Go Into The Story Interview: Kryzz Gautier

My conversation with the 2021 Black List writer for her original screenplay “Wheels Come Off.”

Kryzz Gautier wrote the screenplay “Wheels Come Off” which made the 2021 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Kryzz about her creative background, her script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to her.

Scott Myers: Reading your biography, there’s so much activity and projects. You got TV. You got film, video games, and theater. It’s hard to know where to start, so let’s go to the beginning. You were born and raised in the Dominican Republic. I’m interested in how those experiences may have eventually led to your interest in filmmaking and storytelling.

Kryzz Gautier: When I was born in the Dominican Republic in ’89, there was no such thing as an entertainment industry on the island. In the last decade, Pinewood Studios has built massive sound stages and one of the world’s most prominent water tanks. There’s also a branch of government specifically created to incentivize foreign productions to shoot locally. That has attracted companies like Netflix and other big-budget studio productions, making us an actual filming destination for Hollywood. There’s the possibility of a semblance of a film career today. Back then, that wasn’t even on the list of options.

My mom now loves to tell the story of how my filmmaking adventure started. When I was about five, we went on vacation to Universal Studios in Orlando and got on the “Jaws” ride. I don’t know if you ever rode it. You got on the boat, the shark came out of the water, and there was fire everywhere — the whole spectacle. According to my mom’s version of the story, I got off the ride, looked her dead in the eye and told her, “Mom, I know what I want to do now. I want to make movies like that.” Fast-forward twenty-five years, I sold my first show to Universal. That came full circle. That’s how that started.

Scott: Another person inspired by Bruce, the mechanical shark. [laughs]

Kryzz: Exactly! [laughs] The mechanical shark got it all started.

Scott: That had a beautiful symmetry there, that the first thing you sold was to Universal. That must have developed because you attended Emerson College and got a BA there in film studies.

Kryzz: I actually got a BA in Directing Narrative Fiction. By the time I was thirteen, I knew I wanted to go to Emerson. It was the only school I applied to and got in early admission. Looking back, I always had a pretty clear path. I decided on filmmaking when I was five and set my heart on Emerson in middle school. I studied the school’s admission requirements every year between then and when college applications started. I ensured that I was tailoring everything I was doing for Emerson so that I was the ideal candidate and they couldn’t say no to me.

Scott: How did you find out about Emerson?

Kryzz: I started doing research. I knew I wanted to study in the US and live here after graduation. I’ve always been a stubborn person, so I had tunnel vision. The thought process was: “Okay, I want to be a filmmaker. How do you become a filmmaker? You go to film school. What are the best film schools in the world?” Then I started reading up on it. I’m an overachiever, and immediately, my goal was to get into one of the top five universities. In the US, you can narrow down those top schools to: USC, AFI, NYU, Emerson, and CalArts. Then the question becomes, “Which am I the best fit for? Which one do I like the most?”. Emerson was the easy choice.

From there, we go on to the next thing on the list: “How do you become the person that Emerson will admit?” I decided to mold myself into someone I knew would be undeniable for admissions.

Scott: What was that experience like? Did you enjoy the film school experience?

Kryzz: Oh my God. Yes. I would never take it back. My four years at Emerson were some of the best years of my life. I met some of my best friends there. But also, it was a completely transformative experience regarding who I am as a filmmaker. Look, I get it; school isn’t for everyone and not everyone can afford it. There are a lot of heated discussions on the topic of film school. There are two opposing camps with strong feelings about it. Personally, I think film school is the way to go. I’ll never back down from that. I firmly believe that anyone who wants to get into film and TV should go to school for it. That’s where you get your foundation. Many people say, “you only learn with hands-on experience!” Sure, duh! At Emerson, and all the best film schools for that matter, you get a camera in your hand within the first semester. Or first year, depending on how your schedule pans out. Point is, you’re “doing it” almost since day one. It’s also where you become a well-rounded filmmaker. You learn the history of film. You gain the knowledge of how to think about film analysis and theory critically. The time there gives you the groundwork for everything you need to learn to become truly great at this job.

Over the years, I’ve met many people working in this industry who don’t have the very basics, the fundamentals needed to be a good filmmaker or creative. A lot of people these days go to “Twitter Film School” and “Superhero Blockbuster University”. None of that does an artist make. When you’re forming your cinematic language around and acquiring media literacy from the inane opinions of people on the internet and superhero movies, you end up with a plethora of terrible stances regarding media and plenty of gaps in your knowledge. Controversial opinion. I know. Can’t wait to see the Twitter takes on this. Better people than me have been chewed alive for saying this, but it does need to be said. Long story short, no, I would never take back the four years I invested in school.

I don’t know. I think education is essential. I have an insane amount of student loans because of Emerson. Not everyone wants to go into that. To me, they’ve been worth it. I wouldn’t take it back. I think my experience was terrific. I appreciate the four years I spent there, the people I met, and the knowledge I got from it. In my book, that doesn’t have a price tag.

Scott: It seems to have paid off, at least in terms of work. I’m looking to IMDbPro. Wow. You’ve been quite busy. Let’s break it down into these various areas, like TV. The “Gordita Chronicles” HBO series. Can you tell us anything about that?

