Go Into The Story Interview: Justin Piasecki

My interview with 2023 Black List writer for his script Stakehorse.

I first connected with Justin Piasecki when he was selected to be a recipient of a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting in 2016 for his script “Death of an Ortolan” (now titled “Last Meals”). Since that time, Justin has written four screenplays which have made the annual Black List: “The Broker” (2019), “The Neutral Corner” (2020), “Ballast” (2021), and most recently “Stakehorse” which was named to the 2023 Black List. Justin was selected as one of the Variety’s 10 Screenwriters to Watch (2023).

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Justin about his latest Black List script “Stakehorse” which sold as a spec script to Amazon last April.

Here is that conversation in its entirety.

Scott Myers: This is great to talk with you. It has been a while. I think it was 2017. You won the Nicholl in 2016, is that right?

Justin Piasecki: That’s right. I remember our first talk I was in my mother‑in‑law’s sewing room. I’m now in my own unfinished basement, so I really moved up in the world.

Scott: We covered your background when we did talk about the Nicholl. As I recall, you grew up in the Midwest. Iowa, right?

Justin: Yep.

Scott: Then ended up at NYU. You were in film school there?

Justin: Yeah, I was at University of Iowa for two years and then transferred halfway through, and finished film school at NYU.

Scott: That’s where you met your wife.

Justin: That’s right. She was also going for the same stuff and after that worked in the camera dept for many years. Then, came home one day and said, “Expletive this, I’d rather be a dentist.” Now she’s a full‑on dentist. I didn’t take the hint and I didn’t get out of the business, and here we are.

Scott: By the way, at University of Iowa, did you know Scott Beck and Bryan Woods at all, the A Quiet Place guys?

Justin: I knew them from University of Iowa, but knew of them since high school — we all lived in the same town.

Scott: Small world.

Justin: They’re great. They’re super nice. I think they’re working a lot more out of Iowa, which is envious. In fact they just opened their own movie theater in the town there.

Scott: Davenport?

Justin: Yeah. The Last Picture House. They screened ‘Last Action Hero’ the other month, so you know — pillar of the community stuff. Check ’em out!

Scott: Love that you have that connection to Beck and Woods. Let’s talk a bit about your Nicholl script, “Death of Ortolan,” which now is called “Last Meals.”

Here’s the logline: “A disgraced White House chef is discovered decades later preparing meals for prisoners on death row, but he risks a chance at redemption when he befriends an inmate whose guilt appears doubtful.”

Maybe talk about the life of that project because it’s been several years now. What did that do to you in terms of general meetings and getting other gigs?

Justin: It was a pretty big kickstarter. From that I got my first feature rewrites, worked with guys like Martin Campbell and Ron Howard, it got me agents and managers, actor and studio meetings, it still does every year — and it’s opened doors for other scripts.

Scott: Maybe we could talk about some of those projects. I went through IMDb Pro and saw a project called “The Neutral Corner.” Is that something you can discuss?

“A Nevada court judge who moonlights reffing high‑profile boxing matches must face his demons when he’s assigned to the Olympic fight of an ex‑con he’d previously sentenced for murder.”

Justin: After the Nicholl, we were very lucky and got on the Black List three years in a row. Neutral Corner was one of those.

I found out that, more often than you’d think: when you’re watching a boxing match… not only the ref in the ring, but the judges around it are all often, by day, lawyers… bailiffs… even district judges. I thought, “The DNA of that, they’re both arbiters. One’s in the courtroom, and one’s of a blood sport. Let’s explore two characters who met in one arena, and then again years later in the other.”

Scott: Here’s another one. “Ballast: A shipping engineer and her crew,” so it’s a female protagonist, “find themselves trapped in a deadly game in the middle of the Atlantic when they learn a series of car bombs,” that’s so great “are hidden amongst the thousands of vehicles on board.” It’s just like, you literally talk about ticking bombs.

This one, I was like, “Wow.” “Ballast.” Is this an ongoing project?

Justin: Yeah. That was our third Black List script. I love a lot of the Jodie Foster thrillers of the ’90s and 2000’s. I also love blue‑collar jobs that probably deserve a bit of a spotlight for how difficult and impressive they can be.

