Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

“I came up doing improv where failure is the golden standard. And in improv, if you're not failing, you're doing something wrong. I feel really lucky that that was one of my bridges into entertainment and creativity, to have such a loving relationship with failure because, boy! As a writer, your days are filled with it and rejection and killing your darlings. I think comedy and improv have taught me how wonderful failure can be and how much we can get out of it for sure,” says Carrie Solomon, writer of the new Netflix romantic comedy, A Family Affair starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Ephron.  In this episode, Carrie talks about working as an assistant when she first came to Hollywood, calling it a job that can be, “Thankless at times, certainly, but really rewarding in the amount of information that you can absorb.”  She also talks about bringing her own life experience – like being an assistant – to her storytelling.  “Thematically, I think a lot of lot of the arcs in this movie are certainly my own. It’s my own therapy coming to the screen, going to the page. I should probably send my therapist a Netflix., QR code to go check out the movie,” Carrie says.  Carrie also shares a lot of advice, including how to get your writing noticed. “For anyone who wants to make a splash or write something crazy or noticeable, write something that's crazy to you. Don't worry about what. If you yourself were entertained or wowed by an idea or you think, oh my god, that's absolutely like ass backwards crazy. Try it. I have a lot of friends that the minute they stop worrying about audiences or development execs or what people want to read, that's when they really found their voice and it clicked. I think being personal is one of the one of the quickest ways to find success.” To hear more about Carrie’s writing journey, listen to the podcast.

In this episode, I talk with Dave Holstein, co-writer of the upcoming Disney/Pixar sequel Inside Out 2, which takes us back into the mind of a now teenage Riley as she navigates a whole new crop of personified emotions, including Envy, voiced by The Bear star Ayo Edebiri, and of course, Anxiety, voiced by Stranger Things’ Maya Hawke. Dave describes what it’s like working with a well-oiled storytelling powerhouse like Disney/Pixar, as well as co-writing with Inside Out franchise veteran Meg LeFauve to not only recapture some of the magic of the original film but to also create some of their own.  

“Just a shout out to everybody who's listening who has ever written a movie. This is a true story – I was writing a movie. I had been paid to write a movie and I was writing a movie when I got Late Night. And when I got Late Night, my first thought wasn’t, 'Oh my god, I'm going to have my own talk show.’ My first thought was, ‘Oh my god, I don't have to finish that screenplay. I'm so happy!’” says Seth Meyers, adding, “Anybody who can finish a screenplay – I have so much respect for you. It's so much harder than anything else. And that's the thing, when I watch a terrible movie, I always think, ‘Shout out to whoever finished it. They got three acts. All the characters had names, they did it!’”. In this episode, I talk with Emmy-winning talk show host and former SNL head writer Seth Meyers. Seth talks about his origins of becoming a comedy writer and performer, his time on SNL, what he looks for in a TV writer, and how Late Night with Seth Meyers has grown over the years as he celebrates the show’s 10th anniversary. I also asked Seth about the best ways to get your voice as a writer to show through in your writing sample. He says it’s difficult considering the highly competitive environment, but it comes down to making fresh choices. “The hardest thing I would have to do when I was at SNL was we would receive say, 200 packets of sketch submissions and we'd split them up amongst four of us. It was a slog – not because they were bad sketches but because we'd spent our whole year reading sketches and so you could tell when somebody was aiming to write an SNL script. But then, every now and then, sometimes it was just one line in a sketch, sometimes it was even a character's name, there would be something that would just sort of break through the noise, and you'd look at it and say, ‘Oh, I don't think I've ever seen anybody make that choice before.’ So I just encourage people to try to do the thing that even you haven't seen,” says Seth. To hear more of what Seth Meyers has to say, listen to the podcast.

“From Robert De Niro, I learned not to force anything. Not to force your idea of how something should be and then go from there. Not, ‘Oh, this should be funny,’ or ‘Oh, I'm going make you cry.’ That's the wrong thing. You just need to think about the thing the character is experiencing and don't push it – have it happen. And he was obsessive with me about not trying to make anything funny and he would say to me, ‘Tony, it's very funny. But I want you to see the funny happen naturally from the authenticity of it,’” says Tony Spiridakis on working on the screenplay for Ezra with Robert De Niro who stars in the film, along with Bobby Cannavale, William A. Fitzgerald, and Rose Byrne.   In this episode of the Write On podcast, Spiridakis talks about how Ezra was inspired by his own journey of raising a son with autism. The film shows the very human side of parenting from the point of view of a standup comedian who loves his son desperately but doesn’t know how best to help him. Part road movie, part comedy, Ezra tackles both the perils and heart-felt comedy of the father and son bond. Spiridakis also talks about getting cast as an actor in Stanley Kubrick’s Full Metal Jacket, then unceremoniously getting let go from the film. He shares how he turned his disappointments as an actor into a career as a playwright, screenwriter, and director. “Okay, so the acting didn't pan out as I had hoped it would, but I'm still a storyteller and I think that's the beautiful thing about whatever it is that we gravitate towards – one superpower or another,” says Tony. To find out more about writing the screenplay Ezra, listen to the podcast.

Jess Brownell, showrunner for Bridgerton Season 3, discusses focusing on juicy, character-driven stories inspired by Shonda Rhimes. She shares advice on writing period dramas and delves into the friends-to-lovers storyline and rom-com tropes. The podcast highlights the importance of character secrets, maternal relationships, and costume design in creating compelling storytelling.

