Category: ADAPTATION (page 1 of 2)

Susan Kouguell’s Interview with ‘Treasure’ Writer and Director Julia von Heinz at Tribeca Festival

June 13, 2024 / sucity / Comments Off

Award-winning German filmmaker Julia von Heinz talks about her latest film ‘Treasure,’ from the adaptation process, dealing with transgenerational trauma as a theme, and what she hopes audiences take away from seeing the film.

SUSAN KOUGUELL for Script Magazine

I had the pleasure to speak with award-winning German filmmaker Julia von Heinz about her latest film Treasure, which had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival.

Award-winning director and screenwriter, von Heinz won the German Film Award for Best Children’s and Youth Film with her debut, Nothing Else Matters, her 2020 film And Tomorrow the Entire World competed at the 77th Venice Film Festival and was nominated for Best Film at the German Film Awards. She earned her doctorate at the Film University Konrad Wolf in Babelsberg and teaches directing at the University of Television and Film in Munich.

About Treasure: Set in the 1990s, Lena Dunham plays Ruth, an American businesswoman who takes her father Edek (Stephen Fry), a charmingly stubborn Holocaust survivor, on a road trip through Poland to make sense of her family’s past. Treasure is the third part of von Heinz’s Aftermath Trilogy, which deals with the repercussions of the Holocaust in Germany and globally.

Lena Dunham and Stephen Fry in TREASURE (2024).Courtesy of Bleecker Street and FilmNation

Kouguell: The script is an adaptation of Lily Brett’s best-selling autobiographical novel Too Many Men. Tell me about the adaptation process and working with your co-writer and husband John Quester.

Julia von Heinz: This is the fifth project I have co-written with my husband. Sometimes it’s very difficult because we sleep with the characters and wake up with the characters and we are in love with the characters. It keeps the relationship alive.

I like the process of working together. We’ve known each other for 25 years, and have been through a huge pool of events together. We both loved the novel. My mother gave it to me in the late 90s. (Like Lily Brett, von Heinz’s mother is the daughter of a Jewish survivor and part of that “second generation” to which Lily had given a voice.)

It’s a 700-page novel with a lot of side plots that you don’t see in the movie. It took us a long time to get to the core of the father and daughter story. (von Heinz describes their relationship as a “love story” between two individuals who could not be less alike.)

Kouguell: How much input did Lily Brett have during this process?

Julia von Heinz: Lily was at our side. She was so interested in the process and read from the very first draft to the last draft. It’s such a personal story for her.

Kouguell: Tell me about taking this script to the screen.

Julia von Heinz: Once we had the script I felt I could rely on it when we started filming. When we were on set and working closely with my cinematographer, I knew I could fill in the voids of elements that were not in the novel and bring my energy to make it flow. It’s the most challenging film in my career thus far.

Kouguell: You spent three days shooting at Auschwitz.

Julia von Heinz: The first time I went was in 2016 and it was a shock to experience. I returned many times after that. We were allowed to film outside the fence and in the parking lot along the border because we couldn’t interfere when visitors were there and film crews are not allowed inside. Our crew was permitted to take photographs near the barracks and our visual effects team could insert images behind the two actors in post-production.

Kouguell: The film centers on the theme of transgenerational trauma; father and daughter deal with their respective traumas quite differently. How did you approach this in the script and then onto the screen?

Julia von Heinz: In Lily’s book, there was so much inner monologue with the character always questioning herself and we couldn’t adapt that for the script. We didn’t want to use voiceover.

For example, we needed to find a way to convey the self-harming that is in the novel to the screen. In the novel, it is portrayed with her dieting and the difficulties about her mother. In the script, we conveyed her self-harming by her tattooing. We discussed this with Lily and she agreed that this was a good action to show.

Treasure, poster — Courtesy Bleecker Street and FilmNation

Kouguell: What is your reaction when people dismiss Treasure without seeing it by saying it’s just ‘another holocaust film’?

Julia von Heinz: I heard that a lot. There isn’t a film about the second generation, and this is a generation that we need to tell stories about. We know that this trauma exists, and even exists in the third generation. I feel we should tell these stories, and I feel very confident about this.

Kouguell: What do you want the audience to come away with after seeing this film?

Julia von Heinz: I want to tell my audience to call your mother, father, children – and share stories that might not be easy to share and build a bridge. Share stories that are not only related to the Holocaust. There are so many important stories to share, especially with a father.

Treasure opens in Theaters nationwide on June 14, 2024.

Treasure had its International Premiere at the 2024 Tribeca Film Festival in the Spotlight Narrative.

Susan’s Script Magazine Interview: ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’ Writer and Executive Producer Lesley Paterson On Adaptation, Collaboration and Perseverance

March 7, 2023 / sucity / Comments Off

Lesley Paterson, along with her co-writers Ian Stokell and director Edward Berger are nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. She is also an executive producer of the film.

Many writers and filmmakers often say that getting a movie made is like running a marathon. For screenwriter and producer, Lesley Paterson, this hits close to home; she is a world-champion triathlete.

Lesley and I spoke two weeks after All Quiet on the Western Front swept the BAFTA awards, winning seven, including best film, director and adapted screenplay — more than any other non-English-language film in BAFTA history – and less than two weeks before the Oscars. Lesley, along with her co-writers Ian Stokell and director Edward Berger are nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best International Feature Film. She is also an executive producer of the film.

This is the first time Erich Maria Remarque’s antiwar classic novel has been adapted for the screen in its original German. The story follows teenager Paul Bäumer as he enters the army as an enthusiastic recruit and quickly becomes disillusioned by the horrors of the brutal, futile fighting he encounters. Soldiers such as he are expendable pawns to officers safe from the battlefield and who demand the fighting continue even as armistice is only hours away.

Felix Kammerer as Paul Bäumer in All Quiet on the Western Front. Courtesy Netflix/Photo by Reiner Bajo.

KOUGUELL: You and Ian Stokell first optioned the book in 2006. I understand that you used your race winnings to keep the project afloat over the years, even mortgaging your house at one point to hold onto the rights.

PATERSON: Yes. It ended up being 16 years and two months until we premiered it.

KOUGUELL: The book has been adapted twice prior into movies. Why did you feel the need to do another adaptation?

PATERSON: I read the novel when I was in school. For me, it was the dramatic essence of the betrayal of the youthful generation and it hit a chord. Being from Scotland and that underdog mentality, fighting against the upper brass. I connected to that. When I read it again in 2006, I had gone through an undergraduate in drama, and then a master’s degree in theater and film, and I met Ian at that point, and we were doing various pieces together and we directed some scripts. We were in a bookstore together when we saw the novel on sale and we looked at each other, and thought, there’s not been a film made for several years. (Ian was in the British Army in the 1970s, including a deployment in Northern Ireland and the military, his grandfather fought in the war.)

After reading the novel, we had some ideas about how we would want to do it and then we went about to see if anyone had the rights. We’re kind of mavericks in that regard, and you’ll gather that by my athletic career, we thought we’re on the outside, but let’s have it a go. Lo and behold, no one had the rights. It was shocking. Normally studios or producers had rights, and we pitched them and we were lucky enough that they said yes, and my husband and I scrounged together enough money to pay for the option rights.