I read a short “New York Times” article about stevedores. These guys have to park cars on these cargo ships that are just big, vehicular parking lots, but they have to park it within two centimeters of each other. I thought, “What a great needle‑in‑a‑haystack movie…

You take the 10 coolest percent of all of those marine technical manuals and you just get stuff that you haven’t seen on screen before, which people are always looking for.

Scott: I wanted to talk about another one of your movies, “Relay.” That’s with Black Bear…

Justin: That was our first Black List script, they actually shot last year. It started two days after the writer’s strike started so I pretty much missed out on the whole thing. David McKenzie (Hell or High Water) directed that. They’re in post now.

Scott: Now, Justin, are these all original ideas, these things self‑generated?

Justin: Yes, all originals.

Scott: I find that very inspiring and it’s amazing, frankly, given how addicted the studios and production companies are to pre‑existing content ‑‑ prequels. sequels, remakes, reboots, anything with IP. Yet you’ve managed to carve quite a niche here for yourself. What are your impressions about that, given the nature of the way the studios are operating nowadays?

Justin: I feel, or I at least hope, that there’s an appetite that’s course-correcting back to original stories. There are a few IP things I’d love to write a chapter of…coughFieldofDreamscough… but it can be a lot more fun to play in your own sandbox sometimes as well.

Scott: It’s great you got these things set up, Black List multiple times. It’s wonderful because I just been hoping that we’ll see more original movies. That’s a nice segue into “Stakehorse”, which literally did sell right before the writers’ strike. Here’s the logline:

“A racetrack veterinarian who runs an off‑the‑books ER for criminals finds his practice and life in jeopardy when he’s recruited for his patient’s heist.”

What was the inspiration for this particular project?

Justin: I’d seen 30‑second scenes of characters like this before. In those instances, I wondered, “You can’t get a blood transfusion from a parakeet. If Val Kilmer comes in shot up and he’s lost four liters of blood, how would that job really work?”

So I started reading equestrian medical journals, humans and horses share a certain venn diagram of overlap. Horses have 205 bones, we have 206. Things like that. There’s a synthetic blood that they’re working on in South Africa that you could feasibly put in both species. Find enough of those overlaps and… it starts to come together in your mind.

Scott: What about the heist element? Have you always been interested in heist movies, or how did that arise out of this mixture of things that you were interested in?

Justin: Michael Mann movies are wonderful, my favorite is “Thief,” hands down. It just felt like a real guy in the real world, carving his spot in it. You and I can project ourselves on this nine‑to‑fiver‑type guy that is put into these extreme circumstances. I’d say this was a little bit of Thief. This was a little bit of Kubrick’s ‘The Killing.’

Scott: Let’s talk about the key characters here. Let me say up‑front, as I ask you to describe them and talk about them, you don’t have to give away any of the surprises and twists. There’s one ginormous twist that I think you did really, really well.

Justin: Thank you.

Scott: I’ll allow you to talk about it as much or as little as you want. Let’s explore your protagonist character. That figure on the side, bring him into the center and have the heist group around him. His name is Nick Easter. How would you describe this character and his state of being at the beginning of the story?

Justin: I would say Nick is a character with a code that believes he can live both in underground and an aboveground life without being morally compromised. He starts the script lying to himself, but underneath he knows that this is an untenable existence morally.

When that leaks into the thing that he holds dearest, which is his own son, that’s where we come into the story and where the cracks of this routine are starting to show and something’s got to give. This movie is that give.

Scott: Nick is a complex figure, living in the gray, so to speak. In fact, a lot of the characters in the script are living in that gray area. I’m sure you’re aware of the default mode of development executives, they feel most comfortable with sympathetic protagonists.

Justin: To me, the gray area is 99.9 percent of all of us. The atonement for that is then something that we are instantly more capable of not only sympathizing with, but rooting them for because there’s part of ourselves that have done something wrong, whether it’s a small character flaw, or a bigger fuck up in life, or whatever.

Scott: One thing I appreciated was that it didn’t have a romance story, like, “Oh, he’s going to fall in love with somebody or whatnot.” Really, the romance, the heart of it is this father‑son relationship. That’s the emotional core of the story. He knows there’s this ticking bomb, one slip‑up of his son, and the son’s going to end up in prison.

