Go Into The Story Interview: Jeremiah Friedman & Nick Palmer

In September 2010, Jeremiah Friedman and Nick Palmer who sold their spec script “Family Getaway” to Warner Bros. Turns out, there were fans of my blog. Here’s a 2012 interview with the writing duo.

Scott Myers: Since this a screenwriting blog, let’s try to be creative and start with a jump cut to the end of Act One: Describe where you were and how you reacted when you found out Warner Bros. wanted to buy your spec script “Family Getaway”?

Nick Palmer: We were both at our day jobs. At the time I was teaching Lego Robotics as part of an after-school program but the semester hadn’t started yet, so the week the script went out I was doing inventory, literally counting thousands of Lego pieces, eight hours a day, just sitting there, staring at my phone, waiting for some news on the script.

Jeremiah Friedman: Obviously when we found out it sold it was kind of mind-blowing. We’d set our expectations pretty low and honestly, we didn’t expect it to sell and had just kind of hoped that people would like it enough that we’d get some meetings out of it.

Scott: What formal training have you had in terms of screenwriting? Which teacher or ‘screenwriting guru’ has influenced you most?

Jeremiah: Well, we met at the American Film Institute and even though we were both in the directing program, the school’s whole focus is on classical, narrative filmmaking so we spent a few years there thinking a lot about what makes stories work. Before that, I’d gotten my BA in Film Studies at Wesleyan University, which has this really outstanding and kind of unique program chaired by Jeanine Basinger. Jeanine’s great, she’s got this encyclopedic knowledge of film, she’s seen pretty much every movie ever made and her entire approach to film studies is rooted in critical analysis so the major’s much more story-based than production or theory-oriented. So that was one huge influence. I also took this one screenwriting class at Wesleyan that was taught by an alum, Mark Bomback. Mark’s kind of huge now, but at the time, he was just breaking out. His first film, Godsend, had just been released and he was working on the script for what would become Live Free or Die Hard. Luckily, he and I really hit it off and after I graduated, we kept in touch and he became an incredibly helpful and supportive mentor.

Nick: Before AFI, I was actually an English major at UCLA. I knew from a pretty early age that I wanted to make films, but it was important to me to have a solid background in literature if I was going to pursue a career in storytelling. Because I wasn’t really studying screenwriting at UCLA, I decided to study it on my own. Mamet and Campbell were both big for me and I definitely read my way through most of the how-to books — Syd Field, McKee, Save the Cat — and went to a couple of McKee seminars too. I think I got a lot out of the books and classes but really I learned the most by just constantly writing.

Scott: The first screenplay you wrote you describe as an “Olympic sex comedy.” Setting aside “javelin” jokes, what’s that story about? Were you looking for an idea to write as a team or did you just happen to come up with that concept first, then say, “Hey, why don’t we write this together?”

Jeremiah: Development executives would probably pitch it as Wedding Crashers at the Olympics. It started when I stumbled across a couple of reports about the Olympic Village being this insane hotbed of sexual activity, which I thought was kind of hilarious. And then the more I read about it, the funnier it all seemed. So I approached Nick with the idea of doing a comedy about three, middle-aged American guys who concoct an elaborate plan to compete in the Olympics so they can basically get laid in the village. High brow.

Nick: At this point, we’d just gotten out of school and while we’d never collaborated before, we were really good friends and I liked the idea so I figured let’s give it a shot. Once we started writing, it became clear that we worked really well together, and then the more we wrote, the more seriously we began to consider the idea of a professional partnership.

Scott: Your next script was “Family Getaway.” One logline I’ve found: “A man’s Thanksgiving at his parents’ house becomes a lot more dysfunctional when rival assassins crash the dinner, forcing him to take his family on a cross-country adventure in their station wagon.” I’ve seen the script listed as a Family Action Adventure story and as an Action Comedy. I’ve also seen it described as “The Bourne Identity” meets “Little Miss Sunshine”? Could you help us out here: What’s your take on the story’s logline? What genres do you think best describe it? Is it more “Bourne” or “Sunshine”?

