Stepping into Characters and Finding Common Ground

MINDHUNTER: Writing For David Fincher Interview With Staff Writer & JK Studio Student Pamela Cederquist Live from ITVFEST By Jacob Krueger Jake:  Hello everybody thanks for joining us. This is an exciting event for me for a couple of different reasons. As a lot of you know, we are up here at  ITVfest in Vermont, hosting a retreat for our students, so we are doing a live version of my podcast. This is a special episode, because I am so incredibly proud of the woman sitting to my left. Pamela Cederquist is a student of mine, she is taking pretty much every class at the studio, she is part of our ProTrack Mentorship Program. And, she just finished her first stint in a real writer’s room on one of the most exciting shows of the year, Mindhunter, the new David Fincher series for Netflix. So first, I just think she deserves a round of applause. These are the kind of success stories that you want to see and that you want to remember. Because, so many people wonder, “Is this really possible?” Pamela doesn’t live in Los Angeles; she lives in Upstate New York. Pamela isn't 22 years old. Pamela is a writer who worked her ass off and made it. And, so, I want to talk to you about what the process was for you. How did you become a part of Mindhunter? Pamela:  Hi everybody. First of all, it is a pleasure to be here thank you for listening. I got the job by word of mouth, by knowing somebody and having worked with that person, and also having had a feature script that I had developed and that took 400 years to finish. I was able to show that script to one of David’s producers, and they read it, and I got notes back from that producer. They liked that writing well enough that, when David was looking for another writer, they were able to say to David, “Hey check this out.” I got a phone call and they said, “Hi, say yes to this phone call and would like you in Pittsburgh on Friday.” And I was like, “Okay, I don’t know what I am saying yes to, but I can be in Pittsburgh on Friday.” Then they said, “Good, you are writing for David Fincher,” and I went, “Okay, yes.” Jake:  I think one of the things that is exciting about this is that often writers get hung up on the question of selling it-- Is it this script? Do I have the right idea? Is the idea marketable? The title of Pamela’s spec script is Pyro, and I think Pyro is a good movie for David Fincher and it is a really extraordinary script. When you sent that script out, the real hope of course was that they were going to buy it, they were going to option it, you were going to make a lot of money, it was going to get made. And this is an example of a script that didn’t get bought, where you get a bunch of notes back, “Do this, change that,” and you don’t even know that months later you are going to get a phone call. Can you talk to me a little bit about the process of developing that script? Pamela:  It started with an idea about an artist whose medium is fire. I actually saw a video on YouTube that was a light piece, where somebody had a dragon that was flowing across a wall, a building. And, I went from there to fire, which I think is an amazing thing, and started writing this script. And I had kindof come up with characters and kindof come up with the story, and I knew what the beginning was, and, I sort of knew what the end was. And I got completely lost in the middle of it, which is you know, where writers end up in hell. And, at that point, I went to a writers’ conference in LA, my first one, and I was thinking “Okay I will go to a writers’ conference because I have never been, so I will go to writers’ conference and see what it is.” And walked into a room, and Jake was doing a pitching session, and it was one of those moments where when you meet somebody and you are like, “Oh, right person for me.” And, that just, that happens to all of us, and sometimes it happens often, sometimes it happens rarely, but in my world,