Go Into The Story Interview: Jimmy Miller

My interview with the 2023 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Jimmy Miller wrote the original screenplay “Slugger” which won a 2023 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Jimmy about his creative background, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to him.

Here is my complete interview with Jimmy.

Scott Myers: So congratulations on winning the Nicholl, Jimmy. That must have been exciting.

Jimmy Miller: Once in a lifetime experience. It was great.

Scott: Let’s dive into your background here. You grew up in Ohio?

Jimmy: That’s right. Medina, Ohio. It’s a small town about 30 miles south of Cleveland.

Scott: How did you become interested in film and television?

Jimmy: Honestly, it’s hard for me to say exactly how or when I became interested in being an editor or a screenwriting. But looking back, it was kind of a series of things that built. I remember in middle school I became fascinated with how TV shows sounded. Apart from the picture, the sounds of a television were really interesting to me.

I remember reruns of the show “M*A*S*H” used to play on Channel 43 out of Cleveland twice a day every day. And I used to put a mini tape recorder right next to the TV speaker and record just the sound of episodes. “M*A*S*H” was unique because it was a comedy about war that had a laugh track. And the way it sounded when I played it back gave me a totally different experience than watching it. It was amazing to me how they were like two different worlds.

But I think that taught me a little about storytelling and timing. How important setting up jokes and call backs and were. How the delivery from the actors could profoundly the effect the emotional experience. I had no idea I was absorbing all of that. I thought maybe it meant I wanted to be a doctor. But I think that was the start of my loving storytelling.

Even before that, in grade school, I would write little poems all the time. I was good at making things rhyme. And I would usually buy blank cards for birthdays and hand write a message or a funny poem. Writing felt easy for me.

At the time, I wasn’t sure where that came from. My mom and dad weren’t in the arts, really. My mom worked at a flower shop, was a real estate agent, and owned a beauty shop. And my dad was a radio announcer his whole life. My sisters like to sing and play some instruments, but they weren’t really into movies and writing. I discovered later that my mom wrote a lot in school, and my uncle wrote poetry books in college and is always working on a novel in his spare time. So maybe that’s where I got the writing bug.

But I never really thought of it as a career. I went to The Ohio State University in Columbus and tried to major music engineering. I did well in the band and was also kind of good at math and physics, so it seemed like a great idea. But just before I started my freshman year, they discontinued that program. Which I didn’t see coming. They didn’t tell anyone.

So, I tried other kinds of engineering for a while, electrical engineering and chemical engineering. And it took me about a year and a half to realize — I don’t like those things! Not really. Certainly not enough to work as hard as I would have needed to work to be any good at it. And for the first time, I realized I could maybe make a career out of writing, so I switched over to journalism my sophomore year.

Ohio State has a great journalism school. A full-size daily newspaper called The Lantern, which is still one of the biggest college newspapers in the country. That was fun and it fit me so much better, but I also kind of knew that I didn’t want to be a reporter. That wasn’t the kind of writing that got me excited.

But when I took some feature writing classes, where you write stories more about people and their personalities and their daily lives, I really liked that. Despite that, I graduated from college and decided to go to grad school and get a masters in Higher Education. I worked a lot in the student services programs for different student groups and it was fun, so I thought that might be a good career. I’ll just stay at Ohio State, get a master’s and become like the dean of something.

But before I enrolled, I had a meeting with an administrator in the program whose name I wish I could remember! Maybe she’s out there somewhere. But as we were talking about me pursuing a career in her field, something must have tipped her off I had another destiny. Because she looked at me point blank and said, “Is this really what you want to do?”

I said, “I think so.” And then she asked me, if I could do anything what I do? No limits, anything. And I said, to be honest, I’d probably write and direct movies. And she said, in the nicest way, “Well, why don’t you go do that?”

And I was like, huh, why don’t I? Can I do that? How do I do that?

This was the early ’90s. So, film schools were not a part of every university the way they are now. It was UCLA and USC and NYU, and a few others of note scattered across the country. USC felt too big, and NYU was in New York, where I did not want to live. So, I applied to UCLA and promptly got rejected!

But I also applied to a smaller film school in Washington, DC at American University and got in. So that’s where I started to get a formal education in the craft of screenwriting and filmmaking.

AU was more of a documentary film school, but I learned screenwriting there, took my first screenwriting class. That’s where I learned to edit, too. I was kind of the first generation of computer-based editors, nonlinear editing. I really took to that and spent a lot more time editing than writing.

It led to careers at Discovery Channel and National Geographic Channel as an editor, right there in DC. And I developed a group of friends to AU film school with me and we were always talking about moving to Los Angeles to really get into the industry.