For us we felt that we could bring something new to this story; it was the historical context because they didn’t delve into that in previous films, which were more direct translations of the novel. We thought it was fascinating because it was not something we learned in our history, especially coming from the winning side, and so we thought we had something different to offer, and then we embarked on adapting it.

KOUGUELL: How did your adaptation process begin?

PATERSON: We bought multiple copies of the novel and delved into it. We tore it apart, put different scenes on the wall, dug into the thematic essence of what the author was trying to say – that was our guiding light. We did a lot of research all around WWI, from the German side, the French side and British side – the whole landscape of the war, that formed basically how we did the adaptation. Then of course we did multiple drafts, there were completely different stories.

We created a dramatic throughline that could carry the narrative with some urgency that the novel does not have because the novel is almost like excerpts of a diary.

KOUGUELL: You mentioned that rather than a literal translation of the book, it’s an emotional translation. Please expand upon that.

PATERSON: When you look at a novel it’s very difficult to see how you can make it cinematic for an audience. We had to drill down into it, looking at the key elements and thematic premises of the book. For Ed, myself, and Ian, it was telling it from the German perspective, and having that sensibility; there are no heroes, war is not an adventure. We wanted the audience to feel that total devastation, feel the arc of that patriotic fervor to the numbness and animalistic tendencies at the end.

KOUGUELL: How did your collaboration process evolve?

PATERSON: When we first optioned the novel it would have been nearly impossible to get this project off the ground because you could not raise the financing for foreign language films. That’s why we initially decided to do it in English with German accents. Furthermore, WWI was not a hot topic to cover; it was not an American war. Cinema was very much about America back then. As the landscape changed, streamers came in, local language was much more regarded, such as Parasite won best picture and foreign film.

Luckily we held on to the option long enough that eventually producer Malte Grunert got the script and he was doing a project with Ed Berger. And they both said, this needs to be told in the German language. We loved Ed’s vision and we thought it was brilliant. We knew this was the right path, given we just spent 14 years with various producers, directors, and money on and money off.

We did a couple of passes on the script together and then Ed, and rightly so, said I need to do my own pass on the script and I need to infuse it with that German sensibility. That was a wonderful learning curve for us as writers; I think Ian and I brought the outside in perspective which gave it that historical context and something unique. But then Ed came on, and gave it that inside-out perspective; the way Germans talk, the way they interact, that sense of shame, and their culture about previous wars.

Ed did his pass on the script in English, then gave it to us, and we had some collaboration on that, and that was translated into German. Because Ed is a co-writer and director, it was somewhat seamless. We are also executive producers on the project, and you put your producer’s hat on and say, if you trust in this director, let him do what they need to do to bring it to the screen.

[Filmmaker Chloé Zhao and Producer Spears Talk Adapting “Nomadland” to the Screen at the New York Film Festival]

KOUGUELL: It’s certainly a timely film given all that is happening today.

PATERSON: It’s as relevant today as it was then. As the years rolled on, interestingly, that’s what makes this novel so powerful is the essence of it; the everyman, the betrayal of a youthful generation, the destruction of war, the senseless killings.

KOUGUELL: What tips do you have for writers working on adaptations?

PATERSON: If you are adapting on a basic level, first make sure you have the rights and a good lawyer with the right contacts. Second, read it multiple times, get the essence of it. Adaptation doesn’t mean it needs to be a lesser translation, it’s not a documentary. View it through your own lens and your own experience. Be streamlined with what you want to say; if you say too many things it becomes about nothing. Finding that throughline and finding your angle is really your key.

Continue to go back to the novel. It’s also important to put it down and go back to it. Another key is research, this will spawn more ideas. Don’t do research just for a historical piece there are so many things that can spawn ideas.

KOUGUELL: What has this experience of bringing this film to life brought to you?

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PATERSON: It’s given me confidence to follow my dreams and to never give up when people are saying no. You must keep going and stay true to your why; Why is this story important for you to tell? If you can drill down on that, then it’s going to give you the passion to keep going.

All Quiet on the Western Front is now streaming on Netflix.

Interview with THE POWER OF THE DOG Editor Peter Sciberras

February 5, 2022 / sucity / Comments Off

Script contributor Susan Kouguell interviews Australian film editor Peter Sciberras about carefully sustaining and building tension throughout the film, while still highlighting the complexity and surprises built into the characters and the story.

SUSAN KOUGUELL

JAN 26, 2022

THE POWER OF THE DOG BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH as PHIL BURBANK in THE POWER OF THE DOG. Cr. KIRSTY GRIFFIN/NETFLIX © 2021 Cross City Films Limited/Courtesy of Netflix.

The multi-award-winning The Power of the Dog now playing on Netflix, centers on charismatic rancher Phil Burbank who inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son, Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love.

In my interview with Australian film editor Peter Sciberras we talked about carefully sustaining and building tension throughout the film, while still highlighting the complexity and surprises built into the characters and the story.

Peter Sciberras’s feature film debut HAIL (dir. Amiel Courtin-Wilson) was selected to play in competition at the 2011 Venice International Film Festival. That same year, the short film MEATHEAD (dir. Sam Holst) gained selection in the Cannes Film Festival, and was also awarded the Crystal Bear for Best Short Film at the Berlin International Film Festival. Peter’s feature film collaboration with David Michôd has spanned three films: THE ROVER, which premiered at Cannes Film Festival in 2014; WAR MACHINE, starring Brad Pitt, which premiered on Netflix in 2017 and THE KING, which premiered at Venice International Film Festival and was nominated for best editing at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television in 2019.

KOUGUELL: Tell me about your collaboration with Campion.

SCIBERRAS: I never met Jane before this film. Jane likes to be in the editing room, which I like too. I like to be with directors as much as possible, to get a sense of their particular vision and the atmosphere they invoke. Watching the dailies with Jane, I was soaking in as much as possible — what she liked and what wasn’t there for her. It’s interesting finding how your perspective aligns with the director and making the film they want to make as opposed to what you thought they wanted to make.

That’s the beauty of being in the room together; when you have one idea, and it builds from there in a constant stream of thought. It was such a pleasure to work with someone who is so confident with their vision. And it was incredibly fun.

KOUGUELL: When you signed onto the project had you read the original novel by Thomas Savage?

SCIBERRAS: I had never heard of the novel. I make a point not to know the source material prior to editing, so as not to fill in ideas from the source material. I know what Jane added and her memory of the book and her version of the script.

[Interview with ‘tick, tick…BOOM!’ Screenwriter Steven Levenson]

KOUGUELL: You mentioned solving some of the challenges in the script and changes that were made from the script to the film.

SCIBERRAS: Some characters were introduced quite late and then they disappear for half the script. There was a lot of balancing and identifying how to bring them in and then deciding how much we can get away with. For example, with Phil he’s not in it for a long time and the challenge was keeping that tension building without losing Phil’s presence.

KOUGUELL: The scenes of the vast landscape with the cowboys reminded me, in terms of the tension and atmosphere, of Campion’s film SWEETIE specifically with the landscapes in the outback and the (Australian) cowboys – the jackaroos – dancing.

