Interview [Part 5]: Jason Mark Hellerman

One script that received a lot of attention in the 2013 Black List is “Shovel Buddies” by Jason Mark Hellerman (it garnered 22 votes). I was quite struck by the story — “Over 24 hours, four teenage friends try to complete the “Shovel List” (a will/bucket list) left for them by their best friend before he died of Leukemia” — and reached out to talk with Jason about it. We ended up talking for 90 minutes, an excellent conversation covering a lot of territory. I think aspiring screenwriters will find Jason’s insights particularly relevant as we got into quite a bit of depth about his process of being outside the business to inside it.

Today in Part 5, Jason talks about how he wrote 65 drafts of the script “Shovel Buddies”:

Scott: I love that story. I have these screenwriting principles I teach. One is: Character equals Function. That speaks to it right there because you’re saying, “Look, you got to do something with the parents to have some closure here.” You’re talking that sense of emotional function. By following that thread, you end up with a much more active and vibrant character in Ted.

Frankly, you’ve got a couple of twists with this character. He could have so easily been a cliché, but he does some really surprising things, especially at the end.

Jason: I originally said, I always knew I wanted Sammy’s parents to understand what happened. I wrote so many drafts and gave it so many people, for fresh eyes who said, “This is great, but I have kids. I would be so upset.” Just the necessity of wanting someone to say, “I would want that for my kid. Why am I not working out?”

Honestly, I have to credit that closure to talking to my friend Mike on the phone before he died and had to saying, “I would want whatever happens.”

Mike was cremated. He was like, “God, I hope nobody fights over where my ashes should go.” I thought it was such a crazy thing that he was wise, smart enough to them, be afraid that he’s the eldest. Not that it would devastate his family if he went away, but he was, “Oh, God, if I die, I wouldn’t want an argument to be about where I will spread.”

I thought, “What a selfless idea.” Ted’s pursuit comes from that selfless idea of, “How do I get the parents on board? How do I get them really to sign off on this?” Because no one would sign off on it. If you went to Ted and you’re like, “Look, we’re going to do this.” He would say no, but it’s going to be taking that kid that never got to be a kid and proving that was a kid, and that’s all the parents really wanted.

Look, I wrote “Shovel Buddies” sixty times. You probably read draft sixty, I just finished my 65th to turn into the director. It really has come a long way, a lot of errors and as many trials as anyone was willing to let me have.

Scott: Speaking of your creative process, you’ve got this interesting opening scene. Jimmy and Lump on their bicycles and they go up to this hill and they look in there as Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia as they set off the charges to blow it up. As you’re going through Act One here, “That’s a nice little metaphor.” The death of this boy, Sammy, the death of the stadium, but then later on, the stadium takes on a greater significance.

Do you remember how early on in the process this idea of Veterans Stadium and that whole thing emerged?

Jason: From draft two. Draft one starts in the house. I was always obsessed about starting a movie Fade In on the casket. It just like this immediate abrupt thing. That’s page three now. I wrote the first draft, it was 71 pages long.

It started at the casket, and it ends…There is a ton missing. Ted didn’t exist. There is no parents storyline. They robbed a 7‑Eleven. It was crazy. I had started it in the casket. At the end, I had to mention that they went and saw Veterans Stadium blow up. I rewrite it. I was like, “What, stupid? Why don’t we ever see that? That would be cool.”

Draft two, I literally wrote it and it hasn’t changed since, then we go right to the original beginning.

Scott: There is a bit of a slippery slope feel to the narrative of the first 40 pages or so, with regard to Jimmy and the others, they do this tiny thing, which leads to a bigger thing, which leads to an even bigger thing. That all flows. Then at some point, there is this really huge choice they have to make, which is, “We’re going to take this corpse, right?”

At that point, you as a writer know you’ve got to get total buy‑in from a reader, that these characters would do this. How hard was that to manage and massage all those details? You felt like this makes sense, these characters would do this.

