Go Into The Story Interview: John Gary

My conversation with a longtime Hollywood screenwriter.

I wanted to interview John Gary because his experience as a screenwriter reflects that of many writers I know. He’s been outside the Hollywood system, worked inside it, achieved success, hit a rough patch, made some key personal decisions and acted on them, which led to more success. Here is the entirety of our 2015 interview.

Scott Myers: Where did you grow up, and how did you find your way into writing as an interest?

John Gary: I grew up outside of San Francisco, in the East Bay, this little town called Orinda. I went to Northwestern where I was a theatre major. I’d always had an interest in writing, but when I originally went to school I thought I was going to put up plays and maybe run a theatre company when I got out of school.

I always felt like movies were where big stories got told. That attracted me. I gravitated towards getting into film more in college, and in my junior year I entered the Creative Writing for the Media program. It’s two years long, 12 students are selected each class, and you run through a variety of disciplines — short films, one act plays, features. That was my boot camp.

Scott: Yeah, I’m familiar with that program because we have something similar at University of North Carolina called Writing for the Screen and Stage. Did you enjoy your time at Northwestern?

John: I did. Yeah. It was a great program. Like it probably is at your school, it’s a workshop program.

Scott: Yeah.

John: Workshops can be great, forcing you to evaluate your own thought process, how you approach your material. We were all very young, though, and workshops depend so much on who is in your class and how much you’re all pushing each other.

My sense has always been graduate workshop programs can often be a little better because people are a little more mature, a little older and can confront the other students and their entrenched ideas a little more readily. Undergrads, I think we’re still trying to figure out how our pants fit.

But I did get a lot out of it. Mostly the thing that really stuck with me was, how do you write every day? How do you take criticism? How do you ingrain that in your process? One great part about our program was that they would bring in working professionals to teach. One stand-out professor was Richard Chapman, who’d worked on Simon and Simon in the 80’s and had done a lot of feature work in the 90’s and it was just great to be taught by a guy who, when he wasn’t in class with us, was writing movies that were getting made.

Scott: By the time you got done with that program at Northwestern, were you already thinking, “I’m going to go to LA”?

John: Yeah. By junior year, I knew I wanted to move to LA. I was also friends with a lot of people in the film program at Northwestern. My dorm was filled with journalism and film majors. I had a lot of older friends who had already moved out here and many of the people my year were also planning on moving, so we all kind of came out here together.

Scott: Does the Northwestern subculture in L.A. actually benefit you in terms of connections and work?

John: I think that there are two ways that alumni networks work for students. The first is, like you say, networking. If you know someone who graduated a year before, they can help you get a leg up and all that stuff. Certainly, I benefited in some ways from some of that. Although I would have to say, I don’t think it really helped me a ton, on a concrete, A to B to C level.

The thing that is more powerful that I don’t think people talk about a lot is psychological. You see the people around you doing well, and you model their behavior. “I know that person. I have spent time with them. I went to school with them. I had classes with them. We went for pancakes on Thursday morning, cutting class when we were 20 years old together. She is now creating a television show. So I can do that, too.”

Scott: Interesting. I’ve never heard that, but I think that makes a lot of sense.

John: It’s subconscious, it’s subtle. You see what they do. They’re around you, and you’re like, “I have an idea that I have that in me, too.” It feels doable. It feels like something you can accomplish.

Scott: As I recall, didn’t you work for an agency for quite some time?

John: I interned for a few months when I first moved out here. A family friend put me in touch with an agent at William Morris, a guy in the music department, and he told me to fax sample coverage in to the story department and he’d tell the head of the department to keep an eye out for my material. So I faxed in the coverage and got an interview but turns out the head of the department just thought I was some random kid who’d sent in a blind coverage submission and hired me because he liked how I wrote.

Scott: What was your gig at William Morris?

John: I was a freelance story‑reader. I was there for 12 years. I started at the bottom and I read 5 or 10 scripts a week at 50 bucks a script at the beginning. By the end of it, I was reading 15 or 20 scripts a week, and it was 75 a script. The money ended up being good and sometimes I’d get rushes, which were double and books, which were a lot of money.

Scott: You’re probably the perfect person to ask then. How important is reading scripts to learning the craft of screenwriting?

John: That is a twofold answer, because on the one hand, it is crucial to read scripts, and a good amount of them. But don’t read shitty scripts. Only read the good ones. And at some point, you have to stop reading and start writing. Procrastination won’t help you write.