SCIBERRAS: Jane feels landscape in a particular way; when it comes to filmmaking, she’s very attuned to landscape and very aware of the atmosphere that’s evoked.

With the long panning shot over the hill, we wanted something that had a certain atmosphere and it had a beauty and sensuality with the shapes and shadows hidden in the landscape. Having those conversations with Jane I was very aware of how she sees the world, and how those things permeate every scene, and how attune she is to nature.

KOUGUELL: The tension between Peter and Phil is palpable and continues to escalate as the film unfolds. Let’s talk about that cigarette scene.

SCIBERRAS: The intimate sharing of the rolled cigarette between Peter – who rolls it ‘to be like’ Phil, Kodi (Peter’s character) was so terrific there; the boy’s taken over and the boy is commanding this scene.

KOUGUELL: It was a shift of power between the two characters.

SCIBERRAS: Yes. And cutting to the horses with Peter; the horses had witnessed something we (the audience) hadn’t seen. It was a moment to get a bit more abstract and lyrical and hopefully transport the audience and give the moment some space to live.

[INTERVIEW: ‘Son of the South’ Writer/Director Barry Alexander Brown]

KOUGUELL: The film’s pacing has a distinct rhythm.

SCIBERRAS: As an editor watching dailies and watching performances, you feel the pace the director was working at. It felt really clear to me. The film wanted to be really patient, and I felt that Jane set that up with Ari Wegner the DP. A lot of the pace comes from that, and hopefully the elegance and simplicity.

Weirdly when watching it, I was thinking of Hitchcock; that clear communication of framing, maybe there is something of that. Jane never mentioned that psychological reference with Hitchcock.

KOUGUELL: The film is broken into five chapters. The chapter cards were not in the script.

SCIBERRAS: Right. The chapters were not there to begin with. It was a big part of the edit. With the addition of the chapters, you were left with a question and a cliffhanger moment. In the script it was a fade to black. The chapters allowed us to leave you with a moment of anticipation. It was an interesting shift in the way the film moved, and it allowed us to cut it shorter as opposed to a soft transition.

KOUGUELL: Let’s talk about building tension and intimacy in scenes, and the importance of not being mysterious just to be mysterious in the scenes with Peter and Phil.

SCIBERRAS: All of Peter and Phil’s scenes were fun to cut. Their long lingering looks and a side glance – when you have such great performances it’s exciting. In their scenes, you don’t know what the characters are thinking, and you don’t know where the tension is coming from. Can you trust these people? The ambiguity, tension, and questioning their intentions.

KOUGUELL: Those lingering looks built the tension between these two characters and easily could have been seen as pretentious but it was not.

SCIBERRAS: Jane wants everything to resonate. She has a great compass for that reality, that’s why she can play in that world without it becoming pretentious; it’s very real and raw human. But she has very exciting high concept ideas that she executes and it’s that combination that live in her work and makes her work both accessible and layered. She’s brilliant on that level.

KOUGUELL: Some scenes were omitted and rearranged from the script.

SCIBERRAS: There was a lot of omitting around the start of every chapter.

The first act was tricky, you want to get to the Red Mill quickly where Rose and Peter are introduced, but you need to set up the brothers and how they communicate, and we need to tell backstory. It was a tricky dance to get the right feeling. The brothers have been this way for a really long time and one of them has had enough and he’s not all the way there yet.

The opening of the script opened the same as the book with the castration of the cow. We restructured that scene and put it later when Peter arrives at the ranch. With this cut, it gave it this kind of energy, foreboding and signaling what is going to happen with this boy.

KOUGUELL: The film successfully establishes characters’ relationships and back story without exposition and reveals critical information at just the right moments.

SCIBERRAS: We didn’t want to show too much too quickly. For example, with the magazines in the cubby that are discovered, we wanted the audience to slowly learn what was going on. It felt reductive the way it was originally in the script and we didn’t want the audience to say, that’s why Phil is the way he is.

We also cut the saddle scene. We loved the internal work when Phil’s with his objects of admiration and love, and we wanted to continue that feeling. Jane came up with the idea to have Phil swimming and that was a key restructure, and to have him floating like a crocodile.

KOUGUELL: Advice for our readers?

SCIBERRAS: For editors, understanding the story you’re telling and being free to explore, to create a space with a director to go deep and create a safe place where nothing is off-limits leads to interesting avenues and solutions to problems.

For writers, editors and filmmakers, persistence is everything. It is the key. Good ideas will come but stick to it. Honing intuition is a key thing as well. Allowing yourself to feel the story, and immerse yourself in the characters, understanding the story from the inside and finding the best way to tell it.

The Power of the Dog is now available to watch on Netflix.

Interview with ‘tick, tick…BOOM!’ Screenwriter Steven Levenson

February 5, 2022 / sucity / Comments Off

In a wide-ranging discussion, screenwriter Steven Levenson talks about writing and collaborating for the stage, film and television, delving into the creative process, and the challenges of adapting tick, tick…BOOM! – a true story to the screen.

S teven Levenson is a playwright and television writer who authored the Tony Award-winning book, Dear Evan Hansen. His plays include If I Forget, The Unavoidable Disappearance of Tom Durnin, Days of Rage, and The Language of Trees. In television, Levenson co-developed and executive produced the FX limited series Fosse/Verdon and was a writer and producer on Showtime’s Masters of Sex. His honors include the Obie Award, Outer Critics Circle Award, Drama League Award, Helen Hayes Award, and the John Gassner Memorial Playwriting Award.

About tick, tick…BOOM! Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winner Lin-Manuel Miranda makes his feature directorial debut with tick, tick…BOOM!, an adaptation of the autobiographical musical by Jonathan Larson, who revolutionized theater as the creator of Rent.

Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson in tick, tick...BOOM!. Photo courtesy Netflix. — Andrew Garfield as Jonathan Larson in tick, tick…BOOM!. Photo courtesy Netflix.

Kouguell: Let’s start by talking about your career trajectory.

Levenson: I started acting in school plays and musicals, and continued acting through college and loved it, but toward the end of college, I began to feel that as much I loved acting, I wanted to do more than just interpret ideas and words. And then I discovered playwriting. My playwriting professor (Pulitzer prize winner) Paula Vogel was very instrumental in giving me confidence.

When I left school and moved to New York City, I got a job as a literary assistant at Playwrights Horizon and for two years I wrote coverage and kept writing plays. I had plays produced at Roundabout Theatre Company and other underground theaters, and then made my way to Los Angeles and making Dear Evan Hansen.

Kouguell: Working with composers is an important element of your body of work.

Levenson: I always loved musicals and had a great deal of respect for them. I was eager to work with composers and found the process very intuitive, it felt like a natural fit. It is a very collaborative process and it’s very creative and inspiring how ideas multiply with multiple people.

It takes some humility to work with music in general. If the music in a stage play is great, and after the show when people leave the theater, the book or script will fade into the background if it’s doing its job.

With Tick, Tick…Boom! the challenge there was to take songs that already existed and try to sew the two together. In a way it’s more challenging because you can’t make changes to the songs. It was really a creative and inspirational constraint; as a writer, sometimes constraints are the most freeing things.

