Script Apart with Al Horner

Did you think Script Apart was going to let the 30th anniversary of one of the most iconic teen films ever just pass us by? In the words of Cher Horowitz – “as if.” On today’s episode, we’re joined by Amy Heckerling, the writer-director who, three decades ago this summer, gave Jane Austen’s Emma a Beverly Hills makeover to remember. You may also know her for Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Look Who’s Talking and Vamps, but Clueless is the film that she’s best-known for – a Nineties treasure trove of high school hilarity that’s still beloved today. So much so that a musical adaptation, also written by Amy, just opened in London’s West End. In the conversation you’re about to hear, Amy tells Al about the spirit of kindness that runs through the movie. We get into the TV pilot for Clueless – then titled No Worries – that was turned down across Hollywood, and discuss what was going on in Amy’s life at the time of writing Clueless. The story of the film is one of a sunny optimist named Cher who’s ready to take on the world. For Amy, though, that was hardly the case as she wrote the hit comedy. “I was feeling very depressed, which is how most stories start,” she teased in an interview in 2016. In this episode, she tells us why. Support for this episode comes from Final Draft.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on Script Apart – one of cinema’s great monster movies. The terrifying creature at this movie’s core, though, didn’t have trailing tentacles, bloodshot eyes or reptilian skin. Instead of sharp teeth, it wore a sharp suit – Valentino pinstripe, perfectly pressed. This monster owned a gleaming Rolex, lived in an elegant condo and smiled politely through slap-up dinners with his fellow Wall Street sleazes. At night, he stalked the streets of New York, maiming sex workers and murdering the homeless, to a soundtrack of Huey Lewis and the News. And twenty-five years on, he’s arguably more fearsome than ever in his relevance to our own world. Yes, joining Al Horner for a metaphorical reservation at Dorsia this week is author, actress and screenwriter Guinevere Turner, who co-wrote American Psycho. Guinevere teamed up with someone who would become a long-time collaborator, director Mary Harron, to adapt Bret Easton Ellis’ controversial novel about a deranged investment banker named Patrick Bateman (Christian Bale). In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Guinevere tells me about the parts of herself she perhaps threaded into her and Mary's version of the story, either consciously or subconsciously – as revealed in her 2023 memoir, When The World Didn’t End, she grew up in a cult that promised followers they’d be whisked off in a spaceship to Venus, and there’s cult-like framing of money and materialism in American Psycho that perhaps was no accident. We get into her and Mary’s treatment of Patrick as an “alien who’s crash-landed to Earth,” learning to fit in through the pop culture he engages in. You’ll also hear about Bret Easton Ellis’s version of the film that ended with Patrick Bateman singing a musical tribute to New York, and what Guinevere’s take is on the upcoming remake, reported to be directed by Luca Guadagnino. For more from Guinevere, whose other work includes The L Word, Go Fish, The Notorious Bettie Page and 2018’s Charlie Says, pick up When The World Didn’t End, which is a great read – and head to our Patreon page! We’re running an exclusive series on our Patreon called One Writing Tip, in which great writers share one piece of advice they swear by that they think all emerging writers should know. And for more from us at Script Apart, hit subscribe if you haven’t already.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from Final Draft.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Praise Kier, it’s a Severance Script Apart special! In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Dan Erickson – the dystopian workplace drama’s creator and showrunner – spills all the secrets that Lumon Industries will allow, about the season two finale that aired last week, and our real-world relationships with work, corporations and personal pain that the show offers a meditation on.The series, starring Adam Scott, Britt Lower, John Tuturro and Zach Cherry, debuted on Apple TV+ in 2022 at the exact right time: post-pandemic, a new Zoom-aided groundswell of people found themselves now “working from home” in a way that might be better described as “living at work.” Studies showed Brits and Americans were working longer than hours than ever and tethered to their desks in this round the clock way that made Severance’s story – of characters trapped in an endless hellscape of never-ending work – hit in this deeply relatable way. All work and no play… you know the rest.It was a three year wait for season two, but the payoff was worth it. This latest batch of episodes delved deeper into the lives and psyches of Mark S, Helly R and their “Outies” – the versions of themselves who have no recollection of their job once they leave; it’s like they’re never there. And in doing so, new questions and philosophical dilemmas were thrown at us in the audience about personhood under capitalism, who deserves what rights and what constitutes a soul. Listen out for Dan’s revelations about his drastically different original pilot for the show, and his breakdown of every twist and turn in this final episode including that ambiguous line of Helly’s – “I’m her.” We also get into the hardship from Dan’s life that he’s glad he didn’t sever from: a period of depression in which he learned there’s “power in clawing your way out of a dark place.” It made him the writer he is today – the writer responsible for Severance.