Interview (Part 6): Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay (“The Invitation”)

I’m a big fan of producer Mynette Louie and what she and her cohorts are doing at Gamechanger Films, a film fund for women directors, so when I saw their newest movie The Invitation was coming out in April this year, I made it a point to watch it on VOD the week it went into distribution. I loved it! So I got in touch with Mynette who connected me with the movie’s screenwriters Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay, and we ended up having a great conversation about their careers, the craft of writing and their thriller movie The Invitation.

Today in Part 6, Matt and Phil offer advice to aspiring screenwriters:

Scott: You’re talking about voice. That’s one of those mysterious things. There’s some writers who think, “Well, you know, a person either has talent to write dialogue or they don’t.”

Do you think a writer can develop their ability to write dialogue and, if so, how to go about doing that?

Phil: That’s a great question. I do think you can develop an ear, and you can… It’s like anything. Some people have to work twice as hard to do something that just comes naturally for another person, but it doesn’t mean that they can’t do it and do it even better. It’s funny. I only have my own experience and Matt’s to rely on.

To me, the main thing that I believe qualifies you to be a writer is that you’re really interested in other people. If you’re interested in other people, I imagine you’re probably interested in hearing people talk who don’t speak the way you do, or you’re interested in observing the way people behave that isn’t exactly the way you behave.

Obviously, every place you go can be an opportunity to learn how people speak and how people relate. Comedy is its own thing… I don’t know that you can, for example, make yourself into a quote “funny person” if you’re not. That just means you may have to choose a different type of writing to do.

Scott: I’ve interviewed a lot of writers and thought about it myself a lot. Dialogue does seem to be one of those things that is a little mysterious. Here’s another one that’s also kind of mysterious, that’s the idea of theme.

I ask a lot of writers, “Well, are you one of those writers who knows themes, like central themes or theme, upfront in the process? Or is it something that emerges over time?” Most tend to think that latter, but here I’ve been talking to you about The Invitation. You had that theme that was like right up front in the process, right?

Phil: It is different for everybody. For us, we need to know the theme before we know that we can write the movie. We have to know what it’s about. That doesn’t mean that we can’t discover what it’s about in a deeper and deeper fashion as we go, because I think that’s what happens.

For us, theme is less a statement than it is a question. It’s not what I’m trying to teach somebody. It’s a question that I want to pose to myself and to the audience. For lack of a better word, it’s the ideas.

As we’ve gotten to play The Invitation at all these festivals and at screenings and do all these Q&A’s and have an opportunity to interact with people, it’s very interesting and very encouraging that what people ultimately want to talk about are the ideas.

That’s very encouraging because that, to me, it is a movie that is about ideas and is about, again, questions and investigations. You know what I mean? In a way it could sound very deterministic to say that we decide what the theme is before we write the movie. I wouldn’t put it that way.

I would say we need to know what we want to explore. We need to know what feelings and emotions and intellectual questions that are wrapped up in this story. Then there’s always something for the characters to talk about whether it’s directly or indirectly. The characters are always scratching at something. For us, that’s how we need to approach it and then we discover things along the way.

Scott: Let’s really bring it down to the basics of screenwriting, which is like scene writing. What do you think about when you’re writing a scene? What are your goals?

Phil: I’d say that number 1… and this is stripping away years of practice and things that you’re taught about scene making…To me, to be absolutely reductive, while it seems very obvious, is that something has to happen. Could be a physical thing, a status shift, something exposed, something learned…

Something has to change. Something has to be illuminated. Ideally, it’s illuminated in a bank shot of some kind. Maybe, and hopefully, the scene doesn’t appear to exist to illuminate exactly that thing. That’s the challenge: to be trying to portray the natural lives of these characters, but allowing the turn that has to happen to happen within that context.

Then always we are really, really concerned with transitions, both in and out. I’d say that we’re obsessed with transitions. In terms of craft, that’s one of the most important bits we are always looking at and working on.

Scott: I’m sure your editors appreciate that. I like to ask this, a fun question. What’s your single best excuse not to write?

[laughter]

Phil: There’s so many.

Matt: Oh , that interested me for a second, I better go explore it for an hour.

Phil: A shiny piece of foil floated across my consciousness for a moment. I need to build a nest out of it.

Matt: The Yahtzee app dying to be played. It’s lonely.

Phil: It is the loneliest of the apps.

Matt: It’s interesting because I feel like the actual process of writing, the physical typing of it…it takes me much longer to know what I’m writing than to actually sit down and get it on the page. It’s the why of it, or what is this about. That takes a long time and a lot of procrastination.

Then when I go to actually write it, that process isn’t that long. There could be an outburst at 4:30 in the afternoon, I could cover the workday.

Phil: Yeah. Which I refer to as the desperate hour. If it’s winter, the sun starts going down and you’re like, “It’s got to happen right now.”

Scott: Conversely, what do you love most about writing?

Matt: You have a lot of freedom. You get to make up stories for a living. The very simplest aspect of it is probably the greatest thing. You get to tell stories for a living and on top of that, it’s a job that allows you at some points a lot of flexibility in your life.

Phil: For me, anyone who does it ‑‑ anyone trustworthy ‑‑ will tell you that it’s really hard to do. No matter where you are in your career or what kind of writer you are, I think it’s a really hard thing to do.

But it’s rewarding and I think to me the thing that’s most fun about it is when something surprises me or there’s something that happens that I know is important in a scene but it’s still also a little bit ineffable to me why it’s happening and you feel like the story’s just happening. Those moments are kind of great.

Then, on a more mundane level, it’s the feeling of solving a problem. It’s torture to be in the state of not having solved the problem. This is where it’s great to have a partner who’s really good at solving problems, is that you sit there and you work on it until you have that moment where the knot gets untied, and that’s very satisfying.

Scott: Finally, I’m sure you get asked this at cocktail parties or whatever. What advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and breaking into Hollywood?

Matt: I would say, and I think I’ve said this before, not that anyone was around to hear it, but just write the thing that absolutely best expresses your voice. Don’t worry about getting an agent. Don’t worry about anything like that. Just write what is uniquely yours and make it the best you can, because I think good work does tend to out itself. There are so many people whose jobs it is to find you, in a way.

I know that may sound naive, but I truly believe that if you can write your most distinctive script, it can serve you for your entire career. Write the best script you can. Write every day. Just worry about that. Worry about getting that script before you worry about anything else.

Phil: Yeah, I agree with Matt that I think if there’s one thing that I try to tell everybody who asks, is that who you are is your advantage. What you have to offer, your voice, your concerns, your take, when you’re starting out that’s all you have.

A lot of people make the mistake of running from that and trying to be more like what they see out there in the movie theater or trying to more worry about an exquisitely tuned version of something, of a type of movie. It’s great to be able to create an exquisitely tuned script, but what will make people notice you is your voice poured into a makeable movie mold.

Whether that’s a small independent family drama, or whether that’s a science fiction movie, that shouldn’t change. You can pour your voice into a big science fiction movie and in a way that’s the best idea you could have, is to do that. Just to underline what Matt said, it’s not to run from the specificity of what you and your experience and your life is ‑‑ to run toward that and use that to enliven whatever you’re doing.

Matt: Yeah, the premium in Hollywood is on unique and new voices.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Matt and Phil are repped by UTA.

Twitter: @phillycarly, @MattRManfredi.