Interview [Part 3]: Lisa Joy

“Scott, you are the only screenwriting teacher I’ve ever had.” This is what Lisa Joy shared with me when we had dinner together in L.A. last fall to celebrate the recent sale of her spec script “Reminiscence” which Legendary Pictures acquired in a deal worth a reported $1.75M. In addition to her screenwriting, Lisa has been on staff and written for TV (“Pushing Daisies,” “Burn Notice”), created a graphic novel “Athena” which has been developed for TV, and co-wrote the pilot with her husband Jonathan Nolan for a TV series adaptation of the classic 1973 science fiction movie Westworld for HBO in association with J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot, and producer Jerry Weintraub.

I was thrilled when Lisa agreed to an interview, not only because of the mark she is making in Hollywood, but also because she is a genuine human being: smart and insightful, but also grounded and generous in spirit. Yes, there are people like that in Hollywood… and Lisa is one of them.

In Part 3, Lisa shares some key things she learned about writing from her experiences working on two TV series, and background on her new HBO series “Westworld” as well as “Reminiscence,” the spec script she wrote which sold to Legendary Pictures:

Scott: You’ve worked on two TV series. “Pushing Daisies,” which was on ABC and “Burn Notice” on USA Network. I know it’s hard to generalize, but what were some of the key things you learned in terms of writing from working on TV series?

Lisa: Everything was new to me when I started. I worked with Bryan [Fuller] not only on “Pushing Daisies,” but in the end we also collaborated on a pilot for USA that alas, did not go, but I did have a lot of fun working with Bryan on it and we’re both very proud of it.

I’d say that the thing I learned from him the most is to be bold and to try to stick to your vision as much as possible because no one else is going to do it and you can have death by a thousand cuts with an idea. Bryan was always very steadfast. When he knew something was good, he wasn’t going to let it go.

There’s something to that, to having the courage of your convictions. That’s not to say you should be completely impossible with people. But I often think that if an idea is really good, when you share it with people, they tend to come around because fundamentally everybody wants whatever they’re working on to succeed. It’s a matter of not fighting people, but getting them to see where you’re coming from.

Bryan has a contagious vision, and I think that was extremely helpful. He’s also virulently allergic to cliché, and that is something that is extremely handy to keep in mind, to have your inner‑Bryan in your head saying, “That’s so fucking cliché,” and to try to eradicate cliché as much as possible. That was extremely helpful.

I would say that from “Burn Notice” the thing that was most helpful to me was I really got to learn what it was like to be on set and to produce episodes from the ground up. We were sent there for pre‑production, through production and post, and oversaw every aspect of the episodes we were covering.

That’s the kind of opportunity that not a lot of people, not a lot of writers especially, get in this town. It was a wonderful education on how to interact with a crew, on dealing with effects and stunts, and figuring out what’s going on with transpo.

I truly don’t think that you can learn production unless you just survive it, unless they just dump you in on the deep end, and you have no choice but to sink or swim.

I think the ways in which people swim in production are all very different and dependent on their personality. It’s all about finding your individual style for leading and collaborating — and by being thrust into it on that show, I really got to figure mine out.

Scott: You had two big writing projects go forward in 2013. Let’s talk about, “Westworld.” It’s described in the trades as, “One of the biggest TV commitments by HBO.” A TV series with some heavy‑hitter names attached to it — Warner Brothers TV, Jerry Weintraub, J.J. Abrams and Bad Robot.

As I understand it, it’s a pilot you co‑wrote with your husband [Jonathan Nolan], an adaptation of the movie written by Michael Crichton. How did that happen?

Lisa: I have long been a huge fan of J.J. Abrams. A couple years before, I’d met with J.J. and his team, Kathy [Lingg], Athena [Wickham] and Bryan [Burk] over a pilot that ultimately went to a different studio.

As I said, everybody has their own style. But for me, writing is such a joy and getting to work in this industry is so fun that when I find people who come at it from the same perspective, who just want to create something really fun, and are extremely collaborative and extremely talented, when I find those people, I tend to never let go.

Having narrowly missed out on an opportunity to work with Bad Robot, we wanted to find another opportunity, so we were keeping in mind projects. Meanwhile, Jonah was working with them on “Person of Interest” and he loved working with J.J.