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from Final Draft.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How do you follow a film like Longlegs, the chilling riff on serial killer thrillers that became one of the cult smashes of 2024? The answer, if you’re acclaimed writer-director Osgood Perkins, is to first swap out the pressure-cooker dread of that breakout hit. Next, add a cursed toy monkey. Then, harvest the wildest, darkest parts of your imagination for some of the most gruesome demises ever seen on screen. And finally, package all of the above into an existentialist comedy about embracing death. The result is The Monkey – a Stephen King adaptation inspired by the literary icon’s 1980 short story of the same name, but very much a work of Oz’s own invention.From the moment a flamethrower-wielding Adam Scott opens the film with a maniacal cameo, screaming as he scorches everything in his path, it’s clear the movie is operating on a different tonal plane to Longlegs. But make no mistake, The Monkey is just as personal to Oz as that film and others before it, like The Blackcoat's Daughter and 2016’s I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House. Perhaps, in fact, even more so. As Oz explains in this moving spoiler conversation, the film is a meditation on death because death is something he’s experienced up close in the most unimaginably tragic circumstances; on September 12 1992, his father, Psycho actor Anthony Perkins, died of AIDS-related pneumonia at his home in Los Angeles. Almost exactly nine years later, his mother, the actress and photographer Berry Berenson, was aboard American Airlines Flight 11 when it was hijacked by terrorists and flown into the North Tower of the World Trade Centre, on September 11, 2001. The Monkey, he says, features Theo James playing two roles as twin brothers Hal and Bill, because “that’s my life,” as he puts it. He and his own brother Elvis Perkins, an acclaimed musician, became “buried in the rubble of the tragedy” of their mother’s death on 9/11 and emerged with “differences more apparent than ever.” In the conversation you’re about to hear, Oz tells us the extent to which the movie helped reconcile some of the feelings towards his brother. Al asks him about the ending of the film, which involves a plane crash – a very emotionally-loaded image, given his tragic family history.  And he shares why accepting death is the only true way to find peace.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It was supposed to be “the cheerful Games.” That was the motto of the 1972 Munich Olympics, which was meant to usher in a peaceful new era on the world stage after the horrors in Germany just three decades earlier. Instead, on September 5th 1972, just after 4am. eight men in tracksuits jumped the fence at Munich's Olympic Village, armed with rifles and grenades. These men belonged to Black September — a group associated with the Palestine Liberation Organization – and their plan was to take the Israeli Olympic team hostage and hold them at gunpoint until 328 prisoners detained by Israel were released. The standoff ended in confusion and bloodshed. All eleven hostages died, as did a policeman and five members of the Black September group. This, despite media reports – broadcast to 900m people around the world – that the prisoners had been rescued. Today on Script Apart, we talk with the writer-director, Tim Fehlbaum, and co-writer, Moritz Binder, of a newly Oscar-nominated drama that contemplates what the Munich massacre might tell us about media complicity in acts of terrorism. The pair wrote this film with writer Alex David focused not on depicting the overall events of that terrible day – Steven Spielberg covered that with 2005's Munich, written by past Script Apart guests Eric Roth and Tony Kushner. Instead, Tim and Mortiz’s angle on the story is through the American sports broadcasters who suddenly find themselves tasked with covering the situation live as it unfolds – a world first. Never before had an event like this played out on television as it happened. Today, we’re very much used to consuming terrible atrocities as they happen on our digital devices. But in 1972, such a thing was unheard of. September 5 – which stars a great ensemble cast – puts the ethical questions involved with live-streaming terror under the microscope. It’s a period piece that resonates with disturbing power today not least because, since the film was finished, a harrowing new chapter in the history of violence between Israel and Palestine has been written. Maybe, the film seems to wonder, when you have a form of media that rewards being first and being loudest instead of being accurate, any type of live coverage is doomed to inflame and exploit rather than inform. This episode, as ever, contains spoilers.