“Tennis is an amazing sport to think about a love triangle because it’s so deeply charged erotically," says Justin Kuritzkes, screenwriter for the new film Challengers, starring Zendaya. "Tennis is a game that’s so steeped in repression, but also in wild abandon. There’s all these rigid rules and prescriptions of movement and boxes that the ball has to fall into. It’s all so tightly organized and yet, once the ball is in play, physics takes over and it’s wild chaos. You see these two people responding to each other in an almost instinctual and subconscious way. So, it felt like there was a lot of energy in tennis that was exciting to me cinematically.” In this episode of the Write On podcast, Justin talks about using tennis as a metaphor for relationships, the complicated choices his characters make, and the challenges going from playwright to screenwriter.    “It’s really useful to have some knowledge of yourself as a dramatist or as a storyteller before you go into writing a screenplay because screenplays are so unforgiving. If you’ve already been working as a playwright or novelist, you’ve got an advantage there. The main thing I was focusing on writing Challengers was that I wanted to feel like I could see the movie on the page because it was a movie I really wanted to watch…You can’t tell if something is good as you’re writing it. You can’t tell if something is going to be a safe bet for anybody to make. All you can tell is if the movie is alive to you. If that’s true, there is a chance that the movie will be alive on the page for other people, to the point where they’ll want to make it with you,” he says.  To hear more from Justin, listen to the podcast. 

“We had to go back to the ratings board five times. It was a long journey. You have to laugh sometimes, because we had some really grotesque imagery in our film. We even have a demon phallus in the film and nobody was worried about that. It was really the image of the vagina that was getting us that rating,” says Arkasha Stevenson, director, and co-screenwriter for The First Omen, about initially getting an NC17 rating from the Motion Picture Association. After much back and forth, the film is now rated R.  The First Omen was written by Tim Smith and Arkasha Stevenson with Stevenson also directing. The film is a prequel to the classic horror film The Omen (1976) and stays true to the narrative that brings Damian, the antichrist, into the world. But keeping faithful to the original film proved to be challenging in a number of ways.  “Because we grew up on The Omen,” says Stevenson, “it has such a special place in our hearts. We knew that it has such a special place every horror fan’s heart, too… We didn't want to tarnish anything, so trying to find a balance where we were trying to create something new, and have our own world, and characters and messages within that, but also pay homage to the original omen, and also have tie-ins and callbacks – it was interesting to try and figure out how to have a conversation with the original film,” she says. We also discuss how the film explores the theme of control over women’s bodies and how the current political climate factored into the story considering abortion is such a hot-button issue. To hear more about the writing of the film and how Stevenson and Smith came to the project, listen to the podcast.   

Writer Michael Brandt is no stranger to the big and small screen.   Having written such thrilling films like 3:10 to Yuma, Wanted, 2 Fast 2 Furious and Catch That Kid, he is also the co-creator of NBC’s Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, Chicago P.D. and Chicago Justice.    His latest film, which he adapted from the book, "Arthur: The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home," is a story of friendship and survival. The film stars Mark Wahlberg and Simu Liu.    Final Draft sat down with Brandt to find out how this story of an adventure racing athlete who goes on a 435-mile journey through the jungle with his newfound friend, Arthur the dog, came to life. “Producer, Tucker Tooley, said, 'Here's this book. ESPN has done the story on this guy, but I'm not sure it's for you,'" said Brandt. "Meaning he didn't think I'd be into it. He gave me the one-line, and I said that sounds amazing.”    We sat down with Brandt to hear about this heart-warming true story and how he brought it to the big screen. Listen to hear the full interview.

"When I sat down to start writing it, I sort of like came up with air a couple of hours later with a movie," says writer/director Kobi Libii about the origins of his new satirical comedy, The American Society of Magical Negros. “I think it's kind of beautiful that people don't have a reaction that I recognize because my job is to be really honest, especially about stuff that is that I'm sort of afraid to say.” Final Draft sat down with the writer/director to talk more about how he created this story about a man who is recruited into a secret society of magical Black people who spend their time making life easier for white people.  The film stars Justin Smith and David Alan Grier and releases into theaters March 15. Listen to the podcast to hear more about Libii's journey in making The American Society of Magical Negros. 

“Just write a story you want to tell and don't try to write something which you think you can sell to somebody because that way is madness. You have to write what you want to write whether it works or not for other people. But if it's not authentic to you, it's doomed at some point along the road. So stick to your guns!” says award-winning writer, Andrew Bergman about writing your first spec script. The Writers Guild of America East has again partnered with FilmNation and Final Draft for the NY Screenwriting Fellowship that fosters underrepresented New York screenwriters to help get them career mentorships as they navigate their way into the business. On today’s episode, I speak to two of the program’s mentors, award-winning screenwriter Andrew Bergman, best known for his script Blazing Saddles, and producer Caroline Kaplan, known for the recent Oscar-nominated animated film, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. I also speak to their mentee, Irina Rodriguez about her journey as an emerging writer and what it’s like to get guidance from these two accomplished filmmakers.  “I have always just felt like mentorship is such a big part of the independent film community and what we all do – it's really such a supportive community in that way,” says producer Caroline Kaplan, adding, “This program is really exciting because of how that they create it, both from an artistic mentorship and sort of a business mentorship so we can holistically help somebody… I think connection and community is what it’s all about.” To hear more advice and what Andrew learned from working with director Mel Brooks, listen to the podcast.