Go Into The Story Interview: Max Taxe

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for his script Ripple.

Max Taxe wrote the screenplay Ripple which landed on the 2022 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Max about his creative background, writing a Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Scott Myers: You’re from the Los Angeles area, yes?

Max Taxe: Yeah, I have the most boring backstory. I’m from LA, then went to USC, and stayed here. I lived vicariously through everyone else.

Scott: BFA in screenwriting?

Max: Yeah, I went for undergrad. I was in the screenwriting program. We had 24 people in my class, and you’re with those same people for all four years, so you all get pretty close.

Scott: Are you still in touch with them?

Max: With a good amount of them. I was lucky to be in a class of just kind, low-key people. We all started at a weird, interesting moment in the world and in the industry. My freshman year was in 2007. So we had the writers’ strike, right as the landscape was changing. Then in 2008, the financial crisis changed everything.

We were, I think, the last class that went into film school…not naive, but with a little more of the idea that you can go to college and explore and figure out if you even like this, if this is right for you, whereas now… I don’t know if I would’ve jumped right into this incredibly specific film program, if I would’ve taken that very, very expensive gamble, just because I loved to write and loved movies. If I started college, like, two years later, who knows if I would’ve felt that freedom to take that risk.

Scott: I think if I’m not mistaken, wasn’t Tom Benedict one of your instructors?

Max: Yeah! I had him my sophomore year. He taught the class where you wrote your first full‑length feature. He was the best, he taught me everything — all the fundamentals I know about structure and sequences and all of that come straight from him. I think I bugged the hell out of him too. I remember meeting with him outside of class once, asking him like “let’s get deeper into this, let’s break down everything I did wrong in that script” and he was like “you’re 19, this is your first script, give yourself a break.”

Scott: Tom was the first screenwriter I met in LA.

Max: Oh, no way.

Scott: When I sold K‑9, I got an office at Universal, and his office was down the hall. Actually, his brother, Peter Benedict, was my first agent. Tom and I have known each other ever since.

Max: He’s fantastic.

Scott: Of course, he wrote the movie Cocoon, which is amazing.

Max: Perfect.

Scott: In addition to film school, were there any other resources you used to learn the craft?

Max: I feel like I’ve tried everything and anything. When I went to film school, I immediately felt behind. I loved movies, I loved writing, but… These were all people who had been writing scripts for years already, who knew what they were doing, and I felt so out of my depths. They sent this list of movies to watch before freshman year, and I had seen, like, ten of them. So I spent all summer watching movies, three a day, running to Hollywood Video every single morning to get more. Doing that was my first real resource, just watching everything.

I don’t recommend it, but I read every book on screenwriting, every book on structure. I was desperate to figure it out. You quickly realize you can disregard everything those books say, but each one had one or two things that stuck with me, that felt right. I took what felt right, tossed the rest. Your book would’ve been a godsend during that stretch.

But the main thing I did, I think my main resource, the most informative one at least, was breaking down movies. I still have all these documents where I outlined every movie that I loved, and movies that felt like research for whatever I was trying to write. It forced me to really look at why the movie was put together the way it was, how it was paced, how they doled out plot, and character, and everything in between. It was a great way to dig into structure. I did the same thing with scripts that I was able to get my hands on at the time.

I could keep going back to those documents while writing my own stuff and go… Why did that work, but mine’s a mess? It let me be a bit academic about the whole process, which made it feel graspable.

That’s something I still do, to an extent. I’m not breaking down a movie scene by scene, but… Every time I start a new project, I feel like I’m starting from scratch, I feel like I have no idea what I’m doing, that I’ve never written before, and if I don’t figure this out fast, they’ll realize they paid the wrong guy. So I still watch movies, study them, read what I can, give notes on friends’ projects, and try to keep learning. I don’t think there’s ever an end to that.

All that just buys me freedom in the end. I end up working on the structure, the big picture stuff, in that same academic way, so that I can really mess around, play with the characters, and not worry about the whole thing coming undone.

Scott: When William Goldman says, “Screenplays are structure,” there’s truth to that. Like you were saying, once you can get a handle on that, then you can immerse yourself in the lives of the characters.

Max: For me, it’s almost a safeguard for me to not spin out, because it’s like once I have the structure in place, well, that’s what I have. That’s my playground. That’s why I get obsessive about structure theme. I still like to give myself the latitude to be wrong, to follow paths that end up leading me to the entirely wrong place, but…

Once I’ve made the decisions, and put down the parameters, here’s the structure, here’s the theme, here are the characters, all three are bound together, then I don’t have a million other decisions to make. I have ten decisions, I have five, I have… You’re in this box now. So explore that. Some of it is just to keep myself sane, of course, and drive myself insane later when I decide to take a sledgehammer to it, but… It’s helpful early on to give myself some internal rules to follow. Otherwise, I could chase stray ideas and thoughts forever and never write an actual draft.

