Script Apart with Al Horner

This episode is part of our Storyteller Sessions event – a weekend of career-spanning conversations with game-changing storytellers, raising money for the Entertainment Community Fund. If you enjoy this episode or any of the episodes still to come across this weekend, please do consider donating via the link below: Donate to our fundraiser here!On today’s episode – a conversation about writing with the incredible Lilly Wachowski. Or at least, we were meant to speak about writing. The plan was to talk about Lilly's creative practice. About the queer-coded stories of collective resistance and love in the face of dystopia that she’s told across a glittering three-decade career. One of those stories in particular – The Matrix trilogy, co-written and directed with her sister Lana Wachowski – was the looking glass through which Al stepped into a new way of seeing both cinema and the world when he was eleven-years-old, so you can imagine his excitement to discuss her relationship with the page.That is not what went down. Yes, there's plenty in our conversation about how Lilly approaches writing. About why she prioritises telling stories not about individualist heroes, but about communities coming together to defy power. About how writing film and TV right now a release valve for the filmmaker, helping her channel her “trans rage” at a system that tramples over marginalised groups. You’ll also hear her discuss why she believes great stories can offer an escape path for audiences out of that system. But that’s not all we talked about. Across a hugely moving two-hours, Lilly explains how, when she looks back on her and Lana’s early movies today, she sees clearly the “scratchings on the wall as they were clawing their way out the closet.” She speaks beautifully about her experience transitioning and about how she found her way back to herself after a period of burnout and about the amazing women around her growing up that she credits with shaping her.  Listen out for candid discussion about the “impossible bar” that The Matrix set for her and Lana, and Lilly’s thoughts on A.I in 2023, as someone who co-created one of our culture’s defining works about that technology. You'll also hear about the joy of her experience on Work In Progress,  and why the next chapter of her career is going to be all about “throwing my trans body against the mono culture that Hollywood is gravitating towards.” It was a huge privilege to share this conversation with Lilly who we can’t thank enough for her openness and insights. Again, this conversation is in aid of the Entertainment Community Fund, who do extraordinary work lifting up storytellers of all descriptions and have been a vital support for entertainment industry workers affected by this summer’s strikes. If you enjoy this episode, please do consider donating via the link below.Donate to our fundraiser here!Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Script Apart Storyteller Sessions – three days of career-spanning conversations with truly game-changing storytellers, talking about their relationship with the page. 100% of proceeds are going to the Entertainment Community Fund, a brilliant charity doing hugely important work – so if you enjoy this episode or any of the episodes across this weekend, please do consider hitting the link below and donating to that wonderful cause:Donate to our fundraiser here!Today, we’re kicking off with what is basically the Catalina Wine Mixer of podcast interviews. Our guest today is a filmmaker responsible for some of the great comedies of our time, and someone whose storytelling has undergone a fascinating transformation as the world has slipped into climate emergency, economic emergency and political disrepair. Somehow, in a time with dwindling things to laugh about, this writer-director has found a way to engage with those crises in ludicrously entertaining ways. He's the filmmaker behind Anchorman, Step Brothers, Talladega Nights, The Other Guys, The Big Short, Vice and Don’t Look Up – it's Adam McKay! Adam got his break on Saturday Night Live, becoming the show’s head writer in 1996. His collaborations on SNL with another emerging comic, Will Ferrell, immediately caught the eye and simply could not be contained to the small screen for long. By the early ‘00s, the pair had turned their anarchic chemistry into a wave of outrageously quotable comedies that fast found themselves woven into our shared pop culture landscape. “It escalated quickly,” as Ron Burgundy might say. Then came a change of pace. In 2015, after his father lost his home as part of a devastating economic downturn, Adam released The Big Short – a white collar crime comedy about the 2007 financial crash. It won him and his co-writer Charles Randolph the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar at that year’s Academy Awards, and signalled a sea change not just in the content of Adam’s movies going forward, but also in the cinematic language he was using to tell his stories. His films since then – and to a lesser degree, titles he’s worked on as a producer, such as the smash hit Succession –  have doubled down on that new storytelling style, full of frantic edits and experimental flourishes.Adam’s monumental success has come in the face of a couple of challenging moments medically across his life. In 2000, he was diagnosed with a condition known as essential tremor, and in 2017, he suffered a heart attack on the set of Vice. In the conversation you’re about to hear, we discuss how that heart attack sharpened his resolve to make 2021’s bracing Don’t Look Up. We get into why Step Brothers is a film that “tells you all you need to know about America” – a nation in which “consumer culture has turned us into children,” Adam insists. You’ll hear why he decided to abandon the three-act structure of his old films in part as a response to the rise of Donald Trump and what he’s learned about to fix the world from his recent string of movies grappling with its many problems.The Entertainment Community Fund do extraordinary work lifting up storytellers of all descriptions, and have been a vital support for entertainment industry workers affected by this summer’s strike action. So if you enjoy this episode, please do consider donating below.Donate to our fundraiser here!Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Kat Likkel and John Hoberg, writers of Pixar's heartwarming spectacle Elemental, discuss the film's themes of parental expectation, immigrant struggles, and structural racism. They explore a scene where logs set themselves on fire, the importance of embracing collaboration with story artists, and the conflicts faced by individuals from immigrant backgrounds. They reflect on the impact of their work and express their desire to bring joy and catharsis to viewers.