Kryzz: I don’t know how much I can say at this point since there’s not even a trailer out. I can say that it was produced by Zoe Saldana, Eva Longoria, Sony, and obviously HBO. It’s a comedy set in 1980s Miami and loosely based on the real life of our Dominican creator, Claudia Forestieri. That’s about as much as is out there and probably about as much as I can talk about.

Scott: On the feature side, I saw that you had a Nicholl semifinalist script that got set up somewhere. Is that right?

Kryzz: That’s this Black List script.

Scott: That’s this one.

Kryzz: Yeah. That’s “Wheel Come Off.” The project is currently set up with Julie Oh, the producer on “Tick, Tick… Boom!” I’m also directing, which I’m stoked about. There’s some really, really exciting stuff happening that I don’t know I can share either. I hate being this cryptic, but it’s the nature of the work we do.

Scott: Great. Video games. BioShock 4. Is that right? Were you involved in that?

Kryzz: Yeah. I’m currently writing and being a creative consultant on BioShock 4. That was very surprising. They approached me out of nowhere. I have never played a minute of video games in my life.

Scott: Wow.

Kryzz: Same reaction I had. I got an email one day saying, “You came highly recommended. We’ve heard you’re very good at world-building. Would you be interested in meeting with us?” Because that’s what I do. I’m a genre writer and I do world-building. That’s primarily what I focus on. I walked into the meeting and was very honest from the beginning. I said, “I haven’t touched a video game console in my life.”

They said, “It’s okay. We have more than enough people here who are video game nerds. We’re looking for someone who is good at world-building and who will bring this very particular perspective that we need.”

Scott: By world-building, are you talking about literally the nature of the environment, the story universe, or does that also involve character development?

Kryzz: It’s all things.

Scott: Okay. [laughs]

Kryzz: NDAs, man. [laughs]

Scott: No, I get it.

Kryzz: There are other jobs that I’ve met for with big franchises like comic book adaptations and superhero stuff, things that I also don’t participate in or partake in. I’ve been brutally honest from the beginning. I tell them, “I’m not a comic book nerd. I don’t follow these things.” The response has always been: “We’ve read your work and we’re big fans of what you’re doing. We’re just interested in your voice. We have people here who are the comic book encyclopedias or are this or that, so we’re interested in bringing this fresh perspective into our rooms.”

People have been approaching me because I’m a genre-driven creator, but I’m only attracted to a very particular type of genre. I’m not in the comic book, superhero, or video game space. I’m a sci-fi writer, but it’s also a specific kind of sci-fi. There are a lot of sub-genres within the giant umbrella. I’m the “Another Earth” flavor of sci-fi instead of “Battlestar Galactica”. I also do a lot of magical realism mixed with fantasy. But again, not all fantasy is cut from the same cloth. “Big Fish” and “Game Of Thrones” are on opposite ends of that scale. There, I’m “Beasts Of The Southern Wild” or “The Fall” type of fantasy, not “Lord Of The Rings”. My manager has said that a lot of my work is “Alex Garland meets Michael Gondry”. But somehow, I seem to be falling into worlds outside those fringes of sci-fi, fantasy, and magical realism because of my particular set of skills.

Scott: I’m sure it must be an interesting experience for you. Maybe even stretching you a bit as a writer?

Kryzz: Yeah, for sure. It’s interesting when you start getting those calls where it’s like, “I don’t do this type of stuff.” And their response is, “Yeah, but we think you’d be very good at it.”

Scott: I find that encouraging. I teach at film school and have interfaced with writers for many years now. Of course, I tell them that, they want people with a unique voice, with a distinctive voice, with an interesting voice. What you’re saying suggests that that’s actually true. I’m not feeding them a lie.

Kryzz: I keep running into “voice trumps all”. At least to a certain extent. That is until you get to the buyer level, then the buyer won’t take a risk because you’re “unproven”. They turn around and go with the white male showrunner or writer who’s been doing it for thirty years because the white guy has the “experience”. That’s how minorities never get the opportunity to move up the ladder. They stay “unproven” because no one will take a chance on them. That leaves a lot of voices and perspectives behind. It’s a missed opportunity.

Scott: Hopefully, that’s changing. Carve more of a path for yourself and other folks who are not white guys. And I say that speaking as a white guy. You’ve also directed a theatrical play. Is that right?

Kryzz: I did. That was an interesting experience. That play won an audience award at the theater festival it was a part of. It was the first and only play I’ve ever directed. Again, I was approached to do it out of the blue. Seems like a pattern here. [laughs] I didn’t seek it out, but that opportunity was compelling to me because when you do TV and film, you work on that for years, and years, and years before it even sees the light of day IF it sees the light of day. There’s no immediate gratification whatsoever. Even when it airs, or you put it out there somehow, you don’t get to hear the audience’s live response unless you’re sitting in the room or the theater with them, but for the most part, you don’t. You’re never there unless it’s the premiere, for example. With this play, I was in the theater amongst the audience for the couple of shows we did. You get to hear them laugh or gasp when they’re supposed to. It was a bit intoxicating to witness real-time responses and get to talk to the audience after the shows. It was gratifying as a director to get to have that immediate feedback. It’s honestly kind of thrilling.

