Interview (Part 4): Melissa Iqbal (2014 Nicholl Winner)

U.K.-based writers Melissa Iqbal wrote the original screenplay “The Death Engine” which won the 2014 Nicholl Fellowship in screenwriting. Recently Melissa and I had a transatlantic phone call in which we covered a lot of territory in an excellent conversation.

Today in Part 4, Melissa and I continue to delve into her creative process in writing “The Death Engine”:

Scott: Third major character is James. How would you describe James, his job as a ‘reaper’ with this outfit known as the ‘Death Engine’?

Melissa: James basically sells people their perfect death, an end to their perpetual lives, but his job is more psychiatrist than assassin. He does his research and orchestrates a tailor-made death for each client. Some people want to die softly and quietly. Some people want to experience fear or excitement. Each death is as unique as the person. He’s an interesting character in the sense that he has to deal with death on a daily basis in a world where that’s seen as taboo.

Scott: He’s been assigned Lily. She’s decided she wants to — what they call euphemistically — achieve a permanent end. James is at the top of the list of dispatching clients quickly, yet can’t seem to pull the trigger with Lily.

What is it about her that distinguishes her from anyone else? In fact, to the point where, eventually, he falls in love with her.

Melissa: For me, it’s in the scene where James interviews her. He has a form full of standard questions and when Lily gives her answers, they’re not answers that can fit neatly inside his tick boxes. They’re full of passion and yearning, things James has never heard before. In that moment, he realizes he has become disillusioned with his job and begun to see clients, not as individuals, but as statistics and likelihoods. Lily surprises him and that’s pretty difficult to do to someone who’s lived for so long and basically seen it all.

Scott: I’d like to zoom in on that conversation. It’s an interview upfront, a voice‑over. We don’t know it’s James and Lily. At the end, we see it in a flashback. I’d like to go through that dialogue, because that really gets to the heart of what you’re saying.

This is Lily responding to the question about what death she envisions for herself. She says, “I think it would be sudden, like in one big burst and I’d die all at once. It would be as if all the life of me, all the years I’ve lived began to buckle and overlap. It would be like drowning but in an instant. Though my body feels as if it were falling and my breath is impossible to catch, I’d feel like I’m lifting too in every direction. It would be incredible and violent and devastating like how a star ends, in a great flash of life preceding it’s demise. Like a farewell cry, not a scream, but triumphant laughter. Like beating an old friend at a game.”

That’s really evocative writing. First of all, do you remember writing that?

Melissa: Yeah. [laughs] Yeah, I do. I remember thinking that it had to be a moment of truth for Lily, a moment when she could really express herself and be totally honest.

Scott: There’s such passion in her words, isn’t there?

Melissa: Yeah. I don’t think that’s something she’s used to because there’s nothing she feels passionate about anymore, but death is the one thing she’s yet to experience, so it’s exciting for her to imagine what it might feel like.

Scott: That brings up another thing I got out of reading that, was that she has the desire to feel something real. You have this wonderful little motif of flowers running through the story. There’s the white flowers that were in her dining room. They’re perfect. They’re eternal. Yet they’re fake. It’s a nice little metaphor for how she approaches that. This idea of Sleeping Beauty caught up with me, too. It’s like these longevity people have that mentality. It’s almost like they’re walking around in a coma.

Melissa: Yes. Time stops for them almost.

Scott: There’s a tiny bit of business with James that suggests he wants a real life, too. He’s got this dog named Twenty Two. Could you talk about what the dog represents to James and why doesn’t he do like everyone else and give their dogs a longevity formula shot and keep him alive forever?

Melissa: Twenty two is representative of James’ feelings about death and to some extent explains why he’s a ‘reaper’. He won’t give his dog the injection because he’s done that before and says that, after a while, the life sort of just goes out of their eyes. It’s like a spiritual death, they simply live too long, perhaps they experience their own version of the ‘melancholia’. James also doesn’t want to deny himself that experience of mourning the death of his dog. He wants to experience even the painful things in life, just like his clients, because that’s life, the good and the bad.

Scott: That’s right. There’s this tiny exchange between Lily and James. It’s pretty late in the story, where Lily says, “I feel like I’m sinking.” James says, “It happens. Otherwise, how would we know when we’re floating?”

Isn’t that one of the story’s themes? Like we can’t know when we’re floating without the ability to experience sinking. We need to have death in order to define life.

Melissa: That’s definitely at the heart of the story, it’s why I wanted to write the script. It’s something I really believe in. Death is a part of life.

Scott: At one point, James is confronted by his boss at the Death Engine about his reluctance to terminate Lily. The boss says, “The Death Engine is a big hungry beast, and it feeds on the dead, not the living. Lily Harding’s paid for a death.”

Is that something James and Lily share, that they both feel imprisoned in a way? Her, by her eternal life and him, by the requirements of this job?

Melissa: Yeah, because at the end of the day ‘The Death Engine’ is a business. If someone pays for a death, James is required to deliver it come what may. He isn’t allowed to get distracted by love or larger philosophical questions.

Scott: Let’s talk about the title ‘The Death Engine’ because that has a double meaning, doesn’t it? It’s the name of the organization, but it’s a dynamic that exists within humans.

Death is a physical process, at least as far as normal people are concerned, the inevitability of that. Even with longevity and Lily, even her condition of melancholy, we see this almost internal drive toward a permanent event. Isn’t that the dual meaning of the Death Engine?

Melissa: Yeah, I like the idea that the ‘melancholia’ is something that essentially evolved to combat the fact that mankind have found a cure for death. It’s unnatural to live forever, so nature has stepped in to produce a drive, something that will push people toward the desire to die.

Scott: I’m going to probably confound you with this association, but it occurred to me that it’s like Jurassic Park, that idea we can control this idyllic environment, but then the chaos theory of it. It’s like nature finding a way to deal with the eternal life.

Melissa: Absolutely!

Scott: Let’s talk about the ending. I don’t want to give it away. You managed to pull off something pretty remarkable in that it feels like it fulfills every character’s narrative destiny, the three of them, Lily, James, and Anthony while also respecting Lily’s inner need.

Did you have that ending early on? The resolution of what was going to happen, particularly with Lily? Was that something that you always had and stuck with?

Melissa: Definitely. It’s the one thing I can’t change. I can’t write a different version of that ending. For me it encompasses what the story is really about.

Tomorrow in Part 5, Melissa talks about the craft of screenwriting and what it was like to win the Nicholl Fellowship.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Melissa is repped by Casarotto Ramsay & Associates.

Twitter: @Azureix.