The Process / Dispatch

This week's episode features the incredibly talented actor, writer, and director, MARC MENCHANCA.

Marc was one of the first directors to ever hire me as a cinematographer, bringing me on board to shoot his debut feature, THIS IS WHERE WE LIVE. Marc wrote, directed, and starred in the film back in 2013. It played SXSW in competition and then went on to a small theatrical run. That film was the starting point for a long friendship and frequent collaboration over the years. Marc was one of the first "real" actors that I ever had a chance to direct and I've been incredibly fortunate to learn from many on set experiences with him.

Marc is an actor by trade and he has had an incredible run over the past 5-7 years. Most notably he played RUSS LANGMORE on OZARZ, creating a nuanced and complex portrait of a man in crisis. He played JACK HOSKINS on HBO's THE OUTSIDER as well as roles on White House Plumbers, American Rust, Homeland, Black Mirror, Hawaii-Five-O, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Jack Ryan, and GENERATION KILL.

I invited Marc into our writer's group to speak about the script from the perspective of an actor - what they're looking for, how they imagine the roles after those first read-throughs, and what collaboration between writers and actors might look like.

Especially in light of the SAG strike, this episode - recorded in our writer's group in early 2020 - has only felt more relevant to the current climate.

This is the fourth episode in the WGA inspired mini-season. A break from the usual "Directors on Directing," this season is focused on the granular mechanics screenwriting. Each of these conversations were recorded as a part of a remote writer's group that I ran in early 2020. Though they weren't ever intended to be released publicly - given the WGA (and now SAG) strikes, I thought it would be a small act of solidarity to bring our attention back to the work that goes into the creation of the screenplay.

This week's conversation is with the wildly talented writer, director, and cinematographer, MORGAN COOPER. Morgan created a spec trailer for a dramatic reimagining of "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" called BEL-AIR and threw it up on YouTube. In quick succession, Will Smith found it and he and Morgan pitched and sold two seasons of the yet-to-be-created show to Peacock. Morgan has been on a rocket ship ride and is one of the most exciting and dynamic filmmakers to emerge in the past few years. He has multiple projects in development and I have no doubt, will become one of the preeminent TV creators of the next decade.

Morgan was kind enough to join our writer's group in early 2020 as he shared his screenwriting philosophy, approach, and experiences. He speaks about his outlining process, how to take network notes, and the ways in which creativity is influenced by constraints. At the time, he was writing a show for the now shuttered QUIBI, so quite a bit of the conversation revolves around that particular show. While Quibi is dead, the idea that one must write to the structure of the network is a transferable concept and one that I found to be quite valuable.

Morgan will be a featured interview in the larger S2, however, I'm excited to present our conversation here as a preamble for things to come.

This is the third episode in the WGA inspired mini-season. A break from the usual "Directors on Directing," this season is focused on the granular mechanics screenwriting. Each of these conversations were recorded as a part of a remote writer's group that I ran in early 2020. Though they weren't ever intended to be released publicly - given the WGA (and now SAG) strikes, I thought it would be a small act of solidarity to bring our attention back to the work that goes into the creation of the screenplay

This episode features a conversation with BASSAM TARIQ. Bassam was born in Karachi, Pakistan, and later migrated to the United States, where he grew up in Queens, New York. His dual-cultural upbringing significantly influenced his work, providing him a distinctive lens through which to explore and portray complex issues related to identity, belonging, and the immigrant experience.

Tariq's debut feature film, "These Birds Walk," premiered at South by Southwest in 2013 and was named one of the best indie films of the year by The New Yorker. In 2019, he directed "The Ghosts of Sugarland" - a documentary short he wrote and directed about his post-9/11 high school experience. The film premiered at Sundance in 2019. He then directed "Mogul Mowgli" in 2020, starring Riz Ahmed, which earned rave reviews for its exploration of diaspora identity and the physical and emotional toll of ambition. The film premiered at Berlinale in 2020. Throughout his career, Tariq has consistently demonstrated his ability to deftly intertwine personal narratives with broader societal themes and his profound dedication to storytelling continues to resonate powerfully in the work he creates.

