Go Into The Story Interview: Andrew Friedhof

My conversation with the 2015 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Andy Friedhof wrote the original screenplay “Great Falls” which won a 2015 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. I had the opportunity to chat with Andy about his background as a writer and his award-winning screenplay.

Scott Myers: You’re from Australia. Where’d you grow up and how did you find your way into writing as an interest?

Andy Friedhof: I was born in Sydney. I lived here until I was about five. Then, my parents had what we call here a ‘sea-change’. Do you have that concept in America?

Scott: No. What is that, ‘sea-change’?

Andy: Yeah, ‘sea-change’. People leave the city and move to a coastal region or, if they move to a rural area they call it a “tree-change”. It’s basically when you move out of the urban area in order to have a better lifestyle for your children. My parents did that, moved to an hour and a half north of Sydney. I grew up there. It was a working class area at the time and the high school I went to was pretty bad, academically speaking

The best way to demonstrate that is that the student who scored the highest our HSC, which is Australia’s equivalent of the SATs, wrote the answers on her legs underneath her skirt and checked them while she was doing the test.

Scott: Wow. You have to admire her ingenuity.

Andy: Yeah, that’s true. I had some encouraging teachers there, but I never had any inkling that I could become a writer. I had an interest in books, but the fact of the matter is that I really felt like I didn’t have anything new or interesting to say at that stage and probably felt that way well into my 20s.

I was quite mathematically-minded when I was growing up, so I decided to study engineering. I went to university and did a double degree in Engineering and International Studies, which involved a year of study in Germany. After that, I ended up working at the railways here in Sydney as a civil engineer.

But, throughout that period, I never really lost a passion for writing. I kept writing. Mainly humor pieces. They were published in “McSweeney’s” or the university paper or on my blog. I was interested in humor like Woody Allen’s “Without Feathers” and that sort of thing. Then I came across “The Wire,” the TV series. I was particularly enamored with Russian literature when I was young and, this observation’s been made before, but that TV series has a similar structure to a serialized 19th century novel. The depth and richness of those books. I thought, “Oh, wow, there’s an avenue here to write that sort of expansive material in the television space.”

That was what initially sparked my interest in screenwriting. I read the bible and the pilot for that TV show. As I mentioned before, I’m fairly mathematically minded, so I think the form of the screenplay, with that mixture of literature and mathematical structure, lent itself to my abilities.

While I’d dabbled in writing short stories and novels before, a screenplay was the first thing I was really able to finish. I really enjoyed the process of doing that.

It definitely wasn’t a great screenplay, my first one, and neither were the next four or five, but it was something I was able to complete and feel a sense of satisfaction. It started out more as an enjoyable hobby while I was working as an engineer.

Scott: I’ve talked different writers who come from a variety of backgrounds and it does seem like people who have a scientific or particularly mathematical bent, they tend to relate to the narrative form of screenwriting, an emphasis on structure, compared to say novels. Engineering the same thing?

Andy: Yeah, absolutely. A lot of people refer to screenplays as blueprints for movies. I guess that’s sort of true in my view. There is a natural form, a natural grammar to films, I think. If you’re able to wrap your mind around that, I think you can easily tackle the form.

Scott: So, you’re in Australia, you stumble on “The Wire”. I think you’re absolutely right, it is like a great piece literature, almost Charles Dickensian. You get the ‘bible’ for that. You read the pilot. That was one thing you used to delve into the craft.

But also in your comments in accepting the Nicholl Award, you thanked John August and Craig Mazin saying you considered yourself, “A proud alumnus of Scriptnotes University.”

Andy: Yeah. There are probably only three really useful avenues for people to learn the craft, and the first one is just to watch films obsessively. If you don’t enjoy watching films, I don’t think this is the area that you want to work in. That was something I definitely dived into, particularly over the last three or four years, when I started taking screenwriting more seriously

Before I go further, I should probably tell you a little about my background. Where I was working, we had a conservative government elected to the state parliament. I was working for a state organization and they said, “We want to get rid of all this dead weight,” and so they offered voluntary redundancies, just general redundancies, around the organization to anyone who was interested in leaving.

At the time I thought I could probably keep working in this very secure job for the next 40 years, or I could take a chance, and spend the next three or four years working solidly full‑time on developing my craft.

I took the risk and decided to do that. I went back and did my Master’s in Creative Writing at Sydney University. Over the last four years, I’ve really just spent my time focused on developing my understanding of the craft. Learning screenwriting is a little like learning a foreign language. You can read all the books you like but it’s much easier to become fluent if you immerse yourself in that world..

So, to return to your question, you need to absorb films, you need to read produced scripts, you need to listen to the experiences of working screenwriters. Those three avenues are the best ways to learn the craft. The beginning of Scriptnotes perfectly paralleled my decision to leave that job. I think John and Craig started their podcast a couple of weeks after I made that decision, so the timing was perfect.

From episode 1 to 200 plus, I’ve been listening along and as I’ve developed as a screenwriter, that’s been my soundtrack to that development. It’s been really useful. There’s a lot of misinformation out there about screenwriting, and a lot of forums where people want to present hard and fast rules about how you should do it, but there’s real value in listening working screenwriters.

The most useful thing I picked up from John and Craig was there are no hard and fast rules. You can develop your voice anyway you want. That gave me a feeling of freedom to do that.

Scott: It’s a terrific metaphor, learning the craft of screenwriting is like learning a foreign language, that you really need to immerse yourself in that cinematic culture, this idea of watching movies, reading scripts, and then paying attention to working screenwriters or professional screenwriters.