But after five, then ten years. I kind of realized I might be the only one who really wanted to go to LA. So, in 2004, I stopped waiting and moved out here by myself. My sister lived in Van Nuys, so I moved in with her for a couple of months, but then got editing jobs and found a place on my own. And that was when I started to write “Slugger,” in 2004.

Scott: Wow. 20 years ago.

Jimmy: Yeah. Hard to believe I started it so long ago. I didn’t really remember when I started it until the Nicholl happened. “Slugger” won the drama category at the Austin Film Festival and a gold award in Page in 2007. I always thought that’s when I wrote it.

But when I had to write a speech for the Nicholl, a called a friend who went to AU with me and worked at Discovery. I remember she read the very early drafts. She said she remembered distinctly when she read the first draft because she was pregnant with her first daughter. That daughter just turned 20!

So, it was 2004. And there’s not a single scene in the version from 2004, or from 2007 for that matter, that is now in the current draft that won the Nicholl. It’s had a long journey.

Scott: That’s an amazing story. There are so many things I could pick up on. But let’s zero in on this editing aspect. Has that influenced you at all in terms of your writing? Do you think about it as like you have an editing hat on when you’re writing or screenwriting hat on? Do you switch back and forth?

Jimmy: They’re very similar things to me. They’re just different expressions of the same idea because they’re both storytelling. For editing, I’m telling somebody else’s story. But I have so much to do with how that story is told. And it definitely informs my screenwriting. I think it helps me understand timing better than most. Knowing when a scene is too long or about the wrong thing. There’s a rhythm to scenes in editing when they are right length, and that translates well to screenwriting. I love it when my scenes are one page or two pages. It helps give it pace and direction.

And being a reality editor gives me a lot of opportunities to observe people. I often watch a lot of footage of non-actors just living their lives. Going through what they’re going through. I see of hours of footage get cut down to a minute and a half. It develops an instinct for what’s interesting and what isn’t.

Scott: Your script has a flow to it, transitions from scene to scene, a sense of pace. I can see how that benefits you in terms of your writing. It really has a nice movement to it.

Jimmy: Thank you. Yeah, some of that is learning that leaving a scene unresolved creates tension. Not every question should be answered by the end of a scene. They don’t need to be buttoned up perfectly. In fact, the mess of it should raise more questions and create more problems.

We’re leaving out so much of the characters’ actual lives, and we’re choosing what to show and what not to show so we can make the audience stick around to see how all the dots connect.

Scott: Yeah. Just like that Billy Wilder quote. “Don’t give the audience two plus two equals four. Just give them two plus two.” They’ll love you for it because now you’ve got them taking part in the story process.

Jimmy: Right. And if maybe if you’re clever, you can convince the audience that two plus two equals five. You thought it was going to equal four. I set you up to go to the most logical conclusion, but I tricked you.

Scott: Yeah, you do that several times in your script, too.

Jimmy: It’s setting up expectations. Sports movies have a format, and they come with some expectations from the audience. A lot of times they can sense the math in the story, expecting this “2” and this “2” to add up to “4” at the right time. But I really tried to misdirect the audience, so when in every other sports movie two and two equaled four in this kind of story, I tell them it equals three or equals five or that there’s really no answer to the equation this time.

It took me quite a long time to figure out that there was a balance I needed to have. I needed to give the sports fans the movie that they expected, but somehow still make it surprising.

Scott: That’s a great segue into “Slugger,” your script that won the Nicholl this last year. Here’s a logline:

“Abandoned by her mother and coached by her unloving father, a high school baseball prodigy with a hot temper and a thunderous bat must confront old-school coaches, jealous teammates, injuries, and her own sexual identity on an inspirational quest to be the first woman to play in the major.”

You say you started writing this thing back in 2004. What was the original inspiration for it?

Jimmy: It was kind of a combination of things. I grew up playing baseball with my dad and I’d always loved the game. And I remember when I’d hear the story of a great baseball player, or other great athletes, or anybody who became great at something really hard — almost all of them have some story about, “I couldn’t have done this without my parents or my grandparents or this uncle or this friend” or something like that.

People with exceptional talent at something hard must have support from somewhere because it’s too hard to do on your own. You are often taking a big chance on yourself. There’s risk involved. With great opportunities can sometimes come great risk and you need support.

I started thinking about what happens to great talent when it has little or no support. What if no one ever thought to give Roger Federer a racket? Or what if Michael Jordan grew up in a place without basketball courts or no way to get to them? What if Simone Biles had no one to drive her to the gym and no one to console her when she lost or help her when she got hurt?