The Larson Papers at the Library of Congress

Director Lin-Manuel Miranda, producer Jen Tepper and Levenson viewed the Larson Papers at the Library of Congress, an extensive archive created a few years after Larson’s passing. A treasure trove of the more than 200 songs Larson had written since 1978, the archive contains early versions of numbers from Rent and tick, tick…BOOM!, songs and notes from his musical Superbia, letters, scores, notes, photographs, notebooks, cassettes, demo tapes, and books.

Kouguell: This project was a particularly unique adaptation process; adapting elements from Larson’s personal life as well as his own writing.

Levenson: At the Library of Congress archives we looked at Larson’s papers and spent maybe four or five hours making copies of things. tick, tick…BOOM! began as this solo piece that Jonathan wrote and performed himself, but there were many different drafts of it over several years.

We found every possible draft of tick tick…BOOM! and every draft of Superbia, which was challenging because none of them was carefully labeled or dated. There were five drafts of tick tick…Boom!, our task was to find the commonality and differences and find the most vital and fun material. It was an exciting challenge.

We went back to Larson’s original show, which was about 45 minutes long. Making it into a film, we wanted to do what Jonathan couldn’t do in a solo show, and the great gift of the screen, we could see him create it and see those events and expand them. It was like piecing together a puzzle and getting inside Jonathan’s head as a writer as best we could.

I wanted to put the solo show in and build around it. We would see the story unfold and another frame around that, the present tense viewing of this story and with Susan as the narrator at the opening and end of the film, to get the full impact and understanding of the context of the story, knowing that Larson went on to write a musical (Rent) that changed theater.

Levenson then went on to talk about how they structured the material, listing the songs on a white board and constructing the dialogue around them.

Kouguell: I imagine you felt a strong sense of responsibility to Larson’s life and his work.

Levenson: It was a joyful responsibility. As a team, I think we all pushed harder to make it right, and to always be excellent. There were little things – for example, the scene in Central Park where we are seeing seagulls fly by, the seagulls were Jonathan’s idea. It was freeing as a writer, I was there to serve his vision, and I took my ego out of it.

Kouguell: You write for the stage, as well as for film and television, and worked as a showrunner. In film and television, scripts are considered more of a blueprint from which others work. How do you approach the writing process in each medium?

Levenson: I think plays are about living in real time and in the way conversations really unfold and the rhythms of actual speech and you can luxuriate in that, there’s a different kind of time.

With a script for film and television, the rhythm is about picking the most important moments in a scene and cutting to the meat of it. It’s more about story; plot is a much bigger driver, whereas in a play you can take your time and stretch this. I’m always conscious of that.

For a musical, one line in a song can capture a scene that’s several pages in a script.

Kouguell: Advice for writers?

Levenson: The best creative advice I was given was to take in as much as I could; to read and see as much as I could. If there was a script, I read it to learn how to figure out how it worked. It’s how to find your voice. Immerse yourself in what you love.

Susan’s Interview: ‘Cherry’ Screenwriter Jessica Goldberg

February 26, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off

Susan Kouguell speaks with screenwriter Jessica Goldberg about her work as a playwright, and the process of collaborating and adapting her new film ‘Cherry’ from the book to the screen.

SUSAN KOUGUELL

I had the pleasure to speak with screenwriter Jessica Goldberg about her work as a playwright, and the process of collaborating and adapting her new film Cherry from the book to the screen.

CHERRY, directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, follows the wild journey of a disenfranchised young man from Ohio who meets the love of his life, only to risk losing her through a series of bad decisions and challenging life circumstances. Inspired by the best-selling novel of the same name, Cherry features Tom Holland in the title role as an unhinged character who drifts from dropping out of college to serving in Iraq as an Army medic and is only anchored by his one true love, Emily (Ciara Bravo). When Cherry returns home a war hero, he battles the demons of undiagnosed PTSD and spirals into drug addiction, surrounding himself with a menagerie of depraved misfits. Draining his finances, Cherry turns to bank robbing to fund his addiction, shattering his relationship with Emily along the way.

About Jessica Goldberg

Award-winning playwright, screenwriter and executive producer Jessica Goldberg previously served as the showrunner and executive producer on Netflix’s AWAY which starred Hilary Swank and Josh Charles. In 2016, Jessica created and executive produced the critically-acclaimed Hulu series, THE PATH, starring Aaron Paul, Michelle Monaghan and Hugh Dancy, which ran for three seasons. Prior to that, she served as a writer and producer on the NBC drama, PARENTHOOD.

Susan Kouguell: How does your background as a playwright inform your work as a screenwriter?

Jessica Goldberg: There’s a lot of characterdepth you must have as a playwright. Of course there were so many things I had to learn from theatre, to television, to film about structure and plot. Plays tend to be more character-driven. This movie actually worked well for my early skills since it’s quite a character-driven movie. As a playwright it’s really about dialogue; I used to hear voices always talking in my head, and film is more visual. Often you need more story drive, but there is so much overlap as the depth of the human experience that you try to mine as a playwright, and that’s what you want to do in any form of writing.

Kouguell: You are the co-writer along with Angela Russo-Otstot, the sister of the directors Joe and Anthony Russo. Talk about this collaboration.

Goldberg: I met the Russos about a year or two prior on another adaptation of a book that I was adapting for the screen. Angela produces for them, and we worked very closely on that project so she and I developed this language together, which you need when you collaborate on a screenplay.

The book was very personal to the Russos. It takes place in Cleveland where they grew up; it’s about people they know and the opioid crisis in Cleveland. They asked me to come on board with Angela to work on the screenplay and it was amazing because we already had a strong collaborative language but I didn’t have Cleveland. The first thing we did was get on a plane and go to Cleveland. We walked the walk of the book it was based on. The main character is a bank robber, and we walked to all the banks, we saw how he escaped, we really got a feeling of the town, the city, and we talked to a lot of young people who came of age at that same time our main character was coming of age. Through that process of walking through her hometown and discussing the story over dinner, in the car, over breakfast, and so on, you really start to develop a way of working together.

Kouguell: Tell me about the adaptation process from Nico Walker’s autobiographical novel to the screen.

Goldberg: It was quite a difficult adaptation. The book goes over 18 years and it’s a series of stories, little vignettes that move forward through his life. He starts as a young man, then he goes to Iraq, comes back and gets addicted. Traveling in that book is the character of Emily but she wasn’t as much a part of the book. When we started to decide how are we really going to invest in this guy and the story, we thought maybe we can pull out more of a love story here. That’s something we added to the structure in the film; it became the frame of the film to have a person who we invested in deeply through this story. That was an addition.

Also, Nico wanted the book to be seen as a work of fiction. He was in prison when they acquired his book. We found a little bit of liberty in our adaptation, translating it from the book to the screen, which was obviously a totally different form.

Kouguell: In the film, the main character breaks the fourth wall. Let’s talk about the decision to include this device.