Nick: I think the studio or the producer actually came up with that logline. The script’s really an action-comedy in the vein of True Lies, Mr and Mrs. Smith —

Jeremiah: Midnight Run was also a pretty big reference.

Nick: Yeah, definitely. We were really drawn to the idea of mixing a more traditional action-comedy with the family road trip movies we grew up with.

Jeremiah: And it was always important to us that the action feel real and dangerous and that comedy stay grounded in the emotional relationships between the family members.

Scott: How did you come up with the concept and what about it made you think, “This could be a hit movie?”

Jeremiah: Kind of a funny story actually. I get a lot of shit from all our friends because I see pretty much everything that comes out.

Nick: He saw You Again. In theaters.

Jeremiah: I did. So anyway, a few years back I was sitting in a theater, completely alone, watching this Nicolas Cage movie, Bangkok Dangerous, which is about a freelance assassin on a job in Bangkok.

Nick: And it’s dangerous.

Jeremiah: Right. It’s a pretty ridiculous movie and there’s this one sequence where a group of killers try to ambush Cage at his house and for some reason I thought well, this is kinda boring but if he were home with his parents for Thanksgiving that would be a funny idea. So I think that was the original kernel. Then around the same time, my folks came to LA to visit and I remember one day I was driving them around and I was trying to make an illegal left across three lanes while talking on my cell phone and my mom was going nuts in the backseat and it was just one of those moments where you really realize how difficult it is to go about your normal life as an adult when your parents are along for the ride.

Nick: Yeah and that moment is actually in Family Getaway, we just put it in the middle of a car chase. Which is really the whole idea of the movie, telling the story of that universal experience that you’re always treated like a kid whenever you go home but telling it in the world of an action-comedy. As far as thinking about whether it would be a big, hit movie, we knew the concept wasn’t mumblecore and that it would be in the style of a bigger, commercial movie but honestly whether or not it would sell or be a big hit wasn’t really that much of a factor.

Jeremiah: I mean, we definitely wanted to use the script to get repped and we were aware of the type of movie we were writing. But what started us down the road and then kept us going for almost two years was really our love for the idea and the characters.

Nick: Yeah, for us it came down to — is this a movie we want to see in theaters and is it a story we can stay excited about day after day.

Jeremiah: Yeah, because the truth of the matter is while it might seem like a really commercial or bankable idea, the market is really constantly changing and it takes a really long time to write a script and get it going. While we were writing Family Getaway, a bunch of similar-sounding movies opened and basically bombed –

Nick: The Killers and Knight and Day being the big two.

Jeremiah: And while neither was actually that similar to what we were doing, the loglines were and if we’d been solely focused on writing to what Hollywood seemed to be looking to buy, we probably would have dropped Family Getaway and tried to write a vampire movie instead.

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Scott: You mention doing a “number of drafts” of “Family Getaway” based on feedback from some AFI connections, then “two additional rewrites over the next several months” in conjunction with your managers at Mosaic, all the time while holding down day jobs. How did you manage your time to enable you to write all those drafts?

Nick: It was tough and honestly, it was really hard for me at first. Because we both had day jobs, it meant working nights and weekends and basically giving up our social lives.

Jeremiah: Our friends can tell you we essentially disappeared for about a year and a half.

Nick: Our schedule had been writing maybe three nights a week, 7 to 10-ish, and then usually one weekend day.

Jeremiah: And we should say that was at the point where there was no light at the end of the tunnel. We were a year out of grad school, we had kind of humiliating day jobs, we weren’t repped and we really had no idea how long we’d have to maintain the lifestyle.

Nick: Yeah, by this point I had to stop telling people I’d just gotten out of grad school because that had become, you know, a lie and I just started telling them I was a Lego Robotics instructor.

Jeremiah: We were both getting pretty depressed but we knew our only way out was really to keep writing and push through.

Nick: So we just kept working nights and weekends. Then, once Mosaic got involved, it basically became a second full-time job and we were writing till 11 every night after work and then writing 12 hour days Saturdays and Sundays.