In this conversation we specifically discuss page count, finding and maintaining a "voice", the movement from documentary to narrative storytelling, and the importance of protecting your vision.

This is the second episode in the WGA inspired mini-season. A break from the usual "Directors on Directing," this season is focused on the nuts and bolts of screenwriting.

The second episode features BRADLEY JACKSON, another co-writer on my debut feature, STAGES. Bradley also co-wrote my short film, THE HEIGHTS. But, once again, these two projects are just one of many other credits under Bradley's belt. His first produced screenplay, INTRAMURAL, a comedy about Intramural football, starred Kate McKinnon (SNL), Jake Lacy (The White Lotus) and Beck Bennett (SNL).  Just prior to the strike, Bradley had just finished setting up his script GYM RAT - a gritty basketball drama - with A24 and Oscar winning director Ezra Edelman, in addition to writing an original feature for Bill Simmons and Spotify.  Bradley is also a talented documentary director and producer. His directorial debut, FACING NOLAN - about the legendary Major League pitcher and Texas legend Nolan Ryan - premiered at SXSW 2022 to rave reviews and then premiered on Netflix.   Other credits include writing and producing the feature documentary DEALT which won the Audience Award at the 2017 South by Southwest Film Festival and producing the 4 part docu-series for Showtime and Boardwalk Pictures called ACTION - about the legalization of sports gambling in America.  His current project is writing/producing the Milli Vanilli documentary for MRC that was bought by Paramount+ and will be released in late 2023.

During this conversation, we spoke about revealing character through comedy, the third draft "subtext" transition, and how a co-writer can help wade through determining if the pages you're writing are actually good.

This is the first episode of our WGA themed mini-season. Born out of an early pandemic writer's group, these conversations were part of a months long writer's group for directors who were writing their own features during the lockdown. Each week, I brought on a different guest to speak about writing and scripts from their perspective. While these conversations weren't intended for public release, given the current WGA strike and the broader conversation about the significance writers have in the filmmaking process, I wanted to release these conversations as a small act of solidarity.

First up: Dan Steele.

Dan is one of the co-writers of STAGES, my debut feature that is currently in pre-production. But STAGES is not even close to the most interesting thing that he's working on. Dan is an LA-based screenwriter and producer, an alumnus of the Warner Bros. Television Writers’ Workshop, and an Austin Film Festival Award winner. He currently has feature projects set up at Warner Bros., Netflix, and Lionsgate with prestigious production companies like John Legend’s Get Lifted and Charles D. King’s MACRO. But Dan first got his start in television, writing on staff for over 100 episodes on series such as Gossip Girl and Hart of Dixie. He was a co-producer on MTV’s Faking It and The Donors for executive producer Kevin Hart.

In this episode we dive into the specifics of his writing process, how to navigate second act malaise, the importance of endings, and ways to create prisms out of your characters that reveal theme when action "shines" through them.

We're back! Not for Season 2, which is currently in production, but rather, a short mini-season that emerged out of a writers group that I ran back in the early days of the lockdown in 2020. Every week, around 30 filmmakers would gather on zoom as I interviewed writers, directors, actors, and cinematographers about their own experiences with writing, reading, or breaking down scripts for production. Then our guest would leave and we would split into smaller groups to each work on our own screenplays. It was an incredible few months and each week, those conversations about writing became something we all looked forward to. We spent our time observing, from all directions, the multidimensional effort it takes to write a compelling screenplay.

Then, years later, the writer's strike. And suddenly these interviews intended for this smaller group feel relevant in a new way. They're conversations full of affection for the process of *writing* a screenplay as well as admiration for the efforts that writers bring to their work and to our business. I can't think of a better time to focus our attention on the core component of narrative storytelling.

