Interview [Part 8]: 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 8, Jason talks about his approach to the craft of screenwriting:

Scott: Let’s jump to some craft questions. How important do you think the story concept is to the overall strength and commercial viability of the screenplay specifically, a spec script.

Jason: Commercial viability, yes. I think specs get noticed because people think they can make money from them. That’s the way Hollywood goes. I also think, look, if nothing comes from “Shovel Buddies”, we don’t get the director, and it doesn’t get made, what’s cool for me is that it’s a movie that maybe a studio wouldn’t have the courage to make, but everyone has the courage to read.

The most important thing is to have a story that everyone connects to, whether it’s dark or whether it’s commercial. As long as you get people talking about it.

I hearken back to a lesson I learned about, there’s a screenwriter called Cinco Paul, and he wrote The Lorax and a bunch of other movies, but his first spec which sold for a lot of money was called “Band of Gold”, and it was about a guy who, this is going to get a little blue, but he fingers a prostitute and loses his wedding ring.

And the rest of the night is him trying to find this wedding ring before he has to get home to his wife. And I always thought, obviously that movie wasn’t made, but it’s the noisiest concept.

It got enough people talking that it started his career. I think, when a spec goes out, it doesn’t always have to be a good story, commercial assured. But you need to get a conversation piece.

The nicest tweet I ever got was a random person when the Black List came out, she had one tweet about the Black List. “This is great, the Black List is out. I want to see “Shovel Buddies” and I don’t know what the hell that is.” And I was like “Awesome, great!” That’s all it took, just the title.

Scott: You said you’ve got a lot of ideas you’re working on. How do you come up with story concepts?

Jason: A lot of times, it’s what I’m dealing with in my personal life, but it’s what I want to talk about, but I’m too afraid to. Or I love movies and I love media. I’ll watch a movie and I’ll be like “You know what? How come they don’t make it like that anymore?” or “What happened to that?”

I’ll riff on what my version of that would be, and see if I can come up with anything original. I’m working on a ghostlike high school coming of age love story now. And honestly it’s because I wanted to do a teenage love story, but also I wanted to do a horror movie, and I knew I didn’t have time to write two things. So what if you fell in love with a ghost? And I just started writing it.

Scott: How about prep writing? What aspects of prep do you tend to devote most of the time to?

Jason: Characterization, to me, is the most important. All the characters in “Shovel Buddies” have not changed since the original time I wrote them in my notebook. Like, Dan was always the angry, smoking, weird kid with a vendetta. Kate was always the sort of jilted sister who didn’t feel like, who felt like she got back seated.

I like to come up with characters, but for me it’s always like what the logline is. I always start with a logline. Like I said, for this recent thing, it’s like “What if the girl you wanted to be with was the only one you couldn’t… because she’s a ghost.”

For this one, it’s like “What if you had to solve her murder?” For “Shovel Buddies,” it was like “What if my friend died and I needed to do something to honor him, but along the way I accidentally stole his dead body?”

I come up with those big concepts, and I think the story writes itself from the logline I’ve written. And a lot of times, that logline will change. In fact, most times. The original logline for “Shovel Buddies” had them planning to dig Sammy up to take him to Veteran’s Stadium, that was their plan.

And they had a map, and they were scouting out the cemetery. But it didn’t work, and that was never going to work. So I write down what I want the story to be about, and then I let the story dictate itself. But I always try to stick with the same characters. I think, if I figure out who the people are, then I need to figure out what they’ll be going through.

Scott: Speaking of characters, how do you go about developing them?

Jason: This brings me to the outlining. I love outlines, but I write rough document style outlines. Where it’s like, in the first act, I want all this stuff to happen. I have detailed bios of all the characters, and I think about what they need to get over because so much of movies is what these people are going through.

I let the set pieces, the emotions, dictate themselves in the story for that. So for “Shovel Buddies,” it’s like Jimmy needs to get over Sammy, OK. That’s fine. Or get over his own guilt about Sammy, how do we do that? Well, make him feel more guilty. How do we make him feel more guilty? We rub it in his face. How do we rub it in his face? So it’s like that.

I do that, but I write 15 page outlines. Most of them are around 15, I’ve never written longer than 15. Sometimes they’re as short as seven pages, but then I write the script from that. And I’m a big believer in you have to have a script to have a rewrite, so I really try and dive right in.

Even if it’s a really awful, like I said, 70 page first draft, I try to get something down because I love adding just as much I love subtracting. So, the first draft for “Shovel Buddies” doesn’t really exist anymore except for that opening casket scene, like a paragraph. And everything else was added, but I’m a firm believer in writing the script, and letting your character be in the script and figuring out where the need to go from that.

Scott: How about dialogue? How do you find your character’s voices?

Jason: You have to listen. I think this is the earbud generation, and what I did in Boston and what I do here is, when you have to build public transportation, I put my earbuds in but I don’t turn any music on. And you find the people next to you say whatever they want, because they just assume you can’t hear anything, and you get to hear some crazy stuff.

But I also listen in the grocery store. I spend a lot of time in Trader Joe’s just hearing people. It’s part listening, but it’s also part knowing who those people are. I’m not a good actor, but when I’m writing, I get to act like Dan, I get to act like Jimmy, I get to act like Kate.

I always think if I were an actor, this was what I would want to say. So if you can imagine those people, I’m a big believer in that sort of Robert Rodriguez, “Close your eyes and watch the movie in your head.” And I try and do that, and I close my eyes and I think about what they would say.

And it just sort of, I don’t want to say it just comes to me, because that sounds arrogant, but I have a 17 year old girl cousin. I think about all the shit she says, and I think about all the witty things I wish I could say, but I didn’t say while I was in high school. And I write down a lot of interesting things people say to me, and I try to just weave that all together.

Scott: How about theme? How important is that to you? Do you start with themes, or do they arise in the context of writing the story?

Jason: For me, “Shovel Buddies,” when I got into it, I knew it was about friends who died. I lost another one along the way. So I usually try and start with a theme. Like the thing I’m writing now, the theme is it’s “Be your own person.” That’s a weird thing, it’s how do I define myself? Am I really defined by my parents, or am I defined by my actions? What’s my self definition?

So I try to start with a broad stroke like that, and then whittle it down. I think there’s never one theme in any movie, there’s always multiple themes. I think the themes dictate the characters. I like to have an overarching thing, but I go back to Aesop’s fables, and great allegories. You know what? “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” is not really about lying. So I try and simplify it as much as I can. Don’t lie, great. How can I tell a story about not lying that’s not about wolves? I guess something bad should happen if you lie. Maybe it’s telling about how a tiny lie winds up a bigger lie.

Yeah, I think theme is super important, but I let myself find what I’m afraid to talk about, and I let my fears and my own inhibitions dictate the theme of what I need to get off my chest.

Tomorrow in the final installment of the interview, Jason gives advice on how to break into Hollywood.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Part 6, here.

Part 7, here.

Jason is repped by CAA and Management 360.

Twitter: @JasonHellerman.

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