Q&A: Kyle Killen (“Lone Star,” “Awake”), Part 2

In Part 1 of my interview with screenwriter and TV writer Kyle Killen, we focused on his movie The Beaver which is in theaters now. Today we shift to Kyle’s work in television:

You created a Fox TV series called “Lone Star,” the premise of which is an oil man who is leading two lives. What was the genesis of that idea?

A friend and producer knew some people in Midland [Texas] and wondered if there might be something interesting enough about life there to do a show about. So we visited. And I think we both came away thinking, no, there wasn’t. But the longer I played with it, thought about the people who lived there and how they simultaneously loved and hated being in the middle of nowhere, the more I started to think about someone who could have it both ways.

In a blog post dated February 20, 2010, you acknowledged an odd sense of connection with the series’ Protagonist Bob Allen in an entry titled “The irony about working on a show about a guy living two lives”:

Let me just start by saying that I love my freaking job. I’ve never been happier to be tired. I wake up from four hours of sleep literally dying to get to work… In the past two weeks I’ve watched incredible actors bring characters and words to life in ways I could never have imagined, had the surreal experiencing of scouting my own hometown for locations, and been invited to a straight up HOLLYWOOD celebrityfest simply because I was dressed so poorly I made the person taking me look good by comparison. I know it’s all too good to be true and too fun to last, and every day I’m surprised when I’m not hit by a bus.

So here you are living these two lives — a TV writer in LA and a father of now three children in Austin — working your ass off, loving it, the show gets picked up, the critics love it, it debuts — but the ratings just weren’t there. Instead of curling up into the fetal position and downing a bottle of Woolite, you did something different: You got on your blog and tried to drum up viewer interest, an effort that got picked up by some in the press, and even on my blog. Were you really hoping to influence the show’s Neilsen ratings or was this something else, a writer attempting to make sense of a confounding situation by writing about it?

I was absolutely hoping to influence the shows ratings. I knew in my brain that wasn’t going to happen, but I’ve known a lot of things were never going to happen to me, and then they did, so at this point I tend to just try anyway. The thing about getting a show on the air is that you suddenly find yourself on top of this little corporation, all these people, from actors, to writers, to ACCOUNTANTS, depending on you for their job. And that sense of responsibility helps you get over your fear of looking like a moron in public very quickly. It didn’t work, but I tried, and I needed to know that I had if the inevitable really happened (which it did).

After Fox dropped the show, you wrote a thoughtful post on your blog. Here’s an excerpt:

The truth of the matter is, shows come and go every year. Good ideas, bad ideas, whatever. They all get a run, people find them or they don’t, and the world keeps turning. I’m incredibly grateful that we were given an opportunity to try a premise that, as the numbers seem to confirm, was perhaps a little riskier than I estimated. But I enjoyed every minute of it and would gladly do it all again and just the same, because, well, I’m just that stupid.

Writers are fueled by dreams and I suspect we tend to fantasize about huge successes rather than things not ending well, but the fact is every professional writer has to learn how to deal with failures. How did you handle the cancellation of “Lone Star”?

It’s like driving by a car crash on the freeway. It’s really not that big a deal unless it’s your car. “Lone Star” was my wreck, so it felt significant, but to the rest of the world it was just another fender bender keeping them from getting to Starbucks before work. Ultimately, all you control is the work you do and the environment you do it in, and on that front I thought Lone Star an enormous hit. I met people I will love and respect for the rest of my life, learned things in months that I’d been blind to for years, and had an incredible time. I hope everyone has the chance to enjoy a failure as much as I did.

Your current project is the TV pilot “Awake.” I’ve read the script and it’s terrific, setting into motion a great twist on the procedural cop TV formula. The premise of the show is [description grabbed from the Web]: “An Inception-style thriller about a cop who wakes up after an accident to find he is living in two different realities.” What was your inspiration?

Honestly, it was “Lone Star.” I was just starting to really think about and play with the whole issue of duality and this offered me a different way into it, one where people would be sympathetic to the character as opposed to suspicious of him. I think the fact that we only get one life makes us think hard about all the ways it could have gone but didn’t, so I’m fascinated by people who, for one reason or another, don’t just ask, but start to answer that question.

One thing I’ve noticed: In these three projects — Walter Black from “The Beaver,” who has his own personality but also that of a talking hand puppet, Bob Allen from “Lone Star,” who has two separate families and two distinct lives, and Mark Britten, the cop from “Awake” who is apparently living in two different realities — all three of the Protagonists are living in a fundamental state of disunity, each has some type of split in their lives. Have you ever thought about that? Why is that disunity or split narrative dynamic so compelling to you that you’ve come back to it three times?

See above.

“Awake” has a fantastic cast including Jason Issacs, who plays Britten, Wilmer Valderrama, B.D. Wong, and Laura Allen and a respected show runner in Howard Gordon (“24”). How has the pilot shoot gone? How do you feel about the prospects of the pilot getting picked up?