How many amazing people with incredible talents were lost to obscurity because of no access and no opportunity and no support? What if there was a girl out there who could have been the best baseball player in the country if no one made her play softball instead?

And what if her parents were crappy? What if they were messed up and didn’t know what they were doing? Or even worse, what if she had a parent who was against her? How would she fight against it all? Why wouldn’t she give up? Or would she?

The story gave me an opportunity to explore all those questions. If this could happen, if a girl could really play baseball at a professional level, what would it look like? And how could I make it feel impossible and inevitable at the same time?

So, I gave her a father who was a baseball player, but because of an injury and a big mouth, never got to play pro. He never fulfilled his potential and was pissed about it for the rest of his life. What if a guy like that had a daughter who became a better baseball play than he ever was? I think he’d be proud and jealous and would love her and fight her all at the same time.

Scott: Let’s talk about these three characters that are at the center of the story, the Protagonist Callie Malone. This is how she’s introduced:

“10, short hair, athletic, growing fast, sits up in bed and kills the alarm, takes a deep breath.” And we see her room is filled with baseball paraphernalia. She’s fascinated with Cal Ripken Jr, the Hall of Fame baseball player for the Baltimore Orioles. There’s a photograph of her father when he played at Texas A&M, if I remember correctly alongside a guy, a setup for a payoff later on.

So you establish the baseball element. But then her parents, the way you introduce them:

Her father, Ryan, 30, is one of the players from the frame photo, now old and haggard, paces and limps out of view. Her wild-haired mother Jessica, 30s, “lies belly down on the bed, fresh bruises on her back and arms.” There are wine bottles scattered around.

Expand on this introduction of Callie and her family.

Jimmy: I wanted to set up this unsafe space that this little girl was in. She’s 10 years old. And she clearly has a unique interest in playing baseball. She’s so driven to do it she sneaks out and does this on her own. That’s what I wanted to show. This is a person who we see very quickly has a unique talent that her parents don’t care about. She’s pretty much on her own.

Her father is involved, but he’s selfish, he’s mean, he’s disrespectful to her. He’s driving her too hard. He’s talking to her like he doesn’t care about her. The early pages put her in such an unsafe place that her mom had to rescue her from a potentially violent situation with her dad.

And I wanted that bond between Callie and her mom. I needed you to feel that bond when she was little, that she felt it was her and her mom against him. That maybe she wasn’t alone. So when Jessica suddenly disappears and leaves her with her dad, it really hurts.

Her life fundamentally changes when her mother leaves because she’s now feels betrayed. She’s suddenly now more like her dad. Angry and disappointed. And in the last early scene, when Callie is young, her father tells her to forget about her mom and use the anger to be a better ballplayer. And that’s when she clobbers the ball.

Scott: Boy, does she, yeah. She gets in there and hammers the ball. It’s not just hitting the baseball, it’s a release of her anger. This is like how all sports movies, I think, are not really about sports. The sports is the backdrop, but it’s the psychological journeys of the characters.

So from very early on, there’s this parental pressure on the part of the father who wants her daughter is a mixed bag for him to succeed at baseball, but only on his terms and this only from his own ego.

I love that bit of business where she’s lefthanded like he is and she gets in the batter’s box and moves to the right side. She wants to bat righthanded. I thought at first, well, OK, that may be that she’s just smart because switch hitters. No, she wants to rebel against her father, so it’s a great little bit of business.

Those first five pages, I mean, you just pack a lot in. You set up all this stuff very efficiently. Again, like I think as an editor plowing through tons and tons of tape to find that one minute scene. You really got that instinct, I think, playing there. So I imagine you reworked that beginning a lot, those first five pages or so.

Jimmy: Yeah, it took me a while to figure out. What situation can I put them in where the choices they make in the middle of it tell me the most about them? And I think that’s the trick of every scene and setting up any kind of plot device. And that’s one reason sports is a great plot device, because like you said, it’s not about baseball. It’s the reason to talk about these other things.

The sport can put you in situations where you have to make tough decisions. You have to show your character. But it took me a while to figure out which things I’m needed to show to reveal the characters and set up Callie’s frame of mind when we jump forward to her being 17 and going to high school. What do I need to know about the dad when I get there? What do I need to know about the mom when I get there?

The first time I wrote it, this was 15 pages which felt too long. But then I adjusted a little of the plot. I adjusted a little bit of the action, so it felt more direct and simple. And you know, wrote it, wrote it and wrote it until it was the five pages I wanted.