Scott: That actually reminds me of there’s an anecdote about Igor Stravinsky, the great neoclassical composer, who would break all sorts of compositional rules.

He was teaching a class and one of the students said, “Maestro, don’t you feel restricted by composing on the piano, the eighty-eight keys? Doesn’t that inhibit your creativity?”

He said, “No, it’s the exact opposite. That gives me the structure. I don’t have to worry about anything beyond that. I’ve got those eighty-eight keys and that within that playground, like you were saying, I can do anything I want.”

Max: Yes. My parents were big on Billy Wilder, and those… His movies aged so well. And they’re so perfectly structured in a way that let him be free to go to some surprising places that still felt of the piece. You never look at The Apartment and go like, “Man, they really had to rein it in.” You’re like, “No, they used the form perfectly and went to some dark places, went to some great places.” It’s because of that mastery that it just felt so natural.

All of his [Wilder] movies, even look at the ones that were more overlooked, like Ace in the Hole and those kind of movies. You had to be a master of that craft to get into the nuance they had, and that was 60, 70 years ago in some cases.

Scott: Yeah, they’re doing a retrospective here in Chicago at the Music Box Theater, which is our beautiful old theater. They’re doing a Billy Wilder retrospective. In fact, on New Year’s Day, I went to see The Apartment…

Max: Oh, that’s so nice.

Scott: My favorite movie.

Max: Mine too.

Scott: Wilder talks about how a really good screenplay will hide those structural points.

Max: I’m a sports obsessive and I talk about sports in the same way. When I was a kid watching Kobe or Tony Hawk or any athlete, they always made it so easy and — seamless — and you know it’s not, because you’d go try to shoot a fadeaway or a kickflip or whatever and it wouldn’t quite work, not like them. Because they drilled the basics, the footwork, the balance, for so long first. That’s — the long way of saying that I feel the same way about structure. It’s the unseen work that lets you do all the flashier stuff.

It’s also the same thing when you watch Spielberg’s camera movements. They’re so effortless, but — well, his might actually just be genius, but — he’s done it so many times, he’s put in the work, that it feels simpler than it is. Like, you just hope to get your reps in so you can pull it off that level of expertise once. Just once, that’s all I ask. [laughs]

Scott: I don’t know, Max. Your writing is pretty damn good. In fact, you made the Black List before in 2012 with “Goodbye, Felix Chester.” Here’s a plot summary.

After finding out he has a month left to live, high school junior Felix Chester focuses all his time and energy on one goal, losing his virginity to his dream girl.

What can you tell us about that project, the inspiration for it…?

Max: That was one where I came from just the simple question of if I was… I may be too obsessed with my own death in Harold & Maude kind of way. I wrote this towards the end of college and kept refining it after. If I were to find out I had a month left to live when I was a teenager, honestly, what would my goals be? [laughs]

It became where, obviously, it’s not really about him trying to lose his virginity. It’s about wanting to find love, and learning to appreciate the love that he has already in his life. I was trying to hit some real emotional beats that, especially at the time of my writing, I hadn’t really risked enough to go to some places that were a lot more nakedly emotional, and seeing if I could pull that off, and still keep up the comedy.

It was one where I went in hoping to make those, around the time of Juno and those kind of movies, my version of that. It was the first time that I felt like my voice was in a script. I had written other scripts before that, but it was the first time I felt like this is a glimpse at to the writer I wanted to be.

I think that’s why that became my first script that, like, that’s the one that got me my first managers and agents and got on the Black List, thanks to a couple people that responded to my voice and really, really fought for it.

We almost got it made it in 2016. We were days out from production with indie financing that, in retrospect, had a lot of red flags. It just fell apart. It’s free now, but… I still have a lot of love for that script, I’ll keep fighting for it to get made.

Scott: You also had another project, I think, which did get produced. Moonshot, is that right?

Max: Yeah. Moonshot came out last year. Last year? Yeah. Messing up my years. It was with Berlanti Productions, and Entertainment 360, my managers. It came out on HBO Max, and then — they took it off HBO Max. It was one of those ones that got… It’s still available on iTunes and on every Delta flight, so I’ve been told.

It started as a spec that I wrote when I went and got new managers. I wanted to hit the reset button a bit when I went over to them and get back to writing what I loved. And that was the first script we worked on together.

And my manager, Jill, had this whole game plan for it when we decided that would be my next project. She was like “you’re gonna write the spec, then we’re going to give it to Berlanti, they’re going to love it, and then you’ll use that as an opportunity to pitch them this TV idea of yours,” which is…exactly what happened. They came on board for Moonshot, and we worked on this other pilot for a while too. It was all my manager’s master plan, so she gets all the credit.

And then, you know, they took it a step further and got Moonshot made. Chris Winterbauer directed it. They were in production right as the Delta variant kicked into gear. I don’t think they’ll ever get enough credit for how they handled that whole situation. They did a great job.

Scott: It’s got a romance story at the heart of it, right?