Some of that is the career of the script‑reader. It is very easy to get stuck with velvet handcuffs when you’re pulling in good money for work that is pretty easy, not all that time consuming, you’ve been doing it for awhile and you’re getting the good scripts and you have some respect at work, and you’re complacent and it’s easier to read another script than it is to write something of your own. But in the end, you have to write.

Scott: What was the best script you read while you were there?

John: Was it the John Sayles draft of “Alamo”? Or the Franzoni draft of “Gladiator.” Or “Inglorious Basterds,” or Karl Gajdusek’s “Pandora.” Sorkin’s “Studio 60” pilot was fantastic. What was great about that script is when you were reading it, you didn’t really realize it wasn’t funny — it was just this wash of amazing characters and dialogue. But of course once it got up on screen, the whole thing kind of fell apart.

But what’s interesting about being a script‑reader for so long is that I started to realize that what made a good script was not necessarily what made a good movie. I started reading things and seeing them go up onscreen eventually. I was like, “Oh, that script was great. What the hell happened?” It’s because there can be a disconnect between what reads like butter but just isn’t a great blueprint.

There are some writers who get that, who know how to write scripts that end up great movies. And being able to read a script and think of it not as just a script but rather as a blueprint for making a film is something we often get away from as writers — our focus is so much on how to write the perfect screenplay, when what we really need to focus on is how to write the perfect movie. And those two things can be different.

Scott: Is the converse true, where there are some writers who know how to write for script‑readers but not necessarily how to write movies?

John: I think that happens a lot to young writers.

Scott: What was your first writing gig?

John: The first time I got paid for it was a script called “The Cellar,” a contained character-driven horror set in Scotland. By this point, I’d had a couple specs go out and not sell, I’d signed with but after a time fired agents at William Morris and then later CAA, and I’d pivoted to start writing smaller material I could control more readily because my manager back then had found some success doing this with other clients.

A trio of young producers optioned “The Cellar” and paid me to do some work on it, and then we embarked on a three year long odyssey trying to get the movie made, but that’s a whole other story involving AFM and the Lowes Santa Monica and foreign tax credits and gap financing and some bad, bad choices on everyone’s parts.

Scott: That seems like a segue point because I remember reading one of your tweets where you said at some period of time, you described you were writing “shitty horror movies for weird no‑fly producers.” Was that that time period?

John: That was that time period. The guys who were trying to make “The Cellar” were not no‑fly producers, they were good partners who stuck with the project for many years, but that was in that era, yes. I worked with some other producers on a couple other projects, the checks cleared, but this was all work for non-WGA signatories, so the money wasn’t great, and I was still reading scripts at the time.

This was around the time when I’d signed with a new manager and everything seemed bright and full of promise and then six months later she announced she was moving to Las Vegas. Which is not a good sign.

Scott: One thing people ask me ‑‑ I’m sure they ask you it all the time ‑‑ “Should I move to L.A.?” I tell them is, L.A.’s a great place to be when you’re working, but when you’re not working, and you walk the dog at night and see the searchlights for movie premiers, or you run into friends who have gigs, or you see movies shooting on the street, it’s like you’re constantly reminded that you’re not working or things aren’t going that good.

You had a nice splash, but this period of time where maybe things weren’t going so well. How did you survive all that?

John: Mostly my wife, who supported me financially and emotionally through the worst times, and was and continues to be incredibly supportive. This was just after our first child was born, and my wife had gone back to work and I was staying home with our kid and William Morris had just merged with Endeavour, so I’d lost my job. It was dark times.

Scott: How did you transition out of that?

John: The key thing was ‑‑ this actually comes back to the Northwestern question ‑‑ I looked around and saw other people, other friends, and they were finding some success, so I knew there was a way in. I took a step back, and I said to myself, “What am I missing here?” and the thing I was missing was I was writing what I thought I should write, instead of what I wanted to write. I’d been listening to too many other people, and I’d stopped listening to myself.

I fired my manager. I joined a small writer’s group. I needed to get back to what works for me creatively. I needed to figure out again what I liked to do. I’d forgotten by then. I’d gotten too wrapped up in chasing the machine, pining for success. But writing what you love is only half of the equation. Writing what Hollywood loves is the other half.