So, in a small act of solidarity with the (currently-striking) WGA, I wanted to release a few conversations from that writers group. Some names may be familiar to you if you listened to Season One of the Process Dispatch. Others are new. But each brings a unique perspective to the process of writing screenplays. My STAGES co-writers, Dan Steele and Bradley Jackson. Bassam Tariq. Morgan Cooper. Nikyatu Jusu. Anthony Ramos, Marc Menchaca, and Natalie Kingston. It's going to be great.

First episode drops Thursday 6/29/23.

Nearly every one of these episodes has a *Recorded in 2020* as a disclaimer in the show notes. So - the obvious question: why in the world did it take so long to put these conversations out?? The short answer: I got stuck. And getting unstuck was a multi-step process. First, my friend Jake McMullen came alongside me and began editing the episodes and generating the original music. Anna Remus came along to help put a schedule to the process. And suddenly, the episodes were done and ready...except for all the intros/outros. I recorded a scripted version and it didn't feel right. But then I got stuck again. So in a flailing effort to get unstuck, I put out an IG message asking for someone to jump on a Zoom with me and simply be on the other end of the call while I tried to record the intros off the cuff. But it turned into something much more than intro/outro - it turned into a deep conversation about why and how we get stuck sometimes and how we might find a way out of the maze. Thanks to Meredith Adelaide and Raul Serpas for jumping on that zoom call and helping me process this project on a macro scale. I'm eternally grateful for the final push. As I listened back, I realized I couldn't use it for intro/outro as planned, but it might actually be worth sharing as a way to connect with any of you who have ever had trouble "shipping." Thanks for listening to this season and look forward to bringing you more conversations soon enough.

Ricky Staub is an incredibly talented writer and director who has spent the past decade+ running a production company in Philadelphia called Neighborhood Film Co. Neighborhood, beyond being an accomplished and successful commercial company, also runs an apprenticeship program in which they hire one formally incarcerated person on their staff per year and train them in the art of film production. It's an incredibly inspiring program and one that has had a meaningful impact in the lives of many former inmates. But it's not for show, it's a manifestation of what Ricky and Dan and the Neighborhood team believe about how best to be of service in an industry that is often self-focused.

In 2019, Ricky and Dan wrote and Ricky directed their first feature film, Concrete Cowboy. The film was produced by Lee Daniels and starred Idris Elba, Caleb McLaughlin, and Jharrel Jerome. It premiered at TIFF in 2020 and was subsequently sold to Netflix. The story was based on a book that Ricky and Dan optioned nearly a decade prior and was one of nearly a half dozen feature scripts that they had written together and were ready to go. These guys work hard and write their way to the opportunities they're hoping for.

Ricky and I spoke quite specifically about his process, writing as the solution to all forward momentum, the peculiarities and challenges of making your first feature in the neighborhood where you've spent most of your adult life, and what it's like to have one of the most famous actors in the world agree to be in your first film.

I'm incredibly thankful to Ricky for taking the time to speak about Concrete Cowboy and the long road he travelled to get there.

Recorded in June 2020.

This episode is a continuation of my conversation with Jonathan & Josh Baker [TWIN]. Specifically, we dive into some of the hard-won learnings that they discovered while making their first feature film, KIN. Making films is trial by fire and the debrief after the dust settles is such a critical component to growing as a director. It's a rare thing to be able to be a part of such a candid and open conversation about the highs and lows of bringing a feature to life.

Huge thanks to Jonathan and Josh Baker for letting us in on their process and all the things they've learned that they'll take into their next film, URSA MAJOR.

Recorded in the summer of 2020.

A conversation with directing duo, TWIN. Jonathan and Josh Baker are Australian-born identical twins who have been creating incredible work across both film and commercials. Their first feature, KIN, was a studio feature based on their short film, Bag Man. It is an amazing debut - ambitious and original in a world clogged with pre-existing IP.

We spoke about their start in commercials, betting on themselves, what lessons they learned from their first feature, and how they plan to continue to evolve across multiple mediums. The future is bright for these guys and I'm grateful they made the time to chat.