Interview [Part 6]: 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 6, Jason talks about how his script got noticed in Hollywood and ended up finding representation:

Scott: When you were in the MFA program at Boston University, did you ever imagine you’d write two lines of dialogues like this? “Kate, what are we going to do with the body?” “Danny, which one?”

Jason: It’s so weird to me, still. I’ve wanted to do a dead body movie since Penn State. I wrote a dead body movie, and it just didn’t work. It was a goofy one. It didn’t matter.

I knew it didn’t matter because I never wanted to rewrite it. I wrote it and I was like, “This blows. I don’t want to work on it.” I couldn’t figure out why. It took writing some other scripts to get that what we talked about earlier… if you don’t love it, if it’s not about something.

This script [“Shovel Buddies’], for me, was a bereavement.

This is my letter to the fallen comrades, the people who I thought deserved it more than me and didn’t get there, not because they fucked up, but because the world took them away.

I always came back to that. I thought, “That’s the story where it has to be…” I set out to write that story. I remember pitching it in class and people asked, “Is it funny?” I’m like, “No, it’s really sad.” They’d say, “We’re not going to laugh at that.” I’m like, “I know, because this is not going to be funny.”

I remember writing the opening pages and having people say, “We’re laughing way too much. There’s a dead kid.” I was, “It’ll work. I promise you it’ll work. I’ll just spend enough time to make it work.” I was so manic about it. I knew it had to work.

Scott: That dovetails right into the next question. You’ve got a really interesting mix of tones here, even genres. There’s a drama. You’re dealing with death and loss. It’s got some action with some chase scenes. It’s funny, sometimes a very angry kind of humor.

How did you land on the precise tone you did?

Jason: I was conscious of it. Here’s the deal. I wrote it, and it was the angriest first 10 drafts of anything I’d ever done. All the feedback I got was, “Wow, Jason, do you want a hug?” Anyways, it was mad. There was vitriol. You think Dan is bad now? He was poison.

It was everything that I was frustrated with. Then it was paring that back. When they say, “Don’t send an angry email at night.” It was like that. I had written the angriest script that I sent to people at night that they’re all, “Whoa, tone it back.”

I looked at it, then I started writing a love story. It was a love story between two friends, but I had to write that love story only using the words in this angry email. It became an exercise for me.

Like we talked about, I love all kinds of movies, there’s not a particular genre I don’t like. For me, it was just sitting there, knowing that this had to be funny, because life is funny and because when both my friends died, there was a lot more I laughed at than I thought I would.

But I also knew that I had to cry, because when my friends died, there was a lot more I cried at than I thought I would, and just knowing that I wanted there to be equal parts laughter and crying.

I think taking that anger and actually self‑examining it and fleshing it out into different feelings was probably the best thing for me.

Scott: So this incredible process, 60 drafts of this script, what did you do to get the script noticed?

Jason: I was out here, working for Michael Costigan. I wrote the original “Shovel Buddies” draft in four days. Legitimately four days. I had outlined it, but I just sat up and wrote it and wrote it and wrote it and wrote it. I knew I needed to get noticed. I knew I needed to get read. People were reading different scripts I had and saying, “Oh, these are good.”

I had met with a couple of producers off a different script I wrote that they read and were like, “This is funny. What else do you have?” Then, they didn’t like anything else I had and it was, “OK, good luck.”

The Black List website had just debuted in October and while I was at Scott Free, I remember bringing water to a kid in the waiting room and he was so young. He was my age and I asked the assistant, “Who’s that guy?”

They were like, “Oh, that’s the guy that wrote ‘McCarthy’”.

Scott: Justin Kremer?

Jason: Yeah, and they said, “It was off the Black List website.” I said, “No shit.” I saw him in the waiting room and I thought, “I want to be that guy. I’m interning here. I want to be the guy in the waiting room. How do I get to there?”

I went home. I went to the Black List website. I said, “Fuck it. Why not? Why not? I’m already so deep in student loans.” Putting money on the credit card for screenwriting, to me, felt so much more logical than anything else.

So I loaded up a different script, not “Shovel Buddies”, a script I wrote called “Nativity Knock‑Off.” I loaded it up there and I left it up for three months and I got a lot of really mixed reviews.

It sort of broke my heart and there was, what I thought at the time, was my best written script and I was like, “Damn it, why don’t people love this?” I got really upset one night and I took down “Nativity Knock‑Off” and put up “Shovel Buddies”.

I was so nervous to put up “Shovel Buddies” because of the pure emotion. Whereas, “Nativity” was jokes and more of a comedy, but that was pure, raw, upset emotion.

I put it up there and the first responses I got were great. I don’t know if people, the readers, if they’re familiar with the Black List website, you can host your script on there and then you pay for individual readers to rate your script one through 10.