Scott: Was that in New York or LA or…?

Kryzz: It was in LA.

Scott: LA. That’s right because it isn’t unless you’re doing standup comedy here.

Kryzz: Right. As a writer and a director in the typical mediums, you never get that rewarding moment of hearing people’s feedback in real time.

Scott: I guess the closest thing on TV is when they do the writer staff, people get on Twitter and write.

Kryzz: Yeah, when you do live tweeting sessions or something along those lines.

Scott: Let’s talk about your feature film script “Wheels Come Off,” which made the 2021 Black List. On the title page it says, “Inspired by this writer and her disabled mother making their way through an inaccessible world.” Then in parentheses, “Some apocalypse added for seasoning.” Now, you said you have a particular type of genre that interests you. Is this in that genre?

Kryzz: Oh, yeah. The way that I like to describe it is the post-apocalypse like you’ve never seen it before. It’s the end of the world, but it’s also magical realism. There’s the “Three Amigos,” who are this disabled mom, her sixteen-year-old daughter, and their AI robot.

They eventually meet up with a group of disabled kids, which you never get to see in the post-apocalypse. You have a deaf character, a blind character, someone with Down Syndrome, a young man with cerebral palsy, and someone with a missing limb. It’s disabled people surviving the apocalypse. It’s putting disabled characters front and center and as heroes in the story. You also have these very fantastical sequences. The whole thing is bright and colorful. The post-apocalypse tends to be gray, grim, and bleak. “Wheels Come Off” is nothing like that. It’s the “seasoning” added to the story.

Scott: That old saying, write what you know. Your mother is someone with a disability?

Kryzz: My mother has been in a wheelchair since the day that I was born. Yes.

Scott: That’s something you have an intimate connection and understanding of because of that experience. I’m assuming there was a considerable inspiration for this coming up with the story.

Kryzz: Yeah. The way all my scripts start, the way all my stories start, is with a question. Going through the pandemic and observing what was happening in 2020, I kept seeing people with disabilities being left out of the conversation. That community was constantly left behind. Even now, as the world has opened up again, I’m witnessing how disabled and immunocompromised people have been basically left to fend for themselves.

Once the world reopened, it was like, “We’re going back to normal. You guys just…fuck off.” In 2020 the tune was very similar. It was “Well, you lot figure it out. We’re going to do our thing. This is the priority and we’re not going to consider how people with disabilities will be affected by this lockdown.”

To this day, they continue to be left out of this conversation about how reopening or removing mask mandates will affect their lives. Knowing my mom is part of the group that has been incessantly jilted by society was jarring. I didn’t realize how it was festering inside me until I woke up one morning with this burning question inside my brain. It was, “What happens to the disabled community during the apocalypse?” This script was me trying to answer that question.

After the initial question pops up in my mind, the next step is deciding whether a project is a feature or a TV show. Then the thought process becomes, “Can I answer this question in two hours, or do I have to answer this question in thirty hours of television?” The response, in this case, was “I think I could answer this in two.” That’s how it became a feature. I ended up writing the script in six days. This project got into one of the Sundance programs. When I mentioned this at one of our sessions, one of the advisers responded with, “That’s because the script was inside you the whole time and it just poured out of you.”

A thing that’s always appealed to me is the complex relationship between a disabled parent and their child. The parent is supposed to take care of you, but you also end up being their caregiver. It’s a dynamic with a very cyclical nature, where it’s like, “What’s happening here? I’m taking care of you. You’re taking care of me. What’s going on? How do we navigate this?”

Interestingly enough, I wrote this the very last week of December 2020. Midnight struck on the 31st and I was at my computer furiously typing. That’s how my 2021 began. The feelings of seeing how people with disabilities were both overlooked and stigmatized sort of sat with me for an entire year and it seems to have all exploded over the holidays. The moment I finished it, I told myself: “This is never going to get made. No one is going to put money into a film about disabled people.” A month later, “CODA” premiered at Sundance. Then that thought transformed into “Ah, shit. No one is going to fund ANOTHER “disabled movie”.” You know how this industry goes. Minorities get one thing and everyone in charge believes that’s enough. But CODA has been so successful that I now see an apparent hunger for these kinds of stories. Everyone wants “the next CODA.” It’s ridiculous that maybe getting an Oscar is the only thing that motivates buyers and financiers to tell diverse stories about underserved communities but, whatever it takes, right? Bottom line is we need to be telling more of them. Now, instead of seeing CODA as the thing that would make it impossible to tell another “disabled family” story, I use it to my advantage.

Scott: The fact that CODA did so well, to me, if I put my development exec hat on, I’ll go, “That’s a plus.” It makes it safer as far as me pushing to green-light the project.” Let’s talk about the relationships in the script. You mentioned the Three Amigos. Let’s talk about those three key characters. I know Ella is shorthand for something, but how do I pronounce the protagonist’s name?

Kryzz: Manoella. Man-oh-ella. Sort of? Close. It’s pretty much Manuel with an “a” at the end. It’s the uncommon spelling of a Latino name, so not many people are familiar with it when they first look at it, but it’s what I was going to be called for a long time. My dad’s name is Manuel, so that’s what they were going to do. With this exact spelling. One of my parents lost a bet and that changed last minute. The script as a whole is insanely autobiographical. I figured I’d put that name to good use now. [laughs]

Scott: Manoella is the protagonist in the story. This is how you describe her in the script, this introduction.