Scott: Yeah. It’s a really strong opening. And then you’ve got a nice midpoint in Act One where she makes a choice. Her father’s not happy with it, where she gets up and decides to bat, take a bat. There’s a little car race that she does, a race. I thought it was interesting. She drives a Dodge Avenger of all cars, right?

Jimmy: [laughs] Yeah, an Avenger.

Scott: Appropriately named. Her father says, “You’ll never catch me.” And she says, “I’m not trying to catch you. I’m trying to beat you.”

She ends up with Jessica, who asks a really great question on page 19: “Why do you play baseball?” That question plays out throughout the whole story, doesn’t it?

Jimmy: Yeah, it does. Yeah, because her answer changes in the story. I think it was important for Jessica to ask that, because Callie’s reaction is important. She says, “why didn’t you ask me this when I was six?”

Because it reveals the rift between them. Her mother is trying to be a part of her life, but for Callie, it’s too late. You never cared about this before you left. Why would you care now? She doesn’t get to be part of her world anymore. She had her chance, and she blew it.

But as for the actual question, when she’s first asked, I’m not sure even Callie knows That’s part of her problem is that in the beginning… She’s playing to both make her dad proud and make her dad mad because she knows it does both. But is she playing for herself? Is it just all about her anger?

That’s where Roger, the coach she meets, becomes important because he knows that playing baseball with such emotion at this level, she might get away with it because of her talent. But at the next level, you’ve got to have honed skills. You have to know what you’re doing. And that’s where she’s forced to decide, “What am I doing this for? Do I actually like this game?”

Early she switches to right-handed because that’s more of a power side. She can hit harder from that side. But it’s not the best side for a baseball player of her size and her skill. She’s defying her father and doing the thing that feels good. She likes to hit the ball hard and show the boys up.

So that’s what happens in the midpoint of the whole thing, of her facing, oh, I have to work much harder than I thought. Do I really want to do this? And that’s what the coach is like, “You ready to do this?” And she decides she wants to do it.

Scott: She moves in with her grandfather Roger. This is near, is it Austin…

Jimmy: Right. It’s a city called Flat Rock, which is based on Round Rock, Texas, just outside of Austin.

Scott: OK. So by the end of Act One, she’s living with her grandfather. Jessica is now trying to be sober. She’s studying accounting, which really pays off with her. She’s doing all the stats for baseball, which is great. But that Roger character is like an assistant coach, I think, for the baseball team, eventually becomes a coach.

But jumping ahead, he has a wonderful kind of Obi-Wan moment with Callie about the bat. He gives her a wooden bat, and he’s telling her, just feel the wood. Could you maybe talk about that scene? Because it’s really terrific.

Jimmy: Oh, thank you. Honestly, so much of this story changed because of what I was going through personally as well. And so much of what I was learning about my life is that I was worried a lot more about the result instead of being in the moment. And I had to learn how being very present with the moment really affects the outcome. A lot of that scene was me talking to myself about being right where I’m at.

And that’s what Roger wanted her to do because she was thinking too far ahead about the homerun she’s going to hit and the jog she’s going to make around the bases and just how good it’s going to feel to hit the ball as hard as she can. But that’s the thing that’s going to stop her from doing it. He wanted her to be present right there in the moment. He says, “Make it small.”

He’s basically teaching her how to meditate.

Stop thinking ahead so much, stop overthinking why you’re swinging and what it’s going to be like. Just feel the bat. You are skilled. All you have to do is see-ball, hit-ball.

If she’s really there when that baseball comes at her, her talent will take care of the rest.

Scott: Yeah, it’s great because, as you know, Michael Jordan tried to play baseball and that didn’t turn out well. There’s a line about how hard it is to hit a baseball coming at you at 95 miles per hour: The challenge of hitting a round ball square.

Callie says at one point, “I hit better when I’m mad.” And then Roger says, and you’ll always be an amateur. And then later on he says, first you have to want to fix it. She says, why am I here? A dumbass ultimatum, remember? Fine, I get it. I want to fix it. And so, of course, fixing it is not just your swing and not just about baseball. It’s about fixing yourself.

And so that little moment that you had there, and I mentioned ObiWan, it’s like that moment with the blaster shield that he does with Luke? Right?

Jimmy: Yeah.

Scott: Be here now. Be in the moment. Because if you can’t, in the batter’s box, be completely focused on that pitch coming in. It’s going to blow past you just like that. [snaps fingers] And so what that teaching moment does is say to Callie, “It’s inside you. You can do that. You don’t have to be driven by anger at all times.” Is that a fair assessment?

