Interview (Part 4): Brad Ingelsby (2012 Black List)

Scott Myers

05 Mar 2015 • 5 min read

[The movie Run All Night rolls out in theaters on Friday, March 13, reason enough to reprise my March 2013 interview with the movie’s screenwriter Brad Ingelsby.]

Brad Ingelsby is one busy writer with at least six projects in various states of development and production including Hold on to Me and Run All Night [both on the 2012 Black List] and The Raid. Plus in a nice bit of synergy for us, he sold a high-profile pitch “Merry Men” just last week to DreamWorks.

Brad was kind enough to do an interview and we had an excellent conversation. Today in Part 4, Brad delves into his approach to the craft of screenwriting.

Scott: I’d like to ask a few craft questions, if you don’t mind, Brad.

Brad: Sure.

Scott: OK, let’s start right at the very top. How you come up with story ideas?

Brad: It starts with a character, I think. It starts with a character, and then an arc, and then I sort of build the story around that arc. In “Run All Night,” it was Jimmy, an aging hit man who has to reconcile with his son and his past. And then what are those conflicts that I can begin to place around Jimmy to have an exciting story? So, it starts with a character, then an arc, and then how do I visualize that arc in a way that feels exciting and interesting to an audience.

Scott: That raises the next question. We’re in an environment in Hollywood where it’s pretty much all about superheroes, prequels, sequels, franchises, and tent poles. How do you look at a story idea like “Run All Night” and say, “You know what, this is a movie.”

Brad: That’s becoming increasingly more difficult. My background is character work. That’s how and why I got into writing. Movies like ‘Mean Streets’ and ‘Straight Time’. You couldn’t pitch those movies nowadays. The earliest of my scripts were all small character studies. So it’s difficult for me. I’m not a big idea guy and I’ve never been a big idea guy, so I have to find a way to make these characters that I find interesting appeal to a wider audience.

It’s always tricky. It unfortunately becomes about, ‘How can I throw in car chases and how can I throw in large set pieces around these characters that I love? How can I get it to a budget level that’s going to be appealing?

It’s very difficult as a writer to make a living in the indie world. So I have to find a way to make my characters work in a commercial film. A film that an audience will see a trailer for and say, ‘That looks interesting. I would pay to see that film.’

But you’re right, it’s extremely difficult to write character pieces in this environment.

Scott: How much time do you spend in prep writing?

Brad: I’m not really an outline guy. I typically have an idea, a central character, a few secondary characters and a few set pieces in mind. Then I usually just dive into the script. Sometimes that works and sometimes it backfires. I’ve written some god-awful scripts this way. But I’ve found that I’m a terrible outliner. Whenever I outline a story it invariably changes while I’m writing the script. That’s just the way it goes with characters. They have to be unpredictable. And you have to be open to them pushing back, to them telling you that the direction you thought they would go isn’t really the direction they want to go. They need room and time to grow and change. And you have to listen to them. They don’t always want to say what you want them to say. I find that exciting and sometimes frustrating.

It’s a problem for me actually because when you go up for a studio assignment you’re always asked to write a treatment or an outline and often times when I get to the script it changes in some ways. Sometimes the story changes in very small ways and sometimes it changes in larger ways. And sometimes people aren’t happy when it changes. And I totally get that. They paid for a certain story and you’re now handing them something a bit different. The frustration is understandable. So I don’t like to outline because I know that when I get to the script the characters are going to different things. And you also find things as a writer as you dive in. You find really great scenes and gems and moments that you have to pursue, even if they’re not in the outline. But you have to pursue them. Outlining makes me feel like a slave to an outline rather than a writer searching and following and listening to a set of characters I want to spend time with.

Scott: You mention characters as being of such importance, how do you go about developing them? Are there any specific tools or techniques you use in getting to know your characters?

Brad: I always want to know something about them before I meet them and I want to know exactly where they’re going to be a couple years after I leave them. I think that’s really important. I’ve found that audiences appreciate films where they leave the theater and say, “I really got to know those people.” If there’s a history that an audience is privy to, they feel comfortable. In “Run All Night” I really outlined the Shawn and Jimmy relationship. What did they do in the past? Where did they grow up? What would they do together? Where did they spend their nights? What type of girls did they like to mess around with? Only a small bit of that comes out in the script, where they’re talking about a night they spent with two girls, but I think through their conversations the audience understands that they have a long history together.

One of the things I like to do is write about the characters and what they were doing before the story starts and where they will be long after the story ends. Doing that educates me on dialogue choices. If I know where they’ve been and I know where they’re going, I can write about them in a way that doesn’t feel just about the present situation. It involves characters’ dreams and sins and damage and hope. Things that we can’t always see, but we can feel.

Scott: So essentially some sort of character biography?

Brad: Exactly, a character biography. It’s mainly incidents and locations for me. For instance, the Jimmy and Shawn relationship in ‘Run All Night’. Where did they grow up? What did they do as kids when their parents were away? What bar did they used to drink at? It’s those things that build camaraderie between people, so that when they’re talking I feel like these people have known each other their whole life. In that sense, it’s just adding to the richness of the relationship.

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