Q&A: Screenwriter Marc Maurino (“Inside the Machine”), Part 3

Today we continue my interview with screenwriter Marc Maurino, who wrote and sold the spec script “Inside the Machine” to CBS Films in May 2011:

SM: Okay, so let’s focus on Inside the Machine. Where did the idea for the script originate?

MM: I love crime drama, and I love cops and bad guys. Good characters and stories are drawn from conflict, and the world of law enforcement and criminals is sort of immediately fraught with conflict, and it’s something that I know a lot about, so that was a natural starting place.

Then especially in 2009, the cartel war in Ciudad Juarez was really heating up, and while there have been great crime movies and great undercover movies, there haven’t been a whole lot set on the border. So I set my action down there, and started pulling the strands of the plot together…

SM: How long did it take for you to go from conception of the idea to the draft which enabled you to sign with Circle of Confusion as your managers?

MM: Before the first class meeting of the UCLA program, we were told to have three loglines ready. One was about an undercover federal agent dealing with robbery crews and cartels on the border, which became INSIDE THE MACHINE, and the other two — I’ve since written one as a spec, which my team and I are going out with in 2012, and the third is an idea that I worked on for the third section of the UCLA course, but never panned out.

So August of 2009, I started working on the logline. By Thanksgiving or so we had a 2 pager, beat sheet, step outline (mine sprawled to almost 40 pages) done, then the first act by the new year. I finished the very first draft around March of 2010. I took another pass at that and submitted it to the Independent Filmmaker Project’s Emerging Narrative section of their Project Forum of the Independent Film Week in NYC, where it was one of 25 films selected to be introduced to industry professionals, producers, development execs, reps, etc.

A development executive named Quentin Little who works a bit for IFP gave me some great notes; I had a table read in the summer of 2010 and took a lot of notes from the actors; I got notes from Carson Reeves at Scriptshadow; and I did a rewrite based off of notes from all of those sources.

I brought that to NYC in September of 2010, gave it to a bunch of producers, etc., and to my (now) manager Lawrence Mattis from Circle of Confusion. By November he signed me; hooked me up a second manager on my team, Zach Cox from Circle; hooked me up with my agents at UTA by January; we went out with the script in March and sold preemptively to CBS Films. They never gave me notes and the version we sold was the version I took to NYC (and is the one you read.) So, seven months from logline to first draft; several weeks in summer of 2010 for a rewrite; and sold just about a year exactly after I finished it.

SM: One narrative element in the story that really helps to humanize the Protagonist is the relationship he has with his ten year-old son who has a particularly intriguing psychological condition. How early in your process did you come up with that idea and how did the character of the son evolve?

MM: That was there pretty early; I knew I wanted to present a married couple who were partners and teammates, even though they have problems. I just really didn’t want to do the boozing, philandering cop…I sort of feel that’s been done to death, and may never be done better than by David Simon and Ed Burns’s creation of Jimmy McNulty (Dominic West) in The Wire.

In fact, I was inspired by the relationship between Julia Child and her husband in JULIE AND JULIA — Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci were very clearly in love, and challenges and conflict came from outside their lives, and so that was a goal. Hence, having a son with issues became a way to challenge these characters, still from a place within their family, but not from within their relationship. The character of the son evolved in the sense that I had to do some very character-specific passes to ensure that we stay deeply invested in him, yet allow him to be at the remove that the character requires.

SM: Once Circle of Confusion took you on as a client, how much rewriting of the script did you do?

MM: None. They sold the version I e-mailed to Lawrence Mattis the day I met him.

SM: How was it that CBS Films basically took the script off the market before it went wide?

MM: My producer Tripp Vinson got his hands on the script a little early, and he flipped over it. Being a smart producer, he did whatever it is that smart producers do when they dig something and he brought CBS Films to the table.

SM: Where were you when you found out Inside the Machine had sold? After so many years of toiling away at your craft, what did that moment feel like?

MM: It was late March, and it was a Wednesday night. My wife is a working actor, so she works a lot of nights, and as usual for those nights, I had made and had dinner with the kids, cleaned up, was doing bedtime, and planning to write for a few hours after they were asleep. I knew the script was supposed to “go out wide” on Monday, but by Wednesday afternoon I hadn’t heard anything. I knew a fair bit about the mechanism for a script going out, but I also knew that when it got hot, I’d hear from my reps, so I didn’t hound them and I generally tried not to think about it, and I was working on my new spec to keep myself busy.

So Wednesday night, I go upstairs to read to my son and I dozed off in bed with him, got up at 9 and went downstairs to a message on my phone. It was my manager Zach saying to please call right away, they had to talk to me — and he had the whole team on the phone, himself and Lawrence and Charlie Ferraro and Emerson David from UTA. I called Circle, spoke to Lawrence, and he said that there was some back and forth to be had on various numbers, but that we were looking great with CBS.

At that point, the script wasn’t technically sold, but it was clear it was gonna happen the next day, there was just a little working out of the numbers.

So I went and woke up the kids and told them Daddy’s life just changed, and that I think I sold my script. Both these kids are under ten, but they know I’m writing ALL THE TIME and that despite the day job, writing is what it’s all about. So they got that it was big deal, they hugged me and went back to bed. A couple hours later, my wife came home, I let her tell me how that night’s show had been, then I told her the good news, and she was thrilled.

That moment felt amazing. Just waking my kids up and letting them know that it had finally happened — this journey I’d been on since before they were born, and even though they can’t totally get it, they got that it was a big deal — that was awesome.

The next day I went to work as usual, and got a call midday, which I took in private. The team updated me on the details, and I authorized them to close the deal. I went back to my supervisor’s office to deal with some paperwork, and fifteen minutes later got the call and my agent said “Congratulations. You’re a professional writer.” I felt damn good, then I went back to work for the rest of the day, just like I still do everyday.

The next night, three families with whom we are very close (and all of our kids are friends) came over with champagne, steak, salad, beer, etc., and we celebrated a bit.

It felt fantastic at the time, and it’s felt amazing every day since.

SM: What is the status of the project?

MM: I’m finishing the first of a few steps I got on the project. I’ve been to LA a few times, and I’ve met with Tripp and my executives at CBS, who I really, really like. Their notes have been really smart and character based and supportive and open. I recognize that I may not always say that about studio notes, but for a first time, it’s been amazing so far.

I just completed my first step (rewrite), and it has been an incredible experience, in the sense that no money could buy the expertise, intelligence, and story sense that my CBS executives and producer brought to the notes process and the rewrite process. I left my studio meetings in LA with a batch of notes, went home and executed them, and then Tripp and I refined, cut, massaged, and worked over the script until it was truly, immensely and meaningfully better, smarter, and more powerful than the draft I sold. And that experience, over the last three months, was like a master class in professional screenwriting, and will inform my approach to both my rewrite of my new spec which we’re going out with in 2012, as well as everything I write hereafter.

And of all the smart notes I got, the single best and most valuable task I got was to address the “emotional character motivation” for my protagonist. I already knew what was making my protagonist “go”, but it needed to be a bit more expansive in the script, and taking a pass wherein I identified each and every individual beat where I could address (and then did so) the protagonist’s overarching internal, emotional, motivational thrust made it so much better. It’s a lesson I’ll utilize from the start on all future scripts.

So I just got the studio a new draft, and I have a sense of what might happen next, but that’s really up to them, so we’ll see.

I think that’s the first time I’ve ever interviewed a screenwriter about selling a spec script to break into the business where they shared the good news with their kids! Terrific story.

Tomorrow: Part 4 of my interview with screenwriter Marc Maurino.

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