Interview: Patty Jones (2013 Nicholl Winner) — Part 2

I only have anecdotal evidence, but it seems to me the Nicholl Fellowship does not often select a comedy script as a winning entry. So when Joe Banks won in 2013, I was excited to reach out to its writer: Patty Jones. The script is funny. Very funny. And as would be expected, so is Patty.

Today in Part 2, Patty reveals what inspired her to write “Joe Banks” and her take on some of the story’s key characters:

Scott: Let’s talk about “Joe Banks”. It’s interesting to track your history where you are always interested in reading. You got into writing pretty early. You had a love for movies particularly writer-directors. You were interviewing actors. Got both a B.F.A. and a Master’s in creative writing. Did the UCLA professional program and did all that script reading. Even had a little foray in Hollywood via the board game. So it’s like all that stuff was preparing you.

Patty: A whole loser trajectory. That’s a sad, sad story arc.

Scott: Classic Hollywood fashion. Boom! You have this wonderful experience with “Joe Banks”. I’d love to talk about the script, which is so fun. Here is a description of the plot:

“A wild comic odyssey about a son conceived using sperm from a sperm bank who believes his father is an esteemed Noble Prize–winning novelist and aspires to be like him. His true father is a ‘drinking airport novelist’ whose Noble Prize was taken away after a sex scandal. Together, father and son get to know each other during a wild book tour and discover themselves along the way.”

Which came first? Sperm bank, Noble Prize–winning novelist, drinking airport novelist or road trip with father and son?

Patty: With any good writer, drinking always come first. That’s the credo, isn’t it? [laughter] Again, with my boyfriend, we had thought of a sperm bank story before. Then, lo and behold, all these sperm bank or sperm donor movies came out. There was The Kids Are All Right. There was a Jennifer Aniston one. A Jennifer Lopez. The Jennifers had cornered the market on sperm banks. But I had created this one character of an author who was very much a side character in that idea.

I literally woke up one morning. It was 7:00 AM and I’m lying there in bed. I said to my boyfriend, “I think I have an idea.” I started telling him about this father and son thing, and the Noble Prize. The writer I originally thought of for our other idea, he was already larger than life, but all of a sudden I pictured this father and son dynamic.

Scott: The adult son in the script is Sam. How would you describe this character?

Patty: I’m probably Sam, except I’m not a 21‑year‑old boy, that I’ve noticed. It is about identity. I’m a little bit older than Sam, but you wonder, Who the hell am I and am I going to amount to anything? The answer is no. [laughs]

The answer is we try. And Sam’s got all the ego and insecurity that…I don’t know about you, but I’m a terrible mix of ego and insecurity. He’s probably me except with the strange twist of finding Joe attractive. Which is all wrong.

Scott: Yeah, I found a quote from you where you said about this story, “It’s about who you are. We all wonder about our identity and what we’re going to achieve in life.”

That seems so apt for Sam because he’s trying to live up to the fame and creative talent of this Nobel Prize–winning novelist father Porter Gray. Then he has the rug pulled out from under him when he discovers that Porter is not his father.

Then he’s confused even more when he learns the identity of his real father, this Joe Banks character who’s this larger than life, bombastic figure who writes these pulp novels. When we meet him, he’s really in this state of having everything rather up‑ended and in search of his own identity.

Patty: Yeah, yeah. I don’t know what it is, but I have a huge empathy for men. I like men. I seem to like writing the male characters. I don’t know what it is. I wanted to do it through these two guys. Maybe men have more fun. I don’t know. I have a lot of feeling and a lot of empathy and passion. Men probably have a weird role nowadays. Women do, too. It gets harder and harder.

I don’t know how young men, and I don’t know how a character like Joe’s age, how they fit into the modern construct of masculinity with everything that’s going on today. Women are obviously doing their own things and don’t need a guy to be all the traditional things, and yet Joe is very masculine. He’s clearly, obviously, not a misogynist. He’s comfortable and he loves women. I don’t know. Apparently, I was in a mood. [laughs]

Scott: I’d like to talk about the two father figures who loom over Sam. Let’s start with Porter Gray. What are some of his key character attributes, and what was the inspiration for him as a character?

Patty: He’s a selfish bastard. He’s a peacock. I’m picturing, truly, someone who’s caught up in his own myth but doesn’t have the generosity of spirit to give to his son. Strictly visually, the way he looks — for some reason I always think of Updike. That’s how I see Porter looking, or like Spalding Gray, without the personality of Spalding Gray. The worst scenario of someone who has gotten overinflated. But I always heard Christopher Walken’s voice, whom I also love — that disdainful cool.

Scott: He doesn’t have a lot of pages, but he comes across as a visceral type of a character because he is such an asshole. It creates this really stark distance between he and Sam.

Sam, of course, thinks, for years, that this is his father. Is it safe to say ‑‑ not to get too deep here ‑‑ that that created an emotional vacuum in Sam’s life, that distance between he and Porter?

Patty: For Sam, no real father, that’s the pain. It comes down to the pain of missing a parent. But I can’t help but try to be funny.

Scott: Into the void of that steps Joe Banks, who in many ways is the central character in the story. As I was reading the script, I couldn’t get rid of the image of that guy in those Dos Equis commercials — The World’s Most Interesting Man. For example Joe says, “Men don’t converse without a goddamn scotch in their hand.” It seems like something that guy would say.

We know he was a side character in this previous sperm bank project. Then you wake up one morning and all of a sudden there’s this guy.

Patty: I must have been thinking about sex when I woke up.

Scott: Yeah, it’s on his mind a lot, isn’t it?

Patty: Um, yes. It comes back to the men thing. Thinking about Hemingway and Norman Mailer and probably a bit of Harold Robbins. I was a bit worried, frankly. I did notice with producers who have contacted me that they have mostly been men.

Here I’m a woman, but I worried that I was alienating women, that they would not love Joe as I loved Joe, and that perhaps they would see him as the wrong throwback and that this was old‑school in the wrong way.

I see him, as I said, as a lover of women and certainly not a misogynist. There was a very careful line I had to tread, even in the way he talks to Sam. I didn’t want him to be a bully. He’s a little bullying, but I wanted him to be warm and soulful, but fucking funny. I wanted people to love him and not to think, “What a jerk,” or, “What a jerk to his son,” or he’s throwback‑y in the wrong way.

Interestingly enough, of course, Hemingway went on a lot of safaris and probably shot a lot of animals. Of course, I have Joe doing the opposite and being a protector and a conservationist, which was a twist on the whole Africa safari thing.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Patty shares much more about her Nicholl-winning script “Joe Banks”.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Patty is repped by Benderspink.

Twitter: @heypattyjones.