Screenwriters Roundtable, Part 2: Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, John Swetnam

A special treat this week as I will be posting excerpts from a screenwriter’s roundtable I did with a group of talented Hollywood screenwriters: Chris Borrelli, F. Scott Frazier, Chris McCoy, Justin Rhodes, Greg Russo, and John Swetnam. How good are they? Between them, they have sold more than a dozen spec scripts and have multiple original screenplays on the Black List.

This is the third GITS screenwriters roundtable, the first two of which you can read here and here. Hopefully this will continue as an annual event as it’s a great way to take the pulse of what’s happening in the screenwriting universe, track the careers of these talented writers, and benefit from the many insights into the craft they share.

Here is Part 2:

Scott: Frazier, you had a movie released in 2013, The Numbers Station. What was that like for you?

F. Scott Frazier: It was kind of a surreal experience. I had a whole bunch of friends and family come out and see it. It was a very limited release. DirecTV did a really big push. It was one of its biggest movies this year. There were commercials for it. You could only watch it on DirecTV before it came out in theaters.

I had already seen it and I had live-tweeted it for people who wanted to watch it on demand. But seeing it in a theater was definitely a bizarre experience. I don’t know if I can even put it into words. I was nervous the entire time. I felt like I was going to throw up. I just don’t think that there’s anything even comparable to seeing it up on a 60-foot screen. It’s just a very bizarre experience.

Scott: Yeah, because we spend so much time just in a room with the story. To actually see it live, in front of an audience, is a pretty startling experience sometimes.

F. Scott Frazier: I think my best experience from the movie coming out was… I don’t know, God, when I wrote the script, five years ago, six years ago now, there was a point where I was writing the script, and I wrote line of dialogue. After I wrote it, I said to myself that’s a trailer line. Then it ended up in the trailer. It was like the key line in the trailer. I just thought that was one of the coolest things ever.

Scott: What about your project “Autobahn”?

F. Scott Frazier: The movie was getting put together this summer. We had a leading man, then a couple of weeks before the shoot, the leading man dropped out. He has since been replaced. They’ve rebuilt the cast, and the latest update is it’s going to be filming in 2014.

Scott: Is this Amber Heard and Nicholas Hoult?

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah, they are currently the two that are attached to it, yeah.

Scott: That’s interesting because she was in Zombieland, right?

F. Scott Frazier: Just for like a second.

Scott: And he was in Warm Bodies.

F. Scott Frazier: Yeah.

Scott: I was thinking, because the logline is “An American backpacker gets involved with a ring of drug smugglers as their driver.” It may be too late in development to do this, Scott, but what do you think? “An American backpacker gets involved with a ring of drug smuggling zombies.”

F. Scott Frazier: It’s possible! I mean, we could probably fix it in post. Just add it with some ADR.

Editor’s note: Autobahn is in post-production and stars Nicholas Hoult, Felicity Jones, Anthony Hopkins and Ben Kingsley.

John Swetnam: Actually, I already wrote that as a found footage movie, so sorry guys.

F. Scott Frazier: Swetnam’s jumped on it. John, you had a movie come out, Evidence.

John Swetnam: I did.

F. Scott Frazier: Was that your first spec script that sold?

John Swetnam: Yes. That was the first one we sold. It was the same distribution company as Frazier’s The Numbers Station.

Scott: As I recall, you had written 17 scripts before you sold your first script. In a sense, when that movie came out, that must have been some sort of validation for you to have gone down that incredible path of all that work to see it actually get made.

John Swetnam: Yeah, and if anyone else would have seen it, it would have been awesome.

[laughter]

No, it was crazy. It’s the dream-come-true kind of thing. There’s really no way to explain it. It’s like Frazier said. I think it played in three theaters within 100 miles. I had to drive down to Orange County to see it in the theater because I wanted that experience.

I was in the theater, and actually, one of the actors was… there were only three people in the theater. It was a person I brought, and then one of the actors in the movie was actually at the theater. So there wasn’t a crowd, but still, it was really cool to see it on a big screen. I’m in it, and I looked amazing.

[laughter]

Scott: You’ve got two others on the calendar in 2014: Step Up: All In and Into the Storm, both in August.

John Swetnam: Yep. Summer of Swetnam, fellows.

Scott: At some point, it’s possible you’ll have two movies out in theaters at the same time.