I have this theory, and it’s a theory about who you are as a writer and what Hollywood does. It’s a Venn Diagram. There’s one circle — what Hollywood does. There’s another circle — what kind of writer you are. And this includes what you like to write and what you’re good at and what kind of writing really lights you on fire. The intersection of those two circles: that’s what you should write.

Scott: Did you find it?

John: So far, so good.

Scott: I’m assuming you wrote another spec script at some point.

John: Yes. I wrote two specs. One was a sci-fi noir about the first murder in space, and one was a grounded action-thriller set against the backdrop of the financial services industry.

I used those two scripts to query. I think I’ve talked a little bit about querying on Twitter. The querying ended up going well, and a lot of the people that I was querying were people whom I had some relationship with or contact with in the past. That was helpful.

Scott: I can include a link on that for your Twitter ‘rant’ which is on the site.

John: Totally. Then, I also reached out to literally everyone I knew and was like, “I’m looking for a new manager.” I had a bunch of people help me out, Young Il Kim, Scott Frazier, Chris and Charlie Frazier, among many others. Chris and Charlie sent my stuff to Jeff Portnoy, who was an assistant at Gotham, and he passed my specs up to two of the managers at Gotham, whom I ended up signing with.

Scott: That’s great. Thanks for that background. Let’s jump to your script, “Sarah,” which it’s at Lionsgate. Is that right?

John: Yeah.

Scott: What’s your elevator pitch for that story?

John: Sarah is about a girl who goes to college and gets drawn in to the world of an artificial intelligence professor, starts working in his lab, becomes friends with the professor’s grad students, and discovers that they’ve developed the most advanced artificial intelligence in the world and they’re keeping it extremely secret. What she doesn’t know is that her parents may be using her to get to the professor’s AI.

My manager originally pitched me this idea about a girl who goes to college but it turns out she’s been put there for an ulterior purpose, and he had some other ideas about the character, sort of Manchurian Candidate goes to college, and I thought it was pretty crazy but then I was thinking it through and figured out an angle and wrote the spec while I was doing generals off of the action-thriller they’d signed me off of.
 
 ICM signed me off of the script and then Lionsgate picked it up when we sent it out a few months later.

Scott: Had you written a female protagonist before?

John: Yes. I’m trying to think in how many scripts. A couple of my very first scripts were female protagonists. Then, I had always worked on making sure that I had strong women in my scripts, interesting, complex women, although a lot of that is just because I’m interested in interesting, complex people. Of course, women go along with that.

When George RR Martin was asked how he writes women so well, he said “You know, I’ve always considered women to be people.” I subscribe to that philosophy.

Scott: Sarah is strong. She’s smart. She’s very scientifically oriented. She’s very tactile. She likes to build these stuff, these machines, robots and things. Yet, at the same time, she’s got this little stuffed animal thing, too. She’s like an adult child type of a character. How would you describe Sarah?

John: She’s 18. Is there any better description? She’s 18. For me, the script is about a child becoming an adult. It’s about that moment in your life when you leave home for the first time, and you have to understand how to navigate the world on your own, without Mom and Dad. That’s a scary, strange, weird time for everyone.

Everyone has to go through it at some point. I just wanted to see what it was like for her and how she dealt with that and how she became her own person.

Scott: Interesting. It’s like an extreme form of becoming an adult in compressed time.

John: The maturation process.

Scott: Maturation process, yes.

John: One of the other conceits in the script, as you know, is that artificial intelligences only have 88 days to live.

Scott: Let’s talk about that. There’s a quote there from this professor she goes to work with. “Like everything, we all die, and the light that burns brightest, burns fastest. 88 days. That’s how long the longest artificial sentience has sustained.” Where does this 88 day thing come from? Is that real or made up?

John: Totally made up. I have been so happy that three or four executives have said to me, “Is the 88 days thing, is that real?” It was like, “No, but I’m really glad you thought it was.” The 88 days thing was made up.

Scott: Why did you make it up?

John: It’s a McGuffin. I needed a piece of technology that limited the AIs in the script, and it also became a limit for the scientists to break.

Scott: There’s another major character. Can we talk about Janus?

John: Absolutely. I love Janus.

Scott: You have several big twists in the story. One of them is the nature of the relationship between Sarah and Janus. Janus is an artificial intelligence this professor has come up with in secret.

The first thing that strikes me about the Janus character is the sense of humor he / it has. In most portrayals of an artificial intelligence, the tendency is to be dry and without much in the way of personality, but not Janus. What was your thinking there?

