Creative Principles

“I wanted to be an actor at first,” said Harry Bradbeer. “Then I was directed with some great directors in school and the way they would direct us on stage made me start to see things in frames and shapes, then I directed a play. One day I just took a left turn and made a film.”

As a Director, Bradbeer is known for working on Killing Eve, Ramy, and Fleabag. But after he landed the job of directing Jack Thorne’s Enola Holmes screenplay, he fell in love with the character and started writing the story for the sequel.

In Enola Holmes 2, Harry is the Director and has a story by credit for the film that gives writing credit to Thorne (The Aeronauts, Wonder) once again. The description reads, “Now a detective-for-hire, Enola Holmes takes on her first official case to find a missing girl as the sparks of a dangerous conspiracy ignite a mystery that requires the help of friends - and Sherlock himself - to unravel.”

“Films sort of crept up on me and grabbed by the throat when I wasn’t expecting it. American films from the 70s — Chinatown, Midnight Cowboy, French Connection, The Exorcist — those four movies just obsessed me. The level of reality of cinema at that time made me excited about portraying veracity. It turned me off of theater actually. I wanted to take the camera to the streets.”

This led to somewhat of a natural interest in television, where character-based stories live. “I started working on cop shows that were shot like a documentary or legal shows about kids living in a f flat. They weren’t bright and shiny, but gritty in real. I felt completely in my zone there. It was about performance and speed of work.”

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Psychology professor William Indick was teaching theories of personality when he realized his students simply weren’t getting it, so he started doing film analysis in his classes to explain these dense topics with examples from the silver screen. This led to a handful of books including Psychology for Screenwriters, Movies and the Mind, Psycho Thrillers, and Ancient Symbology in Fantasy Literature.

“I wrote a book about film analysis and then Ken Lee suggested I do the same thing, but flip it. Instead of analyzing films, take these ideas from films and project them onto screenwriters. You can use these techniques other filmmakers use in your films to make more psychologically complex characters.”

These books are meant to showcase an art rather than a science. “Analysis is an art. It’s the art of interpretation, so there is no truth in analysis. Psychologically is largely a philosophical field, so the attempt to make it scientific has merit but those merits are not apparent in the filmmaking process.”

Indick’s first book, Psychology for Screenwriters, is about to have a 2nd edition published. “The first edition was about taking these classic theories — from Freud, Erikson, Jung, Campbell, Adler, May — and applying these to the process of screenwriting.” Each chapter uses films to explain psychology.

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“I used to be a professional horseback rider and professional horseback rider trainer,” said Mali Elfman. This all changed when one of her students — Missy Stabile (Ghostbusters, The Fault in Our Stars) — told her she would make a good Producer.

These days, Elfman is known for being a producer, a writer, and director. In her feature debut, Next Exit, stars Katie Parker and Rahul Kohli. The plot follows “Two unhappy strangers find themselves on a road trip across the U.S. to partake in a scientist's radical experiment with the afterlife.”

In this interview, we talk about being present both with horses and on set, making 31 short films for Halloween (Fun Size Horror), how to sneak drama into genre, why she believes in ghosts, and why she wants to “spread some blood all over the place” in her next horror film.

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“My socialization was by television,” said Steve Black, “the television of the 70s and 80s. As a lawyer, Blackman really wanted to be a writer, so following the “write what you know” model, he wrote an original pilot called The Young Attorneys.

Over the past two decades, Blackman has written for shows like Wild Card, Bones, Las Vegas, Private Practice, Fargo, Legion, and Altered Carbon. He’s also the creator behind Netflix’s Umbrella Academy. You can listen to our first conversation in Episode 233.

In this interview, Blackman talks about everyone writing West Wing scripts back in the day, pitching David E. Kelley in a lobby, how he landed on Fargo, where he starts the research phase, how to flex writing muscles, and why writers have no limitations.

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Thomas Jane got his start by working on sets in high school, when one particular teacher inspired him to step on stage and giving acting a shot. These days, he’s known for ‘The Punisher,’ ‘Boogie Nights,’ ’The Mist,’ ’Deep Blue Sea,’ ’The Thin Red Line,’ and ‘Hung.’

Most recently, he’s starred in two films under Director K. Asher Levin (Episode 368) called ‘Dig’ and ‘Slayers.’ In Dig, “A widowed father and his daughter whose house is up for demolition, are taken hostage by a dangerous couple, who won't stop until they retrieve what lies beneath the property.”

In Slayers, “A group of superstar influencers are drawn to a reclusive billionaire's mansion only to find themselves trapped in the lair of an evil vampire. The only way out is to be saved by a famous online gamer and an old school vampire hunter.”