John Swetnam: Yeah, I would hope.

Editor’s note: In fact, both Step Up: All In and Into the Storm opened on the same weekend, a unique experience for a writer to have two movies released simultaneously.

F. Scott Frazier: They do an OK business with those movies.

John Swetnam: They’ve made a bit of money. Yeah, it’s going to be a trip. It’s one of those things where I just have no idea what that’s going to be. It’s crazy to me, the idea that I’m going to have an actual studio movie, and then another one.

Scott: You started producing this year, too, didn’t you?

John Swetnam: I did. I started a production company, and that’s been amazing. We’re setting up a lot of stuff. Hopefully, our first project will be shooting in the summer.

Scott: Had you always thought you wanted to go into producing, or was that just something that evolved organically?

John Swetnam: Honestly, I never started out being a writer. I went to grad school, started as a director. But directing is too expensive because you have to pay for your own short films. I was like well, fuck it, I’ll produce. Then I couldn’t find any scripts. Then I was like well, I’ll just write a script. How hard can it be? Fast-forward nine years later, nineteen scripts… it was really fucking hard. But yes, the production company was always the plan.

For me, it’s just about having control. It’s about making movies the way I always dreamed that they would be made. I’m very fortunate, and I’m happy about the way things are going, but it’s not exactly the way you imagined it. I want to make movies where it’s like camp, where everybody gets together, you bring really cool people together, and you go off, and you make a movie. It makes money, and everyone’s having a good time.

I want to be the producer that I wanted as a writer. That’s what I tell people. I’m a writer-producer, but I want to be a writer’s producer, do it a little differently and have my own stamp on the way producers work. It’s an experiment, and I could be back at the Olive Garden in two years, but fuck it, I’m giving it a shot.

Scott: Is it far to say, then, because you’re moving into some producing and Chris… both Chrises are moving into directing.

John Swetnam: I’m actually directing my first movie as well.

Scott: Oh, you are?

John Swetnam: Trying it all, yeah.

Scott: OK. Can you talk about that project…

John Swetnam: We independently financed. We are fully financed. I’m producing it, writing, directing. I’m producing with John Legend and his production company, Get Lifted Film Co. It’s a fun, cool little dance genre movie.

Editor’s note: That project called Breaking Through has completed principle photography.

Scott: It seems like, at least for some of you, this issue of control, or having more of an input, oversight over what’s going on, that’s a big deal. Is that fair to say?

John Swetnam: Yeah.

Chris Borrelli: Yes, from me.

F. Scott Frazier: That’s very fair.

John Swetnam: For me, it’s not about necessarily control or oversight, per se. It’s more about partnership. What happens with writers a lot is that you kind of get kicked off the team, or your value on the team diminishes very quickly, which is fine, because that’s just the way it’s always been.

I like the idea of the writer, in whatever capacity, being on the team and being an important player on the team all the way through the production, through editing, through everything. And that’s kind of what I want to do, is whether I’m directing, producing, or writing, I just want to be part of the team. And I want to have input, and I want to be partners more than like the dictator, if that makes sense.

Chris Borrelli: That’s still what I see as control. I think that’s really well‑said, by the way. That’s just how I see it as control, and starting with a vision, and hopefully ending with the same vision. Even if it changes a little bit, but being part of it through the whole process.

I’ve watched certain things I’ve written be kind of screwed up over my career, and I want to screw them up. Why not me? I can screw it up, too. That’s really my philosophy, and it’s what I’ve always wanted to do. At the same time, I think everything’s coming together. Movies, television, the lines are getting more and more blurred. I think with creating a film, while I don’t really believe in the auteur idea, I do think directing and writing and editing, things like that, and producing, that there should be some overlap there. And I’m definitely not afraid to step into those different worlds.

F. Scott Frazier: If you look at our most successful artists in the moviemaking business, you look at the Coen Brothers, and those are guys that have complete control over their movies. I would say that for better or worse, they always make a Coen Brothers movie, and it’s always their movie.

And I think that they have way more home runs than they have strikeouts. It’s about those guys making a movie and making their vision. Obviously, it’s always going to be collaborative process. There’s always hundreds of people that make a movie.