Jeremiah: It was never hard to stay motivated, but it was hard to stay disciplined, especially when we had no reason to think the script would go anywhere. But I remember, we’d taken a break from writing to go see Funny People and Apatow did a Q & A after and one thing he said, which really stuck with us and which we still talk about today is that the people who make it are the people who work the hardest.

Nick: There’s always going to be somebody out there who’s got a better idea or who’s more talented, but you can be the guy who works harder.

Jeremiah: And that’s something we always keep in mind so, for instance, when we were doing the rewrite for Warner Brothers and they’d asked to pitch them four new ideas for a scene, we came back to them with ten.

Nick: Right now while we’re answering these questions there’s somebody out there, probably not repped, but she’s writing her ass off and she’s eventually going to break through.

Scott: What were some of the story areas you focused on in those last two rewrites?

Nick: Most of it was really streamlining the plot and sharpening the characters.

Jeremiah: Our development exec at Mosaic, George Gatins, would always talk about turning it from a script into a movie, which sounds pretty simple and obvious but is actually hard to do.

Nick: It was really Mosaic pushing us, even when we thought the script was great, forcing us to be as hard on the script as they knew the studios would be, that eventually got the project sold.

Jeremiah: Yeah, we had to become pretty ruthless, particularly about pacing and logic issues and it without a doubt made us better writers.

Scott: It’s unusual for “first-timers” to sell a spec script. It’s even more unusual nowadays for a spec to sell without a director or actor attached. What was the thinking behind Mosaic and your agency’s (UTA) decision to go out with the script the way it was as opposed to trying to get an attachment?

Jeremiah: UTA actually wasn’t involved at this point. We didn’t sign with an agency until after the script sold so when it initially went out it was just Mosaic repping us and on board to produce.

Nick: Yeah and the initial plan had been to attach talent because you’re right, it is really difficult to sell a spec today, especially from first-time writers, with absolutely no one attached.

Jeremiah: But we were lucky in that our managers, Dawn Saltzman and Emily Rose, had done a really amazing job building interest around town as we were still rewriting so that by the time the script went out, it was already on the radar at a number of studios, which no doubt helped.

Scott: “Family Getaway” is ranked as the #11 best unproduced script in Hollywood per the most recent edition of The Black List. What is your reaction to making the list and has it benefited you as a writing team?

Nick: A year ago we weren’t even repped, so yeah, just to know that many people read our script, let alone liked it, is pretty surreal.

Jeremiah: Last year at this time I’d just gotten a job as an assistant at a TV production company and one of the first things I had to do was track down and cover scripts off the blacklist so yes this is kind of crazy. In terms of whether it’s benefited us as a team, I think Nick might have gotten a girl’s number.

Scott: What writing projects are you working on now?

Jeremiah: One of the best things about selling a script is that people around town read it and then you get to go around and meet everybody, bounce ideas, talk about projects so pretty much every day you’re talking about new ideas, which is fun and exciting.

Nick: Right now we’re starting to prep our next spec and then there are a couple of other things brewing, which we’re hoping might pan out. There’s a remake we’re pretty excited about and then we’ve got another idea we’re getting ready to pitch.

Scott: Finally for this part of the interview, I would be remiss if we didn’t pause to ponder the marvel of this fact: “Family Getaway” is your second script. Larry Kasdan (Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Empire Strikes Back, Body Heat) supposedly wrote ten scripts before selling anything. When you sold the script, were you aware of how remarkable an achievement that is, not only the sale itself, but selling just the second feature-length screenplay you wrote?

Jeremiah: The truth is that while Family Getaway is the second script we’ve written together, Nick and I have both been at this on our own for a long time and have had suffered plenty of rejection along the way. I took my first crack at writing a feature when I took a year off after high school and I would up with a 240 page “psychological thriller”, which a writer friend told me never to show to anyone. Over the years though I kept at it and kind of just tried to learn from my mistakes. It wasn’t really until I started working with Nick, though, that I really hit my groove so to speak.