Goldberg: One of the big challenges of adapting the book was that his voice is so lyrical and poetic; he has such a unique way of looking at the world. So the challenge was, how do you capture a voice that is that unique? Really early on the Russo brothers said, “Try everything, just go and have a great time, let’s get his voice in there.” They gave me and Angela this freedom to experiment and that’s why I think they embraced all these different stylistic choices that come up in the movie. We needed to capture the heart and soul of the book and they were so open to playing with ideas when approaching writing the screenplay.

Kouguell: There were elements that added a level of humor and tone, such as the fictionalized names of the banks.

Goldberg: That was another way of approaching the question of how do we capture the book. He had this way of walking in the world and seeing hypocrisy and seeing these institutions as blank places and we embraced that idea. Even the doctor who he goes to after the war was named Dr. No One. The movie is told through Cherry’s perspective and that is how he sees the world. Some of those little nods are taken from the book.

Kouguell: Words of wisdom for screenwriters?

Goldberg: My first advice is that life is really long and it’s really challenging, so you have to keep writing. It takes a long time; people always want their first thing made. Perseverance is half the battle to being a writer. That’s a big one.

Cherry is slated for a theatrical release on February 26 and will release on Apple TV+ March 12.

SUSAN’S INTERVIEW: ‘Son of the South’ Writer/Director Barry Alexander Brown

February 25, 2021 / sucity / Comments Off

Susan Kouguell speaks with ‘Son of the South’ Writer, Director and Editor Barry Alexander Brown about the film that was twelve years in the making, the adaptation process, and how his background as an editor informed his work as a screenwriter.

(L to R) Sharonne Lanier and Lucas Till in a scene from SON OF THE SOUTH, Courtesy Vertical Entertainment

Executive produced by his longtime friend and colleague Spike Lee, Son of the South is based on civil rights activist Bob Zellner and his autobiography, “The Wrong Side of Murder Creek”. The film follows Bob Zellner, a Klansman’s grandson, who must choose which side of history to be on during the Civil Rights Movement. Defying his family and white Southern norms, Zellner fought against social injustice, repression, and violence to change the world around him.

This film, which was twelve years in the making and is dedicated to the late civil rights icon John Lewis, takes place in Alexander’s hometown of Montgomery, Alabama where the real-life events occurred.

About Barry Alexander Brown

As a young director, Brown was nominated for an Oscar for his first film, a feature-length documentary about the rise of the anti-Vietnam War Movement titled, The War at Home. He edited numerous Spike Lee films, including Do the Right Thing, Malcolm X, Inside Man, and BlacKkKlansman for which Lee won a best-adapted screenplay Oscar and Brown was nominated for best editor. Brown has worked with Mira Nair on the Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay!, Madonna, In Bed With Madonna, Adrien Brody on Clean, and Tony Kaye’s Detachment. Brown was recently honored at UNESCO and AFI’s World Peace Initiative Awards. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award and their World Peace & Tolerance Narrative Feature Film Award for Son of The South.

Mr. Brown describes his relationship with Bob Zellner as: “We were both liberal white boys from Alabama and we easily got along.”

Susan Kouguell: Tell me about the adaptation process.

Barry Alexander Brown: The first thing I gravitated towards was that The Wrong Side of Murder Creek should be a movie, but the scope was way too big for one film. I wasn’t interested in doing a movie that quickly skips through history. I was writing the script around the same time Bob was writing his book. So much of what I wrote was more based on lots of my conversations with him.

It took me almost two decades to tell his story in a concise way that would convey the importance of what he did and who he was. It took me forever to decide which part of this story that I can take that will make a good story, with a good beginning, middle and end.

You have to write a story that makes sense, and write dialogue that is sayable for the actors and helps move the story along, and come up with dialogue that sometimes paraphrases what happened. This film gave me the ability to say things I wanted to say things about what Bob and I grew up in.

Kouguell: Did you consult on the script with Mr. Zellner?

Brown: I sent him scenes and sometimes he would tell me more information and stories because I wasn’t there when these things happened — he’s about 20 years older than I am.

Barry Alexander Brown on set 'Son of the South', courtesy of Vertical Entertainment — Barry Alexander Brown on set ‘Son of the South’, courtesy of Vertical Entertainment

Kouguell: How did your extensive work as a film editor inform you as a screenwriter?

Brown: With film editing, you’re taught so much about pacing and how to get in and out of scenes. Editing informed a lot of how I wrote. There are so many times a scene would stand alone but more often than not it actually creates a greater sequence of scenes that is all about one thing and what the characters are feeling. I’ve come to understand that one scene doesn’t always stand-alone, it’s a piece of a sequence of scenes.

I’ve worked with very good scripts, and you begin to grasp what writers are doing and also in terms of their language. I remember reading the James Joyce quote about Ulysses – ‘I felt like a thief walking around Dublin stealing people’s lines”. I think it’s good to go around town and listen to the way people talk.’Son of the South’ Script-to-Screen, Courtesy Barry Alexander BrownVolume 90%

Kouguell: There are some humorous moments in the film that offer a good balance with the dramatic events unfolding.

Brown: Although this film is a drama, I still wanted to have humor. Mainly, and why I wanted to use it is because the south is a funny place and they like to play with language. Many films that are set in the south, I don’t recognize these people that are somewhat dour and have no sense of humor; that’s not the south I know.

Two examples of these moments are when Younger asks Bob “Are you really a communist? Say something in communist for me” and Bob’s own repeated line, “I’ll try anything three times”.

Kouguell: Your advice to screenwriters?

Brown: Give every character their own life. Some people have very stylized scripts and sometimes that really works but I don’t think I could do that. I want to understand everybody. There are no small parts. If someone walks into a scene and they have a line or two, you have to know who they are and give them something in that line or two because this is a real person with a real personality.

Also, one of my rules is I should be able to sit down with somebody and tell the story I’m writing but tell it as a story not a script. For me it’s very important that not only is the journey interesting but that it’s going somewhere, so when you get to the end someone isn’t thinking ‘What? That’s it? Why did you tell me the story?’

Susan’s Interview with “BOMBSHELL” Oscar-winning Screenwriter Charles Randolph

January 2, 2020 / sucity / Comments Off

Susan Kouguell speaks with Oscar-winning screenwriter Charles Randolph about his writing process when adapting a true story for the screen and the challenges of bringing “Bombshell” to life.

SUSAN KOUGUELL DEC 20, 2019

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I had the pleasure to speak with Oscar-winning screenwriter Charles Randolph in a very insightful discussion about the craft of screenwriting, the adaptation process, and his new film, Bombshell. Randolph’s credits include Love & Other Drugs, The Life of David Gale, and The Big Short, for which he won the Academy Award®.

About Bombshell: Starring Academy Award®-winner Charlize Theron, Academy Award®-winner Nicole Kidman, Academy Award®-nominee John Lithgow and Academy Award®-nominee Margot Robbie, and based on the real scandal, Bombshell is a revealing look inside the most powerful and controversial media empire of all time, Fox News, and the explosive story of the women who brought down the infamous man who created it. The film is directed by Emmy® Award-winner Jay Roach and written by Academy Award®-winner Charles Randolph.T

Kouguell: Let’s start with talking about your adaptation process for this film.

