Interview (Part 4): Sean Malcolm
My interview with the 2019 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.
Sean Malcolm wrote the original screenplay “Mother” which won a 2019 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Sean his background as a screenwriter, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to him.
Today in Part 4, Sean talks about the carefully orchestrated stages the story’s Protagonist goes through — from pious woman to killer.
Scott: Let’s unpack that because when you read that article, you said where the woman becomes a sniper, she lost both of her kids. I’m sure I would have the same reaction, like, “Wow, how did that happen?” That’s really I thought the emotional core in some respects to this story, how this woman in her 30s takes up a rifle and trains to be a sniper in this guerrilla ground war.
First, you don’t dance around the question of all. In fact, you lean into it. At one point, Farida is talking with this free Syrian army soldier that has befriended her. The boy, one of the rebels fighting against the Russian‑back government, he’s in her apartment and they’re sharing a meal.
At one point she says, his rifle’s leaning up against the wall, “I could never do what you do.” He thinks for a moment and the soldier says, “No one is born a killer. We only fight because we have to.” He stares hurting. He says, “Maybe we’re not so different, you and I.”
She looks at him, not sure she agrees but unwilling to challenge him. Then he says, “I don’t know whether it’s instinct or destiny, but I know it’s His will,” talking about Allah.
The subject matter of being able to kill someone gets raised. She’s obviously got the resources to become what she becomes. That’s the first stage, isn’t it, in laying the groundwork for her transition into the sniper capability?
Sean: Exactly. You hit the nail on the head. That’s foreshadowing her own evolution. In the case of the woman who I had read about in real life, it wasn’t politically driven. It was simply that she had nothing to live for because her family was dead. You would think when you hear somebody becomes a sniper, it seems like a revenge‑driven behavior.
It was as revenge and hatred for the regime, but also no other options and nothing to live for. I wanted to foreshadow ‑‑ that goes back to your comment about everyone having a gray area ‑‑ that even the rebels, and that person turns out to be very ill‑intentioned and it all goes south very quickly, but that even he could still recognize that there was a point in time when he also wasn’t a soldier, or a born killer, that first time that he killed somebody. There was a transition that occurred, and a hardening, a coarsening of the spirit that takes place. It becomes easier. That’s the nature of war.
That’s the nature of any type of scenario where you have war crimes taking place. It’s a gradual transition from a battle over resources or politics, or whatever, to certain elements becoming so hardened and desensitized. There’s a cheapening of human life, so much so that the unthinkable can take place, and people can stare right at it or simply look the other way and let it happen. I wanted to hint that that was coming for her, and show that he had enough self‑awareness to realize that even he had gone through that transition. It doesn’t give him empathy, but it does give him dimension.
Scott: It’s quite dramatic where he says, “Here’s what I can tell you. When it’s your life or theirs, the act is simple.” He leans forward. “Raise the barrel, resting it on your arm or the windowsill,” demonstrating with his arms. Focus the scope, finding the target in the crosshairs. Beat. Hold the butt tight against your cheek to move with the recoil. Beat. Exhale deeply so your breathing doesn’t move the barrel. Beat. When all your breath has left your body, when not one ounce remains, pull the trigger. Physics does the rest.”
That’s, in a way, yet another stage in her process where he’s giving her, unintentionally I guess, a training lesson about how to fire a rifle.
Sean: That’s right. That scene, it’s interesting because originally, when I had him go through those mechanics it was because when she first does it, she’s going to use the rifle and shoot somebody ‑‑ this is in a prior draft ‑‑ on her own. It didn’t seem realistic that she would even know what to do and be any good of a shot at distance, not having ever been trained.
There was a tactical purpose there. Plus I loved the poetry of it. If they want, folks can go on YouTube and see the live reading that was done at the awards ceremony of that scene. It’s quite dramatic. I have to tell you, it was such a thrill to have live actors doing that scene. Tyrese Gibson, who plays the soldier in that scene, milked it for all it’s worth. It was so cool.
I’ve never done table reads or anything for this script. Having it in a theater with a thousand people and have the scene read live, and have him go through that whole scene up to where he fires it, the whole theater shook in their seats when he popped the trigger. It was pretty amazing. I’m pretty proud of that sequence.
And I was lucky. When they asked us what scenes we would recommend for the live reading, and it had to be fairly tight, and X number of pages, and multiple characters, and mostly something dialogue‑heavy, because they’re not physically acting it on the stage, they’re just reading. Some of the other writers ‑‑ we were all talking to each other ‑‑ were struggling to figure out what scene would work. I knew instantly for my script. I was fortunate because I had this scene that captured the entire turning point of her character, her story, and is very heavy. And I think it came over really well.
Scott: There’s a couple more stages in this process. One is this guy who, you said ill‑intentioned, he attempts to rape Farida. She kills him. There’s that. That’s a big step in the process. Then she’s in her apartment and she sees a friend and their son across the way being hassled and threatened by some government soldiers.
She raises the rifle to the window. Your description, “Rita steadies herself breathing in and out. Then with one last exhale holds her breath and the scope is absolutely still, focused right on the first soldier’s chest as he yells, his gun aimed at Amira’s head.” I guess that’s her friend. “Farida pulls the trigger. A single pop and he goes down.”
You know the language system in Hollywood. You got to earn this. You really had to earn that moment where a young mother is going to go from being a religiously devout woman to the point where she’s willing to raise a rifle and kill someone. You did a really good job. My question to you is, how arduous was that? How much work did you put into earning that moment?
Sean: Thank you, first, for the compliment. It was the key part of her journey that had to feel real. So much of the thought was about the stages that led to this, the desperation that she’s feeling with her husband disappearing, the violence that’s around them. Then her son has been nearly killed.
Then they’ve had to flee the hospital. She’s trying to protect her son. They’re running out of food. Then, of course, the prior scene where somebody that she trusted because she needs some food ends up turning into this situation where she’s raped. Then she kills him in self‑defense. The pressure just keeps building, a continual turning of the screw.
It’s foreshadowed by the stuff we just talked about. It’s the setup and the description of how to do it properly. Then she kills somebody, but it’s only out of self‑defense. Then the next step in the progression is defending someone else out of urgency and using the weapon that was left there and the description of how to do it. So it’s this gradual process that turns from reactive to proactive.
I didn’t know for sure, but I hoped that by the time you got to that point, especially if you knew the logline, but even if you were just watching the film, you would buy into it. I later tried to also make that pay off further by having a couple scenes where she misses things. It’s not like she instantly becomes a dead shot.
Scott: Rambo.
Sean: Exactly. That’s cheesy and not realistic. She’s not Stallone. So I try to keep earning it by continuing to have it be a challenge. But by the time you got to that moment, hopefully it felt inevitable.
Tomorrow in Part 5, Sean discusses how he submitted the script “Mother” to the Nicholl competition three different times and rewrote it each time based on feedback he received… and the third time was a charm.
For Part 1, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.
For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner since 2012, go here.
For my interviews with 53 Black List writers, go here.