Max: Yeah, I love that movie, The Sure Thing, that John Cusack, Rob Reiner movie. That very simple, It Happened One Night structure. So Moonshot was in that kind of tradition, but…if the love of your life was one of the early inhabitants of a newly terraformed Mars, and you were still on Earth.

When I wrote it, I was coming off of so many projects in a row that centered on death and dying or subjects that definitely had some real…emotional gravity. Even if they weren’t straight up dramas. So I wanted, consciously or not, I’m still not entirely sure, I just wanted something that was pure fun. There are still serious moments in the movie, in all versions, all the drafts, but the goal was a pleasant, good time the whole way through.

I started the first draft in 2018, so we were in the thick of the Trump years. So I think I needed that genuine escapism. Then, obviously, we got into the COVID years, and it felt even more important, beyond just me personally, to do somewhere where we’re like “let’s just be happy for a minute, let’s just pretend.”

Scott: Well, that leads us to “Ripple,” which is the script that made the 2022 Black List. I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed reading it.

Max: Thank you!

Scott: For a person who loves movies like I do, it’s like an homage. I mean this in the best way. I kept saying, “God, this reminds me of… this reminds me of… this reminds me of.”

Frankly, everything’s come before. All stories have been told before. Hollywood has operated in that similar, but different mindset forever. I do want to talk to you about several films that came to mind as I was reading this. Here’s a plot summary.

“When a time traveler starts meddling with the past, just as Miles finally meets the love of his life, he must battle ever‑shifting timelines to find her again.”

As I understand it, I think this started as a short story, is that right?

Max: Yeah, I wrote this as a short story in 2019. It was one of these ideas that I loved and really felt like it was punching above my weight in terms of — I couldn’t go out and pitch this movie because no one would have bought it from me. It was a little too complicated. And I was in the process of pitching a show around and then, later, writing it for ABC, so it didn’t feel like the right time to spec it either, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it and talking about it.

My managers were smart enough to be like, “We know that you’re not going to shut up about this. We respect that you love it. You have two options: wait until you have the power or the relationships to will this into being, or…just get it out of your head, write it as a short story and we’ll put it in a drawer.’”

I think on some level they were being like, “maybe this will get him to just stop talking and move on to the next thing that’s easier to sell.” I wrote it, just to write it and make it a thing that stood out on its own merits, not as a means to anything else, and really enjoyed it and then we…put it in a drawer. They didn’t send it out. I didn’t send it out. I was circling certain producers to maybe bring it up to if the opportunity arose.

When I met with 21 Laps. I love their work in general, but also Arrival felt like totally the right thing, you know. Also adapted from a short story. I really connected with their execs and brought this up, kind of on a wish and a prayer, and they jumped on it. They’ve been incredible partners beginning to end. Or not end, we’re not done yet, but beginning to…wherever we are now.

We sold it to Netflix originally. We have it back now, and we’re getting all the attachments and what not to then bring it back out. We’re in the middle of something fun.

Scott: Netflix going through their whole whatever business trauma…

Max: That’s the benefit of working with producers like 21 Laps. They have such a good relationship there because Stranger Things and Adam Project and a million other things that they were able to have an honest conversation and it cleared the way for us to get the project back.

It could still go back there. There’s a lot of nuance to us getting it back, but, you know, we’ll see. It’s exciting when there’s open road again on a project, the possibilities feel endless for a second.

My one thing has become every time I start a project, I think, “am I going to be happy with this when I’m talking about it 10 years from now, still working on it?” Because that’s just how it feels in movies. They take so long, they have so many lives. And this is one where I’ll gladly take as long as it takes.

Scott: Let’s talk about the story. I love the relationship between these two characters, and so let’s talk about them. First of all, Miles. He’s our protagonist, 35 years old, I think, at the beginning. How would you describe him, his state of life or state of being at the beginning of the story?

Max: He’s stuck in the past. He’s someone who, as we’ll find out, has recently gone through a terrible breakup where he was with someone for nine years, the bulk of his adult life. He thought that was the last relationship he would ever have until she cheated on him and kind of blew it up.

He felt that was an indictment of who he was, someone who knows you that well and then decides, I don’t want to be with that person. He rightfully takes it hard. He can’t escape that relationship and doesn’t think he can move past it and isn’t moving past it.

Scott: We first meet him, he’s literally trying to blow off someone setting him up on a blind date. He’s just not prepared.

Max: He’s not ready.

Scott: Then let’s talk about Sadie, who is this young woman he meets. First of all, let’s talk about The Apple Pan for people who don’t live in LA, right at the corner of Pico and Westwood. It’s been around forever, right? Like 1940s.

Max: Since the 40s, yeah. My dad moved to LA when he was — my dad is in his 80s now — he moved here when he was like 10. So he remembers going to Apple Pan in the ’50s, ’60s. He one time begged them to let him buy the recipe for their hickory sauce, he was obsessed. He goes deep. But, yeah, he brought me as a kid all the time. I have a long love affair with that place.