Jimmy: Oh, yeah. And it’s about — if you really want the best out of yourself, you have to be OK with being there with yourself and not thinking about the outcome. Because there’s both fear and joy in a potential outcome. I could strike out. That won’t feel good. People are watching me. I could hit a home run. That’ll feel great. People will applaud me.

If it’s always about the others, then your happiness is always driven by the reaction of others. But, if you concentrate on your part, how the bat feels in your hands, are your feet balanced, is your mind clear, you can live with any outcome.

I think that’s what he’s teaching her because he knows she has the physical skill. She has the ability. She is smart enough. None of that is the problem. It’s her own brain that is in her way, overthinking, being angry.

Because like you said, that ball comes at you, especially on the next level. And that’s what Roger’s thinking about. He’s thinking about the next level. It’s a fraction of a blink of an eye. So if you’re not ready, and if you’re not right there, just like you said, it’s past you and you’re out.

Scott: Yeah, it reminds me there’s a great scene of Bull Durham where Crash is up to bat and we hear him talking to himself, his inner thoughts. Trying to focus on the pitch, but he’s distracted…

Jimmy: It was about him getting out of his own head. It’s a common thing we hear athletes talk about and it’s a constant struggle.

Scott: There’s Adrianne, who is a school official, part of that kind of Jackie Robinson dynamic: “What I told you is part of my job, all female athletes walk the tightrope every day, don’t cross a line, don’t take any shit either a real dirtbag gets the job done, despite their disadvantages. You need to convince these men, you don’t have any.”

It’s like that “why it’s so hard to be a woman” speech in Barbie, you got to do all these things like way better than guys. So there’s that pressure as part of Callie’s storyline.

Jimmy: The dynamic between Adrianne and Callie has been refined over the years. I liked the idea of the previous generation being there, because Adrianne’s athletic like was very different because hers came before Title IX.

Callie is a person whose life changed because of Title IX. Because before Title IX high schools could tell you to play softball. And then Title IX decided that baseball and softball were two different sports. So if a girl wanted to play, you had to have a girl’s baseball team, or you had to let them play on the boys’ team. And Adrianne is before that time.

She dealt with a much more closed system as a female athlete. And the idea of playing against men, the opportunity to play against men, was not there for her. They are of different generations, but they still have to deal with the same shit.

I wanted to do that in this story. I wanted to show that there are many male allies that are totally on board, that are supportive. And then there’s an entire set of male enemies different in their thinking. Some of them are kids her age and some of them are men that are much older.

To me, it was important that I show it goes across generations. Some people progress and some people just don’t. It all depends on their parents, how they grew up and their experience. This is not a movie about hating men.

It was important to me to show what male allies look like and this is what men who are not allies look like, because I knew she was going to have to deal with both.

I think Adrianne is a person who reminds her, not everybody’s going to be on your side here, and as you get better, and if you start fulfilling your potential, those sides get sharper. This is about you knowing who you are and what you’re doing here, and you just can’t goof around with this.

Because nobody questions why a boy plays baseball. That’s another reason that question annoys Callie. Nobody asked Cal Ripken why he wants to play baseball. Nobody questions a boy who wants to play baseball.

But for girls, people want to know, “what are you doing here? Why are you doing this?” Callie doesn’t understand why they don’t get that it’s for the same reason boys do it. Because it’s fun. She could be rich and famous. Why else would she be there? But she and Adrianne know those questions are going to come with an edge to them because they will not be able to question her ability, but they can question her right to be there.

Scott: I want to jump to this. Earlier you said, sometimes you give them two plus two equals five. Here’s an example. You introduce this kid named Will, high school baseball player. And the way you describe him, he’s standing in the cage behind him. He’s like out of a movie. Handsome, nice hair, big smile, pat on the shoulder.

So immediately, your expectation is, OK, so this is going to be the romance story between Callie and Will. But then, surprise, five pages later, she’s noticing these girls playing lacrosse, including this girl, Lindsay. And she has the same exact, it’s like a “spark.” I think you used that phrase both times. There’s like a spark between her and Will and a spark between her and Lindsay. Which introduces an exploration of her sexual identity.

When did that dynamic emerge in this process? Was that all the way back in 2004? Or is this something that crept up in the process?

Jimmy: No, that was one of the last major revisions I did to Callie’s character. I really wanted there to be a part of her life where she felt the opposite of how she does on the baseball field. A place where she feels totally lost and scared and doesn’t have anyone to talk to about it.

She feels like such an adult on the baseball field, but in those scenes she’s very much 17–18, exploring how she loves. How she expresses that love, what feels safe and what doesn’t feel safe. I think that’s a universal experience, but for Callie, she’s very vulnerable because she does not know what to do with that part of herself. It’s been so ignored and set aside for most of her life.