In this interview, Thomas talks about training with a vaudeville actor named Ralph Tabakin, why you can’t have a Plan B, why he loves genre, co-writing his comic book Bad Planet, and the problem with cancel culture taking over the independent voice.

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As an actor and martial artist, Scott Adkins is known for starring in Avengement, along with the Undisputed Series and the Accident Man series, including the latest film, Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday.

Adkins has also been featured in Day Shift with Jamie Foxx, the Ip Man series, American Assassin, and will soon be in John Wick 4 alongside Keanu Reeves. Adkins also hosts The Art of Action, a stuntman interview series on YouTube.

In this interview, Scott talks about co-writing films he wants to get made, influences in action, working with the Kirby Brothers, the problem with shaky cam, and what it means to be an entrepreneur in the stunt world.

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David Weiner originally moved to Los Angeles to get involved with filmmaking, where he mostly worked as Assistant Director. Soon after, he started writing and found journalism, where he worked for Entertainment Tonight, The Hollywood Reporter, and he even ran the Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine. There, Robin Block recruited him.

Listen to the first chat with David back in Episode 294 of this series.

In this episode, we talk about the third film in the Darkness franchise, lost horror films nobody talks about anymore, foreign horror movies, heavy metal horror in the most recent installment, what we can learn about indie horror movies today, and how they create content for fans between projects.

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“I started out as a field geologist and then I became a land-claim negotiator,” said Kim Hudson. “All of it very masculine, very linear, I would say, and then I had children and thought, ‘what do I authentically want? It was the 70s and women were doing ‘everything man can do’ but that changed when I had a child.”

During this discovery phase, Hudson found a book by Julia Cameron called The Artist’s Way. The book, which was meant to “help people with artistic creative recovery” according to the description, was a major stepping stone in Hudson’s career. “I was diligent. I did everything [in the book] twice — all twelve weeks.”

“Those years I spent in geology, that’s basically a hero’s journey,” said Hudson. “You’re facing fear, learning to take on challenges and conquer your own fear, and take action anyway. That was my understanding of what life was supposed to be. I got that from Father who was one of those guys.”

This led Kim to write her book, The Virgin’s Promise:

The Virgin’s Promise demystifies the complexities of archetypes and clearly outlines the steps of a Virgin’s Journey to realize her dream. Audiences need to see more than brave, self-sacrificing Heroes. They need to see Virgins who bring their talents and self-fulfilling joys to life. The Virgin’s Promise describes this journey with beats that feel incredibly familiar but have not been illustrated in any other screenwriting book. It explores the yin and yang of the Virgin and Hero journeys to take up their power as individuals, and includes a practical guide to putting this new theory into action.

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“Folk tales, fairy tales, mythology, the past…I’ve always been interested in that,” said writer/director Robert Eggers (The Witch, The Lighthouse, The Northman). “I don’t entirely know why. I’m more interested in that subject matter than I am in films, maybe, in the end.”

The same is perhaps true for Robert’s writing partner, Sjón, an internationally acclaimed Icelandic author who published his first book of poetry at the age of 16. Sjón said, “When I was growing up in Iceland in the 70s, there was no cinema. But if we had had filmmaking at the time, I think I would have seen that as an option.”

The two met thanks to a chance encounter at a party in 2016 at the singer Björk’s home. “She invited us to dinner and said she was going to invite her friend Sjón, who she thought I would get along with.” Over home cooked salmon at Björk’s home, the two connected immediately.

At the time, Robert had just premiered The Witch (also written as The VVitch), a New England folktale about the 17th Century. “Oh, I’ve just written a novel that takes place in the early 17th Century Iceland and features witchcraft and sorcery. So obviously, we realized we had something in common.”

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Finn Jones has wanted to be an actor for as long as he can remember. “It’s inherently been a driving factor of my life,” he told me, along with his early journey into film and television.

As an actor, Finn is best known for starring as Danny Rand in Iron Fist and on Game of Thrones as Loral Tyrell. He’s also been in Swimming with Sharks, Dickinson, and Sleeping Beauty.

Most recently, Finn starred in a film for Blumhouse called The Visitor, which was directed by Justin P. Lange.

The plot reads, "After a series of tragedies, Robert moves with his wife back to her childhood home. After he discovers an old portrait of a man who looks like him, he goes down a rabbit hole to discover the identity of this mysterious doppelganger.”

In this interview, we talk about Finn’s film work, how he originally learned camera work, what it means to have “blind faith” as an actor, working with creative role models, and how he survived failure from Netflix’s Iron Fist.

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If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!