Scott: Let’s talk about Sadie because they do meet at The Apple Pan, which is this iconic place that’s amazing that it’s still in existence in Los Angeles, where everything just seems to get destroyed after about 5 or 10 years. What’s Sadie’s situation at the beginning of the story?

Max: She’s someone who starts out as someone who doesn’t… She doesn’t want any attachments. She moves constantly. She doesn’t really attach herself to anyone. She’s always has one foot out the door with people.

In a way that we can see through immediately, she’s someone who goes with the “I want to live my life and enjoy my life,” mentality but she’s running from something. It’s all a way to cope and rationalize this tragedy that happened with her dad when she was a teenager and the impact that it had on her life.

While Miles is steeped in the past and can’t leave it, she’s doing everything in power to never even acknowledge the past and become past-less.

Scott: You’ve got two people, they’re dealing with time. Time is right at the heart of this story. As I’m reading it, I was struck by several thoughts, one of which I was wondering whether you ever studied philosophy or a student of philosophy, because the story poses some really big questions like fate, how did we get here, and who am I?

Max: So funny. I technically was a philosophy minor, but never actually finished all the requirements. But I loved taking those classes. It’s something I’ve always been interested in and have tried to carve out more time to dig into, and… I mean, it links to writing, so they go hand in hand.

Really, one of the struggles with the script was, and will always be, was wanting to get into the deeper elements of how we treat memory and time, how we deal with our own pains, our traumas, and how, or even whether, we can move past them or come to terms with them, without all of that becoming arduous, prolonged discussion scenes. Putting those subjects, those issues into action.

Scott: Literally on page three, Miles’ voice-over: “How many other moments in that last day, month, three, five years, nudge me this way or that leading me to who I am now?” It’s just this kind of classic philosophical question.

It was reminding me of one of my favorite quotes from author Ann Beattie who said, “People forget years and remember moments.” I’m just curious what your reaction to that is?

Max: I love that quote. I wasn’t familiar with it. That’s the struggle of the whole script, for Miles, is as things start to change around you, how do you hold on to a person when it’s like, it’s not just the big memories, it’s not just the big events, it’s not just the small ones either. It’s how you felt in those and it becomes this impossible tangle of…intangibility.

I mean, to step further back, the initial question I started with on this was — in a time travel movie, we’re always following the time traveler. We’re always following the person who’s making the changes, accidentally or intentionally.

But for all the people who are impacted by that person’s choice, the world is just changing around them, you don’t have control over what aspects of your life have altered, or disappeared entirely, and at what point is this new version of your life not even you anymore, what are those fundamental parts of you. It’s the whole Ship of Theseus problem.

How much can you change until you’re a different person and what elements of you are unchangeable? Digging into that and being specific with these characters, both of whom have moments in their life that they would want to see changed, but if they were changed, then… Then you wouldn’t have ever met this person, this love. What are the costs of that and the emotional weight of each change as they happen?

Scott: You made a really interesting choice. You just brought it up, which is you’ve got this kind of science fiction hook in Ripple. There’s this mysterious character who claims to be a time traveler. He has The Post, he’s dubbed XxNavi47xX and the choice was not to follow him.

In fact, he’s a secondary character. You hardly even refer to him. It’s a QAnon type figure because there’s a cool thing that grows around him, but you don’t follow him. You follow these other people. Did you make that conscious choice or was that just an instinctual thing or how did that come?

Max: That was part of the design from its inception. I wanted to keep him, or her, or whoever that is, to be kind of — over there. I didn’t want the audience to ever think that there would be some reveal as to who the time traveler is, or that there would be a way for one of our characters to time travel. So I tried to make it clear that it’s not that kind of story. I didn’t want it to be clever, frankly. I wanted it to just be — this is what’s happening, and our characters will never have some sci-fi out to their problems, they’re going to have to deal with the major emotional hurdles in front of them.

Like, without the time travel element, this is a story about someone later in their adult lives finally finding the person they’re truly in love with and having them be ripped away from them. That’s it. I didn’t want any cute ways for them to resolve the real issues they were dealing with in their past by letting them mess with it.

So for the time travel element, I just wanted it to be like, “you and I are sitting here together, and Marty McFly is dicking around in the past. We don’t know what he’s doing, or why he’s doing it, but he’s definitely doing something.”

Scott: I mentioned to you that this script is an homage to great some memorable movie. In fact, the characters in the script mentioned Back to the Future and Sliding Doors.

It’s almost a meta kind of a thing, but think about moments that we were talking about earlier. When I was reading a couple of comments in there, it struck me. You remember the very, very, very end of Boyhood?

Max: I think so?

Scott: Where Nicole is sitting there with Mason. He’s gone to college finally, and he’s with this young student and he’s watching their friends, rustic West Texas environment. Nicole says, “You know, everyone’s always saying seize the moment. I don’t know. I’m kind of thinking it’s the other way around, you know. The moment seizes us.”