Jason: It’s two‑fold. I’m writing people I know. Like I said, I’m writing my brother, I’m writing my best friend. I’m writing a girl who’s we’re friends with, and I’m writing Lump, who essentially is me or my fear of what I would’ve become.

Like I said, my parents supported me. They let me make my own mistakes and I made a lot of them.

I thought, look, I’m willing to believe and the audience is willing to believe, these guys are willing to do a very small stupid thing, which is, after they find the will, after they clean out his room, which I would argue is a smart thing to do. The stupid thing is that moment when they’re like, “Let’s go back to his parents and see if they’ll let us do this. They’re bereft, but yeah, this is a good time to bug them.”

I thought, “You know what, when you say no to a kid, they’re just going to do it anyway.” I was like, “If people were willing to buy that they’re going to break into this house, then we’ve got them half the way there.”

It just took a lot of finessing from the point they break into the house to the point they get the jersey that people… I would show little percentage of pages to people at a time where they’d be like, “Yeah, I totally believe they’d do that. I totally believe they’d do that.”

For the majority of the time, the feedback I was getting from people was they bought all the way to breaking into the funeral home. Then they’re like, “Oh, man, that’s a little weird.” When they have to get his body out. I thought, “I can build the weirdness. Maybe they’ll believe it.”

It honestly took, like I said, 65 times for me to just to sit around, playing with what was said ‑‑ the way they’d open the casket, the way they’d take the body.

What would be the reasoning? It really took maybe 10 or 15 drafts to get the idea that the coffin he was in would be cremated. Then once I knew the coffin was gone, a lot more people, like I had say…60 percent of the people I talk to were really going to make the jump that they’d take it, knowing that they couldn’t leave the body with the coffin gone.

Once I had that, then it was just the way they’d portrayed the actions, the conversation Jimmy has with a dead Sammy in the freezer. That was a later addition which calmed people a little bit. There was a room in that script to understand the love between these two guys and his willingness to do anything.

The entire last 40 pages of the script is about Jimmy’s losing his mind. He has absolutely gone insane and takes the body, we’re along for that psycho trip. If your best friend died and you felt like it was your fault, or at least partially your fault, that he died sad or you feared that you died sad, then that’s all the implication to drive you nuts.

I figured, if people are willing to buy that Jimmy is now insane, then he can start doing insane things.

Scott: All the characters have got multiple layers of things going on, push and pull motivations. Jimmy has to confront some pretty harsh truths. First, about his real motivations for trying to fulfill Sammy this thing. Of course, that is tied very much to his guilt which becomes clear.

Second, where his little brother fits in terms of Jimmy’s priorities. You deal with that whole issue that you explained earlier about being left out and making a priority essentially to do something with somebody whose dad is opposed to taking care of somebody who’s hurt law and was alive.

Third, you add this other thing I thought was so interesting, which was Sammy is almost speaking from beyond the grave and setting them on this whole mission, in a way.

Jason: Yeah, it’s the selfishness of Sammy. Again, this is something we touched on earlier. I wanted Sammy to have that multi-dimension of not being the Christ child. It starts in the script with him having the porn, and having the drugs, and having the Booze into the bean or gateway into it. Also, he was making a list of demands.

For me, it was thinking about, “Oh, my God, if I died, what would I want people to do in my honor?” It’s that sort of crazy “I want this, and maybe people will then think of me this way.” It’s the…I don’t know. It’s Sammy wanting to almost be the popular kid in high school. “I want to be buried in this jersey. People will talk about my legend forever.” That not forward thinking is what drives his friends to criminality.

It all comes from wanting Sammy to seem like a real kid. If you told a real kid they were going to die, they would want something. That’s what the Hebrew’s make-a-wish is. I’m totally not against make-a-wish, I think it’s amazing.

I wanted to tell the sad version of what that wish would turn out to be if it wasn’t granted by a benevolent organization, if you had to grant the wish posthumously.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Jason talks about how his script got noticed in Hollywood and ended up finding representation.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Jason is repped by CAA and Management 360.

Twitter: @JasonHellerman.

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