That last point in particular, why would you put your faith in someone who hasn’t worked in the front lines in Hollywood in particular, if that’s your goal, what they have to say, particularly the sort of gurus out there who have their rules and formulas, whereas like you said, John and Craig basically said, “No, there are no rules.”

Andy: I think Craig particularly bristles against the concept of the screenwriting guru who acts sort of like a gatekeeper laying down the laws from on high. Screenwriting is a very democratic craft. There’s no reason anyone can’t try their hand and see if they have the chops to make it.

Scott: That’s right. I remember interviewing David Guggenheim [2010 Black List]. He used that word. The most democratic way of getting into the business is by writing a spec script because it’s your work.

Speaking of spec scripts, I’ve been doing research. You mentioned you’d written several. I found some of them floating around the Internet. I’m just going to toss a few titles out there and get some comments on them. There was a script called, “Made in China,” that made the Austin Film Festival, did pretty well there.

Andy: That was a very early script. One of the things I’ve learned, and I probably should have listened to other people’s advice on this, is your first four or five scripts, it’s probably worthwhile putting them in the bottom drawer.

I think some of my early scripts probably had a little bit of merit to them, but were mostly pretty flawed. I think that script is one of them. I can give you the logline. It’s quite a bizarre story. As I mentioned, started being a comedy more than a drama. I was particularly influenced by Charlie Kaufman. The script involves a loner who finds a novel programmed into his microwave. [laughs] He transcribes the novel from the microwave, sends it out to publishers, and gets a book deal.

He ends up taking credit for the novel, becomes rich and famous, but ends up feeling guilty about it and travels to China to try to find the real author who works in the microwave factory. Quite a bizarre story.

Scott: That’s a fun idea.

Andy: It was interesting listening to Anthony [Grieco], who’s another Nicholl Fellow, because he’s his story is set in the book publishing world. There’s a few beats in that script that I thought to myself, “Oh, that’s kind of similar to Made in China.”

In my script he sends it to a female publisher. She takes him under her wing and introduces him to the book publishing world, accompanies him on a book tour, and that sort of thing. It’s interesting to see the coincidental parallels between the story I wrote and his. Obviously, my script was nowhere near as good as Anthony’s.

Scott: I know The Bitter Script Reader. At one point he did a post on a script you wrote called, “Three Percent of Nothing.”

Andy: As I mentioned, the past three or four years I’ve been working full‑time on screenwriting. There’s been encouraging milestones along the way. Two years ago I got a script into the quarter finals of the Nicholl, which was called “Stat.” That script is currently optioned by Smart Entertainment.

Then “Three Percent of Nothing” got into the semifinals last year. That landed me my current agent. That story, again, this is a bit bizarre, because it’s set in the world of NBA, which Sam [Regnier]’s script was also set in. I don’t know if those guys have been plagiarizing from me, or what. [laughs] It’s about a US agent who is a Jerry Maguire type, Jerry Maguire plus 10 years. His agency is on the brink of failure and he’s losing clients to a former partner.

His top client calls him one night and says, “Someone’s been killed at my mansion. We need to cover this up,” because he’s got a morality clause in his contract and they’re in the middle of negotiations. Basically, they hide the body, using a former client that’s fallen on hard times to help them. It all unravels from there.

It’s a character piece with thriller elements. It’s much more similar to “Great Falls” than “Made in China” I think, which I think is a result of me developing my voice. As I said, that landed me my agent a couple years ago.

Scott: You speak to the value of writing a spec script. Obviously, you’re improving with a writer with each one, but, also, you get something optioned by Smart Entertainment. You get an agent off one. You’re getting more and more notoriety.

Was this the master plan? This contest, that competition, this venue, were you hitting things as you went along and found out about them?

Andy: I think the prevailing mindset when you start out as an aspiring screenwriter is, “If I can just reach this milestone, I’ll have finally made it.” You start off and you tell yourself, “If I can just get an agent, then I’ll finally be able to call myself a screenwriter.”

Then you get an agent, and you think, “Oh, I also need a manger. I need a manager as well.” There’s this series of goals you’re constantly aiming for with the expectation that you’ll eventually reach some plateau called “working screenwriter”. Even now, with the Nicholl Fellowship, I’m thinking, “Okay, this is great but the next step is to sell a script or land an assignment,” and that sort of thing.

I hope that doesn’t come across as unappreciative of what I’ve achieved but I feel like having that hunger and realizing that you’re not going to reach some place where you’re finally comfortable and can put your feet up and say, “I’m officially a screenwriter, and I will be until my dying day.” [laughs] That day is never going to come. You’ve always got to keep working.

For me there was no master plan. There were encouraging moments along way, and those definitely convinced me to keep going. If I hadn’t gotten the quarterfinals of the Nicholl two years ago, then the semis last year, and then this year…

To be honest with you, in July last year, shortly before the announcement of the Nicholl quarterfinalists, I had set up a job alert on my email with the intention of possibly returning back to my previous career as an engineer. The Nicholl Fellowship came just in time, because obviously you can’t be unemployed forever.

There were positive steps along the way, but it’s still been a difficult journey. I’m under no illusion that there’s still a lot of difficulty to come. You’ve just got to keep working hard and worry about the thing that you can control, which is the quality of the writing.

