Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

2017 Big Break Category Winner Kevin Bachar stopped by the Write On podcast to discuss his new feature, The Inhabitant, starring Dermot Mulroney and Leslie Bibb. "It's a relative of Lizzie Borden set in modern times," says Bachar, "and she starts experiencing visions of Lizzie Borden, starts getting feelings of hurting her family. The question is, is this a sort of demonic possession? Is it schizophrenia? What's going on here?" Bachar also shares the secret of how he transitioned from filming content for National Geographic to writing feature screenplays: "I think it's finding any time where you can actually get in front of the laptop. [When I lived in New York] I used to commute into the city, and that was a solid hour on the Long Island Railroad... I made a conscious decision to use this hour to write. and that was it. So that's 10 hours a week that I was able to just really focus on writing. Any time you have that free time, write." The Inhabitant is coming to theaters later this year.

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Thor Odinson makes his triumphant return to the MCU with the franchise's latest installment, Thor: Love and Thunder, once again starring Chris Hemsworth in the titular role alongside Natalie Portman, Christian Bale, and writer-director Taika Waititi. Waititi's co-writer, Jennifer Kaytin Robinson, discusses the process of landing her first Marvel gig: “My journey with Marvel has been long; I pitched on Black Widow, I pitched on Hawkeye, I pitched on Captain Marvel 2, so I pitched on several different films. Kevin [Feige] is so specific and such a genius when it comes to putting the right person on the right project… and Kevin was like, ‘This is not the right thing for you, but we’re going to put you on Thor...' and then a week later, I was in a room with Brad [Winderbaum] and Taika talking about the lore and coming onto the project.”   Robinson goes on to share the importance of pushing yourself and not being afraid to make mistakes: "Don't let the fear of the thing being bad or wrong or weird get in the way of you doing it... If you mess up, if you fail like I've failed, it's fine... you just have to blindly believe in yourself because no one is going to care about you as much as you. No one is going to believe in you as much as you."   Thor: Love and Thunder is now playing in theaters.   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Created by Bisha K. Ali, Ms. Marvel follows Kamala Khan, a 16-year-old superhero fan who's just trying to get through high school when she discovers she has powers of her own. Ali discusses how she put together the writer's room for the MCU series: "I had a room that [reflected] the experience of the characters that we're talking about... We had to have authentic writers; we had to have writers who understood what intergenerational trauma is, what it is to be an immigrant, what it is to be a second-generation immigrant, what it is to be an outsider... in order to get this arc that I wanted to get." Ali goes on to share her advice for writers of color struggling to tell the stories they want to tell: "I think specifically [with] writers from marginalized backgrounds... there's this conflict of, 'I just want to do what I want to do, but I've never seen an example of that. I've never seen that made because people like me don't get to tell stories...' Stop worrying about that voice and really push yourself to be true to who you are." Ms. Marvel is now streaming on Disney+.

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Based on true events, Black Bird follows Jimmy Keene, a prison inmate who cuts a deal with the FBI to befriend a suspected serial killer in exchange for his freedom. Famed crime novelist and series creator Dennis Lehane discusses where he places his focus to make every project of his stand out: "Every single thing comes down to the characters - every single thing. I've always been character-centric, but never as much as when I started to really get into TV, because that's what it is... that's what people watch TV for... They watch it for an emotional journey of the main characters."   Lehane goes on to share his process for adapting source material for the screen: "My job is to be absolutely as true to the spirit of the novel as I can be. You should be able to read the novel, look at the TV show, and go, 'Oh, wow, it's the same thing...' It reaches the same conclusions about the human beings in the story, about humanity."   Black Bird is now streaming on Apple TV+.   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Based on the viral YouTube short from 2010, Marcel the Shell with Shoes On follows Marcel (Jenny Slate), a 1-inch tall shell who lives a colorful existence with his grandmother Connie (Isabella Rossellini) and their pet lint, Alan. When asked about creating and writing for such a unique protagonist, the original video's creator Dean Fleischer Camp says, "I think the thing that's always appealed to me about Marcel is he doesn't think of himself as small or weird or a talking shell or anything, and the film itself does not treat him with anything less than 100% dignity as a documentary subject and doesn't freak out over the fact that he's a talking shell." Camp's co-writer Nick Paley goes on to share his own take on writing "weird" subject matter: "Do everything you can to cultivate high-sensitivity-listening to your own tastes. I think that is a skill that no one really taught us in film school: to self-authorize around the things that you love, even if you think they're dumb and kind of beside the point or not relevant to what's happening. I think the only type of work that is really special is the stuff that someone is really not sure is going to work for other people, and this film is a wonderful proof of that." Marcel the Shell with Shoes On is now playing in theaters.