Mason goes, “Yeah, yeah, I know it’s constant. The moment. It’s just. It’s always right now, you know.” I’m curious, was that an inspiration for you, the movie, or just what your thoughts are in terms of that idea of moments?

Max: That sentiment, yeah. I’ve noticed that a lot of the stuff I write tends to center on someone who is really struggling to appreciate what’s right in front of them. They’re hyper-focused on some other goal, something that they think will fix their problems, but… The answers are right there in front of them. I mean, that’s something I struggle with, and I imagine most writers struggle with, most people…

We know the answer that we should appreciate what’s right in front of us. We should be present in the moment. That’s so easy to say and yet it’s impossible to do, especially as you carry more and more baggage as you get older.

It’s really hard to do that. For me, it was more of knowing the answer. All of us know that answer. But how the hell do we actually do it? How do we get to a place where we can have these awful things in our past and things that hurt us so badly and define who we are and still be present in our lives and let them… Let them be a part of who we are, they happened, but not let them consume us?

That’s, to go back, why I didn’t want the answer to this movie to be the time travel itself. Like Miles — spoiler — his past isn’t going to change. It is going to remain the same. His problems don’t just get erased, even though this time travel element offers a promise that maybe there is this easy path where the things that caused you pain magically disappear. So then the question is — how do you get past that? How do you move forward with this brick in your pocket, to steal from Rabbit Hole. I think all of us, especially in the last handful of years, have had to deal with that question.

If you’re lucky enough to age past — really any age, but — growing into adulthood, you’re going to be carrying a lot with you. How the hell do you manage that and not let it bury you at the same time? That was more of my question. It’s how do you to get to that revelation at the end of the movie, the play, the book, and actually internalize it and use it to navigate through your own life without it all sucking you under.

For both of these characters, that was the focus. For all the characters, actually. It was — how do you continue forward?

Scott: It’s a narrative device, this ripple that provokes these changes and forces characters to confront stuff. Could you describe the physics of the ripple like “The Time Traveler” and how that impacts and created that?

Max: Sure. The basic conceit of it is — someone goes back in the past, does something, let’s just say Marty McFly, like he goes back, accidentally hits on his mom. [laughs]

All of that has a major impact on his life, his future, and those in his immediate circle. His family, friends, so on and so forth.

But for people who are far removed from him… You know, Marty’s parents not meeting probably won’t have any impact whatsoever for someone halfway around the globe. But everything is connected on some level, so maybe that will have some ripple effect far away where this little change led to this tiny change and…maybe someone unrelated adopts a different dog because of it. They put on a different shirt that day. Whatever. Small changes.

Now, of course, the more changes someone like Marty makes in the past, the bigger than changes and the scope of the ripples would get. And for some people, like Miles and Sadie, they just happen to be impacted more than others. They’re caught in the web.

So the idea is — when one of those changes happen, in the future, the changes are immediate. That dog changes right in front of you. But your brain is a mysterious thing, and it can hold on to what was — before. Kind of like a dream you wake up from where it feels so real in that second, but the more time passes, the more it fades away, until you can’t even remember it.

So there’s a sort of overlap period before the previous version of your life, if you happen to notice the change, is still there in your mind, like a memory. And it’s through this overlap period that Miles finds a way to game the system and attempt to hold on to as many memories, even ones that have since disappeared into timelines that don’t exist, as possible.

Scott: He meets this guy, Oz, who creates a way of managing to hold on to a version of the life that’s now right when the Ripple happens, that changes. There’s a funny aside that HAIM doesn’t exist anymore. They were this band, three sisters, great harmonies, folks with good stuff. A couple of ripples ago, they ceased to exist.

During the overlap period, their fans went online and said, “Hey, did I make this band up?” Collectively in that hour, we wrote up the music, the lyrics, and as many songs as we could. We saved something wonderful from disappearing.

Everyone can now learn about these three sisters from the San Fernando Valley and hear their cover songs, even though they never existed. He’s created this little program, I guess, or system or whatnot. Miles starts to do that because they do start having some changes.

He and Sadie move along in the relationships. Could you describe how this becomes almost an obsession for Miles?

Max: The short story got a little more into it, kind of the fun and sometimes goofy ramifications of the whole thing. Like in the overlap period, we would all have a moment where we’d collectively be like “oh my God, did the President just change?”

And there’d be this feedback loop where we’d be able to “preserve” a different timeline, even as we’re forgetting it. We would remember if we went from Biden to, I don’t know, Kermit the Frog. We’d all use that overlap window to make note of it, to note that that’s different, and we’d build out this strange history of timelines that no longer exist.

The question was, okay, that’s helpful because the world would be able to jump onto Wikipedia and start typing out what they remembered, and it would be crowdsourced and verified by thousands of other people, giving us this historical document, but… How do you do that for yourself? For your own history that doesn’t have thousands upon thousands of people verifying and remembering in real time. So this character, Oz, finds a way to create that for himself, a kind of journal.