Scott: That’s a nice segue to your 2015 Nicholl winning screenplay, “Great Falls”. Here’s a plot summary provided by the academy:

“After negligently killing a hunter with her patrol car, a sheriff’s deputy and her superior must decide what to do with the only witness to their crime, a death row inmate only days from execution.”

Let’s start at the very, very beginning. What was the inspiration for this story?

Andy: Back in 2014, my then girlfriend, now wife, and I were traveling around the United States and Canada for about four months. We did a fairly extensive trip around North America, had a fantastic time, and met some incredible people.

While we were in New York I read an article in the Times about a botched execution of a man called Clayton Lockett. The execution is actually pretty similar to what is depicted in the script itself. It was apparently quite a harrowing experience for the people that were present. They tried to insert the needle into his arms, neck, legs and feet at least a dozen times, from memory.

Scott: I remember that. In Oklahoma, right?

Andy: It was, yes. He was a former drug addict, so his veins had collapsed, so they had to inject him, actually, in a vein in his groin. To preserve his dignity, what remained of it, they covered him with a cloth.

Because of that they weren’t able to see that the injection site had failed when they started injecting him with the cocktail of drugs they use to execute prisoners. He ended up dying of a heart attack I think nearly an hour after the procedure had begun, and during that time he tried to sit up on the execution table and speak. It was pretty horrifying to read the series of events that had occurred in that room.

The whole story was just such a stark contrast to the incredibly decent and friendly people we’d met on our trip. It was such a disconnect for me, that this thing had been carried out in these people’s names, when I compared that to my recent experiences.

It got the wheels turning. Obviously, I don’t exclude myself in that by the way. There are plenty of things that the Australian government does that I completely disagree with. They have particularly heinous refugee policies, for example.

It got me thinking about how we’re so often disconnected from the violent or immoral acts that are carried in our names. There’s plenty of examples of that phenomena in terms of policing, foreign wars, factory farming, that sort of thing. We’re kept at a distance from the violence done on our behalf, whether we agree with it or not. That got me thinking about what would happen if that barrier was torn down, what sort of circumstances would bring that about. That was the genesis of the idea.

If it’s moral and legal for someone to fatally inject a prisoner in a temporary single-wide trailer in Deer Lodge which is what the execution chamber at Montana State Prison has consisted of for decades, does it make that much difference if it’s someone who’s doing it in a cabin thirty miles down the road I was interested in exploring that idea and testing people’s belief in the death penalty.

Scott: Interesting, what I hear you saying is that basic “what if.” I think those are the two best words for coming up with a story idea.

Andy: [laughs] That’s right.

Scott: What if you basically could shrink the distance between the people dispensing the means of capital punishment from some sequestered chamber somewhere in a prison, pull that into our normal experience, bring it closer to home.

Andy: Exactly. I think just because something is legal doesn’t make it moral. I think often that justification is used as a fig leaf.

Like I said, I think that applies to things like refugee policy and policing, as well. People can sometimes become ambivalent about these issues because they say, “Well, it’s just the law,” They can dismiss it. When that structure is removed and you’re faced with actually having to do it yourself, it’s a question of whether you can actually follow through with that conviction.

One of the most important things I learned while doing my Masters, was that action is character. It’s easy for a character to say, “Yes, I’m pro death penalty,” but when you test that principle against reality, the idea that they might have to actually do it themselves, what’s the value of those words at the end of the day.

Scott: It’s like that moment in The Dark Knight, remember, where they’ve got the two boats, regular citizens in one, prisoners in the other, and the ‘good’ guys can pull the switch and take out the prisoners?

Andy: Yeah, right.

Scott: I want to get into the details of the story, but before we get there, I’d like to talk about your writing process for “Great Falls”. You go on this road trip to the United States. Now you’re in Australia. You’ve got this ‘what if’ story concept and start developing these characters. But the story is set in Montana, 10,000 miles away or more.

When you read the script and it feels like, “Yeah, this guy grew up in Montana.” What resources did you use to achieve that sense of authenticity?

Andy: I heard that quite a few times while I was over there which was very flattering. I think the Internet is an incredible resource now in terms of the amount of research you can do. Even something as small as visiting locations in Google Street View, in terms of immersing yourself in the environment you’re writing about. So much of the detail in the script came out of the research.

In terms of why I chose to focus on Montana, obviously, I needed a state that still had the death penalty. It’s actually kind of incredible how much information the state government has on websites about the death penalty process.

For example, there’s a publically available document called “Montana Execution Protocol.” That basically describes step by step how a prisoner is supposed to be executed, right down to whether they can be sedated, and how many sedatives they are allowed to have before they’re executed, when their last meal will be served, the person who will be doing that.

There’s a huge amount of data out there, but it’s also quite horrifying when you think about what those documents are actually describing. It’s a government document describing the killing of a human being in this very bureaucratic language. Another really helpful resource was the Montana Abolition Coalition. They had a huge amount of research on their website.

As I said, many of the details of the script came out, even decisions around which characters to focus on. For example, early drafts of the script didn’t have the family of the victims in it.

One of the things I read about was how, and I never even considered it before, but often families are torn apart about the decision to execute. Some members of the victim’s family wholly support the decision to kill the inmate, while others are extremely opposed for a variety of reasons

Families that should be united and supporting each other through their greatest period of grief are often arguing about this issue or the schisms caused by this issue. That was something I wanted to explore, as well. That was the reason those characters were introduced.

Scott: This is Liza and Josh?