John: I’m not interested in people who aren’t people. I’m interested in people. I just wanted to write Janus as a person. Yes, the fact that he’s a computer, that’s part of the story.

But I’m interested in his psychology, in Sarah’s psychology. I’m interested in why he thinks and feels the things he does. I’m interested in the relationships he has. I’m not interested in Hal. Hal is a cool character, totally interesting and fascinating, but he’s not really a person. I like people. I think that we relate to people.

I think we go to movies because we want to see people having relationships with other people, exploring how they’re thinking and feeling. Along the way, things blow up. In the end, we go to see The Avengers: Age of Ultron not necessarily to see things blow up.

We go to see Robert Downey, Jr. experience those things and grapple with what he’s done, which is partly why that movie doesn’t really work for me, because it didn’t explore that enough. It was more focused on the zazzle. Edge of Tomorrow was such a great movie because we were in Tom Cruise’s psychology, what he was going through. We felt him grapple with it.

The movies that affect us and that we like are about people experiencing great or mundane things, either way, but reacting to them in human ways. I wanted to see Janus react to this in a human way.

Scott: It’s really interesting, too, because all the major characters in this story have world views and experiences that we can all relate to. Janus, who essentially becomes a nemesis figure, you can completely and totally sympathize with him because of what’s gone on. It’s reminiscent of the novel, “Frankenstein.”

John: Totally.

Scott: You completely sympathize with that character.

John: Yes. The book, “Frankenstein” was absolutely something that I went back to and revisited before I started working on this.

Scott: How much research did you do? There’s a lot of science involved.

John: I did a lot of reading about artificial intelligence, mostly from a theoretical standpoint, and transhumanism and ethics related to artificial intelligences. Also a lot of research into robotics, to get a sense of what that world these characters live in feels like.

It’s interesting, because not a lot of that stuff ended up in the movie. That was just pepper that you’d sprinkle in, here and there. The stuff that I think makes it actually feel science‑y and authentic are the people.

Mostly, though, I just wanted to capture what it’s like hanging out with physics nerds, and what it’s like when you’re at a table with a bunch of dorky people in the cafeteria, how they behave, interact, relate, and what they talk about. You don’t have to do a lot of it. There are not that many scenes where Sarah is hanging out with those classmates.

Scott: Just enough to give you a sense of it.

John: Exactly.

Scott: There is a line which gets repeated three times: “You are in the serious shit. I am in the serious shit. This is some serious shit.” I thought it was such a great line.

John: That’s just this great moment where Sarah’s boyfriend realizes “Oh. You really are in trouble. Wait — that means I’m in trouble. What the hell is going on here.” It’s a fun beat.

Scott: Have you seen Ex Machina?

John: Yes.

Scott: What’s your reaction?

John: I loved it. I thought it was really interesting. I think the third act has so many things to do, it falls apart a little bit, but whatever. By that time, you’re already along for the ride. Besides, how else are you going to end that thing?

Ex Machina is fascinating because it explores all of these questions of, “Who are we? What do we do?” in a very confined way. It’s so narrowly focused in a very traditional sci‑fi way that’s really gratifying for a sci‑fi guy like me. It’s all character.

Scott: I’d look at that, because I thought it was terrific, too. I’d say, “Hollywood’s a similar but different mentality.” Everybody that I know who’s seen it really liked it.

That would actually benefit Sarah, because people would say, “Wow, that’s accessible, so therefore, I can cover my ass, at least.” Then, also be inspired. Think, “Why not do this?”

John: Lionsgate has been super‑supportive of “Sarah”. They’ve just been great.

Scott: I know you’ve got some other projects. Some, you can’t talk about, but are there any others that you can discuss?

John: There’s a project at Paramount that was actually something I started on before “Sarah”. A year ago, my agent called me up and was like, “There’s this project at Paramount you should totally go in for.” He sent me the script, and it was a spec that they had just picked up. There’s a well-known actor who is producing it. Really great guy.

I was like, “Yeah, that sounds really cool.” I went in, pitched on it and got it. That was totally great. It was interesting. After the pitch and when we were having our first story meeting, one of the producers said to me I got the job based on how much I focused on character, which was incredibly gratifying.