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Based on George Saunders' short story Escape from Spiderhead, the Netflix adaptation follows inmates at a state-of-the-art penitentiary who volunteer as medical subjects to shorten their sentences. Paul Wernick describes the moment he and co-writer Rhett Reese were introduced to Saunders' story: "Jeremy Steckler was the executive [at The New Yorker] at the time. He put it in front of us when it first was printed about ten years ago, and we fell in love with it. We said, 'We're doing it. We have to write this.' We were so passionate about it... George had laid out what was the makings of a movie, but we had to expand it out." When asked what advice he would give to his younger writer self, Reese muses, "I feel like a part of what you need to tap into is that naive, ignorant optimism where you just go, 'Look, the odds are against me, and they're against anyone, and I'm going to go write what I want to write... and commit to it with both halves of my brain, and do as great a job as I can, and then keep doing that over and over until I break through." Spiderhead is now streaming on Netflix.

 

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Created, written, and directed by Nida Manzoor, We Are Lady Parts follows a British punk rock band consisting entirely of Muslim women as they strive for musical success.   Manzoor discusses the pressure of feeling like she was representing an entire community and how she ultimately decided to write from her own experience: "I'd had a few meetings as a new writer where I was sort of being asked to write about the suffering of being a Muslim woman or to portray it as being a victim, [which] didn't reflect my experience or the women I knew, and so I found that frustrating. I was like, all right, if I was going to examine this aspect of my identity, how would I do it? ... The frustration pushed me into developing something which is my dream show to make."   Manzoor goes on to describe her connection to the story itself and how that ties into her creative roots: "I grew up in a very creative household old - a very musical household - which is why the show is sort of about a band, so I think music was my first passion. But then after doing a degree in politics, I realized very quickly I didn't want to have anything to do with politics; I wanted to be a filmmaker… and, you know, Lady Parts was really my first foray into writing and directing something that was really kind of myself and true to the kind of work I wanted to make."   We Are Lady Parts is now streaming on Peacock.   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Inspired by Stephanie Land's memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother's Will to Survive, Netflix's Maid follows Alex (Margaret Qualley), a young mother who escapes an abusive relationship and gets a job cleaning houses in order to provide for her daughter. Showrunner Molly Smith Metzler recalls the moment she knew she had to adapt the memoir for TV: "[John Wells] handed me the book, and I went home, and I read it that weekend, and I was like, 'Oh, no, I have to do this.' I say 'Oh, no' because I knew it was going to be very hard. It's an incredible memoir, but not a natural fit for television... I knew it was going to be hard to adapt, but I also couldn't picture anyone else doing it." Metzler goes on to speak on the importance of taking notes and moving on to what's next: "You get all these notes because something is exciting to people, and then what can happen is you just spend all of your time rewriting it... My big advice is when you have the thing that finally gets read and people get excited, don't spend two years rewriting it; write the next thing because you can't rewrite things for different people. You just lose your sense of self, and you'll lose your mind, so always be thinking about the next thing; always be writing the next thing."

Maid is currently streaming on Netflix.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Based on the Marvel Comics featuring the character of the same name, Moon Knight follows Marc Spector / Steven Grant (Oscar Isaac), two alters of a man with dissociative identity disorder (DID) who gets drawn into a deadly mystery involving Egyptian gods. Head writer Jeremy Slater discusses the series' approach to featuring a protagonist with DID and the creative challenges it posed: "It was the biggest creative opportunity and also one of the hardest things about the show. It's actually surprising how few characters we have in the show; it's really kind of only three. It's just that Oscar Isaac is doing so much as Mark and as Steven and commanding the screen as both sides of that system... on screen, it's just the actor, and they have to convey who's in charge and what's going on." Slater goes on to share what drew him to adapting this particular Marvel story and bringing a brand new character to the screen: "One of the reasons I gravitated towards Moon Knight was because he didn't have that former baggage... No one knows who the hell Moon Knight is; no one knows what his powers are; no one knows who his villains are. So for me, I view that as really creatively liberating, because we can come in here and put our own stamp on this." Moon Knight is now streaming on Disney+.   Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!  

Based on the novel Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s by Jeff Pearlman, Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty chronicles the 1980s Showtime era of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team featuring notable NBA stars Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Series co-creator and showrunner Max Borenstein describes the challenges of having to imagine what certain moments and conversations looked like without having been in the room: "Our role is to take the things we know - I look at it as the tip of the iceberg... the role of the drama is to then imaginatively reconstruct what might have been or could have been underneath the surface, and oftentimes.. you're imagining your way into that room where you have no idea exactly what was said." Borenstein goes on to explain what drew him to tell this particular story from this particular time period: "I happen to be a basketball fan, but what was exciting to me was not just retelling the story of this particular basketball team; it was that this particular basketball team and this dynasty speaks to a change in the way entertainment worked and the way celebrity works... I think the Showtime Lakers [are] a perfect prism through which to view that moment in time." Season one of Winning Time is now available on HBO Max.

Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes!   Now available on Google Podcasts!