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest today is a Palme d’Or-winning writer-director whose films centre characters “chasing the American dream but who don’t have easy access to that dream.” You might know Sean Baker from exhilaratingly raw dramas like Tangerine, Red Rocket and The Florida Project – each a compassionate and captivating dispatch from life on society’s margins, and each lavished with critical acclaim. His latest movie, Anora, has seen new levels of recognition for the 53-year-old, though. Next month, the film – about this tale of a sex worker named Ani, played by Mikey Madison, who falls for the son of a Russian oligarch – will compete for four awards including Best Picture and Best Original Screenplay at the 97th Academy Awards, with internet discussion about the movie, its characters and their motives refusing to dissipate.In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Sean tells Al about how his own experience of heroin addiction in his twenties has influenced his storytelling. We talk about why this film is not a Cinderella story but a tale about shattered dreams, discuss a hopeful epilogue to the movie that Sean wrote but has so far refused to share with the world about what happens to Ani next, and break down the film’s devastating ending. A huge thanks to Sean for being a fantastic guest.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

How will romance adapt to the age of A.I that lies ahead? What bleak (and beautiful) impulses might the technology bring out in us? And have you ever seen a Black Mirror episode inside a Coens Brothers thriller, inside a Barbarian-esque horror? These are the questions posed by Companion, the new movie by writer-director Drew Hancock. Today on the show, we talk devotion, dating and androids with Drew, whose directorial debut kept its cards close when it came to its marketing – and understandably so, because there are some really fun twists and turns in this script that are best experienced fresh. (Stop reading if you haven’t yet seen Companion and want to experience fresh, as recommended).Companion is about a young woman named Iris, played by Sophie Thatcher. Iris arrives at a weekend away with her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) to glares of suspicion from his friends, who she’s meeting for the first time. As an audience, we experience her hurt at these friends’ strange microaggressions – and at Josh’s dismissive behaviour, callously, abruptly commanding her to “go to sleep” immediately after sex. Then – a murder. A murder and a reveal. Arguably the most humane character amongst this assortment of friends, is not human at all, but a machine. From there, a crime thriller unfolds with a large stash of cash at its blackly comic centre. It’s bold, original and manages to find new things to say about the intersection between technology and relationships. I had a blast watching it – and Drew from the sounds of things, had a blast writing it. On this episode of Script Apart, you’ll hear about the current real-world advances in technology like Iris that informed his vision of where we might be fifteen years or so into the future. We get into the hints at how A.I companions like Iris have altered the world beyond what we see in the film – and some early ideas for the movie that were completely different to what ended up on screen. And we break down every detail of the film’s emotionally satisfying ending. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The climate crisis is here and over the last few years, a question has loomed: how will Hollywood respond? Can blockbuster movies be a tool for mobilising audiences into action as global temperatures rise, fires rage and climate denialism continues to spread? Maybe in decades to come, The Wild Robot – a film by my guest today, Chris Sanders – will be looked back upon alongside Pixar's Wall-E as one of the first indicators of mainstream moviemaking’s processing of and pushback against the weather emergencies coming our way. The film – a stunning, Miyazaki-inspired animation about a robot washed ashore on a nature-abundant island, in an America devastated by unspecified ecological disasters – acknowledges what awaits if carbon emissions aren’t curbed head on, instead of alluding to it, like in other blockbusters. It’s a deeply moving tale that features the voice talents of Lupita Nyong'o as Roz – an android who learns to love through foster care. After an accident, she becomes the guardian of an infant goose named Brightbill, voiced by Kit Connor. Brightbill has to learn how to fly in time to migrate to warmer climes, before the brutal winter turns the island into a scarcely survivable tundra of sorts. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Chris reveals what the phrases “kindness is a survival skill” and “exceed your programming” – two mantras that informed the film’s creation – mean to him. We get into the truth behind Universal Dynamics, the shadowy company that created Roz. And you’ll also hear a deeply moving story about Chris’s mother and the regret he’s carried with him about their relationship, that influenced one of the key lines in the movie.