Interview (Part 5): TJ Cimfel and David White (“Shut In”)
The horror movie Shut In has its world premiere this week at the Los Angeles Film Festival, screening on June 12 and June 17. Recently I had the opportunity to interview the film’s screenwriters TJ Cimfel and David White. It was a terrific conversation which I will be featuring over the course of this week.
Today in Part 5, TJ and David discuss their approach to some key aspects of the screenwriting craft:
Scott: We’re very nicely into the last section here of craft questions. TJ, you mentioned earlier about you have had an intentional approach to generating story ideas. If you want to get movies made, you are quite conscious of the story concept’s commercial viability. Now that you’ve gone down this road a bit, how do you come up with story ideas?
TJ: Well, now, it’s a lot freer, I’d say.
David: I wait for TJ to come up with the concept. [laughter] Then I start working on characters.
Scott: Division of labor.
David: [laughter] That’s right.
TJ: It’s usually out at the bar or in an email, just a random email that one of us will throw at the other. I’m happy to say that now, at this stage, it’s far less calculated. Now, for me, it’s much more about what catches my fancy, what excites me. Is it sustainable? I mean, I don’t know how many damned ideas I’ve had that, when I poke at them for more than a half hour… the first half hour, I’ll be like, “Oh, my God! I’m onto something!” Then you track it and follow it and you’re like, “You know what? There’s not really anything there.” You’ve got to move on. I guess if we’re really going to go to the age old question of where your ideas come from, ultimately, we’re talking about the psychology of stuff that Dave was talking about. A lot of times, it relates to very specific things in my life.
It’s things that are very emotional and personal that may be going on in my family. You can take that and that can be the basis for character conflict and emotional conflict. Then, it’s about finding the situation that that person finds themself in. That’s going to be a nice, ironic situation or some kind of tension that feeds into that and can tie everything together, thematically.
David: I feel like it’s paying attention to what sticks in your head, what causes emotion to rise up. If there’s something there, if you’re being deeply affected by something, then there’s probably a story there. You just have to pull at that…
TJ: In many ways, especially if we’re talking about horror, it’s simply, what scares you? There are these parallel paths of things that are more “movie world,” whether they be supernatural or something a little more extreme, and then, stuff that is more grounded, about character, real life.
There’s that gut level horror that you experience from certain things, like being out in the woods late at night, when there are no stars, and you can practically feel Lovecraft breathing down your neck. Then, there’s just the stuff that keeps you up at night and has your brain spinning… Death, disease, abandonment, entropy. It’s all of those things that…
David: Stuff that bugs you.
TJ: … that bothers everyone.
David: Stuff that causes you emotional dread.
TJ: Exactly.
David: You’ve got that emotional dread and you need a story to frame it. It’s figuring out a way to put a concrete story, to organically put that dread into a concrete story.
Scott: You mentioned earlier, TJ, you couldn’t imagine writing a script without doing sufficient prep work. Let’s say you’ve got an idea now that’s got a strong concept and emotional dread to it. How do you all go about doing your prep writing? What do you tend to focus on the most?
TJ: Dave and I have gotten incredibly good at just emailing back and forth. We just continue poking thoughts at each other. One of the things that’s interesting about it is, if he pokes thoughts at me and I sit on it too long because I’m busy at work or whatever, I start to feel like I’m not keeping up my end of the bargain. It forces me to carve out space and continue thinking.
I would say character is obviously a huge one that we start with. From concept, we oftentimes will think in broad strokes around just the three act structure. What kind of big twists can we put to it? How does the idea map across a general plot structure? We keep throwing those things back and forth.
At a certain point, it turns into an outline or a treatment.
David: I feel like once those broad strokes are there, once act one, act two, act three, just the basic beats are down, and you start to feel like the story’s coming together, at some point, theme comes into it. You start to get a sense of, “OK, this is what this story is really about.” That is what’s going to determine the ending, really. What’s the theme of the story? That’s where the ending comes from.
TJ: Sometimes, you can find your way through a first draft without really knowing whether you have that theme. Only through the full writing of the script do you start to be like, “OK, this is what it’s really about.” That really helps to drive the second draft.
Scott: For you, then, it sounds like you’re the type of writers that don’t start with theme, rather the themes will emerge in the process of the writing.
TJ: I would say that that is how stuff works for us. It doesn’t mean that we don’t necessarily say, “This is probably what the theme’s about.”
David: We tend to get a sense of what the theme is without… we knew with Shut In, for example, it’s somewhere in the notion of being trapped.
TJ: “Is it really possible to free yourself from your surroundings or your circumstances?” I guess what I would say, you think you might know what the theme is, you may discuss it, but we don’t put a huge emphasis on that up front.
There have even been times when we feel like we know what the theme is, and we write the script, and then we’re like, “Yeah, you know what? This story really isn’t about that,” and so you have to adjust what you think about it.”
Scott: Dave said something interesting, which is the theme was what indicates the end of the story. Do you have any more thoughts on that, Dave, dig into that a little bit more?
David: I feel like, I don’t know… As you start to get a sense of what the theme is, it presents itself as a question. And the answer to the question, then, determines where your protagonist is going to end up. I don’t think it’s actually something I’ve consciously thought of before I said it, but it seems real and right.
TJ: They’re both real and right. Story comes from theme. Theme comes from story. It’s hard to force one or the other to come first.
Scott: I thought it’s an interesting observation because it seems like you have to know what’s going on thematically, at least at the central theme of the story, or else the ending may not be indicated to you.
TJ: But how often? Here’s the question I’m going to ask you, Dave. How often have we changed our endings, the actual endings? I feel like every script we’ve written, the ending that is in our first draft is totally different. Think about how many endings we wrote for Shut In.
David: Right, it’s because the theme is crystallizing as we go.
TJ: The theme is changing and shifting. I think with Shut In, I think we knew right off the bat that the theme had to do with being trapped, because of the agoraphobia, and I think having a vague idea without really knowing how that would play out, we kind of built that into each of the characters.
It was just sort of, “OK, we know we’re going to need this trapped aspect as we go forth. We’re not quite sure how it’s going to play out.” We even, I think… not that we want to necessarily give away the ending. Let’s just say, we had the exact opposite ending in mind when we first started writing the story. In terms of the character arc tying to the thematic question — “Is it really possible to get unstuck from your environment, your genetics?” — we wound up in the exact opposite space. As far as I’m concerned, if you think of the theme as a question that you’re asking, then ultimately, we completely flipped on the answer over the course of writing the script.
Tomorrow in Part 6, TJ and David talk about their choice to pursue screenwriting while living in Chicago, not Los Angeles.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Part 2, here.
Part 3, here.
Part 4, here.
If you have any questions for TJ or David, post in comments, and I will pass them along.
For ticket information about the upcoming Los Angeles Film Festival screenings for Shut In, go here.
TJ and David are repped by Marc Manus.
Twitter: @dkwite, @TeaJaySee.