At some point, that whole potential is what drives Nick deeper into criminal activity, because that’s a threat that’s made. Sean is a very well executed and interesting kid, and that relationship is intriguing too.

Justin: Nick is really put between his son, but also his father‑in‑law. They’re almost equally close, but couldn’t be at further ends of the spectrum.

Scott: That’s Carl Reinhart, who is the father‑in‑law. That’s an interesting point, is that if they’re together, Carl and Nick, then that in some ways keeps the memory of the daughter/wife alive. Then there’s a detective, Jim Pulaski. What’s your take on this character? By the way, you set this in Chicago. Did you live in Chicago for a while? Is that right?

Justin: I was born in Peoria and my aunts, uncles, grandma, grandpa, all of them are Chicago so I’ve spent a lot of time there, but Chicago was a pretty deliberate choice because of the disappearing horse track economy.

You had to say, “Whose got a horse track that’s still running in a big enough of an industry? Also, what’s a town that would support this criminal economy that we’re also going to lean into?” You don’t want to do the Kentucky Derby because you don’t want to think of that as a bunch of heist crews running around.

Scott: Of course, Detective Pulaski, that name is totally a Chicago thing. Maybe you could talk a little bit about the evolution of this character in your story?

Justin: I wanted to put his code and Reinhart’s code at total opposites. If you think about it, I would never rob a bank, but if my brother came to me, and said, “I need you to rob this bank with me.” That is such a different question.

That’s what I think the relationship is between Nick and Reinhart. Reinhart still honors that code of, “If he’s in, he’s in. If he says he’s out, he’s out. This is family.” There’s that family respect there. Pulaski represents a new, more cynical, but probably more realistic criminal code: Humanity is not a bunch of pack animals, it’s a bunch of lone wolves.

Scott: Let’s talk about some of the narrative choices you made that were pretty interesting to me. It’s all arbitrary to say. “This is the end of Act One.” To me in your script, it’s 34 where Nick says, “All right, I’m in on this thing.”

Now, there’s all these literalists out there who’ve read a certain book that would say, “The break into Act Two has to happen on 25.”

Do you even think about page count or is this a case where you felt like you needed that time to sufficiently create this familial dynamic, this character, and the circumstances which would compel him to make the choice that he makes? Essentially, what were you thinking in terms of what some would say is a rather long first act?

Justin: I pay attention to my page count for sure. At the same time, I think if things are going right, you can get away with a longer first act because they’re not thinking about, “Well, you haven’t done this yet.” If they are thinking about that, then you failed somewhere along the way.

I think the reason I thought I might get away with it is, I posed the question of the act turn on page 30, which is, “If you do this, you never have to fucking worry again.”

Then I didn’t want that decision made lightly, but weighed across the spectrums of his life, ending with his son. Because that carries the most weight, him seeing his son liberated again is what makes him willing to go through the fire of everything he’s about to go through.

Scott: What do they say in Hollywood? “You need to earn it.” Whatever you need to do, but it’s not like the thing drags at all. It just works.

Another narrative choice, you’ve got to in a way because you’ve got the cold open. That’s kind of a heist thing. You’ve got three then, but two, really the one that’s takes place in the middle, and then there’s the big one in Act Three. Three heists. Was that always part of your plan?

Justin: That went back to The Killing a little bit where it jumps around in time, it jumps around in people. It has a narrator, which wasn’t a device that I wanted to use. What you’ll realize by the end is that all the mini heists that you’ve seen along the way were all pieces we needed to get together for the big heist.

Scott: I like the way that you tease the reader early on. You don’t give them all this exposition and stuff. For example, why is Sean in the juvenile center? Who is he the silent partner, the man behind the man, the Moriarty character? We don’t really figure that out until at least midway through the story. You tease the reader to get us involved with these kinds of mysteries. I’m assuming that was intentional in your part. That Billy Wilder thing, “Don’t give them two plus two equals four. Give them two plus two.”

Justin: What you just said, I religiously think about that every day, every time I open up final draft or whatever I’m outlining — the two plus two is such an integral balance. Sometimes I get it wrong and I give them one plus one, plus one, plus one.

I’ll probably always err toward that in early drafts. You don’t want to reader’s feeling left out, but I often feel we don’t give viewers enough credit. They’re pretty good at inferring.