Andy: Exactly. That came out of the research. There are a lot of myths around the death penalty I think that people aren’t aware of. A lot of people say, “It’s cheaper to execute people,” but it’s actually not.

It’s far more expensive because there’s a long series of appeals and court hearings, and then the actual process itself is extremely expensive. The security involved, the procurement of the drugs, the training of the personnel.

I read somewhere that California has spent $4 billion since 1978 to carry out 13 executions. That’s over $300 million per execution. It costs close to $180 million a year just to keep the death penalty system active in that state.

There are some misconceptions out there. I think some people rely on those misconceptions to justify their ambivalence or support for the death penalty.

Scott: Let’s jump into some of the characters here. I’m going to get your impression of these key figures.

The first one is Sergeant Stan Gittany. This is how you describe him when you introduce him, “Sergeant Stan Gittany, 50s, smiling at the waitress. He wears a tan Cascade County Sheriff Department uniform. Everything about Stan is thick, his eyebrows, his neck, his accent, his wit.” Where did he come from in your story crafting process?

Andy: For me the main character is Josie. She is the person that changes in the story. In the United States and Australia there’s still a majority support for the death penalty. I think if you asked people how strongly held their view on that is, they’re probably not dyed-in-the-wool supporters of those policies. They’re more blasé about it.

Josie’s role was to represent that majority experience. Stan’s role is the hardline response to crime and support for the death penalty. He was the cypher for that attitude. That was where that character initially came from. He’s very firm and confident in his black and white worldview.

Scott: You’ve got Josie, who’s a deputy. You describe her, “Early 30s, sitting opposite, same uniform, staring at Stan’s eggs. Doesn’t smile much. Not much gives her cause to.” She goes through a transformation. Starting off she’s got a drug addiction which she’s hiding and fractured life.

What I hear you saying is that you’ve got her, where she comes down eventually on the side of not in support of the “death penalty” that emerges for Bernie, this ad hoc thing, versus Stan. Bernie is the murderer who is condemned. Stan’s attitude, I think he even says, “You’re in a cage, you’re basically an animal.” That’s where he’s starting off at, right, Stan?

Andy: Yep.

Scott: That’s one of the interesting things. Bernie, here’s how you describe him when he’s introduced in the script. “Bernie, 40s, the condemned, sits in the backseat behind a steel cage. Chippewa Indian, graying, patchy beard, skin of waxy pallor, like coffee with a little too much cream in it.”

He’s the condemned murderer, and yet, in some respects, over the course of the story is it fair to say that he’s almost one of the more humane or humanized figures in the script?”

Andy: Yeah, I was concerned about making him too morally pure, given he does have this violent history, but I am a firm believer that most people can change. He has spent, obviously, an extensive period in jail by this time. He’s found religion.

I feel like if you didn’t believe people have a possibility to change, then what’s the point in even having a correctional system? If you feel someone’s evil and will be for life, and it’s only about punishment then that attitude is not currently reflected in the wider justice system.

Bernie’s someone who was obviously affected by drugs badly, and made a horrible decision as a very young man, and carried out this terrible act, but I’ve also seen people come back from the brink of that sort of nihilism.

One very important aspect of Josie’s character is that her own family has a history of dealing with the opposite side of the law. She’s someone who initially believes that immorality is merely a personal decision, rather than something that can be influenced by circumstances and context.

She holds her brother to that sort of standard, in terms of lending him money to start his business because she believes that he simply needs to make the decision to get right with the world. The reason her father, for example, ends up having a brush with the law is he lost his job and, out of desperation, tried to rob this bank.

I think that’s Josie’s learning process over the course of the script. She starts off thinking that Bernie just made a horrible decision and therefore is somewhat supportive of the idea that he needs to die. But as she gets to know him and sees that he has clearly changed, to some extent that plants the seed of doubt in her mind.

Scott: Because she could draw a parallel between her father and him?

Andy: Exactly, she discounted the desperate circumstances of her father and thought he just made a bad choice. She gets to know Bernie, she starts to understand her father and her family’s history.

Scott: That’s an interesting point. If we truly do believe that the prison system, the intent of it is, at least in part, is to rehabilitate prisoners, then you have to believe in the idea that they can change.

At one point Bernie says to Kyle, who is Josie’s brother who gets roped into the situation. He says, “This ain’t the same mind that thought to do it. That’s the only shame in it. They give you time to change, and then they kill you.”

Andy: That’s the critical moment for me. If the death penalty is about punishment then they’re not even punishing the same person he was at that time. Often decades have passed before the sentence is carried out. For me that heightens the immorality of it. It might also stem a little bit from the fact that I’m an atheist and I don’t believe people go to hell or whatever after they die. I think once they die they just stop existing.

One of the characters in the script, Josh, makes this point, as well. He says that death eliminates any opportunity for redemption or resolution. I totally understand there are circumstances where people are remorseless or psychopathic, and will never change. If someone really feels that way, it’s probably worse for them to have to live as that person.

Even if there’s only a 10 percent chance that someone expresses remorse or reaches out to the family of the victims to say, “I finally have the clarity of mind to understand what I did to you,” or whatever else, I still think there’s a huge value in that, and it’s something that should be protected.

Scott: You’ve got these characters. You set this thing into motion. At the beginning it seems like a fairly clear moral universe. There’s good guys and bad guys, basically Stan’s take on things. Then there’s this incident whereby there’s an accident and Stan, and to a certain degree Josie, are culpable. They’ve got to try and take care of this person that gets killed in a car incident.