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jesse Eisenberg owes it all to an internet pop-up ad. A few years ago, while at an impasse with a screenplay about two friends on a trip to Mongolia, the writer-director and star of movies like The Social Network read an ad for “Auschwitz tours - with lunch.” And that jarring phrase unleashed an avalanche of ideas about, as he puts it, “the irony of wanting to connect to your ancestors’ pain but at the same time not being willing to experience any pain yourself: stay at the Radisson, eat your continental breakfast, have your croissant in the morning and your coffee in the van going to a concentration camp.” Skip forward to 2025, and the film unlocked in his imagination by that ad – A Real Pain – is an awards season frontrunner, nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor at this year’s Oscars. Its story of two cousins – David, played by Jesse, and Kieran Culkin as Benji – on a Holocaust “trauma trip” through Poland is a moving meditation on the shame it’s easy to feel in today’s world for feeling unsatisfied with life, when we think about the greater hardships our ancestors may have suffered. it’s devastating and deliriously funny in equal measure, not to mention bold in how it refuses an Eat Pray Love narrative of having international travel solve these characters’ problems back home. In A Real Pain, Culkin’s erratic livewire Benji ends up exactly back where he started – but we as an audience are changed. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Jesse tells me about how the film worsened rather than resolved his complicated feelings around what pain he’s entitled to feel. We get into that devastating final shot at the end of the film and why it is we feel the urge to connect to our pasts, with services like Ancestry and 23andMe. Listen out also for the parts of Jesse’s life he folded into the script – such as his use of medication and medication to tackle OCD and depression – and how Jesse reflects on the unanswerable question of, how much grief to allocate to the terrible situation in the world right now, before we cease functioning. It’s a fascinating chat about a fascinating film.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Thirty years ago, a film hit multiplexes that helped redefine love onscreen for moviegoers. So much so, in fact, that the history of the modern romantic drama might arguably be best separated into two distinct eras: before Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater’s enchanting cult smash stroll through moonlit Vienna, and after. Today on Script Apart, Richard’s co-writer Kim Krazin reflects on three decades of hearing from strangers about how this simple tale – in which two strangers on a train make a spontaneous decision to get off and wander the streets till dawn together – touched them deeply. The film starred Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as Jesse and Celine – one an American tourist, recovering from a botched trip to Madrid to see his now-ex girlfriend, the other a French student, heading back to Paris to continue her studies after visiting her grandmother. Kim and Richard had worked together before prior to Before Sunrise. Kim appeared as an actor in 1990’s Slacker and 1993’s Dazed and Confused. This time, however, they were co-writers, sequestered together for an intense eleven-day writing sprint, hard at work on a boy-meets-girl story with a difference.Before Sunrise was to be naturalistic. There would be no melodrama – no conflict for the sake of it. Just conversation, as two people brought together by chance, who live a world apart, forge a connection against the ultimate ticking clock: at sunrise, Jesse has a plane to catch. As their attraction deepens, we’re left to wonder: will they see each other again after their expires, when dawn arrives? As it happens, they would; two sequels, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, later followed, the first of which Kim has a “story by” credit on. But in 1995, as the credits rolled, audiences were famously left in the dark. The film’s brilliant cliffhanger ending – in which the couple decide not to exchange any contact information and instead meet at the same Vienna train station in six months’ time – was being written and rewritten right up until 3am on the last night of filming. You may have heard about how Linklater was inspired by a woman who he met in a Philadelphia toy shop and ended up wandering around the city with, talking deep into the night (this woman, tragically, died in a motorcycle accident before the film’s release). What you might not be aware of is Kim’s chance encounter at a Bob Dylan concert in London, one day on a train trip through England, that gave her some of the emotional kindling for Jesse and Celine’s tale. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, you’ll discover what parts of the movie wouldn’t fly today because of the modern technology that connects us brilliantly, but also robs us of the “romance of chance,” pervading every frame in Before Sunrise. We get into early plans to set the film not in Vienna but in Texas, and everything unlocked by the decision to set the movie abroad. And finally we get into whether or not Jesse in the film invents the concept of social media a good decade or so ahead of time. Hear us out on that one. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Join Kim’s The Magic Hour community by clicking here.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.