Miles gets very obsessive about it. He knows the most important thing in his life is this person who he met, who fell in love with, and moved in with. And it’s not just about…preserving a historical event, it’s not just facts, you’re preserving the memory of a person and… How do you do that?

Like what if the person you fell in love with changed a tiny bit? What does that mean? What you’re trying to preserve is this ever-changing person who you’re still in love with. How do you even say she did change? How do you prove that? What if it’s something subtle and impossible to pin down?

If you read this journal later, if she did disappear, would it convey to you everything it needed to? Would you understand who this person was, and why they were so important to you, would you be able to capture the intensity of this emotion?

It becomes this rabbit hole for Miles that he can never really get out of because he gets to a point where every small gesture, every feeling, every detail feels crucial to capture. He transcribes everything. Everything feels more important with every second because he’s like, “Well, I don’t want to lose the way that look made me feel.”

Preserving the past becomes more important to him than living in the present with her.

Scott: It’s kind of that enigma about what John Lennon said, “Life is the moments that go by when you’re…”

Max: Not paying attention.

Scott: Attention. How do you live in the present? It is, I think, reflective of these personalities, the way you described it upfront. He’s stuck in the past because of this relationship he had with this nine‑year‑old relationship with Grace.

He’s desperate to try and remember the relationship he has with Sadie, which it’s a very positive, affirming, life‑altering experience he has with this woman. He’s trying to save that. Again, it’s like he’s creating the past with a positive version of it.

Meanwhile, she is not at all affixed to the past. She’s more free spirit. In fact, she even says about him when he’s writing this stuff down, “You’re never here anymore. You’re always off somewhere in your journal working on your project.” What relationship? The only one that exists right now is written on these little napkins.

Is this a reflection of the two worldviews?

Max: Yeah. Though the trick for her is that she acts untethered to any past, she is in the moment, she’s enjoying what they have right now, but she’s watching all of these changes happening around her and harboring this hope that maybe, just maybe, one of these ripples will change what happened to her dad.

She doesn’t really want to speak that into existence, she keeps it at arm’s length, but even having that hope is impactful, because if this incredibly painful thing in her past was undone, it would mean that she and Miles would’ve never met. She would’ve been someone totally different.

Miles totally understands her wanting that though. Who wouldn’t want to get rid of the most painful moment in their life. It sounds nice. He has something in his past he’d love to have erased, all of that pain. But then again, without those things, they wouldn’t be here, together. So there’s the tradeoff. So they each have to grapple with all of that, all of the conflicting emotions this new reality brings them, while trying to stay present in their lives.

Staying present is hard enough, with all of the baggage and chaos we always have. But those pasts are at risk of changing at the snap of someone’s fingers, it heightens that awareness.

Scott: Some of these movies that popped to mind when I was reading the script. There is this dynamic that runs through the story about finding love and the rapture, the joy and fun of it. Then the potential of losing love and also playing around with time. I was reminded of (500) Days of Summer.

Then also, I don’t know if you remember, Heaven Can Wait with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie. Did those percolate in your consciousness when you were thinking about this story?

Max: Yeah, I love both of them. 500, it was interesting. I think this started out more 500 Days of Summer with a little more non‑linearity. Then, once the structure was in place, it became a lot more of Eternal Sunshine. Those kinds of movies that delve into memory. The producers I think said it was 500 Days meets Eternal Sunshine with some 50 First Dates sprinkled in.

None of those were intentional, or conscious, on my part, but… Once we got into it, the one we kept coming back to, both tonally and even structurally, and just in terms of sheer conceptual and emotional ambition, was Eternal Sunshine. That was probably the biggest. Just because it did it so well and also got so real and specific, and — you just know how thin that line is between that masterpiece version and one where it just went off the rails.

It went into places emotionally that, that concept merited. It utilized every nook and cranny of their concept. And I was trying to make sure we did the same thing with our concept, and these characters, and not holding anything back.

Scott: Eternal Sunshine was another one that came to mind. You make a really important point. I make this with my students whenever they come up with a high‑concept conceit, like Ripple, this kind of thing.

I always tell them that, “Look, OK, that’s great. You got the big story, so that’s your plot line. You got this thing going on. What’s going to sell it is this small story. You got to have the character relationship, the characters, and the relationships nailed down because otherwise, that stuff doesn’t mean anything.”

You did it so well in the script. The relationship between these two. I was so invested in them. Where did that come from? The dialogue between them is so wonderful, it’s like sparkles on the page. I guess that’s a silly question to say, where did that come from, Max?

Max: Well, the dialogue and stuff, I started out…When I say started out, I was very amateur high school level. I started out with playwriting, that was my go-to form. So dialogue, and that rhythm, the voices, those were at the forefront of my mind in my early writing days. And now, I do think I generally find the characters through way they talk and the way they talk to each other and their own private conversations. They become a little more real in my mind once I know what they sound like.