“Manoella Cortez (Latina — 16 going on 54 — face looks older than it should, aged by years of misfortune) zig-zags while biking down barren streets. She may be a teenager, but she’s already racked up about seven decades worth of bullshit that’s made her grow up too fast, too soon. She takes it all in stride. It’s only made her more astute.” Where did this girl, this character, come from in your imagination?

Kryzz: I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that characters in the story are based on me, my mom, or my father. As I mentioned, this is kind of true to life but with significant creative liberties. It’s not directly my family and me, but it is deeply rooted in us, with a twist. It’s “write what you know” but heightened.

I won’t say it’s fully a self-insert, but it’s based on us and my experiences. It’s pulled from conversations I’ve had with my mom. It’s based on my family’s background. My dad undoubtedly doesn’t build robots. He was a financial executive. My mom did work at my dad’s company. There’s a close to thirty-year difference between them. My dad was married until I was about seven. He has three older children. My mom has been in a wheelchair since the day that I was born. Most of the foundational truths of the story are pulled from my life.

Then there are things like the fact that we lived in a two-story house when I was growing up. My dad predictably lived with his wife and children. My mom had caregivers that would leave at around 6:00 PM. At that point, we would be alone from 6:00 PM until 6:00 AM, when someone would come to take care of her again. The kitchen and everything else in the house was on the first floor. I would be my mom’s connection to the rest of the world for about twelve hours. I was the only assistance she had from when they left until the following day. If she needed anything, it would be five, six, or seven-year-old me doing it.

On more than one occasion, my mom fell out of bed, or something happened when no one else was there. It was only me with no upper body strength to speak of left there to try and figure out how to get my mom back up on the mattress because no one was there to help us.

It would be a two or three hours endeavor for us. Like, “How do we do this? You get a chair here. Get a chair from the living room or get this thing. How do we figure it out?” There was no pulley system or skates like in the film. There weren’t any inventive feats of engineering mechanics just lying around. I had to get ingenious when it came to “How do we get you from here to here?” I couldn’t pull her up to the bed myself. It was a process. We had to get creative with it. The two of us had no choice but to figure it out. When I got her back on the bed, it would be like, “Cool. I’m going to go get a juice box now and go watch ‘Barney.’” [laughs] I would go back to being a kid. I would also go back to disconnecting from the world and have these crazy fantasies of the world exploding, me navigating a submarine, or something along those lines. I’d use these vivid fantasies of me going into these different worlds as escapism. I had notebooks filled with these insane stories of everything I was doing in my head. I was a writer even back then.

This script is my life story, except it’s set in a different universe.

Scott: There’s such an interesting, emotionally evocative, and complex relationship between these characters. It’s like, at any given moment, who’s the parent? Let’s talk about Carla, the mom. Here’s how you describe her when you introduce her in the script. This is right after one of Manoella’s fantasies.

“Real life Carla Nuñez (36) stares from bed. This Carla is more worn than who we saw in the retro fantasy. She may be tattered on the outside, but she has raging lightning storms behind her eyes and more will to live than anyone you’ve ever met.”

Does that describe your mom pretty well?

Kryzz: Yeah. My mom was a twenty-three-year-old dancer who went in for a routine C-section and came out paraplegic. Suddenly, she found herself disabled and with a newborn. She said, “I’m not going to let this defeat me. I’m just not going to let this knock me down. This isn’t going to break me. I have a kid. This won’t stop me from giving her a normal life.” She has more will to live than anyone you’ve ever met. Even in a wheelchair, she became as independent as she could.

To this day, she’s always color matching from head to toe. She will not leave the house unless she has a beat face. Hair blown out every day. There is no difference between her and someone who’s not in a wheelchair. She has never let her disability stop her. She was at every bake sale and every school event. She never allowed me to feel the difference between her and every other mom. I saw plenty of parents who did less than her when I was at school, and my mom was the one in a wheelchair. That’s why I describe Carla the way that I do in the script. It’s because my mom legitimately has more fire in her than a lot of women who haven’t gone through half of the things I’ve seen my mother go through.

Scott: At one point, you describe their little bedroom. “This tiny one-bedroom is a showcase of Manoella’s ingenuity. Everything is stored at wheelchair height and what can’t be is MacGyvered into being accessible regardless.” I was curious about how much research you did. Some of that, I would assume, comes from dealing with your mom in real life, but when you’re extrapolating yourself to the 2060s in the world’s had this post-apocalyptic environment, you had some really cool jerry-rigged things. Did you do much in the way of research? Did that spill out of you naturally in terms of those gizmos and things that she was good at?

Kryzz: I’m familiar with a lot of the things made for people with disabilities. For example, I’m aware of the pulley systems to get them in and out of a bathtub. My mom has never had one, but I’ve seen them, and I know exactly how they work. Throughout the years, I’ve also thought a lot about it. When you’re the child of a disabled parent, your brain is simply wired differently.