Nick: Similarly, I’ve got a couple of horror scripts sitting in a drawer somewhere and yeah, while they didn’t go anywhere, what they did do was help me learn to write. But working with Jeremiah has really raised my game and kind of forced me to stop writing scripts and start writing movies.

Jeremiah: We definitely don’t want to downplay our good fortune. We’ve caught some lucky breaks and are incredibly grateful for the opportunities we’ve had. But while it might look like an overnight success, we’ve had years of set-backs, challenges, false-starts, pretty much every discouraging failure an aspiring writer can encounter but we tried to keep our eye on the ball and just keep writing and moving forward so that when the lucky break came we’d be ready.

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Scott: Let’s start at the beginning of your prep-writing process. Where do you find your stories? How do you come up with story ideas? How important do you think the story concept is to the overall strength of a screenplay?

Nick: It’s really a mix of things. A lot of times one of us will have a kernel that might have come from something that happened to us or something we read and we just sort of knock stuff around, building a story off a premise or a character we found interesting. A lot of it comes out of us just bouncing ideas back and forth and talking things through. It’s one of the great benefits of having a writing partner. You’re spending so much time together, you’re constantly in conversation so there’s just a lot of opportunity for developing new ideas.

Jeremiah: Again, for us it all really comes down to whether or not we can see it in our minds as a movie. Has it been done before? Is this something we know we’d want to go see? As far as finding those kernels Nick was talking about, a lot of it is a mix of luck and inspiration but we also try to go about life in kind of a hyper-aware state, always looking for new stories and characters we can build off of. We both read a lot — both fiction and non-fiction — and we make sure to check in with each other regularly and download ideas, most of which we develop a little and then file away.

Nick: What we’ve found is that while we might get really excited about a character or a new take on a genre, a lot of our job is being able to pitch our ideas to other people and that’s where having a strong, clear concept really helps. A lot of times we may have a really clear sense of the movie we want to write but we’ve still got to find a way to communicate that to our agents and managers or executives at a production company or studio.

Jeremiah: Particularly in the space we work in — commercial, studio movies — concept is kind of key when you’re always trying to sell your idea. Studios want movies they can sell, for better or worse, and a lot of times that has to do with a concept they can wrap their heads around and see as a movie. They want something that’s new and familiar at the same time. What we try to do then is find the small story in the big idea that way they’ve got something big and flashy that they can get excited about and we’ve got a clear, character-based, emotional journey we can focus on.

Scott: How much time do you spend in prep-writing (i.e., brainstorming, character development, plotting, research, outlining)? Which of the aspects of prep do you tend to devote the most time and focus to?

Nick: I think we really learned to appreciate prep coming off the first script we wrote together and we now dedicate a huge portion of our work time, probably close to fifty percent, to prep of one kind or another. When you have a writing partner, the most important thing is that you’re both telling the same story at every step of the way. The more you invest in prep at the top, the smoother and faster the actual writing will go. For us, it’s really crucial that we map out every scene, every beat really, before we ever sit down to write.

Jeremiah: We spend a lot of time talking about the characters and constructing character profiles, that probably comes first once we’ve already developed an idea enough to commit to writing it. At this point, we have a sense of the entire story and the major beats but we still take a fair amount time just to come up with a lot of stuff that frankly will never be in the script. And again, we formalize it and write it all down because we need to make sure we’re on the same page about who these people were before they show up on page one. Once we’ve got those down, we head into a pretty extensive outline and then we breakdown the script on a board using index cards so we can kind of see the entire movie and visualize the structure. We also devote a couple of days to studying whatever genre we’re working in, which helps us get a sense of the rules and conventions and also helps us talk about tone, which is pretty huge for us.

Nick: Now that it’s not just us alone at my house writing after work but there are actually a fair number of other people involved in every project, prep’s become even more crucial. Because now it’s not just about the two of us being on the same page, but we want all these other people — the producers, the studio, etc — on board with us too. So rather than disappearing into a cave and then just dropping a finished script into their laps, we try to keep them in the loop throughout the whole process so that they feel ownership of the story too.