But I think you also want to have a little bit of that vision, and you want to… for me, there’s a lot of scripts that I write that I’m just like OK, I get it. This is a hundred million dollar movie. I’m not going to be involved in it anymore. There’s way too much on the line for my say to be the final say in making decisions.

When I write something that’s a little bit closer to my heart, or I write something that’s a little bit smaller, it definitely does kind of hurt when you get taken off of it, or you get, like John said, you get taken off the team or you get put on the bench. It wouldn’t exist without writers, and to kind of get the short shrift is never fun.

Chris McCoy: The point is also to make movies. I think that everyone here in this roundtable is in a position where we’ve been able to have careers and make a decent living and make money, but I don’t think anyone came out here just to write scripts and be able to tell your friends your scripts are set up at places.

I think that at a certain point, you just realize there are enough people who have just taken the reins at some point and decided ‘I can do this. Lots of people before me have directed a movie. It’s time for me to do this.’ It gives you confidence. Every single director started out with a first film somewhere, so you just have to be that guy.

Editor’s note: Chris is directing Good Kids from his own Black List script, the project starring Zoey Deutch, Julia Garner, Nicholas Braun and Isreal Broussard.

F. Scott Frazier: I’ve always said that screenwriters are some of the only types of artists that I can think of where what they create is not viewed by the public. If you write a really good script, 100 people in Hollywood read it, and then 100 crewmembers read it, and then it gets made into a movie.

The people who go and see the movie, 99 percent of the time, they’ll never read the script or they’ll never see the work that we put on the page. I’ve always likened it to an architect. An architect is the same way.

If an architect does a really good job, you’re never going to see his blueprints. You’re just going to see his building. When they start making the building, the architect isn’t suddenly set aside and told thanks for the blueprint, we’ve got it from here.

It’s definitely a bizarre situation, and there’s always going to be a struggle, I think, between wanting to be a part of it, and that there’s 100 million dollars on the line.

Greg Russo: The writer’s also the only guy above-the-line where it’s okay for others involved in the film to mess around with his craft. There’s a great analogy to the cinematographer. I don’t know if you guys have heard it. Imagine a producer going up to Roger Deakins on set and saying, let me fuck around with your camera a little bit here and there until I’m happy with it.

F. Scott Frazier: Can I adjust the depth of field?

Chris Borrelli: I don’t even get asked. They just do it. On top of that, it’s funny, just a lot of writing, of course, is done either in dark rooms or maybe a coffee shop, often with very little interaction with other people. It’s funny how much we can learn about human nature from honestly being a screenwriter.

People, they love you. These producers will do anything for you, and they want your opinion. Once they have what they want, I’ve seen it time and time again, they just move on. Just human nature. So I’ve learned to not take it personally.

A lot of the people that you work with or hire you, I believe they’re terrified for their own jobs or their own place in this. I don’t really take it personally, but the fact to create something that I do care about, when I’ve watched it go the wrong way or I’ve watched the ball be dropped, or something be set up or we have an amazing leading man in the line, and that falls apart.

When I’ve watched that happen through bad mistakes, kind of a slow motion car crash, I wish I could step in and have more say and have something to do with it, and have something to do with taking that vision to the finish line.

That’s one of my big reasons I’m making this push, and I’m surprised I waited this long, really.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Each day for this series, I’m going to highlight one of the writers. Today: F. Scott Frazier.

Scott Frazier’s credits include THE NUMBERS STATION, starring John Cusack and Malin Ackerman. His latest movie, AUTOBAHN, starring Nicolas Hoult, Ben Kingsley, and Anthony Hopkins and directed by Eran Creevy is in post-production now. He most recently sold his spec script BERLINER to Universal, with Chris Morgan producing. He has worked on a number of projects in development, including METRO 2033 at MGM and HEATSEEKERS at Paramount. He lives with his wife and son as far north as you can possibly get while still remaining in Los Angeles county.

Please take time to leave a reply with your observations and follow-up questions, and while you’re there thank these writers for taking time out of their busy schedules to do this roundtable for GITS readers and the wider online screenwriting community.

On Twitter:

F. Scott Frazier: @ScreenWritten

Chris McCoy: @thatthere

Justin Rhodes: @twopointfour

John Swetnam: @JohnSwetnam

Many thanks to Wendy Cohen for logistical help with the roundtable.

Tomorrow: Part 3 of this exclusive screenwriter’s roundtable.

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