I spent probably five or seven of 15‑minute pitch, a third to a half of the pitch was about character. It’s a big sci‑fi, far‑future kind of script. There’s a lot of technology and a lot of whiz‑bang stuff, but the thing that interested me most about it is, “Who are these people? What are they going through? How is that relevant to us, today?” The studio responded to it, and the producers did. I’ve been alternating between drafts of that project and “Sarah” for the last year.

Scott: I’m really glad to hear that you got that gig, in part, because the fact that they said, “You focused on character, talked about character.” You know me. The blog, my teaching, I emphasize the importance of character over and over and over again. That’s gratifying to hear. Good luck on both of those projects.

Scott: I’d like to jump to something. You’re on Twitter as is much of the online screenwriting community. I think you coined this phrase, “The Hope Machine.” Is that right?

John: Yes, that was my beast. Not my beast, but I was the who initially coined the Hope Machine.

Scott: Okay, so we can go to the source on this. What do you mean by the Hope Machine?

John: The Hope Machine is that monolith in Hollywood that makes you think that your dreams are right around the corner. Some of it, some of the Hope Machine is purposeful and premeditated, people who actually want you think that. Some of it is just kind of accidental. I think you and I are part of the Hope Machine.

Through no fault of our own, we’re doing the thing that we do, which is a valid thing to do. Being on Twitter, talking about successes at screenwriting is almost part of the Hope Machine, too.

When I first was thinking about it, I thought about it in a very negative way. I have come to the conclusion that it’s value neutral.

All of these things that tell amateur and aspiring screenwriters, “You can do it. You can have a career as a screenwriter. Your career is just around the corner,” what’s important is for people to know that that is not necessarily true and that being a professional screenwriter and making it into having a career as a screenwriter is a long, long, long slough that almost always never pays off.

It’s achievable, but it’s like making it in the NFL. It is actually like making it in the NFL. It’s like actually being Peyton Manning. There are just as many paid feature screenwriters as there are paid NFL football players every year.

Scott: Let me play devil’s advocate because I see this come up sometimes.

John: Yeah. Absolutely.

Scott: People will say, “The only reason you pro writers shit on the chances of outsiders succeeding is to keep us from trying to make it and increase the competition.” How would you respond to that?

John: A couple dozen people make the jump to professional feature screenwriter every year, and most of those wash out after not too long. There is not some torrent of new writers threatening to take jobs. This job is so weird and so hard and so self-defeating that really the only person I’m competing with is myself.

In the end, all I want is for people to know and understand the realities of the business when they start out, because I have watched too many people “break through” as screenwriters and then fall apart and end up three years later back in their day jobs. And they look around and wonder where it all went wrong, but the answer is, “That’s the business.” That’s the norm. So even if you get the brass ring, you have to keep getting the ring over and over again.

I compare it to the NFL, but at least with the NFL, if you don’t have some specific physical attributes, if you aren’t tall and muscular and, obviously, a man, if you’re older than 18 or 19, you know you’ll never make it. You know you won’t play football professionally, so that isn’t something you spend your whole life trying to make happen.

Screenwriting is different. Everyone thinks they can write. Everyone loves movies. Everyone thinks they know what makes a good movie. There are no physical restrictions, no age restrictions, no external boundaries to being a screenwriter — which is a blessing and a curse. Anyone can do it, but also, everyone thinks they can do it. So a lot of people put a lot of time and energy and money into trying to make something happen that is just very very very unlikely.

But it’s the hope and corresponding disappointment that kills people. I think if you understand the odds better, you can better manage your disappointment — and in the end that’ll make you more likely to enter your career knowing what to expect and able to make better decisions.

Scott: What about the cottage industry, the script consultants and the screenwriters podcasts, and the books and all that?

John: Yeah. That’s the most nefarious part because those are people that want to actively perpetuate the idea that screenwriting is an achievable goal for everyone. If they don’t, then their money dries up. It’s not, especially as the purchasing of specs have gone.

Specs are the way that new writers break in, and as that has declined, it’s become more difficult for new writers to really get a toehold and become successful.

The cottage industry, they’re interested in making money off people with dreams. That’s pretty much it. They’re not interested in helping you build a career.

They want you to think that Hollywood is against you, and that they have the clues and the secrets. Yes, Hollywood is against you because Hollywood is a giant monolith. But nobody has any clues and secrets. The only clue and secret is, “Write a good script in a genre Hollywood makes.”