Again, you never know and so many of the factors are beyond your control it’s like trying to predict the weather on a given day a month from now. I know we put together a great group of people who were committed to doing their best work in the hopes that we could do more of it.

If it goes to series, would you consider relocating to L.A. or are you committed to living in Austin?

I REALLY like living in Austin. I also REALLY like my wife and kids, so I don’t know. We’ve tried to carve out a situation that would allow me to spend more time in Austin than Lone Star did, and if there’s any way to make it work I’d like to stay right where I am.

Okay, some questions on your writing practices. Let’s start with your prep-writing process. Where do you find your stories? How do you come up with story ideas? How important do you think the story concept is to the overall strength of a screenplay or TV series?

I wish I knew where I found things — I’d look there more often. Notions, ideas, thoughts, they just sort of come to you all the time and some stick around long enough that you decide you should try to do something with them. I’d say that the concept is really important to the whole, except there are countless examples of brilliant films and shows about very little, and spectacularly terrible ones that seem to have slam dunk concepts. Everything in life tends to be execution dependent.

How much time do you spend in prep-writing (i.e., brainstorming, character development, plotting, research, outlining)? Which of the aspects of prep do you tend to devote the most time and focus to?

Again, I’m really a mess when it comes to process. TV was the first time that something structured and rigorous was demanded of me, and I still tended to start writing before I really knew what I was writing about. I’ve never done outlines because I’m never sure what a scene really is until I try to write it. The flip side of that is that a lot of what I write turns out to be overwritten and unnecessary, to make the same point multiple times, and generally read like I’m working it out as I go, which I am. I hope I’m getting better through the sheer volume of things being asked of me, but only time will tell.

When you wrote “The Beaver,” was there a particular narrative paradigm you used or did you have a more ‘organic’ approach to story structure?

If by organic you mean, I just threw in a bunch of stuff, yes, it was that. I mean, I went to film school, I know how structure works, and I absolutely try to have it guide me and keep me from spiraling off in a million directions. But with the Beaver in particular, because it started as a novel, it was more about seeing what would fit and what told a story that could be understood than anything else.

What are some of the tools and techniques you use to dig into your characters and develop them?

Pretty sure I can’t possibly answer this one without sounding like a pretentious windbag, so I’ll skip it.

Let’s say you’re plugging along in your writing when you suddenly realize something you wrote 15 pages previous doesn’t work. Do you go back and fix it, or do you keep writing because it’s more important to you to finish that first draft?

This is where the difference between what I was used to doing and what TV demands really became clear. I’m totally a go back and fix it person. I want to know that the ground I’m standing on is firm before I start building anything else. But in TV there just IS NOT TIME. You have so much to write that if you get stuck you have to skip ahead and find the next scene you DO know how to write and come back. It was the first time I ever wrote scenes out of order, let alone wrote on multiple different scripts in a single day. Tremendous pressure makes all sorts of things possible.

What do you think are the keys to the rewrite process?

Usually it’s about hiding whatever you wrote the first time. The first time through people tend to tell each other what the scene is about, and in life we don’t really talk that way. We talk around things, at things, and about things, without ever overtly stating them. Life has a subtext. Most first drafts don’t.

If there’s one fundamental principle about screenwriting or TV writing to which you subscribe, what would that be?

You have to be interested in what you’re working on. If you’re not, it shows. That doesn’t mean it won’t get made, or air, or make millions of dollars. It just means that someone somewhere will know you wish you were writing something else, even if that someone is just you.

TV writing or screenwriting: Do you prefer one over the other? If so, why?

I don’t. Time is the incredible and terrible thing about both. In TV it means you write something today, shoot it next week, and see it on the air in a month. It also means that your job never ends up being about making something perfect, it becomes about making it as perfect as it can be by next Tuesday. In film, you have all the time in the world to tweak, adjust, and perfect. It’s truly about going back as many times as you can stand it until the thing is as good as you can make it. The flip side is that it all takes forever. So many things have to break right for a film to come together, let alone to be successful that it can feel like waiting for an eclipse. But on those rare occasions where everything lines up just so… I like to imagine it’s pretty hard to beat.

Finally what advice can you offer to aspiring TV writers and screenwriters about the craft of writing?

I’m terrible at advice because frankly I’m not sold on the idea that I’m that good at my job to begin with. So perhaps instead of advice I can simply offer inspiration. I got this far on a very limited amount of talent and copious amounts of desperation. In the end it just comes down to this: if you can’t quit, you also can’t be stopped.

You want inspiration? Print and post this last paragraph, or even just that last line: “If you can’t quit, you also can’t be stopped.”

Over the last three years on this blog, you and I have complained often about the crap Hollywood routinely foists on us in terms of movies and TV. Then along comes a writer like Kyle Killen who creates original, compelling stories like The Beaver, “Lone Star” and “Awake.”

You want to support talent like that? Go see The Beaver this week. When “Awake” gets picked up, watch it.

Many thanks to Kyle for taking the time to do this Q&A.

You may follow him on Twitter: @killen8.

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