Stan says, “With him,” being Bernie, “as a witness this is vehicular homicide. We’ll get two years minimum for this.” Now you grey the moral environment here, in which the two law enforcement officers are brought a little more into Bernie’s world. Now they’re having to deal with the crime.

One of those “in a moment life changes drastically” stories. Where did that idea come from, “OK, I need to put these people in a situation where now they’re pulled more into the sort of gravitational pull of a Bernie, criminal type of a life”?

Andy: I’ve read a lot of scripts over the years and I think one of the things I learned from that was that you really need to let your reader know what your story is about as early as possible.

I’ve read a lot of meandering 35‑, 40‑page first acts. To me it’s really important to get to that inciting incident as early as possible so the reader can say, “Okay, I understand what this script is going to be about…”

I needed something to provide that narrative thrust to the story. Regardless of whether you agree with where Great Falls ended up going, you probably can’t help think, once you’ve read that moment with the car accident, “I need to find out what’s going to happen here.”

As you said, it brought those characters out of that clear moral universe they inhabited and dropped them into this grey universe.

That’s exactly what an inciting incident should do. Rock your protagonist’s world and ultimately force them to make a decision about how they’re going to respond. That was really important to me.

I’m not someone who’s rigid about structure. I don’t think, “Inciting incident, page 12,” “End of the first act, page 30,” or whatever else. I do think there is value in structuring the scripts in a way to let the reader know what they’re going to be reading. That realization came out of having read a lot of scripts where I was still wondering on page 40 or 50 what the story was about, which is an incredibly frustrating feeling.

Scott: That’s absolutely right. I think that that’s a really good point. I tell my students by the end of Act One, a reader should know what the story is.

In your script Stan says, “Look, he’s going to die anyway, what’s the difference how it happens? What if we do it, just like we’re going to go down to Deer Lodge where they’re going to take him to be executed. Same day, same time, same method.”

You literally are telling the reader, “Look, this is the central conceit of the story. these characters, these civilians, are going to take on, essentially, the task of execution in an ad hoc fashion.” That’s the central conceit, and you do that by the end of Act One.

Andy: One of the incredible things that I came across were pictures of Montana’s death row facility. As I said earlier, for decades it was little more than a temporary trailer. I’m not sure if that’s changed since. It was basically a mobile home where they execute these people. It looked so unprofessional, un‑medical and ad hoc.

As you’re probably aware, medical practitioners aren’t allowed to participate in the death penalty process because it’s against the Hippocratic Oath. So they essentially have trained prison guards carrying out these procedures.

It’s not a huge moral leap for the characters in my script to think, “If my friend who I’ve known for 30 years and isn’t very smart can do it, then maybe we can do it, as well. The outcome will effectively be the same.”

I guess that’s the question the script asks. Is it actually the same thing, or is there a difference? In my opinion there’s no real difference in the morality of that decision, other than, as I said, the legal framework that people often hide behind.

Scott: You have an interesting contrast there, because in describing the facility in Montana, the official facility where the capital punishment would take place, “Our overwhelming feeling should be this is tacky. This is cheap, this amateurish, and, most of all, this is no better place to die than Stan’s cabin.” That’s the cabin for this ad hoc form of capital punishment.

Interestingly enough, there’s this Paula character, who’s Josie’s mom, who basically suffers from dementia. She’s got an obsession or a fixation on Canada.

She mentions, “Oh, it’s a wonderful country, so clean, so civilized compared to the trash you find in Great Falls.” Does that come from your sense that because Canada has a more humane view about prison life compared to the United States?

Andy: That wasn’t a conscious thought when I wrote that line. It was more a dig at her son Kyle, who she didn’t remember because of her illness and the fact that she hadn’t seen him for nearly a decade.

I don’t want people to feel like I’m making a moral judgment about one country or the other from the outside. It tends to annoy me when people do that. There are some areas of difference between the policies of the two countries but it’s not like the death penalty’s legal throughout the United States, either. She could equally have made the point about a neighboring state that didn’t have the death penalty.

It was more the fact that she accidentally identified a potential solution to the seemingly intractable problem Josie and Kyle were faced with. That sparked the idea in their minds. The proximity of Canada was the reason for that more than Canada being so much more morally pure than the United States or anything like that.

Scott: That’s one of the things that really interested me about the script because it obviously brings up a lot of these deeply philosophical, moral questions about capital punishment. There have been movies which have done this in the past, Dead Man Walking, The Life of David Gale.

Yet this script, you hit this really delicate balance where it doesn’t come across as preachy. The experience feels more, in some ways, almost like a Coen brothers’ movie. Like Blood Simple, that there’s this incident that happens, like a pebble in a pond, and this ever‑widening circle of implications and consequences.

You get more caught up in that sort of thing. There’s lot of plot twists and turns. Lots of subplots that come interweaving back and forth, and some very surprising results, and whatnot. I think the reader tends to get more caught up in that, and so you’re able to convey these philosophical questions about the death penalty amidst the entertainment of this crazy set of circumstances which emerges.

Andy: That’s one of the greatest benefits of taking this issue out of the prison and out of the death chamber. I think if you say to someone, “This film is about the death penalty,” they expect a po-faced and teary drama with Susan Sarandon or someone like that as an advocate for someone on death row.

They know what to expect in some ways and therefore approach the material with their guard up. It’s also a very static way of exploring the issue. It’s often people sitting in rooms discussing the issue and coming to a realization.