The only people who could really help you are friends who you meet when you move out here. You can throw away a shitload of money trying to chase some idea.

Scott: But, John, it’s so much easier, to say, “There’s a proven formula or a paradigm or a process.”

John: It is. It’s super‑seductive, isn’t it? It sounds so easy, but it’s not. Great writing is about what is personal and human and relatable. That’s different for everyone. The trick is to keep your nose down and keep writing. Keep meeting people who want to help you and who you can help, and you all work together into finding some way into building some kind of career, hopefully.

Scott: That’s a natural segue into some craft questions, if you’ve got time for that.

John: Totally.

Scott: How do you come up with story ideas?

John: I think a lot about setting and tone and mood, I’ll find a thing I’m interested in, a world I like, a world we haven’t seen before, something I’ve read about, a magazine article or a book or even a movie that has some element in it that maybe they don’t explore a lot but really interests me, and then I’ll think about building off of that thing.

Like when I was first thinking about “The Eye,” which is a sci-fi noir, I’d been watching Chinatown a lot and I’d been reading about Elon Musk and SpaceX. I hit on the idea that Elon Musk is basically today’s Mulholland. Then, I look for the human way into it. What’s the piece of that that’s relatable?

With “Sarah,” I had robots, college, parents — but those are all the things in the movie, but that’s not what the movie is really about. It’s really all about how, when you go to college, you are leaving your parents behind and growing into your own person. So then I built the whole script around parents and children, and everything started to make a lot more sense to me.

Scott: I would figure that one of the tests that you put, when you come up with a story idea, is, “What’s the human thing? What’s the relatable dynamic that’s there?”

John: Always. That’s always the thing that I keep coming back to. Then, that will always give me the theme and the central dramatic question. Once I find that, then it’s not easy, but then everything becomes clear.

Scott: Let’s jump to theme, here. Are you one of those people that needs to know that up front, before you’re writing? Or is that something that emerges along the way?

John: I don’t need to know it up front. I often have a general idea. I like to know what I’m dealing with, thematically, but I don’t need to know the exact central dramatic question. I will find that through working the script, writing the first draft and then revising that.

Especially the second draft, I can write directly towards the central dramatic question, make sure that every single scene addresses it and is relevant and hopefully that the character is always grappling with it and by the end of the movie has resolved that question.

Scott: A script like “Sarah,” complicated plot with lots of twists and turns. Curious, how much time you spend in prep writing, and what do you tend to focus on more? Brainstorming, character development, plotting, research, outlining?

John: “Sarah” was a little unusual in that I had come up with it and pitched it, top to bottom, to my manager, and then I sat on it for a year while I was doing a bunch of other stuff. It was sitting in my mind for a long time. Then, I just started writing. I think a lot of that was gestation, character and I was thinking about it as I was driving to meetings and stuff like that.

Scott: Do you outline?

John: I do. I basically outline like I pitch, where I’ll have a pretty good idea of what the story is and what all the beats are, but I won’t have every scene heading or something like that. I’ll know when I’m going to hit each beat. One of the nice things about writing something for a studio, for instance, is that I don’t really need to worry about, “I got to hit this thing on this page,” or whatever. If the first act is forty pages, that’s OK. Back when I was writing a lot of specs, my first act ending after page twenty-five would’ve given me the mips. But that’s part of where spec writing and books and teachers and gurus all focused on specs make you think you need to obey rules that aren’t real rules in screenwriting.

As long as I know that the script is interesting and that the character is constantly being pulled in different directions and there is dramatic tension and conflict, and that I have an arc through each act, then I know I’m OK.

Scott: You’ve mentioned characters. How do you go about developing them?

John: I like to think about all of the characters in relationship to each other. The main character is the one with the arc. Then, I want all of the other characters to splay out from there. The main character should always be the one grappling with the central dramatic question.

Then, the love interest or the co‑star has probably already gone through that and has come out on the other side and already has some answers. The villain, the nemesis, the bad guy is also dealing with the same issue but never resolves it. The fact that the antagonist never resolves it is usually his or her downfall.

I want all of my characters to have different relationships with the theme. Their roles sometimes define their relationship to the theme, and sometimes their relationships with the theme define their place in the story. Does that make sense?

Raiders is always the best example of this because Belloq and Indy are two sides of the same coin.

Scott: Belloq literally says that.

John: Literally says it.

Scott: He says, “We are like the shadows.”