Bad Robot got the rights [to “Westworld”] from Jerry Weintraub, who had been trying to sell it as a feature for a long time. J.J., I think rightly, figured out that this would be a hell of a series because you could take the characters and the themes of the movie and really explore them in a very deep, and new and subversive way.

Currently, TV is having this renaissance, I think where you are able to do so much, and to explore so much, and to go so dark, and to go so deep with characters and the world. He figured that it would be a natural fit with somebody like HBO, and someone like us.

He brought it up, and we clicked to the idea immediately. For me, the idea, as soon as somebody said the words, “Westworld,” and, “TV show,” I was like, “Oh, I get this. This is going to be fantastic.”

It also dovetailed with a feature that I’ve been trying to write for like seven years, and I’ve never quite done it the way I wanted to. I realized I could take so many of the ideas and things that I wanted to explore in that story and put it into an idea like “Westworld.”

I think Jonah felt the same way. We’re so interested right now in explorations of the soul and of human id and the ways in which emerging technologies are changing the world and our place within it.

To be able to explore what robots and artificial technology would look like in this world, and to explore the entire Western trope through this new lens was just so enticing, it was impossible to resist. Especially when you added in the possibility of working with J.J. and his team, and Jerry, and HBO, who are just so open to big, bold ideas. We just jumped for it.

Scott: That’s moving forward this year?

Lisa: We’re writing the pilot now, and it will shoot in June, and Jonah is going to direct.

Scott: Let’s jump to another sci‑fi project, another big project from last year, your script “Reminiscence” which you wrote on spec. Terrific script, Lisa. You made your teacher very proud.

Lisa: Oh, thank you.

Scott: Here’s a description of the plot: “An ‘archaeologist’ whose technology allows you to relive your past, abuses his own science to find the love of his life.”

This is set in the near‑future. It’s a fascinating science fiction, crime‑thriller script with a very strong emotional core to it. What was the inspiration for this idea?

Lisa: I think it was floating around in my mind. It’s hard to say where inspiration comes from. I remember I was in New York, and I just woke up one morning and I was like, “Oh, I think I have an idea.” It had been something that I was kicking around as an idea for a TV show for awhile.

But at the time, I’d actually found out that I was pregnant, and it was hard for me to staff and everything. The Writers Guild does not have maternity leave, and I was scared that I’d worked so hard to get into this career and what if it was all over.

Suddenly, when I’m thinking of this idea, I was like, “I have absolutely nothing to lose. I might as well write this exactly the way that I want to write it, with no thoughts about ‘sellability’ and no thoughts about appealing to certain people. I’m just going to write something that amuses myself, because there’s really nothing else for me to do for the next nine months.”

It’s a mix of some of the things I love. I love the movies To Have and Have Not, Blade Runner, Eternal Sunshine, and the novel “Slaughterhouse Five.” If you took all of those things, and some of my favorite poems, and put them in a blender, I think you’d see a lot of those influences and the kinds of themes and world that I wanted to explore.

Once I had the idea and I thought, “I’m not going to do this as a TV pilot,” which when you do something for TV, on network especially, there are certain places you don’t go, certain things you can’t do. You have to self-censor.

When I took away the idea it was going to be a TV pilot, I said, “Write a feature. Write it exactly as you want it.” Shortly after I let myself off the hook that way, the structure for it fell into place easily.

It’s a complicated structure, the piece, but it has a symmetry to it that was poetic in the way that it fell upon itself. As soon as I found those kind of buoys bobbing in the water I knew I had to hit and that made the whole piece float, I just swam for those buoys and wrote the thing. That became the script.

It’s funny because there are scripts I’ve worked on, this one that I’m now using for the idea for “Westworld,” I worked on it for over seven years I would say, and never got it to quite the place I wanted to.

For “Reminiscence,” most of the time I spent on it in pregnancy trimesters. It was the first trimester I thought of it. My second trimester I finished the script. I just wrote in this delirious burst, and edited it for a while. We took it out and within two days it had sold.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Lisa and I dig into her script “Reminiscence.”

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

Lisa is repped by UTA.

Please feel free to stop by comments with any questions you may have. Lisa has kindly agreed to answer some of them. I’ll pass along the best of the bunch.

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