Ever since I was four years old, I don’t remember ever being with my mom and not walking into a room without clocking where the exits are. Whenever I’m with her, the thing always at the forefront of my mind is, “How do I get my mom out of here if something goes wrong?” Those are some of the earliest memories I have. I recall being tiny and scouting rooms for the quickest escape routes. My mom taught me how to read pretty early and I remember sometime around the same age of four or five, seeing that elevators have that sign that says, “Take the stairs in case of fire.” That was wildly concerning to little me because if there’s a fire, how the hell do we get downstairs if we can’t use the elevator? “She can’t go down the stairs!” It’s not normal for a child to be forced to think about that all the time.

When writing about what this apartment set looks like, I didn’t have to rely on research because I’ve been ruminating on creative ways to circumvent problems with my mom for years. I have genuinely asked myself, “if the world ended and my mom’s wheelchair broke, could I put her on skates and drag her around to keep her mobile?”. Those are the random things I think about at night when I can’t sleep. [laughs]

Scott: It’s so interesting to put this couple, this mother and daughter, in a post-apocalyptic environment where these issues are even more pronounced. I would imagine then, we tend to be not terribly sensitive to this issue anyhow. I would think that it would be even more problematic in an environment like that. Right?

Kryzz: Right. Of course.

Scott: That’s part of the grand thought experiment. I think like you were saying: “What would happen to the disabled community in the apocalypse?” Before we move on to the third of the Three Amigos, Tony the robot, I do want to talk about Manoella, a writer with these journals.

You mentioned earlier that we tend to think of apocalyptic movies as gray and gloomy, but because she’s got such an incredible imagination, we dip into, I don’t know, eight or nine fantasies maybe?

Kryzz: I haven’t counted, but I think there might be more than that.

Scott: It’s a lot.

Kryzz: You guys got a much older version of the script than the one that already existed when the Black List got announced. There’s more at this point in the latest version. There are probably a dozen now. Guesstimating.

Scott: Each one is a kind of mini-sequence and they’re effective. First of all, you’re learning about our internal world, which is excellent. It’s a great way to visualize that, but the divergence, the diversity of these stories. Maybe you could talk a bit about that. I know you’ve got a great imagination, clearly.

It’s visible in your writing and in talking with you. The decision to say, “You know what, this is going to be a part of the story.” Was that natural flow, or were you saying, “I think this will be a cool thing to do to make the apocalyptic world different?”

Kryzz: It was, one, to make the world different. Two, this is a story that I strived to have well rooted in myself, my mother, our experiences together, and what that dynamic would look like if we were navigating the post-apocalypse. Stemming from that central idea, the script had to revolve around what sixteen-year-old me would do in the off time between when chaotic things happen in the apocalypse. I would for sure be going into my head and having these wild fantasies. I knew that had to be a part of it. That had to color and texture the world.

When you’re living through such harsh conditions, you have to remove yourself from it. You have to. Even if temporarily. That’s why during the pandemic, things like TikTok took off. People are always looking for escapism. What will you look for when you don’t have the Internet and when you don’t have anything else to do? Manoella has TikTok in her mind. [laughs] Basically, she has an integrated Internet in her brain. She’s her own escapism. With her fantasies, she’s transporting herself into these very elaborate worlds she’s crafting.

That’s her version of theater, TV, movies, and video games. It’s not just entertaining herself. It’s how she keeps herself sane.

Scott: Her situation is exacerbated by the fact that it’s just the three of them for the first twenty-five pages or so.

Kryzz: For eight years, it’s been the three of them. She’s genuinely had no one but her adult mother and a robot to keep her company between when the world ended when she was eight and now at sixteen. She hasn’t had another child or a teenager around. No one to commiserate with. Only herself.

You can see the craving for company. It’s not the first, but one of the first fantasies we see is basically what amounts to a high school party sequence but set in the 1920s. It’s a period fantasy, but it’s a high school party at the end of the day. And she meets a girl there. You can infer pretty quickly that at this point in her life, one of her deepest desires is to be around kids her age, party a little, and have a girlfriend. That’s all she wants to experience.

Scott: Let’s talk about that third character, Tony, a robot. “From the bag on her shoulder, we see Tony.” This is how Tony is introduced. “A two-foot robot with the same expressive abilities as Wall-E but ranking even higher on the lovable scale” That would be interesting to see because Wally is pretty lovable. “He peeks his head out, looking curiously at the world zipping by.” Where did Tony come from in your imagination? I assume you didn’t have one around your apartment. [laughs]

Kryzz: I did not. [laughs] He came to be because, as a writer, I don’t think everything can always be serious. I’m not the person who wants to write straight drama. I can, but it’s not what I prefer. Even when I’m writing dramatic genre scripts, I still strive to give the audience respite. You must have a storyline or character that brings the comedy in some way or gives the viewers a bit of an intermission from the heaviness. I always find ways to insert a character that can be a breath of fresh air. And, as I said, I’m a sci-fi person. There had to be some technology element in there somewhere. There had to be a fun little robot.

Scott: Practically speaking, as a screenwriter, you also need somebody she can talk to when she’s not around Carla, right?

Kryzz: Right. Exactly. She needed a sidekick. She needed the person, or in this case the thing, that helped not to have it all be internal. She had to have something she could bounce ideas from and externalize feelings and thoughts to.