But I love that Callie wants to push herself and try to ask the most basic questions. There’s a part of her that needs to know what “category” she’s in because she’s lives in the world of baseball where everything has a place and purpose. There are no gray areas. To me, the line that was important is when Callie asks Lindsay, “What if I’m attracted to both and girls? How do I pick?” And Lindsay says, “You don’t have to pick the boy or the girl, pick the one who gives you the most butterflies.”

I really wanted that. I wanted Callie to hear that she doesn’t have to fit into any category. That there aren’t really categories, it’s just all made up. Just follow where your heart leads you. Callie getting permission from another girl her age, to be exactly who she is, was really important.

Scott: Well, it’s an extension, isn’t it, of that whole thing that Roger said, you got to be in the moment. Just don’t think about the future and the past, just like the butterflies are like, what are you feeling right now?

Jimmy: Yeah. And it’s OK. It’s OK to follow it. It’s OK to be who you are.

Scott: Now I’m thinking about that philosophy: Be here now. Be present in the moment. It really flows through this whole story. like there’s scenes where Jessica and Ryan get together at some point, like pretty late in the story, 71, I think.

She goes to Ryan and says, “Jesus, not everything’s a competition. We both suck. The only reason she’s still at the ranch with her grandfather and Jessica is I haven’t screwed up again. Can we just agree that we’re both shitty parents and just stay the hell out of the way?”

Like, just accept being in the present where we’re at. Don’t project from the past and project into the future. The only thing she needs from us is to for once not suck at loving her which is a pretty profound comment and I think did shake up Ryan.

Mason has a similar note. This is a grandfather, he says you can love someone and hold them accountable at the same time. You can be hurt and find forgiveness at the same time so again it’s just like try to avoid getting caught up in the web of past and future and just be here now and live in the present. Doesn’t it seem like that’s a theme that’s playing throughout a lot of different levels in the story?

Jimmy: Yeah. That’s one of the basic things I’m talking about in the whole story and in scenes like that. Letting go of the mistakes. What does our child really need from us? And that’s Jessica saying, she doesn’t need us anymore. The only thing she needs from us is to just love her, just accept who she is.

Jessica had to decide to let Callie be mad at her. It’s a hard position for a parent, but she knew it would have to be that way. She had to let Callie express her anger without trying to correct her. Jessica had to accept that she did something really awful…

Scott: Left her for seven years.

Jimmy: Left her for seven years, didn’t say a word and took the dog. She knew her only hope to repair things was to be honest and accountable and to be worthy of her daughter’s trust again. I’ve been in a 12-step program, I’ve dealt with addiction, and making amends in part of my own story. Being accountable to whoever you harmed, and accepting that they have the right to whatever reaction they have.

I was not owed forgiveness. I was not owed a certain response. I’m just doing my part to try to make it right and their response is theirs, and I have to let them have it, no matter what it is. When you stab someone, you can’t judge them for the way they bleed. Don’t worry, I didn’t stab anyone, but I think that’s part of what Jessica is going through and what she’s trying to tell Ryan. Callie has the right to be as mad as she is and as hurt as she is and exactly who she is — because of who they are and what they’ve done.

So there’s a lot of struggling to accept mistakes and being accountable. And Ryan and Jessica don’t handle it the same way. But I don’t think you can be truly present if you haven’t accepted the past.

Scott: There’s a moment where the team is down, I think six to nothing in the championship game and this little kid, his name José, if I remember correctly…

Jimmy: Yeah.

Scott: There’s one out and he’s coming up to bat, he’s not a good hitter, he’s a little dude, and Callie says to him: “Just swing. Anything can happen.” There you go…

Jimmy: “A swinging bat is a dangerous bat,” I think she says.

Scott: I don’t think I’m giving away too much here but that’s the first time he’s ever I think it’s a what is this strikeout would you call it a…

Jimmy: Walk-off strikeout, yeah.

Scott: I don’t want you to give it away because it’s also, again, two plus two equals five there, but was that moment there all along? It was a great moment.

Jimmy: You mean when Roger says, this is my Kirk Gibson moment?

Scott: Yeah, exactly. The ’88 World Series. Dodgers vs. Oakland A’s.

Jimmy: Yeah, because his best hitter is injured…

Scott: The Natural, the Robert Redford baseball movie.