The big thing I always ask myself and try to remind myself on every script and concept is, who are the best characters for this story or for me at least? And I just drew on a lot of personal stuff, especially my fears. I’ve been with my now wife… We’ve been together for 11 years. So a lot of Sadie and Miles started from a place of… What would be the worst thing that could happen to us? What would it feel like to have this scenario play out for us? What was it like meeting her the first time? All those hopes, fears, all the most extreme versions of what could happen to us. It almost immediately moves out of the autobiographical realm, because you want to do what’s best for your characters, or what’s worst for them, but digging into my own relationships, the things that freak me out the most, that would rattle me the most, lets those characters be so much more accessible.

All the things I write are in the end, nakedly autobiographical. Even if no part of the plot has ever, or will ever, happen to me. Just those base emotions.

Scott: Another movie that came to mind, though, your script was set up before it came out was Everything Everywhere All At Once because you’ve got that big story, the multiverse thing. It’s hard. It’s a mother‑daughter story and that big story, small story thing.

I’m just curious what you have any thoughts about Everything Everywhere All At Once, other than just being a terrific film?

Max: I loved everything about it. It was a reminder to go as specific as you want, take big swings, don’t settle for the middle. They went for their vision to the fullest. Their voice. They did not pull back. They left nothing on the table. That’s so difficult to actually pull off. That whole movie is a miracle.

And, I get the parallels with Ripple, but… It’s so different. Maybe… It could only be a benefit, if anything. Maybe their success opens people’s minds a little more to the viability of a movie like this.

Part of Ripple is an unintentional response to the multiverse movies. Not just Everything, but — there have been so many recently. Ripple has all the trappings of one, but it’s not. At one point I did have a character point it out, I don’t remember which draft it was in. But they make the point that they’re all living linearly the whole time, they’re not exploring these different versions of themselves, they’re just living in whatever reality they’re in.

I will say that one major benefit of Everything Everywhere and movies like it is… Audiences get it now. You don’t need to explain things for an hour. There’s a multiverse? Got it. These are the rules? Understood. That’s how time travel works here? Roger that. [laughs]

Scott: I’m curious about what your writing space looks like, because while Ripple ‘s not mind‑bogglingly confusing, there are these different life‑world experiences. Did you have the whiteboard with the thing or the corkboard with the color‑coded index cards to track all those changes?

Max: Yeah. I have my whiteboard here. We’ve gone through so many rewrites that it really… Again, it comes down to structure. The main structural points haven’t moved much over time, especially in the first half. So there was a freedom to try some stuff out and I knew I wouldn’t have to totally rebreak it later. I tend to write the full outlines out for myself, and rewrite them, and try to hit a place where I feel good about what’s going to happen, and then, when I’m into pages, be willing to throw it all out the window.

I try to find that mix of planning things down to the letter and having that freedom and playfulness and getting excited by some new idea that pops up organically. Like, I feel like setups and payoffs are so critical in a movie, and when someone does them well, they can make the movie. But those can feel so programmed, so writerly, so unless they’re major, major plot points, I try to write out pages, and go back and see what I accidentally setup. Then the setup feels organic. It was never forced. It was just something that felt natural to the character, a piece of dialogue, something they carried in their pocket… And then I’ll go back into that outline, and start jotting down in the margins how I could use it later. It’s this whole back and forth process of planning and discovering, planning and discovering.

Now that I know that that’s my process, I really push myself in those early drafts to throw everything in. A character can mention anything that comes to their mind. I’ll add every detail of where they live, what they have on them. It’ll all be deleted later, but one or two of those things do become setups that I can pay off later. The goal being that moment where you go “oh my God, they set that up so well.” This is all a long way of saying I like backing into my setups.

It can get messy for this kind of script, but… I don’t know, I never wanted it to feel too clever at any moment. I wanted it to be organic. It’s in the tone. Like I knew, for this kind of movie, there were going to be moments early on where you, the audience, will go “oh, they’re saying that because it’s going to change once the time travel kicks in,” and… You do need those moments, but you don’t want too many of them, you don’t want to be so blatant about it, or it gets exhausting, you feel the hand of the writer.

So, yeah, this one was a lot of planning, a lot of outlining, and then a lot of writing, and deleting, and writing in the margins, and more rewriting. I don’t know if I got there, but I kept trying to make it all feel natural and in the moment. I envy any writers who do that well.

Scott: That’s what I tell my students. I say, “Sometimes, you’re in the receptive writing mode, where you’re there with the characters, you feel your way into the scenes.” I always tell them, “Write your scenes from a feeling place.” There are other times where you step outside, and you look at things and go, “Oh, wait a minute.” That executive kind of writing.

It sounds like you’ve got that balance in between the two. I’d like to ask you about, first of all, delete, delete, delete. It’s right up front. It’s like a big clue if you’re really paying attention.

