Interview [Written]: Chris Sparling
Kim Garland, one of the contributing columnists at Script Magazine, did a recent interview with screenwriter Chris Sparling, whose writing credits include Buried (2010), ATM (2012), and the upcoming Sea of Trees (2015).
Kim: Buried was your first screenplay sale, right?
Chris: Right.
Kim: How did that sale come about?
Chris: After I made my film, [An Uzi at the Alamo], I did a lot of research about who might be willing to take a look at it when it was done, that is, any agents or managers or even producers. I sent like 50 [queries], maybe more, and I heard back from maybe 5 percent. And a few were just, ‘I’m sorry, we’re not interested,’ or some sort of form letter. But there were two or three people that were willing to look at the film.
One of the people I heard back from was Aaron Kaplan who is now my manager. He wasn’t then. He watched the movie and said, ‘I liked it, I laughed’ — it was a comedy — and he asked, ‘what else are you working on?’
I thought, great, I just opened a door. And so I sent him a script that I had, that I had already written. I’d say that process went on for three years, where I would write a script, I’d finish it, I would send it to him. I would do that over and over and over again. Thankfully, every one of those scripts was at least good enough for him to say they were pretty good, not right for me, but let’s keep talking.
So I’m sending him script after script and it kind of stayed that way, and I got to the point where I wanted to direct a feature again. I finally felt I was in a position where I knew how to do it right, as a writer, as a director, I felt I could do it. But the crazy thing was, I didn’t send Aaron this script. I worked really hard to build and maintain that relationship with him, and in my head I was thinking, he’s a Hollywood guy, a manager and a producer, and he’s not going to care about my little movie about a guy in a box. I didn’t want to ruin this relationship by wasting his time to ask him to read this.
Six months went by, and I’m in pre-production trying to figure out how I’m going to make this movie, and I had one of those moments where you question where your career is going. And I decided to hell with it, I’m going to send [the script] to him, and if it destroys that relationship, I guess so be it.
I sent it and two days later I heard from him, and he just flipped for it. He signed me and then I got my agent like a week later, and he asked me if I would be willing to go out with it as a spec and give up directing. I said sure, of course.
The crazy thing about it is it got made about four months after that. The script went out in March 2009 and then [the film] was in Sundance in January 2010. It was shopped, cast, shot, edited, ready, and premiered within that amount of time. It was pretty wild.
For the rest of the interview, go here.
To read my 2012 interview with Chris in which we analyze his movie Buried, go here.
Comment Archive