Think of your worst experience with online dating – the most excruciating Hinge disaster or Tinder catastrophe. However bad you might think that ordeal was, it’s nothing on the tale told in the extraordinary recent indie I Love My Dad. Part cringe comedy, part family drama and part horror movie for the MySpace generation, the film followed a screw-up father who’s desperate to reconnect with the child he pushed away. Blocked on social media, this father – Chuck, played by Patton Oswalt – resorts to posing online as a beautiful young waitress whose friend request his estranged son will surely accept. The scheme is soon complicated, however, when the teenager begins to fall for this stranger in his DMs, growing determined to meet her in person.That premise – a teenager cat-fished by his own father – might sound like the logline for a zany, high-concept Hollywood romp, but what’s so special about I Love My Dad is how grounded it is in the loneliness of being a certain age and desperate for connection. The lure of the internet, the versions of ourselves we present online and the sometimes unhealthy fantasies that permits – these questions are all explored in the film by the film’s outrageously talented writer, director and star, James Morosini, who it was a delight to chat with for this week’s episode.In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, James explains how I Love My Dad has such an air of emotional truth to it because, well, “this actually happened” to quote the film itself. There are ways in which James’ story deviates from the one in the film but yes – his father really did cat-fish him in real-life, in events that inspired his screenplay. We discuss Age, Sex, Location – the title of James’ first draft of the film – and why an early ending in which Chuck has a heart attack and Franklin gets together with the real-life Becca had to go. It’s a fascinating conversation about the inherent performance of social media – how we’re all cat-fishing one another to less explicit degrees – and why running towards our most embarrassing moments and most vulnerable parts of ourselves, rather than running away, makes for great storytelling.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from MUBI, ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro 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.

Renowned filmmaker Judd Apatow revisits the movie 'Knocked Up' and shares his creative process through emails, discussing parenthood and breaking taboos around pregnancy. They explore the appeal of man-child characters in Apatow's films, the impact of unforeseen consequences in relationships, and the process of capturing authentic comedy through improvisation.