Randolph: It was really trying to cobble together as many sources as you can get. Part of that was that there was a great deal of journalism available. Usually what happens is when you do a canvas of stories you can generally feel who has access and who doesn’t. If you were to read 50 articles on Roger Ailes and Fox at that time, it became pretty clear that Sarah Ellison at Vanity Fair and Gabriel Sheman at New York Magazine had access to the Murdochs, and if not the Murdochs, to their label in a pretty intimate way. So, what happens is that you start to figure out pretty quickly whose perspective is framing the story and that helps a lot, and you can start to hierarchize and know what you can trust.

Charles Randolph

Over the course of writing the film, various people produced books, including Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson, and these can be helpful for color and background. Then once I’m done with that process, I will meet people. It varies from project to project. I usually meet people later in the process. There are a couple of reasons for this, one is that I don’t want anyone’s NDA (non- disclosure agreement) to be put into question. There’s also a journalist thing when you sit down with someone who tells you a heartbreaking story of their lives and then you’re not be able to use it, because it feels very ugly to do so.

I wait and see whose story I’m going to need and then reach out to their representatives, contact them, and go meet them. I tend to do less than Jay Roach, the director, who likes to meet everyone. We made a concerted effort to sit down with just about everyone who has more than say, two lines in the movie.

For me, it’s a combination of primary sources in terms of books, articles, people writing about other people, and then the interviews, and from those three, using the most potent narratives you can. I love doing the primary research myself because you never know what jewels you will find that another writer might leave out, so if you have the time to do it, that’s great.

Kouguell: Was there any resistance about getting permission from Megyn Kelly and Gretchen Carlson and the others? How did that work?

Randolph: It makes a difference, and I won’t lie to you, if you have an Oscar. It gives you a little bit of credibility, so the big, important people know that this is going to be real. It’s much easier to do that now than it was previously. Then more than that, once the project is going into production and actors become attached and those names are associated with the project, then generally people want to talk. Leveraging a bit of that can help a lot.

It’s also about being as gracious and honest as possible. I always tell people, I’m not a journalist, so we can have conversations that are background that not only will no one associate with you, but also, even if everything is on the record, I don’t know if I’m going to be using those details, so people won’t know it’s you.

It’s really a matter of everyone getting to know the world and recognize that some things, even though there are only two people in the room when it happened, one of them had to have talked. Volunteering information for a film is a much safer prospect than speaking to a journalist. And generally speaking, people like to talk.

Kouguell: Let’s talk about your choice to have the Megyn Kelly character break the fourth wall in the opening scenes.

Randolph: We employed some of this in The Big Short to explain technical concepts. In Bombshell, the idea here was that you needed to very quickly get the logic of the Fox News architectural space, how it exists in that building, how the power was represented in that building, but also what it means to the culture, the flavor of that culture, what the culture was, and the role of Roger Ailes in that culture. We thought we’d do a presentation moment because Megyn is a journalist, and occasionally on her show talked to the camera, as she did famously in the election of 2012.

With all these meta devices, I always say the same thing: Only use them when they’re the only solution available to you to communicate something that you cannot communicate otherwise.

And even in doing that, realize they’re not always going to work.

Kouguell: You created empathy for your characters who many might feel are not empathetic in ‘real life.’

Randolph: Some of these characters we think we know but really don’t. The film is inherently humanizing and one of the things that’s fascinating to me, is a lot of people struggle with the fact that they are identifying with Megyn. We don’t ask you to like the characters, although some people say we do, but that’s not true—we just want you to see them as human. So, much of our understanding of these humans is based on the news, and news is a different function than entertainment. News is about imposing order on chaos. It’s like giving us a story about what’s going on in the world. It’s like giving things labels. Because Megyn and Gretchen don’t live up to that label you have in your head, it gives me an opportunity as a screenwriter to play with your expectations.

I have a friend who asked, ‘Why didn’t you show Megyn as complicit in that culture at Fox?’ and I said, the whole point of her character is that she comes to understand that her silence makes her complicit in the harassment of other women.

I say this to actors all the time, great performances come from characters we are ambivalent about. Do you like Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane? Well, no, you don’t like him, but you understand him. Or Tracy Flick in Election? She’s so interesting and so indicative of a cartoon but also of a type that is sort of real. But do I like Tracy Flick in terms of like? No, I don’t like her—she’s just mean. There’s that thing—great movie characters occupy that space that transcends our judgments, our easy judgments, and so that’s what you’re always striving for as a writer—to get people into a world where they see that character in the terms of that world, and that’s often very uncomfortable in terms of life itself.

Susan Kouguell Interviews “Mouthpiece” Director Patricia Rozema

June 19, 2019 / sucity / Comments Off

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Patricia Rozema and I met for our interview in a Greenwich Village hotel restaurant to talk about her new film Mouthpiece. It had been several decades since we had last seen each other; her film I’ve heard the Mermaids Singing was just picked up for distribution by Miramax Films where I was working in the story department. There was certainly a lot to catch up on.

When I first saw I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing, I was immediately struck by Rozema’s distinct vision, story sensibilities, sense of humor, and her willingness to take chances. I closely followed her career since that time and continue to be inspired by her often rule-breaking work.

We started our interview talking about the expectations and sacrifices of mothers and daughters in relation to Mouthpiece, as well as with our respective daughters whose mothers work in the film industry—well known to have hiring and pay inequities.

There is a scene in Mouthpiece when a clip of Ruth Bader Ginsburg pops up on Cassandra’s laptop with Ginsburg’s words: “Women will not have equality until men are involved in raising the next generation.” Rozema commented: “That’s how RBG did it with her husband. I think there should never be a choice between developing yourself as a skilled human and having a family; you should be allowed to have both.”

ABOUT MOUTHPIECE

Mouthpiece is a powerful, funny and highly original look into the conflicted psyche of Cassandra Haywood—a fiercely independent millennial woman. Cass is a single writer who lives by her own rules. She’s also a bit of a disaster. Following the sudden death of her mother, Elaine (Maev Beaty), she finds herself in crisis, unable to think straight with a debate raging inside her head. This movie makes that invisible conflict visible: Cassandra (Amy Nostbakken & Norah Sadava) battles it out while figuring out what to say at her mother’s funeral. What unfolds is a wild careening through grief, anger, sex and self-sabotage in an exploration of the messy lives of women from both generations. Raucous jokes, musical numbers and heartbreaking memories add up to a deeply moving and political portrait of a mother and a daughter as seen through the eyes of one conflicted young woman.