Scott: Maybe it’s just a generation of audiences that grown up on video games, they like to be dropped in. That’s how they participate in the story process. It’s not they’re controlling things. It’s like, you’re engaging them to try and figure out stuff, and then you pay it off.

I do want to ask about this. Horses, horse racing, horse medicine, guns, weaponry, heists. What resources did you use to research all this stuff because that’s a lot of research, I would think.

Justin: This sounds dumb, but YouTube is absolutely the new “Encyclopedia Britannica.” Sometimes you watch it frame by frame. Or grab these equestrian medical journals.

One of my biggest fears is to write a movie and then some technical advisor comes on and says, “That would never work.” I want to be able to say, “Well, hold on. Wait a second. “

I don’t own a gun, so I had to go to my realtor and be like, “Hey, can I bring you a bunch of 12‑gauge riot ammunition and fire it so I can hear how loud it is to understand if you could shoot from a suite at the track? Then you go to Santa Anita and you start measuring things and you pull up blueprints for Hawthorne’s track. Or you visit an equestrian hospital, and see the tattoo guns for their gums…

It’s just that much more compelling when you’re like, “Oh, wow. That’s how you could do it.”

There’s a lot of pretty dry reading, but hidden in there, that’s where you get the cool stuff.

Scott: I’m glad you turned your life towards screenwriting and not toward criminal activities. You’d be a very good criminal, it strikes me.

We actually had a nice segue there about the universe dropping things in your lap. We did chat a bit about before we got on the call, but I would like to talk about April 2023, which is like literally about a week before the WGA strike started.

Could you walk us through how this happened because it’s so unusual? You didn’t have a director attached, right? You didn’t have actors attached. That makes it even more unusual. How did that happen? You get the script done? Then, what was the process whereby this thing sold and there’s a spec script?

Justin: I think we had a little bit of help because of the three Black List scripts prior to this. The doors weren’t wide open, but they were a couple inches open for us at a few places, and from there, we got very lucky.

It was a very quick word‑of‑mouth experience that I had never experienced on that level, then we had directors incoming and actors incoming, and one brought it into a studio and said, “Buy this for me.” That started the other studios coming in. At the end of the day, Amazon and MGM was our place.

Scott: Then on the representation side, you’re with Range Management?

Justin: Yeah Range on the management side, Paradigm on the agency side. Hansen Jacobson for legal. It’s a really great team all around, those guys really help make it look like I know what I’m doing.

Scott: Given how tough it is with the spec script market nowadays, and yet if people want to break into the business, they got to do something that represents their voice, their vision, their creativity, and that’s write a spec, what are the things that you would say to them to focus on knowing that more than likely the best they can hope for is just to get representation out of it or get some meetings out of it?

What would you say would be the points of focus for someone now outside the business, trying to break in, in terms of writing a spec feature?

Justin: I very much come from that place. I had no connections when I came here. The one path that is available to everybody is writing. And from there: screenwriting competitions.

I was very lucky when you and I met that we’d won the Nicholl Fellowship, but I had actually placed pretty high in two or three prior to the Nicholl, and even then I started having the right conversations and I could tell the ball was starting to roll.

What’s great about specs, they always have a second, third, and fourth life. Whether it’s you get top 10 in a screenplay competition, or you wrote it in 2014, but then you didn’t meet the right person until 2022, I think they’ll never lose their utility.

If you get one going, then that makes everybody go back and look at all the other ones that they didn’t look at the first time. That’s the other side of it though: you’ve got to write more than one. The only way you’re going to get better is to keep working. Don’t put it all and let it all ride on one spec. I wrote six in six years because any project takes so long to get off the ground.

It was my third one that got made first, and my first one is now eight years later. My last one will probably shoot within the year. I appreciate not everybody can do this full‑time and I couldn’t either when I started this, but I would never discourage it when you can.

Even though I have the opportunity to jump to other stuff, I don’t have any intention on not writing specs. I plan on doing that the rest of my life.

And if you’re having fun doing it, that’s going to come on the page. The reader’s going to feel that, so make sure you’re enjoying it.

Justin is repped by Paradigm Talent Agency and Range Media Partners.

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