John: Yes. Belloq and Indy start out at the same place, and the fact Belloq does not learn is his downfall. Marcus, such a great mentor, has already gone through what Indy has gone through. Marcus has already been scared. He knows not to do this.

Sometimes, as when you’re learning screenwriting, you learn, “I need a character who warns Indy not to go do this.” It’s like, “Yes and no.” You need a character who has already been through what the main character is going through, and one of the things that character will do is warn you, but you don’t just need a character to warn the main character.

You need a character who’s been through that journey and come out the other side alive. One of the things that character might do is it might warn the main character. It might also help him decipher some stuff that he needs to figure out. In Sarah, that character is David, an older grad student.

Scott: It’s interesting. When I work with writers, I say, “You could look at the story and invert it.” We tend to look at plots and focus on that, but if you invert it and say, “Look at the elements that happen in the plot as being tethered to the protagonist’s development.”

It’s like you invert it and look at it, say, “Why does this stuff happen? Because the protagonist has to go through this psychological journey.” Does that resonate with you at all?

John: Yeah, definitely. I’m always turning things upside down, shaking them and reevaluating the choices that I’ve made. The project that I’m working on for Paramount right now, I’m in my third step. I always say the first step, the first draft, you’re full of confidence. The second draft, you’re refining and fine‑tuning. Then, the third draft, you’re burning it all to the ground.

You’re like, “What am I doing?” I’m completely turning everything over and shaking it and seeing what falls out and trying to figure out, “This choice that I made when I was writing the first draft, should it have been this or that? Should I change it completely?”

You get notes from a studio, and you try to decipher and drill down. “What exactly do they want?” Then, you try to think about, “They want this.” And then, “Is that what’s best for the story?” and try to weigh that. Then, you’re like, “What if I completely take out this one element? Does that fix the problem, magically?” It probably doesn’t.

It’s all a big balancing act, but I think third drafts can be really difficult because they are that, “Let’s completely reevaluate everything we know.”

Scott: It’s so funny, listening to you talk about that. It strikes me that you’ve got to balance or basically have faith that you can say, “I have this, but I’m going to completely tear it apart,” but have some sort of faith that you’re going to end up on the other side. You also have to just deal with the fear, like, “Oh, my God. Will I be able to pull this off?”

It reminds me of that Pixar comic that Pete Docter made. He said, “It’s like every time we do a story, we jump out of an airplane without a parachute, but we believe that by the time we get down, we’ll build the parachute.”

John: The saving grace is that you always have the second draft to go back to. You always know, “There was a thing that kind of worked in the second draft, so I can try a bunch of different things, and if need be, I can always just hit revert.” Or you fail. It is possible to fail. It is possible to do a bad job. That happens.

When you do that, sometimes you just have to hunker down and decide, “I guess this is going to take longer than I thought it was.” Then, start over and try to make it work.

Scott: I want to jump into just your action writing is always quite strong.

John: Thank you.

Scott: There’re a lot of action sequences in “Sarah.” What are some keys to writing good action?

John: People always say, “Good action is character‑based.” That’s totally true. You want your character to start someplace and then, by the time they get through the action sequence, they need to have discovered something or figured something out. Something else needs to have happened in the plot.

You can’t just have shit blow up, then end of scene, and then we have some dialog or the plot advances. That’s always important, but for me it’s about thinking, “What’s interesting? What’s different? What’s unique about where we are and who the characters are and what they’re going through and what is happening right now? Then, how can I convey that in an interesting way?”

Scott: That’s the part that I’m interested in. I think the character stuff is great, that you’re talking like that. Like Frazier. Doesn’t he have some board, where he’s got things up?

John: Yes.

Scott: I don’t do action movies. I’m like, “Where do they come up with these ideas to do helicopter this?”

John: I approach it from a much more story‑specific kind of way. I am much more interested in where the characters are in the plot and just location‑wise. If there needs to some kind of tension action here, I’m not just going to drop them into a parking garage because I have a cool action set piece in a parking garage.

Sarah’s at the mall because she needs to go to the mall to disguise herself, and there are people there. Someone’s going to recognize her and try to catch her. I’m always looking for where the character is in the story and in the location. Then, just like, “What can I do that’s interesting in that locale?” Then, “How can I write it so that it feels energetic?”