Scott: If it were a novel, maybe, you could go outside of that, but not in a TV or movie. Let’s talk about the nemesis character. You did an interesting thing with this character. You said, “Erick Hanes (30s — white, skinny but menacing, tattooed, his ring and little fingers were sloppily cut off years ago, always whistling the tune of The Killer’s “Mr. Brightside”) stands in the back and taps between one of the thief’s hands.”

He’s disabled. Where did Erick come from by the end of this story process?

Kryzz: The origin of Erick, well, people close to my family will know where he came from, but I won’t put anyone on blast. [laughs] There’s a connection between Erick and my family. Everyone in the story has one. Manoella needed an antagonist and she needed someone that was going to challenge her. I didn’t want it to be someone who was ever-present because, if you can tell, Erick isn’t “The Big Bad”. He’s not there all the time.

To me, the big challenge and conflict of the film is the wheelchair breaking, but you still needed a “bad guy”. If it were up to me, I never would’ve written a person as a problem they need to confront, but I was hyper-aware that note would be coming from execs, producers, buyers, etc. I got ahead of it. Hollywood has conditioned audiences to believe every movie needs a threatening, tangible, human antagonist. I would’ve preferred to solely have the challenge of the wheelchair. If this were my tenth feature and I had free reign, that would’ve been the journey I would’ve stuck to.

That being said, I feel like The Wheelers are good foes to Manoella at the end of the day. I’m fine with her having someone to butt heads with. Erick challenges her in an exciting way. He forces her to show how witty, resourceful, and intelligent she is without it being heavy-handed.

Scott: Let’s talk about Ari. “18, talks fast, feels deep, fully open to the world.” The wheelchair breaks. Fixing things, that’s the goal, but along the way, they run into this found family. They bump into this group of people that, as you were saying, each of them has their own disability. Except for Ari. That’s a wonderful relationship that emerges in a nuanced way between her and Manoella. Where did Ari come from for you and how did that character develop?

Kryzz: Ari is derived from a dear, dear relationship I had in my mid-twenties. She’s based on someone that was and still is very special to me. It’s all about that innocent but earnest and complex connections you can form with someone in a very short period of time. Those can be very real, profoundly human, and intensely life-changing.

I included a character like Ari because I wanted to see Manoella in a quasi-relationship. Of course, we never see it “be a relationship” outright because they’re together for a limited amount of time, but we get to see what could be. There’s an undeniable connection there and clear undertones of profound feelings between them. You can fall in love with someone without ever having to directly address it, because they do fall in love and don’t even realize it. They don’t have to verbalize it, but it’s there. Their bond is honest and they’re present for each other. They risk things for each other, have candid conversations, and push each other when needed. Manoella feels it’s safe to go to Ari when she needs to. It’s rightly painful when they have to separate. Ultimately, I wanted to have a queer relationship in the story that wasn’t about coming out. There’s never a big “Oh my God, I’m gay!” moment in this movie, but it’s still a queer coming-of-age story.

Even the actress playing Manoella, because we already have someone attached to play her, has commented on how not having a big gay realization moment is one of the things she loves the most. At this point, I believe we’re over coming out stories. Manoella is queer, but the movie is not about her being queer. She’s openly gay, but we never dwell on that fact. It’s not “a thing”.

Carla and Manoella do have a conversation addressing Manoella’s queerness, so it’s not like it’s unspoken either. It’s when they both acknowledge they’re on the queer spectrum and then move right along. Carla says something along the lines of “I also dated a girl back in high school.” It’s a beautiful, nuanced moment between them.

Scott: That’s one of those, I guess unconventional things is that it is so subtle. A lot of it, the bonding that you see, the tightening of the relationship is described through action. That there’s this seamless way to how they work together. They’re in sync with each other.

Manoella’s got this relationship with her mom. That obviously is critically important, but in a way, that’s not going to allow her to have her path. Ari represents that. Is that fair? The future, her own journey?

Kryzz: Absolutely. Manoella doesn’t have to lose Carla to find herself. That’s not the characterization I’m trying to make or the story I’m trying to tell. I don’t believe that’s true for a second. But Manoella’s future and her “coming of age” is with Ari and that gang. That’s where her journey starts.

Scott: It’s almost like the end is the beginning. Right?

Kryzz: Right. A writer friend who read it said I could write a show that picks up where the movie ends. [laughs]

Scott: One of the fantasies that Manoella has is her father’s like the moon. They have an exchange. I want to ask you if I was on target with this. The moon says to her at one point, “The more you let it drag you, the further you will go from where you want to be.” Then “The comet drags Manoella further, but Erick is only a few feet away from her now.” There’s a whole thing going on. The moon says, “Let go.” I was wondering whether that’s almost a message to Manoella that she does need to free herself in some respects in order to allow herself the freedom to go forward. Is there anything there, or am I misreading that?