I paid for three readers to rate “Shovel Buddies” right off the bat and with “Nativity”, had gotten bunches of sixes and sevens, which, I guess, are good, but not great. But with “Shovel Buddies”, I got nines. I got three nines to start out. Immediately I started getting more downloads.

I made the front page of the Black List website. I felt really good and I was getting emails from managers. “Let’s meet. Let’s talk.” I went and met with the managers, but we just didn’t jive.

They were nice or they had different ideas or they’d be like, “Hey, this script is too sad, man. Maybe, the kid could really be alive. Maybe, they can use a defibrillator at the end. They shock, he’s back to life.”

I’m like, “No, that’s not at all what I want to do.” I just left it up there [on the Black List site]. Then October 2013 rolled around and I got this email from Franklin Leonard and Terry [Huang]. They were like, “Hey, Jason, we love ‘Shovel Buddies’. It’s really cool that you’ve got,” I probably had 75 or 80 downloads, and ratings.

A lot of times, I’d either be getting nines or I’d been getting fives. I would think, “That’s weird.” They were like, “We love how polarizing it is and people on the site, they either really like it or they just don’t like it. We’re going to start doing a script of the month thing, a script of the week,” or whatever it was at the time. I think it’s two weeks long.

They said, “We’d like you to be the first one. Would you like to participate?” I was like, “Yes, thanks. More than anything, yes.”

I emailed them, said, “Yes, it’s amazing.” They sent me this guy who would draw a poster for it, which was cool. We did all that jazz. He drew the poster. I was super stoked.

It goes up on a Tuesday and, of course, I was at work. I’m rolling calls and I’m really busy. Michael [Costigan] had just had one of his assistants who quit, so I’m back on his desk answering phones. I hadn’t been in a while, so you’re very rusty. I’m rolling with big time agents and other producers. I’m having a very stressful day, but I’m doing OK.

Then the script goes live. My cell phone just starts ringing, and rings and rings and rings. I’m getting all these calls and voicemails. You’ve got six voicemails and you’ve got whatever. Then, I guess through the power of Linkedin and Google, people started figuring out where I was working.

They started calling Michael’s line and emailing him, “Hey, that assistant you’ve got. I think he wrote a script and it’s pretty popular.” Michael called me in his office and was like, “What did you do?” I said, “Hey, remember that script we talked about a while ago?” Michael had read “Shovel Buddies” and really loved it. We had made this sort of pact between men. He was like, “Look, buster, ask me for a year and I’ll help you for a lifetime.” And I was like, “Yes, sir.” Whatever.

At this point, he had given me everything, every opportunity. He had paid my rent. He had been amazing, like a movie father figure to me.

He said, “OK, let’s make a list.” We sat there, and I played all the voicemails through. We looked at all the emails, made a list of everyone who called me. He said, “Look, take the next week, go to breakfast with all these people, one by one, and let’s circle back at my house on Friday night and pick.” I was like, “OK, great.”

He helped me filter out who he thought would be good for me, and who he thought wouldn’t, and who he thought, “These people won’t return your calls.” He was just great about that.

Then I went and met with all these managers, and I settled on Dean [Sneider] and Ali [Itri] at Management 360. People are always like, “Why did you pick them above everybody else?”

A, they were the first ones to call me, which meant a lot, and, B, it was because I told them, “Look, I work for Michael Costigan. He’s graciously allowed me to have breakfast with people, but I don’t know when I can meet you because he has a call at 9:00 AM, I have to dial him in.”

They said, “We’ll meet you at 7:00 AM, at Nate & Al’s,” and I was like, “Seriously?” They were, “Yeah, we’ll meet you there.” I got there at 7:00 AM, and they were already outside waiting for me. I didn’t have to wait for them.

They were upfront about their plans and what they liked about the script. It wasn’t like they heard it was hot. They had read it. They each had personal stories about it. It meant a lot, so I signed with them.

I signed with CAA the next week, with Allie Trussman and Matt Martin and John Garvey, who were the same deal. Not only were they among the first, but they had a personal connection to what I did. Also what I thought was a logical, “Hey, Jason, we think you write a lot like this person. Do you like these movies? This is what we’re going to do to get a director. This is what we’re going to do to help you next.”

Again, I sat with my mentors and people I talked to. “How do you pick?” They said, “Look, if you feel good about, that’s all of it. That’s a hundred percent. CAA is a name that everybody recognizes, but if you sit across from these people who are going to be your agents and going to be your managers, and you like them and you’re laughing with them and they get your jokes, and you think they’re actually laughing at your jokes, then that’s it. We can’t teach you anything more than that.”

That was it. That was in October, and my life has been a whirlwind since then.

Tomorrow in Part 7, Jason shares what it was like to learn “Shovel Buddies” had made the 2013 Black List.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Jason is repped by CAA and Management 360.

Twitter: @JasonHellerman.

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