That’s the thing that I always focus on is when I’m writing, I want it to feel like it should feel when you’re watching it. There’s some stretches in Sarah where I am not very economical with my scene description, and I’m OK with that.

People can read. If they want to read that stuff, then I’m going to give them good words to read. If I want it to feel a little more, not languid, but want it to feel a little more rich and interesting.

Scott: Immersive?

John: Immersive, yeah. Then I’m going to give them that. But when I’m getting into an action sequence, I want it to start to feel quick and fast. If there’s an explosion, and the main character gets knocked down, I want the words on the page to reflect that. I want you to slow down, stop when you’re reading it. The words on the page should make you feel like you’re watching it.

Scott: What’s your actual writing process like?

John: I write at a cafe every day.

Scott: Headphones on or off?

John: Sometimes on, sometimes off. Sometimes, I like the world around me. Sometimes, I shut it out. I have never been a good at‑home writer. I’ve just always have worked better around a lot of people.

Scott: Is this the same place you go every day?

John: Same place, every day.

Scott: Obviously, they know you.

John: They all know me very well. I know them very well.

Scott: You walk in, they know exactly what you want.

John: Yes, always.

Scott: Same table?

John: No, not necessarily. I try not to take up too much space. Sometimes, I’ll sit on the bench. Sometimes, I’ll take a chair and put it against the wall. I don’t want to be a hog. At the same time, I also know that I’m furniture there. People are disappointed when I’m not there, or at least they say they are. There are probably a few people who are disappointed when I am there. Who knows.

Scott: Is this a place that other writers frequent?

John: There are a few. There’s one guy who’s been writing for years, he and I are both cafe writers in the neighborhood. We have both been through three or four cafes in the area over the course of like 15 years. He’s written a bunch of great movies, he’s a great writer.

Scott: Cafe writers.

John: Yes, exactly. Exactly.

Scott: The moments when you disappoint the people by not showing there ‑‑ I like to ask this question ‑‑ what’s your single best excuse not to write?

John: Right now the best excuse is other projects, looking for the next thing I’ll work on. Developing a pitch. Brainstorming on a potential job. Tweaking a pilot so it’ll be ready to go out next week. Reading a script a production company sent over for an assignment. But really though, I don’t like not writing. I like to write. I’m happiest when I’m writing. Sometimes, I’m not very good at it, which you just accept, because that’s just the way the world works, sometimes. But I enjoy it.

Scott: That leads to the next question. What do you love most about writing?

John: I love writing. I know people say, “I love having written.” I actually like thinking up the words to write. I love when I’m good at it. I’m not always good at it. I’m really feeling that right now with the draft I’m currently writing, not being good at it.

But I do love the actual act of thinking up the words. “Does this word convey the feeling that I want it to convey? Does this word work in the sentence? Does the sentence need to change, move and come over here? What happens if I move this line of dialog? How does that change the course of the scene? Where can I find more conflict? How do I need to draw out the characters more?”

Scott: Here’s the question that I always end with, which is what advice can you offer aspiring screenwriters about learning the craft and at least attempting to break into Hollywood?

John: Move here, and write more, which are the obvious pieces of advice. But more than that, the best piece of advice for young writers I have is to write with intent.

Have a purpose with your words, have a reason for writing the things you write. I don’t mean “I want to tell the world about my experience” or something like that. I mean make choices in your work for specific reasons. Know what those reasons are.

“Why does this character go do this thing? Why does that character feel the way she feels about this? Why are these two characters in the scene at that moment, together? Why did you pick that word? Why did you start a new paragraph there? Why did you capitalize that word instead of that one?” Have a reason. When I was young, that was the thing my writing lacked most.

The second script I’d ever written got a lot of attention. I was 24. This was back when the spec market was still very hot. I’d just signed with William Morris and a manager, and they sent the spec out the week after I signed with William Morris. The next morning, I started getting phone calls, producers who wanted to talk to me, so excited about the script, but they had some questions. It was a twisty-turny script, a complicated mystery, and they just wanted to talk through some things before they took it in to studios.

And I’ll never forget sitting on the phone with them as they each asked the same questions — “What does this part mean? Why does that character go there? What really happened here?”

And I didn’t know. I hadn’t written with intent. I hadn’t made choices with purpose. I couldn’t advocate for the script I’d written. I didn’t have an answer. Ever since then, I have done everything I could to make sure I have an answer. Have an answer.

To read 100s more of my Go Into The Story interviews, go here.