Whereas the majority of the action in Great Falls takes place outside of death row and outside of the prison system. That allows breathing space for the characters to explore this issue within their own moral universe, rather than the prison system or legal framework in which they’re operating.

Scott: Let’s jump to the ending here, what happens to Bernie, and to Kyle, and Josie, and Docherty, and to Stan. Docherty is basically the sheriffs boss. That ending, you tie up everything in a very sophisticated manner. Every single subplot has its own resolution. It’s satisfying in that respect, but it’s also disquieting.

It’s not a happy ending, per se. Josie does come out of it transformed, but it’s a pretty dark ending. How early on in the process, or how did that evolve, where you knew that that was the ending you wanted?

Andy: That was pretty firm from the beginning from memory. I think for me the most important part of Josie’s journey was realizing that it’s not just a decision. It’s also circumstances that drive immoral acts.

By the end of the film she is ready to accept responsibility for her participation in this immoral act because she realizes that circumstances played a role in her downfall and therefore she isn’t defined by that single moment. There’s this temptation that the sheriff holds out to her saying that we can sweep this under the rug.

He says to her “There’s no reason that we need to prosecute this. I can help you cover this up.” But she refuses to evade accountability because she can now see a pathway back to a morality which she couldn’t before.

Ultimately, it was probably the most satisfying resolution for the arcs of each of the characters. The ending of the script is one of those things I love to hear people talk about and debate. In questioning the ending you are in a way questioning the theme itself. Should Bernie have survived in the end? Should Josie have avoided responsibility for her actions? Why do you feel that way? The sort of things that you can think about after the film, once you walk out and it stays with you for the next few days. Did the character make the right choice? Would I have made that choice?

I love it when you there’s conflict about these things. When you understand the reasons for a character’s choices, but then say, “If I was in their position I would have done this,” or “I would have done that.” I love to hear people’s feedback on that sort of thing.

Scott: I think it’s great. You literally present dozens of forks in the road for characters, including one at the end. This Liza character who you talk about. She’s someone whose parent was killed by Bernie. She insists on bringing her newborn infant to the execution. Wow, that’s a powerful, powerful image.

Andy: I think she says to Josh, “I want to be able to tell my child that they were there when they ask me, ‘Why don’t I have a grandparent?’”. Obviously there’s a schism between her and Josh, because of that decision. The implication in the end is that it’s such a huge schism that it will end up driving them apart completely.

As I mentioned, that came out of the research, that wedge that’s often driven between families by this process.

Scott: How many drafts of the script did you write before you submitted it to the Nicholl?

Andy: It’s hard to keep track of the number of drafts that I do. I’m someone who goes through scripts obsessively, start to finish, even once I’ve finished them, and keep making tweaks. I guess I finished a draft I was reasonably happy with in October of 2014. There were some issues with that draft and I wanted to go back and fix that.

I basically spent the next couple of months working on a revised draft for the Nicholl. I finished that in January of 2015. As I said, we traveled into the US in April of 2014. The script actually came really quickly. I had an initial draft completed three or four months after that. The final draft went into the Nicholl less than a year later.

It wasn’t something I’d been working on for years. It’s something that came very naturally. It was probably the easiest script I’ve ever written, to be honest with you.

I think that’s sometimes a good sign, when you’re able to write quickly, and know exactly where you’re going, and know your characters that well that you’re able to develop it that easily.

Scott: You submit the script to the Nicholl. Maybe you could walk us through that process of what happened after that.

Andy: As I mentioned I had a different script two years earlier that made the quarter‑finals and didn’t make it further, then the next year I had one in the semi‑finals that didn’t make it further. Because of that I was prepared to, once I got to the quarterfinal round again, not proceed any further. Then I made the semis, which was very exciting. Then I made the finals, which was unbelievable.

Hearing from Greg Beal that I made the finals was very thrilling, and terrifying at the same time. Part of me wasn’t prepared how I would react if I made the finals, and then couldn’t quite make it that final step. It would be such a strange feeling of both extreme pride, and then a tinge of disappointment, that I wasn’t able to participate in the events of the Nicholl Week.

Particularly, as I’m from Australia, it’s great that some of the finalists were able to come to the Nicholl Week, because they live nearby or flew in. I think nearly all of them were from the United States, but coming from Australia, I doubt that I would have been able to get over there if I had just been a finalist. It was incredible to find out that I was a fellow and the whole week was a dream come true. It was amazing.

Scott: How has it changed your life?

Andy: While I was over there I had what they call the water bottle tour of 30‑something meetings over a two‑week period spent driving on the wrong side of the road…

Scott: [laughs]

Andy: It was a really incredible experience, but one thing I’ve learned from the whole thing is you can either view the Nicholl Fellowship as just an achievement or you can also view it as an opportunity. For me it’s an opportunity to write something strong and have people interested in what I write next.

I think it’s a mistake to say, “I finally made it. I’m a Nicholl Fellow. Mission accomplished.” You need to keep working. When I got back to Australia, I still woke up at the same time every morning and wrote the same amount as before. So my daily life in Sydney hasn’t changed that much. There’s been a lot more activity over in the United States with my reps being contact by people interested in my material. That’s been amazing.

I’m in the middle of the visa application process that I’m hoping to get out there sooner rather than later to be more immersed in that side of things. The people I’ve met through the Nicholl Fellowship have been fantastic and it’s great to have an almost instantaneous support network.