Kryzz: You’re on the money. There’s a lot that she’s holding onto in terms of her father and that relationship. There’s a lot of baggage with her dad in general. When she gets to his house, we see this hero worship that she’s starting to unshackle herself from. She comes to terms with the fact that the man she saw him as is not the man he actually is. She had a twisted perception of him and how things went down. At one point, Carla checks her and tells her something along the lines of “You’re misremembering how all of this went down. That wasn’t as pretty as you recall.” Manoella has to have a come to Jesus moment. She has to confront the idea that maybe he wasn’t as perfect as she thought. The version of him she clung to was a fantasy, much like all the other vivid ones she has. From that moment on, she comes to terms with needing to let all these things with her dad go.

Scott: That probably served her in surviving when she was younger psychologically, but now time to move on.

Kryzz: Very much so. Then, she closes that door when she walks away from his house. That entire past. She leaves everything behind there.

Scott: It’s a terrific script. I’m so happy that it’s set up. I hope that it gets made. You said you wrote this in December 2020. A year later, you were following the Black List rollout on Monday, December 13th.

Kryzz: Thank you! I was. It was a shocking surprise. I wasn’t necessarily expecting it. I was sitting there, secretly hoping but with zero expectations. I was like, “Oh God.” Then I saw the ticker go by the screen, and I said, “Holy shit! I’m on The Black List!” out loud. [laughs]

Scott: [laughs] I hope that you felt a sense of pride or vindication or whatever, some sense of satisfaction out of that.

Kryzz: To get it on this script?

Scott: Yeah, this script.

Kryzz: Yeah. On this one, it feels very, very, very special.

Scott: Okay, a few craft questions. Generally speaking, how do you come up with story ideas?

Kryzz: As I mentioned earlier, they all are born from a question. A random one pops in my mind and I suddenly crave to find the answer. That tends to come with, “Okay, well, how do you populate this world? Who are the characters who will lead the journey to find this answer? What world will offer the most effective canvas to find said answer?” That’s pretty much how I deconstruct it.

I also mentioned this before, but, “Am I going to find this answer in two hours, or will I find this answer in ten hours? How long is this road?” It always starts with a question and that leads to thirty-seven other questions. [laughs]

Scott: Maybe that instinct is back with thirteen-year-old Kryzz, “How do I get to Emerson’s? How do I set myself up to go to Emerson? What do I do to shape myself to be the perfect student?”

Kryzz: I’m inquisitive. I have OCD and severe ADHD. I have a million things running through my mind at all times, but I’m also somehow very methodical about how I manage those thoughts. I’m extremely neurodivergent. I go on very, very intense research spirals when I’m hyperfixating on something. Now, when you put it that way, it’s not surprising that it all starts with questions.

Scott: You say you wrote this script in five days, you go to Sundance, and the person says to you, “Well, you had that in you all along.” Did you have to break story for this? Maybe a better question is, what do you do? If you’re writing for TV, I assume you’re busting outlines and stuff like that. What is your process of breaking story?

Kryzz: I’m a speedy writer. I don’t do outlines. I don’t do treatments. I just sit and start writing the script. I dive right in. Typically, I can write the first draft of a pilot in days. My last hour-long, I also wrote in six days. I’ll wake up with a question or an idea, and I’ll sit down and won’t stop until I get it all out of my system. The first draft will pour out of me. Then I’ll go on to polish.

Scott: Let me ask you, have you ever done an outline?

Kryzz: No. [laughs]

Scott: I know people who’ve tried it. They say, “It just sucks the creativity out of me.”

Kryzz: Mhmm. Definitely my case. My brain doesn’t work like that.

Scott: I remember reading a quote by Mike Arndt. He said he wrote “Little Miss Sunshine” in four days and then spent a year rewriting it. When you knock out your first draft, is it more like Hemingway, first draft and that’s it? He basically was done.

Kryzz: I can write so many scripts in a year. [laughs] Last year, I wrote something like four pilots, two features, and three decks that are series to take out as just pitches. That’s kind of a decent example of my average yearly output. Are they all masterpieces that I’ll sell in the room and will get made? Nah. But at least I’m always writing. Some of those stick, most don’t. We kind of have to make peace with that as writers.

As far as number of drafts, it really depends. It’s never taken me a year but maybe five drafts. Four or five. Some, I have it in two. But I’d say about five is a pretty truthful number. And again, fast writer, so I can crank out five drafts in maybe a month. Or less. At that point, it just really depends how fast your friends give you notes. You’re at the mercy of other people getting back to you with thoughts.

A thing to note, though, is that one of the keys to being a writer is you need to know when to stop. I have a show set up at a studio right now. I wrote the first draft of that in five days. Currently, in the development process, we’re up to draft nineteen or twenty. Not my choice. [laughs] When other people get involved, it becomes a different beast. Development hell is real. The version of the pilot they bought was something I was immensely proud of. It’s one of the best pilots I’ve ever written. I was so, so, so delighted with where it was. Now, not so much. What I’m trying to say is…more drafts don’t mean better writing.

Scott: When you say fast writer, you sit down for ten hours, twelve hours, fourteen hours at a time. How does that work?

Kryzz: When I get notes, I can do a rewrite in maybe six or eight hours. If it’s a pilot. Give me twelve or fourteen if it’s a feature.

Scott: Wow. That’s pretty amazing, Kryzz. It really is. How do the characters emerge?

