Interview: Stephany Folsom (2013 Black List) — Part 1
I’m a big Stanley Kubrick fan and Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is my favorite satire of all time. So when I saw this script make the 2013 Black List — “1969: A Space Odyssey or: How Kubrick Learned to Stop Worrying and Land on the Moon” — I knew then and there I had to interview its writer. That turns out to be Stephany Folsom, and we had an informative and fun one hour plus conversation.
Today in Part 1, Stephany talks about her wide interests with regard to stories and her experiences as a documentary filmmaker:
Scott: I understand you’re originally from Colorado Springs, Colorado. Did movies play much of a role in your youth, as you were growing up?
Stephany: Movies were everything in my youth. Other than outdoor activities, there wasn’t much to do in my hometown, so I grew up watching movies all the time.
Scott: Do you have any favorite movies from back then you remember?
Stephany: I’m a big classic movie fan. The Third Man has always been one of my favorites. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is another one I absolutely adore. God, there are so many. I love big studio movies. Steven Spielberg really resonated with me as a kid. I loved Jurassic Park and Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of my favorites.
Scott: What about your educational background? In college, were you doing any writing or film classes there?
Stephany: I told my high school guidance counselor I wanted to go to film school. She was this very, very old woman and she tried to convince me I should study radio instead. She thought a career in radio was more sensible. Luckily, I didn’t listen to her. I moved to Los Angeles when I was about 17 to go to film school at Loyola Marymount University.
I received an excellent film education there. It was completely immersive. They made you do everything in the classes. I got to direct. I got to produce. I ran the cameras and lit the set. I got to write the script. You got your hands in every aspect of filmmaking, so you really learned what it took to make a movie. I’m really thankful I went to film school.
Scott: I’ve read that some of the people who inspire you are Lou Reed, Steven Soderbergh, Kurt Vonnegut, Jean Renoir, John Hughes… Talk about variety!
Stephany: I know [laughs]. When you go into a meeting with producers or executives, they always ask, “What’s your favorite movie?” I try to hone in my range a little bit to more with them, but I’m drawn to interesting characters in extraordinary circumstances.
I love dark comedies. I think that’s where the John Hughes and the Kurt Vonnegut of all of it comes in. But I also love drama. I like extreme pathos, and that’s where Renoir fits in. I also love Hitchcock. I love thrillers and science fiction. To me, it’s ultimately about the characters, and the crazy circumstances you can you put them in to play out the drama.
Scott: Didn’t you log some time as a journalist?
Stephany: Let me start at the beginning of my background. It’s just easier that way. After film school, I did a brief stint in feature development where I worked with some very famous producers and did coverage, got coffee and learned the ins and outs of the business.
I left my development job to focus on my writing, but I still needed a way to pay the bills. I had a friend who was working with a foundation and she says, “Hey, you went to film school. You know how to work a camera. How about we give you a small budget and you go and shoot a short documentary for our donors about this AIDS clinic were building in Northeastern India. You can explain to them what’s going on and how their money is being used and how this clinic is being built.”
I was like, “Sure. A trip to India. This sounds great.” So I went to India with a sound person and a camera. It ended up being a total nightmare.
There was no way to get money in or out of there, or supplies. The clinic was never going to be built. It was near the Golden Triangle so there were all kinds of problems with drug trafficking. I didn’t know any of this was going on there before I went. That is how ignorant I was of that part of the world. While I was there the neighboring state invaded. We ended up being in lockdown and under curfew.
I got out of the area safely, but I had to come back to the foundation and tell them, “Hey, your clinic isn’t going to get built.” It was awful, but I had captured some great visuals and gotten some great interviews, so I met up with a friend who was doing some freelance work for the National Geographic Channel, and he suggested I sell the stock footage and the interviews to various news outlets.
I ended up shooting some short docs for various foundations and other outlets. I traveled the world, shooting stories on human trafficking, and the AIDS crisis. I went into war zones. I did this for a couple of years, and got completely burnt out on the travel and tough subject matter.
I came back to Los Angeles and returned to my first love, which was writing. I did a whole bunch of ghostwriting, I wrote for some premium YouTube channels, I did some commercial copywriting and I did and a lot of freelance articles. That’s how I paid the bills, and it afforded me enough time to focus on my screenwriting career.
Scott: One thing interesting to hear when you were going down the litany of all the things you did after your traveling and coming back to the United States… writing, writing, writing. Everything involved writing, right?
Stephany: Yeah, it was tons and tons of writing. Hours and hours of practice.
Tomorrow in Part 2, Stephany shares how she hit on the inspiration to write “1969: A Space Odyssey or: How Kubrick Learned to Stop Worrying and Land on the Moon”.
Stephany is represented by Verve and Kaplan/Perrone.
Twitter: @StephanyFolsom.
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