Interview [Part 3]: Jason Mark Hellerman

One script that received a lot of attention in the 2013 Black List is “Shovel Buddies” by Jason Mark Hellerman (it garnered 22 votes). I was quite struck by the story — “Over 24 hours, four teenage friends try to complete the “Shovel List” (a will/bucket list) left for them by their best friend before he died of Leukemia” — and reached out to talk with Jason about it. We ended up talking for 90 minutes, an excellent conversation covering a lot of territory. I think aspiring screenwriters will find Jason’s insights particularly relevant as we got into quite a bit of depth about his process of being outside the business to inside it.

Today in Part 3, Jason recounts what inspired him to write “Shovel Buddies”:

Scott: I’ve read that the inspiration for “Shovel Buddies”, you had some friends who had died from leukemia, and so there’s a personal connection. How did the actual idea of moving from that to a concept for a story evolve?

Jason: It’s two‑fold. I always wanted to write a coming‑of‑age story. I was on the plane to Boston University, writing down my ideas, with these big hopeful eyes, like “Oh, my God, this is going to be my mark. This is what I’m going to do.”

I was obsessed with this thing called “Sammy’s Place”. Growing up, a girl in my neighborhood died. She was six years old, and her parents built this place in the woods, near my house, called Sammy’s Place. It was an outdoor amphitheater where you could go and watch shows and listen to nature. That was what they did to commemorate her.

Because it was in the woods, and no one went, it wound up being the breaking grounds for my brother, my friends and I where we’d sip our first beer, smoke our first cigarettes, and bring girls there. It wound up being this coming‑of‑age place where the best things in our lives happened. I always knew that was supposed to be a story, and it was supposed to be a place.

In college, I had a wonderful mentor named Arnold Markley. He was an English professor, and he was the first person to put it in my brain that I could be a screenwriter. Before that, I was writing really long short stories, not quite novellas but they were long.

He sat me down one day and said, “Look, Jason, no one’s going to pay you to write op‑ed pieces. You’re funny, and you like to create characters. Have you thought about writing movies?” I was like, “No, I haven’t thought about anything. I’m a sophomore in college. I’ve thought about doing your homework, and I’ve thought about the girl that’s sitting next to me,” but I really didn’t have an idea about what to do.

He said, “I want to introduce you to the film faculty. I want you to meet some people. Maybe, you could even be a scholar, maybe get your doctorate in film,” blah, blah, blah. He was amazing, and he was wonderful. He’d stay late, and he’d read anything I’d give to him.

When I was a junior in college, he sent out an email one day. “I’ve been diagnosed with leukemia. I’m going to be in treatment, and we’re going to try and do the bone marrow stuff.” Over the next year and a half, he struggled. He retired from teaching, then came back, then retired again.

Then, one day, I remember walking across the campus at Penn State. This was right when Facebook had sort of taken off. I’m trying to remember, like 2008 or 2009, and I remember seeing a Facebook post that said, “We lost a great person today. RIP, Arnold.”

I thought, “How many people do you know named Arnold?” I was like, “What the fuck?” My mom was working for Penn State at the time. She called me. “Mom, what happened?” She said, “You guys were really close. Arnold passed away this morning.” I just remember being shocked and broken.

I didn’t even get to say thank you. I didn’t even know where his advice was going to take me. It stuck with me, and it stuck with me for a long time.

I went to grad school. I tried to write “Sammy’s Place.” It didn’t work the way I wanted it to, which no screenplay ever does, first one out, and I was a little bitter. It was really about having a mentor who died. In this one, Sammy was still a kid and he died. It was more about a mentor relationship than anything else.

I couldn’t crack it, but I knew something was there. I knew the idea of being a shovel buddy, which is taking your friend’s stuff that they don’t want anyone to see like his porno mags, his cigarettes. I knew that was a strong concept, and that’s something other people get.