Patricia Rozema

PATRICIA ROZEMA – Director, Screenwriter, Producer After an Honours B.A. in Philosophy and English from Calvin College in Michigan, Patricia Rozema distinguished herself as a writer/director with her internationally celebrated first comedy feature, “I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing” at the Director’s Fortnight in Cannes, where it won the Prix de la Jeunesse. It then opened the Toronto International Film Festival in 1987. Other highlights: writing/directing the contemporary lesbian love story “When Night is Falling,” adapting/directing the politically progressive Miramax Jane Austen feature “Mansfield Park” with Harold Pinter, and co-writing HBO’s “Grey Gardens” starring Drew Barrymore and Jessica Lange (PEN Screenwriter’s award, Emmy nomination and a Golden Globe). She also won an Emmy for writing and directing a Yo-Yo Ma/Bach film “Six Gestures.” In 2015, Rozema adapted and directed the apocalyptic thriller “Into The Forest” with Ellen Page and Evan Rachel Wood. She has also directed “Anne with an E” and “Mozart in the Jungle” for Netflix/CBC & Amazon. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Rozema with Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava

FROM STAGE TO SCREEN

Rozema was introduced to the stage play Mouthpiece by her now 22-year-old daughter (she also has a 14-year-old daughter) who was working as an intern at Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre. “It was so fresh and strong and tapped into a visceral feeling that I had never seen represented before” says Rozema, who then insisted that Alexandra Hedison and Jodie Foster check it out while they were working in Toronto. Foster and Hedison said, “When we first saw Norah and Amy’s breathtaking performance, we were speechless. Mouthpiecetouches on every part of the female experience from birth to death using dance, music, and wicked humor with just a bathtub for scenery. The result is a new kind of feminist language which ignites pure, intravenous emotion. It’s impossible to describe and truly unforgettable.”

The theatrical production consisted exclusively of Cass, played by Nostbakken and Sadava, wearing white bathing suits, often sitting in a bathtub. The film, on the other hand, is much broader and very visual.

THE INTERVIEW

KOUGUELL: Tell me about the adaptation process and collaborating with Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava, bringing their play to the screen.

ROZEMA: We did a lot of talking. The thing I brought to it was to add the mother character. The play was one hour. I have daughters and my mother had died so I thought I had the right to be in it. We just riffed and told stories and wrote them out. Mostly I was at the keyboard, sometimes they were. They didn’t know the format of screenplays, like Final Draft, so I would write it, then after a session I would polish it up and then share it, It was like a writers room. I loved it. I always wondered if I would enjoy a writer room, but I loved it.

Their senses of humor are so close to mine and their B.S. detector is similar to mine. I also brought to the story was the Christmas section. I thought what was needed in the film, was a bit more of a narrative drive so, I thought, ‘What was the question that remains unanswered?’

KOUGUELL: The question of: What happened at Christmas?

ROZEMA: Yes, What happened at Christmas. It’s amazing, if you have one tiny hook like that, you can put so much on that’s emotionally and socially relevant.

KOUGUELL: Tell me about the shoot and post-production.

ROZEMA: The shoot was 28 days. We did a lot of screenings during the editing process. I said: Is this a pizza with too many toppings? The trick is that the film needs to be unified, yet diverse. If it’s too unified it’s boring, if it’s too diverse, it’s a pizza with too many toppings, and it’s a mess. I had test screenings with people who didn’t know me and had nothing to do with the film every couple of weeks during the editing just to see what do they get, what do they not get, are they confused, and so on.

KOUGUELL: You have been working in both feature films and television, including ‘Mozart in the Jungle’—have you found any differences working in these various mediums?

ROZEMA: It’s all just storytelling; filmed fiction. I have a huge appetite for novelty, for newness, I can’t have done it before or seen it before. I’m very open as to length, format, decimation, it’s all just story. I tell my agent: big budget little budget, I don’t care, just give me a story that needs telling, that is new, and let me play.

It’s interesting, Paul Schrader and I have the same background. We both went to Calvin College, we were both Calvinists, that was our world. Schrader was 10 years before me and I heard him speak recently about his film First Reformed and his nomination, and he was saying something about the fact that he never enters into the making of a film, thinking it’s going to be like this other film I saw, it’s always, ‘I wonder if this will work’ or ‘oh, I’ve never seen this before, I’m going to try this or try this crazy combination.’ I thought, is there something about being a lapsed Calvinist that makes you seek out novelty? I wonder if there is something about our formation.

KOUGUELL: Maybe the strict rules?

ROZEMA: Maybe. They say when you leave that religion, you’re like the colt that escapes the coral, you have no rules. So, there are the rules of the 3-act structure for example, and I think let’s break some of these rules.

KOUGUELL: It was a powerful and effective decision not to portray the two sides (the bifurcation) of Cassandra as one good and one bad.

ROZEMA: I had so much pressure to do one good and one bad.

KOUGUELL: The overall choreography and particularly the physical battle was very moving.

ROZEMA: That synchronicity was in the play, and done with such natural gestures, and that thrilled me. I was hungry to put that into the film. There’s no trick to that. It’s work. Looking in the mirror. Take after take after take.

The fight scene was just a fight scene that we choreographed but we wanted it to feel harsh.I wanted it to feel like the things I say to myself, what we say to ourselves.

I loved how Catherine Lutes lit it, she did an amazing job; very classical, very eternal. i loved it being an empty church. That was in the play. I loved her throwing herself down eventually. I loved this idea of the fight, the self-defeating metaphor.

KOUGUELL: Do you feel there are more opportunities as a Canadian woman?

ROZEMA: Yes. I sort of self-selected out of the big Hollywood situation; I felt why would they be interested in me as a woman, a lesbian, with female leads as an inclination, and my work which is a combination of comedy and non-comedy.

KOUGUELL: You have a very unique sensibility

ROZEMA: There’s money for things that are not genre, that aren’t obvious crowd-pleasers, but even more profound than that, if I make a film that no one wants to see, my kids still have health care, and they still have good schools they can go to. That is profound. So, I can make dangerous artistic choices, I can take risks, I can experiment, and not risk starvation. That is a big difference for me, living there. It’s also very progressive and creative.

Finding collaborators who have just the right politics, sense of humor, worth ethic; that’s a needle in a haystack and I always like to try new things.

Writer and Director Dee Rees Discusses “Mudbound” and Talks to Susan about the Adaptation Process

October 27, 2017 / sucity / Comments Off

Writer and Director Dee Rees Discusses Mudbound

By: Susan Kouguell | October 24, 2017

At the New York Film Festival press conference, film critic Amy Taubin interviewed Dee Rees and her Mudboundensemble cast.

Award-winning screenwriter and filmmaker, Susan Kouguell is a screenwriting professor at Purchase College, SUNY, and presents international seminars. Author of SAVVY CHARACTERS SELL SCREENPLAYS! and THE SAVVY SCREENWRITER, she is chairperson of Su-City Pictures East, LLC, a consulting company founded in 1991 where she works with writers, filmmakers, and executives worldwide. Twitter: @SKouguell

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Mudbound Cast

At the New York Film Festival press conference, film critic Amy Taubin interviewed Dee Rees and her ‘Mudbound ensemble cast Carey Mulligan, Mary J. Blige, Garrett Hedlund, Jason Mitchell and Jason Clarke in a thought-provoking discussion. Dee Rees previous projects include the critically acclaimed Pariah in 2011 and HBO’s Bessie in 2015.

Mudbound poignantly incorporates poetic voiceovers, shifting between the characters’ internal monologues as the story unfolds. Although set in Mississippi of the 1940s, this is not a typical period drama; the themes of oppression and violence powerfully reflect contemporary issues and a history repeating itself.