Scott: In terms of screenplay structure, is there a particular paradigm or methodology you use or do you have a more ‘organic’ approach?

Jeremiah: We write a certain type of movie, in the tradition of classical Hollywood, narrative films, so there are certain rules that we’re aware of and that we keep in mind throughout the whole process. We’re less dogmatic about any particular methodology than we are about finding ways to make our story work. We want to be new, we want to be fresh, we want to be interesting but we also want the story to deliver emotionally and that’s where the basic mechanics really help.

Nick: We also spend a lot of time thinking about objectives and obstacles both for the script as a whole and for each scene. It probably seems obvious but it’s actually an easy thing to lose sight of and most of the time if a scene’s not working, it comes down to one of those two elements not being strong enough.

Jeremiah: We know that for us, when we were starting out, a lot of our writing was dominated more by exposition, dialogue and coneptual stuff and we’d lose track of the basic dramatic conflict and it’s really the conflict that’s going to drive the story forward and keep the audience engaged. A strong, clear conflict and a character whom you care about trying to overcome it is really all you need.

Scott: What are some of the tools and techniques you use to dig into your characters and develop them?

Nick: Like we said, we do pretty extensive character bios and a lot of those are based on a list of questions we’ve put together. The questions range from trivial, everyday surface stuff to deeper, interior emotional/pscyhological landscape stuff. Mostly though, they force us to get specific and detailed and to really flesh the characters out as human beings.

Jeremiah: And a lot of what we come up with never ends up in the script, not even the first draft, but it’s there in the background informing how the charcters talk or respond to conflicts throughout the story. The biggest question we try to answer for every character is the pretty standard one. What does he want? Why? That really drives everything and then we just try to create a worldview that’s unique to the character and feels specific and human.

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Scott: Okay, you’re ready to type FADE IN. Do you divvy up scenes for each of you to write or do you work out each scene together? If the latter, could you describe that process?

Nick: By the time we actually go to script, we’ve usually outlined all the beats so extensively that we find it easiest to just split the script in half so maybe Jeremiah starts at the beginning and then I start at the mid-point. We each write our half and then trade and rewrite each other. Then we trade again, each takes another pass and then we combine the two halves into one, single document.

Jeremiah: One of the things that really works for us about this approach is that by the time we hand the script to anyone else we’ve already rewritten it at least three or four times. Also, by rewriting each other, it really forces each of us to elevate our game and we wind up with a draft we have a lot of confidence in.

Nick: Generally when we have smaller revisions and page notes to incorporate, we do that together, moving through the script line by line.

Scott: Let’s say you’re plugging along in your writing when you suddenly realize something you wrote 15 pages previous doesn’t work. Do you go back and fix it, or do you keep writing because it’s more important to you to finish that first draft?

Jeremiah: We usually just keep moving forward. The exception would be major logic holes we discover. Those we’ll stop, discuss and figure out a way to fix. But in general, we like to write really long, kind of all-inclusive first drafts and then whittle away in the rewrite process. We’ve found that a lot of times you don’t really know what you have and what’s working and what’s not until you take a step back and read everything from start to finish.

Scott: Other than getting terrific creative advice from your managers, have you discovered other keys to the rewrite process?

Nick: Probably the biggest thing I learned is to give the people who are giving you notes the benefit of the doubt. It’s tough not to be defensive because that’s just your natural instinct, especially if you’ve spent months or maybe even years working on a script and you feel like you’ve got a lot on the line, which is definitely the case with your first script. There have definitely been a lot of times on Family Getaway, for instance, when an executive presented an idea that we’d never considered and because it was so different our initial instinct was to dismiss it or fight against it. But in almost every case, once we sat down and discussed the note we discovered that some version of the new idea actually made the script stronger.