Kryzz: I tend to also write based on people that I know. Gets me in trouble sometimes. [laughs] I write from very personal relationships. Again, “write what you know” is one of my most prevalent guiding lights as a writer. It sounds corny, I’m aware. I do think that truthfulness is essential in storytelling. Even the most fantastical scripts have a truth they’re trying to get at. I anchor my “truths” on things I’ve lived.

I might write it as a sci-fi set 200 years in the future, and I’ll certainly take some creative liberties, but at its core, I’ll pull from situations I’ve experienced. I’ll draw from the emotions of what I’ve gone through. Fictional truths are built around my truths. But with a genre spin. People that shared those moments with me have recognized it and themselves in my work. It hasn’t always gone well.

Scott: What about theme? If you even think about it. You write so intuitively, it seems like. Do you even think about central theme or subthemes? Does that stuff ever populate your consciousness?

Kryzz: Never. The funny thing is when I say that, it doesn’t even make sense to people. My severe ADHD is why it’s hard for me to grasp abstract concepts most of the time. It makes me sound so stupid when I say it out loud. [laughs] For example, I’ve never been able to understand theoretical concepts of grammar. I can’t for the life of me understand that stuff, but I’m a really, really good writer. I was always top of the class in creative writing, but please don’t ask me to explain what a subordinate conjunction is. I can probably write a perfect one. I’m assuming. [laughs] If you put a gun to my head and threatened to shoot if I can’t break down what a clause is, I’d tell you to pull the trigger. My brain can’t process information like that for some reason. It’s kinda the same with the “rules of screenwriting”. I just write. I’ve tried reading “Story” by Robert McGee, but it’s a dense fucking book. It’s five hundred pages. I had to quit like two hundred pages in.

Words get mixed in my head and don’t stick. I’m not dyslexic, but I’m…something. [laughs] I’m a visual and tactile learner, so when you talk to me about things I can’t see or touch, it’s going to go in one ear and out the other. I can’t do “rules” of anything. It’s why I’m terrible at math and science. I open Final Draft and the writing simply comes. Dialogue is my strength. Writing character is my strength. Themes don’t even cross my mind. They honestly don’t. I write to answer questions. I write characters. I write the truth that I think will resonate with the story and these characters.

Scott: I tell my students I say, “Look, each one of you has heard, read, or seen tens of thousands of stories in your life. You bring an intuitive understanding of story.” The screenplay, all this mystery about screenplays and screenwriting, no, it’s really telling a story. It’s in a specific format or whatnot. People get hung up on that bullshit, but it’s a story. Right?

Kryzz: Right. I’m a highly intuitive writer. I only follow my gut. I’ve always been that way, no matter the medium, whether it’s prose or script. I’m not a formulaic writer. I’m not a “structure” writer. I perch myself in front of my computer and type. Once I put that first draft on paper, I go to the friends who are masters at structure and ask, “Does this work?”. The vast majority of times, it’s nearly there or already there. How do I do it? Don’t ask me. It was built into me innately somehow.

Scott: You follow your curiosity, you know your process. Don’t mess with it.

Kryzz: I have all the quintessential screenplay books. They’re on my bookshelf. I’ve tried reading them. They all say, “By page ten, you must have sent your hero on the journey. By page fifteen, they have to have done this.” I’m like, “No, that’s not what works for me. I’m going to open Final Draft and my hero will go on the journey when it feels right to me for them to go off on it.”

If that type of rigid, “Save The Cat” structure works for you and you want to do that, then by all means, please, but that’s not how writing goes for me. Hasn’t failed me thus far. Not fixing what ain’t broken. [laughs]

Scott: As long as the reader is engaged and involved in these characters’ lives, screw the rules. Does that seem like a fair take?

Kryzz: Yeah. I have this conversation all the time. I even got a note on the Black List script that was like, “They go on the journey too late.” My response was along the lines of, “Listen, their world is about to be turned upside down when this wheelchair breaks. I need people to understand what their existence used to be like, for them to grasp how devastating it is when this wheelchair is not a thing they can rely on anymore. I can’t do that in ten pages. I can’t do that in fifteen pages. I need to establish a routine and what life was like prior to this event so that the audience can actually mourn these losses later.” It was a very intentional decision to take my time with that “before” so that the “after” has weight.

Scott: That’s speaking to making that emotional connection so that we bond with Manoella and Carla.

Kryzz: They can’t be out on the street by page fifteen because then you don’t care that the wheelchair is not in play anymore. The life that they’d settled into for eight years crumbles when that happens. We need to have a deep understanding of what their day-to-day looked like before we quite literally break it and burn it.

Scott: One final question. What advice would you offer to people who are aspiring screenwriters and they’re trying to figure it out? What advice do you have for them?

Kryzz: Learn the rules to break the rules. Over a decade into this, I now have a firm grasp of good storytelling, so I can freely say, “fuck the rules”. I can think, “No, I’m not going to have my hero leave by page ten in this story. That to me makes no sense.” On the other hand, you need to understand the limits to straying away from the path. I’ve seen screenwriters not have the hero start their journey until page sixty. That’s because they have a fundamental misconception of what a screenplay is supposed to be. You have to understand what makes a lousy screenplay in order to write a good screenplay. Have a solid discernment of what great storytelling is before you go chucking it all out the window.

For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.