I sat on the story, and I wrote three other scripts. Because the universe is kind of awful sometimes, I went to grad school. I sat on “Shovel Buddies.” I was moving to LA, and I found out that one of the kids I went to Penn State with, who was a source of inspiration for me — his name was Michael Chobot, he was nominated for two Emmys in sound design — he called and said, “Hey, man, I have leukemia.” I said, “What? How’s that possible? That’s not a real thing. You’re 25 years old. You’re an ultra marathon runner. You worked on The Blind Side in sound design. You worked on a Pokemon movie in sound design. You were one of the youngest members of the union.”

Mike moved to New York without fear, lived on a mattress in Coney Island, lived off 35‑cent hot dogs, and did the night shift sound editing and kept getting promoted. He was everybody’s litmus test that you could make it in the business because no one was as driven as him.

Hearing that he was dying really fucked with my head. He and I wound up talking a lot because he was getting chemo at night, and I was in Los Angeles. He would send me some screenplay ideas. I’d sort of rift on them because he knew I wanted to be a writer. He had nothing to do because he was sort of being quarantined because when you have leukemia you’re susceptible to diseases, so he’s shut out.

I would send him DVDs as I would come across screeners and stuff like that. Please don’t sue me, MPAA. I would send him all the Oscar screeners, and we’d talk.

One day, he stopped answering my texts. I had just mailed him Fruitvale. This was recently. I sent it to him, and I got an email from his sister: “I’m not sure if you heard, but Mike died yesterday morning.” I couldn’t afford the flight home, so I missed the funeral.

When Arnold died, I was your typical 21‑year‑old. Open a bottle of Jameson, let’s get drunk, and let’s forget about it. But when Mike died, because he had the same dream as me, and because I felt like he acted on that dream and he deserved that dream to come true, maybe more so than anybody I’ve ever met, and he wasn’t going to get it, I felt like I owed it to him not to be an asshole and get drunk.

I owed it to him just to write it down and to keep writing it down. So, I reopened “Shovel Buddies”, and just kept writing. I wrote the parent characters into it who didn’t exist anymore, and I wrote the emotional parts of it, the parts where the kids are upset and crying. I just wrote, and I wrote, and I wrote.

Every time I’d be pissed, or upset, or I’d realize how expensive Los Angeles is and how I can’t afford anything, or if I’d get a parking ticket or a traffic ticket, or I’d be at work until eleven at night. Anything that I wanted to complain about that I thought, “Man, this fucking sucks,” I would just sit and write “Shovel Buddies”.

I guess it worked. Looking back, it shocks me that it worked. I just took every sort of frustration I was feeling and put it into that script.

Scott: That’s an amazing story. I’m obviously sorry for those losses, but you’re doing what you can do to honor them.

Jason: Exactly. I’d print out “Shovel Buddies” at work, and I’d write on top of every page, “How do you honor Sammy?” because that was, I guess, the goal of the script. In my brain, it was the only way I could honor Mike, the only way I could honor Arnold was to write this, was to make it the best script because if the world’s going to be unfair, I need to seize the unfairness and talk about it.

That, to me, was the lesson I learned from both of them drying, and from growing up at a place like “Sammy’s Place”, was how unfair the world was going to be, and how much I wanted to right the wrongs of the world.

Scott: I always tell my students and blog readers, too, “Whatever idea you come up with, no matter how commercially viable you think it is, make sure it’s something you’re passionate about, something you have an emotional resonance with, a connection to.” I think it’s probably safe to say, at least your experience with “Shovel Buddies”, you would agree with that.

Jason: Absolutely. If you’re not writing about something that makes you uncomfortable to talk out with other people, if you’re not writing about something that is so much of your soul that you don’t want to share it with people because you’re afraid they’re going to judge you, then you’re not writing about shit.

It’s completely worthless if you don’t feel some sort of hesitation that you’re, like, naked in front of other people with what you’re doing it, then it’s not going to matter. I think you have to attack every story. Again, whether it’s We’re the Millers or whatever. That idea that it’s got to have at least some part of the struggles we all understand and are afraid of.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Jason delves into the complex process involved in writing his script “Shovel Buddies”.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Jason is repped by CAA and Management 360.

Twitter: @JasonHellerman.

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