Jeremiah: I think maybe the toughest lesson for us to learn with rewrites is that the script can almost always get better. Especially for us, just starting out, I think we both, initially, were really resistant to changing something we felt was already working. It’s a strange mix of confidence and insecurity. Because the truth of the matter is, at least for us, a lot of it came from a fear that we wouldn’t be able to make the script any better, whether that meant coming up with funnier dialogue or more exciting set-pieces, whatever the case may be. What you learn is that when rewrites are working, they’re almost like a purification process, stripping away all the excess and getting to the heart of the story.

Nick: Whether you’re repped or not, it’s really important to have a couple of readers whose opinions you trust, people who you know will give you smart, honest critical feedback and not just tell you what you want to hear. That’s the only way the script will get better.

Jeremiah: I couldn’t agree more. And just as importantly, you’ve got to get yourself to a place where you can be absolutely ruthless with your own writing. I garauntee that whatever draft you have that you’re convinced is ready to go out wide could use at least one more pass. And you owe it to yourself to be as hard on your writing as everyone else will eventually be.

Scott: If there’s one principle about screenwriting to which either or both of you absolutely subscribe, what would that be?

Jeremiah: Well goes without saying that pretty much any rule or principle can be broken if need be. It all just depends on what makes the story work best. And I guess that’s one principle I, at least believe, in. Either something works or it doesn’t. Where knowing the “rules” helps is that as a screenwriter your job often is to figure out why something isn’t working, articularte the problem and find a way to fix it. So as far as those bigger principles go, the two I come back to most frequently are that movies are about emotions not ideas and that good writing and good drama comes from character.

Nick: Yeah, I completely agree. We read a lot of scripts and the majority of them don’t work. Usually that’s because the conflict isn’t coming from the characters, but instead, from some kind of external, contrived situation, which makes the drama broad and hard to connect with. Another principle I really believe in, even though it sounds like a cliché (because it’s the first thing you learn in pretty much every writing or acting class out there) is that drama comes from objectives and obstacles. The stronger those two elements are, the more engaging the story. Clever writing and smart dialogue are great, but they can’t make up for a weak, central conflict.

Scott: Finally as two young, talented writers who are living out the fantasy of literally millions of people, what advice can you offer to aspiring screenwriters about the craft?

Nick: Don’t be precious and don’t settle. When I was writing alone, I’d find myself getting really attached to scenes, whether they were working or not. Having a writing partner has put me in a different head space. Now I know that any scene, any line, any moment can get thrown out and rewritten and so that forces me to make the priority the script as a whole and not my writing. And when I say don’t settle, I just mean always look for the better joke, the stronger action sequence, the less expected moment. Always be pushing and always be open to trading up for a better idea.

Jeremiah: I guess my advice would be that hardwork pays off. But you’ve got to put in that work. Nick and I always talk about that we have friends in med school, you know people putting in 80 hour weekes and really pushing themselves to the limit to master their profession and that’s something we both admire and really strive for ourselves. If you’re going to set-out to write professionally, you need to educate yourself about the realities of the business and always be working toward mastering the craft. Bottom line is writing is like sex or push-ups. You get better the more you do it.

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Nick Palmer grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he spent all of his free time making horror movies in the backyard with his buddies. As he finished high school, and began his BA in English at UCLA, Nick started writing and directing short films with professional crews and name actors. This led him to the MFA Directing program at the American Film Institute, where he directed four short films. His thesis, DOCKWEILER, a dark drama about an ex-con running a beach clean-up crew played at a number of festivals around the country.

Born and raised in New York City, Jeremiah Friedman worked as a production assistant on ZOOLANDER before majoring in film studies at Wesleyan University. Jeremiah’s undergraduate thesis film, MISSING, earned high honors from the Wesleyan University Film Department, and went on to screen at the Northampton Independent Film Festival as well as the Hamptons International Film Festival, where it was awarded the student prize. After graduating from Wesleyan in 2005, Jeremiah worked for screenwriter Mark Bomback (GODSEND, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD), and producer Amy Kaufman (Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN, SIN NOMBRE). In 2006, he enrolled in the MFA directing program at the American Film Institute, where he directed four short films. His thesis, PAWN, a conspiracy thriller centered around a Presidential assassination, played at a number of festivals around the country.

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