Our guests this week are Cherry Chevapravatdumrong and Teresa Hsiao – writers of Joy Ride, 2023’s rowdiest comedy. The film tells the incredibly explicit tale of four friends on a wild journey of self-discovery following a business trip gone awry. Each character has a different relationship with their Asian heritage, which they’re forced to confront in hilarious and moving ways as a series of chaotic events sees them travel across the continent. Cherry and Teresa, who met in the writers’ room on Family Guy, didn’t fill their script with hilarity and depravity, though there’s plenty of that. Their script packed an emotional punch too, reminding audiences that “home” is maybe best defined as the place in which we love and are loved in return.In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Teresa and Cherry tell us all about the parts of themselves they brought to the page in Joy Ride. We discuss the genesis of its wildest jokes, how they wrote the movie’s hilarious K-pop scene and the “Asian good girl” trope they wanted to take a flamethrower to across the course of this story. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, MUBI 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.

She brought a small town to its feet and a huge company to its knees – that’s right, this week we’re talking all things Erin Brockovich with the film’s screenwriter, Susannah Grant.Susannah is a talent who, over an impressive three decade career, has gone from writing on the ‘90s teen TV drama Party of Five and conquering animation with Pocahontas to penning dramas like 28 Days, romcoms like In Her Shoes and science-fiction with The 5th Wave. She’s also a force to be reckoned with behind the camera: having made her directorial debut in 2006 with the comedy drama Catch and Release, Susannah wrote and directed episodes of the recent searing Netflix series Unbelievable, which took a scalpel to the problem of rape culture in America.Erin Brockovich, though, remains one of her best-loved works. Her witty script for the Julia Roberts-starring, Steven Soderbergh-directed legal drama earned her an Oscar nomination on release in 2000, and it’s both a testament to her writing and an indictment about our society’s lack of progress that the film still feels so relevant today. The film told the true-life tale of a single mother who fought and won a landmark legal case against the Pacific Gas & Electric Company over contaminated water supplied to residents in the town of Hinkley, California. In order to secure justice for the hundreds of people made sick by PG&E’s malfeasance, the real-life Erin had to navigate misogyny, classism and the demands of parenthood. Susannah’s script captured all of that with poignancy and punch.In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Susannah tells us all about grabbing burgers with the real-life Erin Brockovich, the importance of David vs Goliath stories like this, the balance of fact versus fiction in the film – and the one line that had to change at Erin’s request.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, MUBI, Magic Mind and WeScreenplay.Go to magicmind.com/scriptapart to get up to 50% off your subscription for the next 10 days with the code: SCRIPT20.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 world is changing and truth is vanishing in our very special episode today, accomplishing a mission we’ve been hoping to make happen since the very inception of the show. Yes, this week’s guest is a true maestro of modern blockbuster filmmaking – a writer-director who won a Best Screenplay Oscar before his 30th birthday for the timeless neo-noir, The Usual Suspects. Since then, he’s leaned into action cinema of most breathtaking spectacle, without ever losing sight of the stripped-down dramatic principles that made The Usual Suspects such a gripping introduction to his work. He’s one half of a director-star symbiosis arguably up there with Ford and Wayne, Scorsese and DeNiro, Scorsese and DiCaprio and Spielberg and Hanks. And this summer, he and his close collaborator, Tom Cruise are back with a terrifyingly relevant spy thriller sequel that needs to be seen to be believed. Yes, this week on Script Apart – it’s the phenomenal Christopher McQuarrie.Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One lights the fuse on a number of fascinating questions. Questions like: how do you take a series that’s already threatened the world with nuclear bombs and all sorts of other threats, and raise the stakes even further, seven films into this franchise? Christopher’s answer was to take the anxiety around artificial intelligence that’s been such a fixture of our recent news cycle and fashion those fears into a espionage adventure pulsing with paranoia. What’s all the more impressive about this is how long-delayed Dead Reckoning Part One was by the Covid-19 pandemic – meaning McQ predicted this. In the conversation you’re about to hear, the filmmaker is really articulate about the real-life threat, its overlap with his movie and how he anticipated it,  far in advance. You’ll also hear how Christopher constructed the story and crucially, the emotional arc of this latest Mission movie – the journey Ethan Hunt, played by Cruise, needed to go on this time around, to make all the film’s stunts and spectacle mean something to those in the audience. Get ready to discover the rationale behind that shocking death, and how the film’s astonishing climax – a train sequence that acts as a literal cliffhanger – came together on the page and the rationale behind that shocking death at the end of the film’s second act. One thing you won’t hear much about, unlike in most episodes of Script Apart, is the film’s first draft. And there’s good reason for that – there wasn’t one. What you’re about to hear is a tale about how writing a Mission: Impossible movie isn’t all too different from what it must feel like for Ethan, surviving one of these films. There’s a lot of improvising out of tight spots – the screenwriting equivalent of Tom riding a speeding motorbike off a Norwegian cliff top into a base jump and landing on a moving train. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, MUBI, Magic Mind and WeScreenplay.Go to magicmind.com/scriptapart to get up to 50% off your subscription for the next 10 days with the code: SCRIPT20.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.