Just having that extra breathing room and being able to spend more time writing is so valuable. I think Anthony said during the week, we were basically being paid to write over the next year and we can write anything we want. I’m incredibly grateful for that freedom.

Scott: As part of the Nicholl, you have to write a script. Are you writing something in the same vein, tone‑wise or genre‑wise, as “Great Falls”?

Andy: Yeah, I think I will. I’m someone who writes fairly rapidly. I generally produce a new piece of material every four to six months. I’m hoping I’m able to generate more than one script over the fellowship year.

One thing I will say is that it’s important to develop your voice, and once you’re comfortable in a particular area try to stick in a similar wheelhouse. When people weren’t paying attention, I could write whatever I wanted including surreal Kaufmanesque comedies like “Made in China”. While that script wasn’t great, the process of writing it was still a very important learning experience. In the initial phase of your screenwriting career it’s worthwhile working on whatever excites you with the understanding that those early scripts will be for your eyes only.

Once you find out what you enjoy writing and what you’re good at writing, you can stick to those areas. For me, I really enjoy writing character-based dramas and thrillers. Sci‑fi is another genre I really love as well. That’s where my strengths are, and I think where the next few scripts will be.

Scott: That’s a perfect segue into some craft questions, so let’s jump to those if we can. You came up with the story idea for “Great Falls” based on a newspaper article that you read. Is that a typical way that you come up with story ideas or are there other ways that you generate story concepts?

Andy: That’s one of the ways. Generally, a lot of reading — long-form journalism, novels, non-fiction. Watching films and television. For example, “Stat,” the script that was optioned by Smart, that idea came to me when I was watching The Godfather.

There’s a scene in that where Don Corleone is in the hospital after he’d been shot. Some men are coming to kill him, and his son Michael moves his hospital bed to another room. Then he stands guard on the hospital steps with Enzo the Baker and pretends to have a gun in his pocket.

I thought, “Wow, that would actually be an interesting concept for a film.” A police detective is in a coma in a hospital. Some men coming to kill him. This paramedic has to keep him alive overnight while these hitmen are hunting him through a hospital. That idea came from that brief scene. Ideas can come from a whole variety of sources.

You’ve just got to keep your mind open and stay curious. Often you’ll think “I’d like to explore a theme from the perspective of this character that I’ve thought of,” but for me I don’t think there’s been any single avenue to developing story ideas.

Scott: You mentioned you tend to work rather quickly, churning out a script every four to six months. How much of the time do you spend in prep writing, things like brainstorming and character development and research and plotting and outlining?

Andy: I spend the bulk of the time on research, because I think that’s the most valuable part of the process in terms of getting a sense of the place and people you’re writing about. As I said, the Internet is a fantastic resource and I think it’s just foolish not to use it to its maximum capability. The research often informs my story choices and my story locations.

I’m not someone who spends a lot of time developing complex character backstories or anything like that. There’s a sense I’ve gotten that for some people plot and narrative are dirty words. For me plot and character are in a totally symbiotic relationship. You need character to inform plot and plot to inform character.

There’s no reason you can’t work on both at the same time. It also reflects how people approach movies. When they talk to their friends about a film they saw they generally stick to the superficial logline or narrative but I think the character journey is what actually causes people connect with the material and makes a film work.

When someone asks, “What’s Groundhog Day about?” it’s outwardly a fantastic concept about a man repeating the same day over and over, but what makes that film work is the emotional journey of Bill Murray’s character. If I come up with a theme or a setting or concept that I want to explore, I develop a character that can chafe up against that. Once I have that character firmly in my mind then that informs my narrative, which in turn informs and changes the character. It’s like a feedback loop which you develop in parallel until you have both an interesting and, importantly, logical narrative and a satisfying and emotional character arc.

Scott: I know you mentioned earlier this idea of character is action and it reminded me just based on your comments of a quote I heard somewhere, that in a novel you’re exploring what characters think, in a play you’re exploring what characters say, and in a movie you’re exploring what characters do. Does that ring true?

Andy: Absolutely, yeah. I think that’s the power of film as a visual medium. The fact that you can have close‑ups on people’s expressions but it’s left up to the audience to connect the internal dots.

A book you can delve into a person’s mind and are given an insight into their psychology. You can’t really do that in cinema. Even with voice‑over it doesn’t really work because audiences absorb and process images much more efficiently than what they hear on the soundtrack. That’s why film is such a fantastic way of exploring a character through action.

Scott: Speaking of a visual medium, that’s one thing that’s very striking about the script, is your embrace of that in seeing the scripts. It’s a very strong visual sensibility and lots of specific and vivid images. How aware are you of that and how much of that is just instinctive?

Andy: That’s something that’s developed over time. You probably noticed for example that I don’t use conventional sluglines in my script.

Scott: Yes.

Andy: I think it’s an act of folly to write a screenplay as though you’re going into production tomorrow. The first thing you should aim for is to provide a fun and enjoyable reading experience for the reader.

What I really want to do with my scripts is take people through the experience of watching the movie. You might have noticed that I often start scenes with close‑ups on objects or specific details in the scene. That’s how films are shot, basically. When a film is edited together they generally don’t start scenes with wide shots of the interior of a room. So it doesn’t really make much sense to start every scene with some variation on INT. ROOM — DAY. For me, it’s really important to capture the energy, movement and spirit of film.

There are quite a few screenwriters who do that already. Those are the screenwriters I admire and those are the screenwriters I’m always excited to read. I want people to look forward to reading the scripts I write.