Jimmy: Versions of that moment were always there, but in the later drafts I decided to just name the moment, have Roger say it. I saw that moment live on television and it’s an iconic moment in baseball history that I thought would be fun to see with these characters — after everything that has come before. I wanted to feel like Callie could really be a part of that history, and this is what it might look like. And it’s showing how Roger has a love of baseball, too. He would know that moment. And Callie knows the moment, too, even though she was far from being born when it happened.

And that whole thing with a walk-off strikeout, that’s me showing my absolute love for the strange complexity of baseball rules.

I love the idea that if it’s the bottom of the ninth and it’s 50 to nothing, but you can still come back and win that game. I love the idea that there’s no clock. It’s the fairest game. Everybody gets the same amount of tries, and a baseball game is never over until that third out in the bottom of the ninth and sometimes not even then.

Scott: I don’t want to give away the very, very, very ending of your script. It is like The Natural moment, but again, two plus two equals five. Did you always have that in mind?

Jimmy: Yes. I knew that’s how it had to end. Because there’s no point to the movie otherwise. All of this was leading to her discovering that she never needed her father’s approval to be whole and to be happy. She realizes she never had to make him proud.

His feelings about her are not relevant to what she’s doing. And it’s also really important that her father says nothing and walks away. He finally understands. That’s what I need to do for her. This is her moment. It had nothing to do with him.

There might be something for them in their lives in the future, but it’s not right there. And her growth was understanding she never needed him, and he was wrong. Everything from now on and what she wants to do with her life and what baseball means to her. It’s not about anybody else anymore. All of that is built into that ending. And if it wasn’t so hard to get there, it wouldn’t mean as much.

Scott: Isn’t there that line in A League of Their Own, “The hard is what makes it good” or something like that?

Jimmy: “The hard is what makes it great,” That’s a thematic driver in so many wonderful movies. That’s part of what I was doing here, too. I learned that from so many movies that I love.

Scott: Well, it extends the screenwriting. It’s certainly hard to write and to achieve some success which you did when you won the Nicholl. Maybe you could talk a bit about that what was that like that experience.

Jimmy: The experience was very surreal and strange. But the people at the Nicholl and the Academy are so wonderful.

They’re so generous and kind. People in the industry who I’d want to emulate. They’re so interested in encouraging and fostering writers outside the business and inviting them in. I think that’s incredibly generous, and I respect it so much. I want that to be part of my career, is mentorship and encouraging undiscovered writers who are going through their struggles, the same ones we all go through, that they think they’re going through alone.

I think that’s the best thing about the entire Nicholl experience is being able to meet the people on this committee, becoming friends with them, with the other Nicholl fellows who are incredible writers and incredible people. We’ve been able to get to know each other and every one of them is unique and interesting and talented.

Being able to be around such talented people who care about the art and the craft of screenwriting is incredibly inspiring. It’s motivating. It’s the world I want to be in. It made me realize even more that this is where I want to be. This is what I want to do.

Scott: Well, congratulations once again. Time for a couple of craft questions for you. How do you go about developing characters? Are there any specific techniques or tools or things that you do to unpack a character?

Jimmy: Every writer is different. For me, when I conceive of an idea, I rarely feel like it’s a real ideal until I know how it ends. Until I have some sort of idea of what feeling I want the audience to walk out with and how my ending will create that, I can’t really start writing pages. What am I doing? What is my ending? And those are questions always answered by characters.

One of my things I constantly must work on as a writer is, wherever that character is at the end, I need to drive them as far away from that as possible. Because that’s where their story will begin. Everything that Callie is at the end of “Slugger” does not exist in her in those first pages. She has to battle through everything to get from point A to point B.

I had to decide what was the worst possible situation I could put her in, that is the opposite of where she’s going to end up.

That’s common advice for writers, I think. I’ve heard it from lots of places. But it’s still something I battle. My early drafts often have characters with very flat arcs. And I realized a lot of times it’s because I love them so much, I don’t want them to suffer. [laughter]

But the suffering is necessary. They have to go through it. It has to be hard or why is it a movie? Why does it connect with other people? Why do people want to watch this? Why would they have an emotional experience? And that’s what you’re trying to do. I think you have to give your audience an emotional experience for it to really mean something. Whether it’s laughter or sorrow or anger or whatever it is, we want them to feel. There are so many details I have forgotten about the movies I love. I often can’t remember the director, the cast, who wrote it, when I saw it or the details of the plot. But I remember how it made me feel. People remember the emotional experience.

Scott: How about themes? What do you think about the subject? Are themes important to you? Do you start off with themes or do you find them as you go along?

