Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

"We try to answer two questions before we say yes to a job or embark on a spec script: Why does the protagonist need this movie? And the other is: Why tell this story other than to make money? That was our attitude going into Jurassic World. That was our attitude going into Avatar," says screenwriter Rick Jaffa about how he and his writing partner Amanda Silver approach tackling a large film franchise. 

On...

"I didn't think I'd be a good fit as a writer if they were going to do a PG version of the story. That's not where my strength lies, so the great thing is that the version Francis [Lawrence, the director] wanted to make was the version I wanted to write. A week later, we had a meeting with Lionsgate, we pitched the project, and they said, let's do it. So, it all happened very fast. It's really not common how smooth tha...

"I love adaptations. The beauty of adaptation, especially a classic, like Shakespeare and Chekhov or Ibsen, they're such a gift because they give you this beautiful framework, and it's almost like they're begging you to take it and make it your own," says writer/director Nia DaCosta about adapting Henrik Ibsen's 1891 play Hedda Gabler into her new film Hedda.  

Set in the 1950s, the movie stars Tessa Thomp...

"As you do draft after draft, it becomes shorter and rendered down. And [Keanu Reeves and I] would go through scenes going, 'Can people say less? Can the action be tighter? Can the action sequence be shorter?' The action is an extension of the hero's journey and if you don't give a sh*t about the character, it doesn't matter how great your action is," says Derek Kolstad about his writing process with actor Keanu Reeves...

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."

–Otto Von Bismarck 

"It's funny, because when I was writing After the Hunt, I definitely wasn't like, 'Oh, I want to write about this current socio-political moment.' I was really just invested in the characters and the story," says screenwriter Nora Garrett about writing a screenplay that probes the dynamics of p...

"[My dad] really started to inhabit the characters, especially Ray, speaking as him during the writing process. That was when I realized this was going to be its own kind of special beast. Working with him taught me so much as a writer and storyteller; by the time we got to set, we had a shorthand for everything," says director and co-writer Ronan Day-Lewis about writing the script Anemone with his father, Daniel Day-L...

"You have to love all your characters. Even if you're writing a bad guy. You, the writer, have to write them with love and empathy, and treat each character, give each character, a full life and a full arc in your story, even if their screen time is small. Essentially, if you were following that character, they also have a full story, a full life," says actor/writer Brett Goldstein about how he approaches writing chara...

On today's episode, we speak with director Joe Wright whose new limited TV series Mussolini: Son of the Century, explores fascism through the early political career of Italy's Prime Minister Mussolini in the 1920s. The show is incredible storytelling from beginning to end, mixing opera and techno rave music while drawing chilling comparisons to the current rise of fascism around the world. 

"We all have a ...

"The thing that started it all off was me saying [the character Toxie] should be a guy in a suit. In other words, let's not do a computer-generated creature, let's have a person in a suit and have that handmade, hand-stitched kind of quality to it where you can sort of see the seams a little bit and have that be part of the fun. I also said let's have it be rated R. Hopefully y'all are not interested in a family-friend...

"Our goal in writing [Sirens] was to write something that makes you think, and offers the opportunity to re-examine your own assumptions that you made about these characters. And it's taxing. We ask some difficult questions. It's not The Perfect Couple. It's not a murder show. We're going after something thematically that's really large and really ambitious, and that's why the Greek mythology came to mind. These are ep...

"Write your own anxieties. Get into your own psyche. I think if it scares you – like, I'm terrified of guns, and that's where The Purge came from. But here, there were various generational fears and whatnot that led to The Home, Adam's fears and my fears about getting older and our anxiety. So I would say if it's born from your fear, the majority of the audience probably has a similar fear. I think we are communal in t...

"Vampires hold incredible destructive power, and so we're very drawn to them, sort of like moths to a candle, right? I think that's sort of eternal, and that's the reason every culture, pretty much around the globe has some version of the vampire because it represents that very human conflict of what we desire which is so in tune with and aligned to things that can also destroy us. That just feels very honest and etern...

"One thing I've found in the crime genre is that homicides are always interesting. When somebody's killed, whatever that case may be, it's usually compelling drama. So then it's up to you as the writer to surprise the audience and do things that they didn't think were coming. I've described it like this before: If you can hit the sweet spot of, 'I didn't see that coming! I should have seen it coming, but I didn't see i...

"In my mind, Belle is going through life, at least our version of Belle – I've never met the real Belle – she's going through life with this hole inside, this overwhelming need for approval, that social media absolutely capitalizes on and she just keeps trying to feed the beast. She hasn't grown up with the healthiest of role models herself. She has learnt that being sick is a shortcut to being loved and to getting att...

"The most important thing that I've learned as a storyteller is that I have to treat every character in the show as though they're the lead in the show, and they are never doing anything so that I can prompt a move from another character. They are doing things that are true to what they want and their motivation. So that's what makes that architecture hard, because you know you want things to happen, but they have to h...

"It's not ripped from the headlines. We're not using any of [the Buss family's] real-life stories and putting them into our show. Because Mindy [Kaling], Ike [Barinholtz], and I have so many influences like Arrested Development, 30 Rock, The Office and Succession, we're coming up with our own fun stories and fun situations to put this dysfunctional, very wealthy, successful family into a blender and then have them goin...

"It was a lot of empathizing. I would do long phone calls with Abel (Tesfaye, aka the Weeknd) after we had met, just basically talking to him and finding out more of his history, where he was at in different phases of his life, where he's at today, and using those to create a character. And part of creating that character is I'll find my own personal stuff to attach to it… Portions of his life I can relate to very much...

"Sometimes it's easier to find and access your truth through 'pretend' characters. So I had this embarrassment of riches of this true story but in my heart, I was like, 'I totally get to tell my truth!'… So my advice is find a way to do it, and if you have to do a mind trick by saying, 'I'm writing this pretend character' that's fine, but put all the stuff that's real to you into that pretend character, because I find ...

"For me, I don't know how you could not make [a script] personal. I think drama allows you to hide how personal it is. I think that's kind of what I like about writing in the genre space. On the outside looking in, it just looks like a big action movie. It doesn't look like a personal story. But there are personal elements like my mom was a working mom as well. And so that's why you have Kyra in the movie who has to co...