About Mudbound

An historical epic drama based on the novel by Hillary Jordan, Mudbound details the daily hardships and vicissitudes of farm life in Mississippi during the post–World War II era. Two families, one white (the landlords) and one black (the sharecroppers), work the same miserable piece of farmland. Out of need and empathy, the mothers of the two families bond as their younger male relatives go off to war and learn that there is a world beyond racial hatred and fear.

REES: “I wanted this to be good old-fashioned film. I wanted this to be the kind of film they don’t make anymore. I wanted to break out of the 90-minute artificial construct and just let the voices ring out, let the story live and have the audience become invested in the characters.”

Adaptation

For this publication, I recently wrote about writer and director Lucrecia Martel adapting Zama from a novel to a screenplay as well as other articles about adaptation, including Adapting Novels, Memoirs and Short Stories: What to Keep and What to Cut.

I asked Dee Rees about the process of adapting the book to the screenplay.

REES: “Virgil Williams wrote the first adaptation of the script in 2015. Reading the script prompted me to read the book to see what else was there, and then I rewrote the script before we shot it.”

Rees went on to describe how the acting ensemble found other passages in the book they had questions about, which Rees then included into the script.

REES: “Carey Mulligan asked about a passage how Jamie would see her, and I put that in, then Jason found a passage about Henry on the land, so I put that in there. The whole sequence about Hap breaking his leg; I thought that should be included, and Hap’s occupation as a preacher because I thought it was important to show his faith, and the half-built church – in the book it’s fully built, but I wanted it more incomplete so it’s more symbolic.

I wrote a lot of individual monologues for the characters, like Hap’s monologue. I wrote, what good is a deed, and the play on words “deed” and “deed” and the fact that no matter how much he is invested in this land, he’ll never be vested. And Florence going to care for Lauren’s children, I wrote the meditation because it’s important to hear that chord of dissonance of her doing the very things she said she would never do. Then Ronsel leaving for war, I wrote that scene because it was important to establish Ronsel not just as the son of Hap and Florence, but a son of the community.

There were a lot of details I also included like when Hap and Florence slow dance, to show them as a loving sexual couple who talk about other things not just white people. I wrote the candy bar scene between Florence and Ronsel to establish their special connection. We see Florence as this self-sacrificing person who will eat only one square, and wants to share. I wanted to give dimension to the Jackson family, they didn’t just come with the house, it’s not just about the circumstances of their existence, they have agency, they have ideas about who they are.”

Character Parallels

REES: “The fathers. Henry and Hap both have a sense of disinheritance. Hap literally has his blood and sweat in the land; he can never take title to it.

What it means to be a mother. Florence has to come to terms with love and love can be a tool; by loving Laura’s children she can keep her own family intact. Florence and Laura are also linked by economic empowerment; they both have husbands who try to tell them what to do, and they have their small rebellions.

The brothers: Rosel and Jamie are linked by the trauma of war, shell-shock. They’re both not understood. They both are expected to step back into this context in which they no longer fit. In a way, they become more brothers than Henry and Jamie. It was interesting to have those parallels, and to ask: what is brotherhood?”

Final Words

REES: “I hope people take away from this film the fact that we can’t begin to tackle our collective history until we tear down our personal histories. More expansively, I think it’s about inheritance. It’s just not about race. It’s about what ideas we have inherited, what attitudes we have inherited, and what we are unconsciously passing on.”

A Netflix release: November 17, 2017

HBO’s “Getting On” Will Scheffer talks collaboration, adaptation, the characters’ evolution & more (SCRIPT MAGAZINE)

November 23, 2015 / sucity / Comments Off

Susan Kouguell Interviews HBO'S 'GETTING ON' Creator, Executive Producer and Writer Will Scheffer by Susan Kouguell | Script Magazine

Mark V. Olsen (L) Will Scheffer (R) (Photo credit: Lacey Terrell / HBO)

I spoke with series creator, executive producer and writer Will Scheffer about the third and final season of his Emmy-nominated HBO series GETTING ON. We talked about his collaboration with his husband Mark V. Olson on this series, adaptation, the characters’ evolution, and more.

Based on the BBC series of the same name, GETTING ON is created for American television by Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer (co-creators of the acclaimed HBO series Big Love), the show follows the daily lives of overworked nurses and doctors as they struggle with the darkly comic realities of tending compassionately to their aging charges in a rundown, red-tape-filled hospital extended-care wing, blending outrageous humor with unexpected moments of tenderness.

KOUGUELL: What did you learn as a writer and producer during these three seasons?

SCHEFFER: I think I always learn the same thing: “It’s about the people, stupid.” I learn it different ways, dealing with different problems and crisis and joys — but it’s about the people you collaborate with in all aspects of the production and also the people you’re doing it for. I also learned you can shoot a TV show in three days and it can still be excellent if you’re working with the right people.

KOUGUELL: Do you feel that your writing and/or collaboration with Mark has changed since Big Love and if so, how has it evolved?

SCHEFFER: It has. A lot. I used to be the first draft guy (and I still am on some or our projects) and then we’d trade drafts from there — but Mark really ran with the drafts of GETTING ON. And I felt more like I was connected to him at the hip, channeling. We talk a lot more now — before and during the drafting and we solve problems together like in a “dialogue” and then he’ll execute that in the writing.

GETTING ON developed in a special way because of time factors and other things, but I did less actual typing and more talking and feeding answers to Mark’s questions. It really felt like a good process for this show. We’ve already written three other “shows” where I did the first draft and Mark is the closer. And then I’ll get it back for some light polish. But GETTING ON was the show where I think I’d say we became a real writing team. With Mark I/we become better. We trust each other. I’ve had almost the same amount of time as a solo act and a duo 15 years and 10 years, respectively — and I know I’d have a body of work and a career without Mark, but I doubt very much I’d have this career. I’m grateful he finally pushed me into collaborating because he made me a better writer and thinker and luckily it’s made our marriage richer, too. We still write some things solo and we help each other on those. I’m a producer on some scripts of Mark’s that I never could have written and I’m just as proud of those as of our work together.

KOUGUELL: How much input, if any, do the actors have on the scripts?

SCHEFFER: I’d say they contribute. They make it better. But we hold the keys to that particular kingdom.

KOUGUELL: On the show’s trailer you mentioned that you are “digging deeper into the characters this season by introducing their family members.”

SCHEFFER: I think the whole season is about allowing the characters to become the patients, in a way. Their stories are what we’d usually call “the patient” stories.” Sure, we have a few great “guest patient” turns — but the show really comes together this year. It takes off like a plane.

KOUGUELL: How have the characters evolved from the first to your final season?

SCHEFFER: Well, like all good TV characters they haven’t evolved too much. I’d say they’ve become more themselves, if anything. Have they grown and learned why they were so f***ed up? No. But maybe they’ve admitted they were a little screwy to begin with. And they all so surprise us this year in ways you’ll have to watch to see. They’ve become more sure of who they are. They have to me, never been more of a joy to behold.

In a January 2014 article for this publication, I spoke with Will Scheffer about Season 1of this series in which he also offered insightful tips on pitching projects.

Learn more about GETTING ON: http://www.hbo.com/getting-on

Su-City Pictures East, LLC

Screenplay & Film Consulting By Susan Kouguell

Category: ADAPTATION (page 1 of 2)

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