Scott: This gets back to that screenwriting guru thing, where there are these supposed rules about, you’re not supposed to include camera shots or directors’ lingo and what not, in a spec script. While that is true in a certain way, screenplay format and style has evolved over time, and if you compare selling scripts nowadays as compared to shooting scripts in the ’50s, like the Hitchcocks, in which you’ll have camera shots and the 25‑line paragraphs, camera shot after camera shot…

Yes, that’s true, but if you get caught up on that, you lose the fact that we can still “direct the movie.” It’s a visual medium. That’s one thing that you do very, very well in your script. You’re not stepping on a director’s toes. You’re simply trying to create images in the minds of the reader to help them get into those scenes and to entertain them. Is that a fair representation of what you’re trying to do?

Andy: Absolutely. In many ways the screenwriter is the first person to watch the film. They do that in their mind’s eye. What you’re doing is watching the completed film in your head, and then describing the scene as you see it.

Another thing I’ve also tried to do is put a lot of white space in my scripts as well. I want people to feel a sense of forward momentum when they’re reading. I try to be generous to the readers as much as possible.

Scott: Make it a ‘good read’. It wasn’t this laborious thing that had all of these tons of black ink. It had some white space.

Andy: Yeah. This is specifically relating to spec scripts. If you reach a stage where a script goes into production it’s very easy to add all that technical detail after the fact. But in the initial stages, when your script is circulating around the industry, what people are looking for is, as you said, a good read, a great story and to be transported visually into the world you’ve created.

Scott: What about dialogue? Your characters had that in “Great Falls”, had that wonderful sense of place, subculture, obviously you did your research on that, but beyond that, the individual voices that each of the characters has. How do you go about finding your characters’ voices?

Andy: That’s probably one of my greatest strengths, I think. I have the ability to inhabit characters and get a sense of their worldview and write for them accordingly. One of the things I’ve generally gotten praise for with Great Falls, is that I managed to make each character sufficiently distinct from one another. That comes from having a good understanding of who your characters are. I don’t think you need to write complex back stories for them. You just need to have a certain degree of empathy and an understanding of the psychology of human beings.

If you have that ability it’s very easy to slip into the character and work out how they would respond naturally to other people and situations. I’m not sure whether that’s a skill you have naturally or a skill you have to develop but it’s pretty obvious if you don’t have it.

Scott: How would you define theme? How important is that to you? Do you start with theme or do you find them along the way?

Andy: Often I don’t discover the theme until after I’ve written the initial draft. I think it’s sometimes good not to think too much about it in those early stages because it can tend to make your writing a little too didactic.

It’s better to approach theme a bit more naturally, so you don’t try to wedge it in artificially.

Obviously, “Great Falls” has a central theme relating to the morality of the death penalty. But, as I said, I want people to interpret the material for themselves and reach their own conclusions. If you reach an alternative view from mine then that’s completely fine. That’s why I’m attracted to the medium of film. It’s accessible to pretty much anybody and everyone’s interpretation is valid. As I said, I’m always happy to hear people’s thoughts on any script that I write.

Scott: What about when you write a scene? Do you have any specific goals in mind?

Andy: There are some good rules of thumb I try to follow in terms of getting into a scene late and getting out early. There are only two rules I follow when writing: one, keep it interesting and, two, keep it moving. The second one is important. A lot of people fall in love with pieces of dialogue or expressing their personal opinion through the characters.

It’s important to understand the point of the scene in the wider narrative and character journey and then get to the point as efficiently as possible. Sometimes that can be tough to do especially if you’ve got a particularly funny joke or exchange of dialogue that you’re attached to, it can be very hard to let that go.

I think you need to take a helicopter view and say, is this really necessary to the story I’m trying to tell?

Scott: What do you love most about writing?

Andy: I’m not someone who, as you can probably tell from this interview, loves thinking on my feet. I really like to spend time alone contemplating difficult ideas and developing considered responses. For me, screenwriting allows you to do exactly that. It allows you time to carefully craft a world, a concept and characters that mean something to you and, once you’re happy with them, to present them to others and say “This is who I am and what I believe.”.

I also really enjoy the process of just sitting down and writing. To me, it’s very meditative act.

It’s a very special feeling, creating something you’re proud of and then sharing that with the world. Initially, writing was the way I dealt with my social awkwardness. You are allowed to be whoever you want to be when you’re writing. That’s something that has always appealed to me.

Scott: Finally, this is a question you are more than likely going to be confronted with as you move forward, not that you’ve broken through that membrane and are working away into the business. What advise can you offer to aspiring screen‑writers about learning the craft and breaking it to the business?

Andy: That’s a little difficult to answer because part of me feels like I’m still an aspiring writer in many ways. All I can say is, as I said, read screenplays, watch films, listen to the working screen‑writers, and just keep working. I think that one mistake a lot of writers make is to write one script and then spend 5 to 10 years just trying to perfect it.

What you need to do is write as often as possible, and once you finish your project, after making it as strong as possible, recognize when it’s time to move on to the next one. You need to develop a work ethic and treat screenwriting like a job.

Also, seek out objective feedback on your work wherever possible. For me, that sort of feedback gave me a sense of whether I was improving as a writer and also offered moments of encouragement along the way.

If you’re not getting that sense of forward momentum then maybe it’s worthwhile asking at that point whether screenwriting is the career for you. There’s certainly no harm in at least trying. Look for those signs of improvement and moments of encouragement and keep pushing on.

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winners since 2012, go here.