Interview (Part 3): Sam Regnier (2015 Nicholl Winner)

Sam Regnier wrote the original screenplay “Free Agent” which won a 2015 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting and has been set up at CBS Films. Recently Sam and I had an excellent phone conversation in which we covered a lot of territory, his background and how he got into writing, a deep analysis of “Free Agent”, and a discussion about the writing craft.

Today in Part 3, Sam talks about the surprising route he took to figure out the sports angle in “Free Agent” and how it’s really a sports movie:

Scott: The second point of inspiration from that interview you said for “Free Agent”, this is another quote. “My wife and I had a daughter, and that influenced me as I wrote the script. There’s a character, Taylor that comes in the middle of the central character, Bridgette, has a conflict that represents my dealing with becoming a parent for the first time.”

You mentioned earlier that you had an emotional connection to the material. Maybe you could delve into that a little bit, this Taylor character, was a surprise to you. That was one of the first instincts that you had.

Sam: I wasn’t even planning to have this character. I was planning on it being a workplace drama focused solely around Bridget having a relationship with a younger man.

I remember the moment the Taylor character came to me. I was looking at the script and I thought there was something missing. I knew the emotional journey she needed to take, and she couldn’t do it with Nick because she would be too guarded in that relationship to really experience some of the closeness that she needs, some of the emotional closeness that’s different than a romantic relationship.

I was walking to work one day, and this character popped into my head. What is Bridget was dealing with a younger version, essentially, of herself? Someone that was as driven, and as difficult as she was. What would that look like? What challenges would that person have?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was writing about becoming a parent. This was within months of my daughter being born, and her befuddlement and lack of confidence in how handle this new interruption in her life was pretty much a carbon copy of what I was going through.

And on top of that complication aspect, there was feeling — what did I do to deserve this great thing that’s happening to me? It’s a feeling that Bridget also reaches throughout the script.

Scott: What better way to create conflict than to physicalize some internal aspect of stuff that Bridget has yet to resolve in the form of this Taylor. So you’re walking to work, and you have this idea of this young, teenage girl. I’m assuming pretty quickly you said, “Oh, she could be the sister of Nick.”

Sam: Yes. I needed a way, I wanted a good reason for her to be involved in the script, and honestly, the way that she becomes involved with a little bit of a cheat. You get maybe one or two cheats in a script, and I needed a really good way to make sure that they would really be in close contact.

Scott: How would you describe Taylor’s character to someone?

Sam: I would say she’s a precocious 15 year old girl who leads with her chin, leads with her own worst qualities, almost daring someone to reject her. Because her overwhelming desire is to convince you that she does not care what you think about her.

She’s gone through a lot. She’s lost her mom, and she’s on her own in the world. But she’s taken that feeling of being on her own and decided to flip it in her favor — make it as a testament to how strong she is.

That baseline “I don’t care” attitude tends to produce a conflict in almost every situation she walks into.

Scott: Like, a good offense is the best defense?

Sam: Exactly. She’s not going to wait for you to reject her, she’s going to reject you first.

A scene from “Free Agent” as read by Jimmy Smits, Freida Pinto, Kathy Baker, and O’Shea Jackson Jr.

Scott: That’s a primary nexus point for Bridget in terms of her personal transformation, this relationship with Taylor. When you’re walking to work, you came up with this idea for Taylor, I’m assuming you didn’t know, “Oh, this is where this is going to go.”

Did that trajectory and arc of that relationship between the two, how did that evolve over time?

Sam: The next key moment is the introduction of basketball into the script. Even though that is the core plot, it was the last piece to come in.

Initially, I introduced Taylor, and there were scenes where she interjected herself into Bridget’s life, but there wasn’t a really good method or vehicle for them to connect with each other; a way of physicalizing or externalizing the conflict that they were having.

The introduction of this shared love of basketball was a way for these two people that are incredibly guarded to plausibly open up to each other.

Once I found that they had this shared love of basketball, this possibility arose that they could get onto a court with each other and essentially battle each other to emotional exhaustion. To where they can reveal something really about themselves.

There are essentially four basketball scenes between Taylor and Bridget that, in my mind, are the core of the script. You can change a lot of things around them, but those beats are the story, in my mind.

Scott: I definitely want to get into that, because it’s a really interesting aspect of this story. Let’s talk about the NBA part of it. On the surface, someone would say, “Oh, this is a sports story,” but it’s not at all, really. The sports is a backdrop, correct?

Sam: Yes. It’s important, in some ways; that Bridget has this somewhat outsider role, that she’s a woman in a man’s world. Also, this idea that she is stuck between rationality and emotion very much comes from that world. At the same time you never see an NBA game, or an NBA practice. You barely see an NBA player in the script. You see one high school game at the very end.

Essentially, it’s less about the NBA and more about what it means to be part of a team. Bridgette has a history that she played basketball, she loved basketball, she had a history of being on teams. But now she’s rejecting this idea of working with other people, of teamwork. She has to work her way back to trust, learning to be part of a team again.

That’s the whole point of the title. She’s chasing this free agent, and she’s acting like a free agent in life. She’s floating, because she doesn’t want to tie herself down to anything. But she can’t be a free agent forever.

Like you said, is it about the NBA? Tangentially. Is it about sports? Yes, in that it’s about connections. It’s about teamwork. It’s about that feeling that you get when you achieve something with other people.

Scott: It’s really interesting to hear you talk about this, Sam. It speaks to the magic of the creative process. You start off the whole thing with this character, Bridget, and you’re interested in her, and the place of a woman in her early 40s, from that generation, dealing with some of those big issues.

Then you come up with this idea of Nick, and then you have the spark of this character Taylor. You’re starting to think, “How can I intersect them, and what can be the possible point of connection between these two?”

Then you take your obsession with the NBA, because you say, “I don’t want her to have a Wall Street job. I want to give her something interesting.” You said you were watching a game, and you saw a general manager for the Houston Rockets or something and said, “That’s interesting.” Is that right?

Sam: That’s exactly what happened. They were talking about him on TV, and I thought — her story would be so much richer if that was her job.

Magic is the perfect word for it, because watching all these things, all these pieces that you suspended in the air and you’re looking at them, and you’re thinking, “No way these things fit together.” Then something happens, and they all fall together into one piece.

It’s a truly bizarre experience, because there is not a great explanation for how it all fits together, as far as I’m concerned.

Scott: Yeah, you wind through the circuitous journey, end up at the NBA and all of a sudden you’ve got, “Wait a minute, I’ve got basketball. That’s what they could connect with, right?”

Sam: Sometimes the pieces fit so well that you wonder how. You wonder — where did this come from? Is this something that I saw somewhere else? How could I possibly get piece Q before I get piece B, and why do they fit so well with each other?

Tomorrow in Part 4, Sam discusses his thought process on writing a project like “Free Agent” which involved making some unconventional choices.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Sam is repped by Paradigm and Management SGC.

Twitter: @dadbasic.