Jimmy: I’ve had a love-hate relationship with theme. [laughter] And I think so many writers can relate to this. For me, theme comes out after a few drafts. And I’ve learned to be OK with that. For me, theme is where my honest truth as a person starts to come through in my story. Because at the start I rarely know exactly why I’m compelled to write a certain story. I just know that I am and it must be in there somewhere.

But I have to write it to figure it out. I think a lot of writers go through that, not knowing the theme until you’ve dug in further and further and it reveals itself. Some people call writers explorers, but I think we’re excavators. We’re not discovering anything new. We’re uncovering things we’ve buried.

In Slugger, the theme came through when I realized I didn’t want this to be about Callie accepting her father or her father accepting her, but about Callie accepting herself. I wanted her to realize that she didn’t need her father’s acceptance to be whole. And when she stopped fighting for something she didn’t need, she started fighting for the things that really mattered.

And that’s part of my truth because I have a complicated relationship with my father, who passed away in 2014. My father talked a lot about loving me, but often did unloving things. So, I always felt unacceptable in ways. And it was important for me to let go of the need for that acceptance because I would never get it. He was gone. So, my only path to kind of find peace was to accept and forgive him after he died.

Callie’s plot is not my personal plot, we are totally different people and acceptance from our fathers doesn’t look the same. But I get how Callie had to let go of him to get closer to who she was.

Going through addiction and learning the process of amends, all of that started to come through in my story, too. There was so much about the story that I realized was about forgiveness and accountability, and the idea of how they need to coexist.

So much of what I was learning and going through in my life that was not in the early drafts started to poke through. It took me several drafts to pull it all together and making it work.

And as I get more honest with myself about my story, my themes come through better and earlier in my writing. I can see more clearly what should stay and what should go and what needs more work.

Scott: I got one last question for you. What’s the single best piece of advice you have for someone who’s attempting to learn the craft and trying to break into the business?

Jimmy: I’m not sure that I can say anything so unique that readers haven’t heard before. But there was something I learned in film school that had nothing to do with writing, that I realized later had a lot to do with writing.

I was in a summer film class that worked like an indie feature film. The professor was the writer and director, and everybody enrolled in the class was part of the crew. So, we were recording sound, creating sets and props, first and second ADs, first and second ACs.

I was on the lighting crew and the DP, who had taught us lighting, asked us to light a scene. And we got it done, and it looked great, except we had a little shadow on the wall that we just couldn’t get rid of. None of us could figure it out. And we’re adding lights to the scene and pointing them at the shadow, trying to get rid of it. We didn’t want to move all the lights that were good. We just had a weird shadow, and we were stumped.

And the cinematographer finally said, “If you got a shadow you don’t want, you can’t shine lights on it fix it. You got to start over. You think it’s perfect, but you did it wrong or it wouldn’t cause the bad shadow. Start over. Move the lights.”

And I realized in screenwriting sometimes when I’m developing a plot, if I get too attached to a certain aspect that I think shouldn’t be touched, I can plot myself into a corner. And I’m so attached to whatever that thing is that I do things that are just bad writing. Trying to explain away logic problems with an unnatural line of dialogue, making people do things that don’t quite make sense, or adding even more plot to untie the knots I’ve put myself in. I’m trying to find shortcuts to solve the problem.

I’m trying to fix the shadow my light is making with more light. Instead of moving it to a better place. Sometimes you have to give up the thing you think is perfect and accept that it’s not. Sometimes you gotta move the light.

There’s something I’ve tried to accept when I’m writing and rewriting. It will not work the first time I write it and that needs to be OK. I’m doing things I might have to completely tear apart and write again later. I will put some lights in the wrong places the first time. And I’ll get shadows I can’t fix unless I start over.

When lighting, and writing, are done right, they look and feel natural. Everything’s in its place. I don’t have shadows making the reader go, “I don’t get that” or “that doesn’t really make sense.” “That’s not what somebody would say.” And I think it takes every writer a lot of work to get there.

We all have different ways we do things, but as much as we’d like to believe it, even the most brilliant screenwriters don’t write perfect screenplays in one sitting. It’s not a goal that should be strived for. It’s not a thing. I think the work of screenwriting is figuring out how to make the mess of our world and the complex people navigating its millions of variables every second still feel human and real when you boil down their stories, that would really be weeks and months and years, into 120 minutes.

Why do we even do that? Is it possible that art is just the acknowledgment that only a very tiny fraction of our lives really matters? And when we cherry pick them out and put them together in just the right way, we find meaning and connection.

But if you do it in a way where all the things in between that we are purposely leaving out — don’t feel like they can exist… then it stops feeling human. Because we only get the good parts if we survive the bits in between.

Jimmy is repped by Marc Manus at Persistent Entertainment.

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