think?

James: A lot of the times, when you’re in distress ‑‑ this is just how I felt all the time growing up ‑‑ you don’t necessarily want the help, you just want people to know you’re in trouble. At least acknowledge it so I know I’m not insane.

Growing up, I just wanted someone to ask, “What’s wrong?” Not “with me.” Not like I had some problem or wasn’t enough, I just wanted a simple: “What is wrong?” It seemed like a really important distinction to me when I was kid. Looking back, it’s all insecurity.

Ronny lives in that space too. Ronny and Edgar both are people who could really use some help but are way too insecure to see a helping hand as anything more than another thing that could slap them in the face.

Tomorrow in Part 4, James talks about a poem he wrote to include in a fictional book referenced in the script which speaks to one of the key themes in the story.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

James is repped by The Gotham Group and Fuse Literary.

Twitter: @JamesUmAcker

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner since 2012, go here.

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.

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