Pack your bags, everyone. Today on Script Apart, we’re making an emotional Return To Seoul guided by Davy Chou – the writer-director behind one of 2023’s most alluring slow-burn dramas. Davy is a Franco-Cambodian writer-director whose own dual cultural heritages helped inform Return To Seoul, a film that poignantly probes questions of identity and displacement. It follows first-time actor Park Ji-min as Freddie – a young woman wandering through the home country of her biological parents in search of answers and in search of herself. Part inspired by the real-life experiences of artist Laure Badufle, with whom Davy co-wrote the screenplay, it’s a delicate, raw character study that will both move you immeasurably and made you want to visit Seoul right this very second.There really is so much beautiful nuance to this story. In real life, we human beings are messy and contradictory. Return To Seoul basks in that complexity, forging characters out of it who are flawed, who let themselves down, who push people away when they ought to let others in. Around Freddie are a supporting cast of characters who are all similarly entangled in their own messy wants, desires, hopes and regrets. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Davy shares with me how he crafted these characters and this story. We talk about the clever ways the film accents the cultural disparities between Freddie and the parents who once abandoned her. We get into what the film seeks to say about transnational identity. And we break down the meaning of the film’s enigmatic ending – so be sure to check out the film, available on MUBI now, before listening in.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, MUBI, Magic Mind and WeScreenplay.Go to magicmind.com/scriptapart to get up to 50% off your subscription for the next 10 days with the code: SCRIPT20.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.

“Lately, I’m getting the feeling I came in at the end. That the best is over.” 24 years ago, a man stepped into a therapist’s office and with those few words, transformed television forever. That man was, of course, Tony Soprano – a great big brooding bull of a mob boss, whose violence as the head of a New Jersey crime family hid a subtle sweeter side to his personality. The Sopranos balanced scenes of his brutality with glimpses at his capacity for more humane behaviour, and it was these duelling elements that powered the show, created by our very special guest today, the one and only David Chase. Tony was a doting father with a twinkle in his eye. The kind of guy who would wade into a swimming pool in his dressing gown to play with a family of ducks, when he wasn’t wading through a sea of cocaine and criminals at the Bada Bing. He was complicated, and with that complexity, the series took a hit out on basically everything TV execs thought they knew about the kind of protagonist that viewers would root for on the small screen. Walter White, Don Draper, Bill Hader’s Barry – Tony Soprano walked so other morally dubious men could run rampant through our TV landscape for decades to come.In the conversation you’re about to hear, which was recorded before the writers strike, David tells us about his memories of devising The Sopranos’ iconic characters. We talk about what David and members of his writing team – a staff that includes past Script Apart guest Terry Winter – took from the 1990s political ether and poured into the show’s storylines. And crucially, we also discuss how the question that drives The Sopranos isn’t which family will come out on top in any of the show’s vicious mob disputes. It isn’t whether Tony will be caught by the cops or if he’ll make it out alive, either. It’s whether it’s possible for a man with so much blood on his hands to better himself. The turf war for Tony Soprano's soul. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro 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.