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, what I have learned is when that happens, you grab hold and you stay there. It took me two years to finally be able to get in a position in my life where I could play with Jake. And, in working with you on Pyro, what we found, and what I have learned from you that was invaluable in working with Fincher, and what I learned on Pyro was theme; was taking theme and using it as your guide, like that was my roadmap. I knew what I was writing suddenly, and we threw out characters, we created new characters, we threw out entire sequences, we added more sequences, and now all of a sudden I have car chases and foot chases and roof running and blowing shit up, all that other stuff. And it works, it isn't gratuitous, it works and it is the right thing. Jake:  So, talk to me a little bit about your process as a writer, because you have a very intuitive process. And you know, I think a lot of writers get hung up on the idea of where they are going. And, one of the cool things that I saw as your writing developed was that we had all these chunks, and all these different chunks, and you would sort of discover them like, “I don’t actually know where all these chunks go,” or, “I am not exactly sure who this character is.” We had characters who switched gender, right? Talk a little bit about that process and how you discovered that stuff. Pamela:  Okay, so one of the things I have found is that the way I work is I have to think a lot. And, Jake at one point finally said to me, “Look, don’t go so deep, please, don’t go so deep, just write on the surface,” because otherwise I am like, “Wow maybe this person is like going to turn their hair orange, it is going to be great.” So, it needs to be integral to me. And the biggest discipline I think I had to learn was getting out of my own way, was, stop trying to write, that for me was the most important thing. I have done some acting, and it is the same thing in my experience as acting where if I walk onto a stage or in front of a camera and I try to act, it is going to suck. And, if I just arrive on stage and let it flow, and trust whatever it is that is talking through me, it works and it works well. And, I have had that same experience with writing, and that is what I brought to the table with Fincher as well.   Jake:  So, I think this story is awesome. Sometimes we manifest things that we don’t even realize we are manifesting. So, we got to the end of this two year process, to tell you that Pamela rewrote that script like 400 times, probably doesn’t even describe what that was. And then, she got all these notes from the producer and she rewrote the script again, which has been another good six months. It is an incredibly long process and it is one of the things that a lot of writers don’t understand. They are wondering, “Do I have what it takes to make it? Or, is this idea good enough? Or, is this script good enough?” And I think one of the reasons that Pamela succeeded is because of her tremendous work ethic. And, I can tell you in my experience working with writers that I will take a writer who has got the work ethic over the writer who it flows easily for any day. I will take the writer who maybe struggles a little bit more. Some people just start typing words and it flows out like magic and gold. But sometimes, those people don’t actually have the experience with struggle to say, “Okay I want to do this again. It didn’t work; I am going to do it again.” And so Pamela-- I was almost done the first draft with Pamela-- and Pamela says, “You know Jake, I have decided as my next project, I want to learn to write something on a deadline because this thing took me two years, and I grew so much as a writer, and I feel like I got enough and I need to learn to write fast.” And, the next thing I knew, she was writing on insane deadlines on Mindhunter. She just manifested it and got out. What was it for you, what was the difference when you are writing alone, or writing a feature versus coming into an existing show and having to write those characters? Pamela:  Listening. I mean, I got lucky. I got to work with David Fincher, and my experience in working with David Fincher is that he is willing to give anything to the creative process. He was available 24/7, his schedule was insane and I never took him up on it, but in my conversations with him, he was like, “Call any time, if you have any question, call.” And he was willing to play with, “what if?” “Yes, here is my outline, yes here is what I have been told, but I would like to play with this a little bit, I am not sure with the character, I think we could do more with the character, I think the character---what do you think?” “Yeah, yeah go ahead, write it, write it long, if you give me 200 pages for 60 pages, I am fine with that, let me see it, and let me participate in playing with it.” So, I got the best-- I mean you can’t get better. I got lucky, I got to work with somebody who was interested in participating-- or maybe I didn’t get lucky, maybe that is true about a lot of people, we just don’t get a chance to help them get there. But, it was about being of service to somebody else’s story. That is what I was there for. I was there to support him in telling the story he wanted. Which meant not only doing what he asked for, but listening and trying to find those pieces that he was maybe implying or wasn’t quite 100% clear about yet. And giving him the stuff to look at so that he could go, “Yes, no, no this doesn’t work, yes this works.” And that-- accepting that the no’s were going to be part of the process of finding what was yes, and not taking it personally. Because it is his project. Jake:  How do you step into a character that you didn’t create? Pamela:  Oh yeah, yeah. Finding what is true for me. So, Mindhunter, came out today,