Did you always have that ending in mind? It does have that classic Hollywood thing of, give the audience what they expect and give them what they want. Did you always have that ending in mind?

Max: The short story had an ending that was a little different, but it’s the same kind of feel. It’s all been there from the beginning. There was one time we toyed with taking it out, and the producers immediately were like, nah, go back. We’re all on the same page with what the movie should be, so the second it went off course, we all felt it. So this ending, with slight alterations, has been there in every draft.

It’s where the movie wants to end. The characters have changed. It’s a romance. We’ve invested so much in these people being together. And the ending doesn’t have them get back together, but there’s a hope that they could, and this time around, they’re better off, they’ve changed in ways that will make their relationship that much more powerful.

Some of that is just… My outlook on the world, and the producers’ outlook on the world, coming through. We want these characters to be in a good place. We want that hope. We want to feel good, and the characters have earned it. It’s a bit of a gut feeling, but I feel like it had to end on that note.

Scott: I concur because I was so happy. It’s such a lovely little moment. By the way, I hope this movie gets made and you get a lifetime free pass at the Apple Pan.

Max: I don’t even need the free pass. Just being mentioned in the same breath as the Apple Pan would be the dream.

Scott: Let’s talk about your Black List experience because you did it in 2012. What’s that like this time around in December when it’s announced that the script made the Black List?

Max: This time is so much different. The first time it was revelatory. It was such a big deal, rightfully ,because, first of all, it got me read by so many more people than would have read me before. I had a manager going into that, but it got me agents at the time. It opened up the world.

I was 23 when that happened, so I was very young. I didn’t take advantage of it in the ways that maybe I should have. It was ultimately a learning experience. I got thrown right into the business and it taught me how to approach, or how not to approach, this business.

I’m lucky it happened that way, that it wasn’t some instant ticket to success or anything. It rarely is. You learn quickly that being on the Black List is a huge deal, but it doesn’t mean you’re about to get paid. You’re not given a career. You still have a lot of work to do.

It was a stamp of approval, it was validation, it was… We’re all crazy for pursuing this career, but it made it feel like… It’s worth sticking around for a little longer to see what happens. That maybe this career could happen. And that little bit of hope goes a long way early on.

This time, it felt different. It’s hard to explain, because it was this wonderful thing, there was still this thrill to it… Maybe this is just me being healthier about my work and my life, but it felt more like… Gratitude that people responded to this script, to this project I love, and that people spent the time to give it a read, and then take this extra step to tell other people about it. It means a lot.

It’s, like, I’ve been lucky, in a lot of ways. I’ve had a movie produced. I’ve made a career out of this. I’ve been working with a lot of people in the last couple of years have been good to me, personally and creatively. But that need for validation… It never goes away. We always feel like frauds, and I’m not immune to that.

Especially for a script that became more and more personal with every passing draft, it was nice. I’ve gotten some meetings that I wouldn’t have had otherwise and met some allies. It might not feel like the same groundbreaking, what-is-happening-right-now moment that it did ten years ago, but it’s no less impactful, just in a different way.

It’s more about this project in particular instead of about me, and hopefully, giving this one more of a life and more of a chance to get to the goal we really want, which is to get it made and get it out there.

Scott: I would hope so. In a town where business decisions are often made based on fear, to have the Black List, they’re attached to this project. Now, if you’re going out again, trying to get it set up, hopefully, that will benefit you in that regard.

Max: Absolutely. It makes everyone’s job a little easier. You’re always fighting to prove you’re worth someone’s time, because everyone’s time is so limited and they’re sent so much stuff. Being on the Black List gives it a little more excitement as they open up the first page. That’s all you can ask for. It’s hard to do. It’s a credit to what Franklin Leonard’s done for writers. There’s really nothing else out there that does that. I’m incredibly grateful to have been a part of it twice now.

Scott: Congratulations again and also just on the script, which is terrific. I’d like to ask a few craft questions here as we round out. How do you come up with story ideas?

Max: I just try to have a lot of ideas. I mean, even back in high school, when I was writing plays, my friend and I, who I would write with sometimes, we would challenge each other to send ten new, full ideas every night. They were all terrible. But once in a while, one in a hundred was worth going, “oh…there’s something to that.”

So I’ve always had that kind of approach throughout my career. I’ll jot down notes, and send e-mails to myself, and… Every single idea I have, no matter how small, if it intrigues me even the tiniest bit, I’ll write it down. It can be garbage, it can be a thought, it can be a line. Put it down.

From there, once you have this chaotic list of ideas, it’s a matter of whittling it down. Generally one or two stick with me, they keep clawing their way back to the front of my mind, and those I know are the ones worth considering. Over time, I’ve gotten better at identifying the ideas that have the legs to be a full movie or a series. But I’ll also send a list of my favorites to my team to see what they think, and I’ll try to be honest with myself about what I actually want to spend my time on and dig into.

I just try to draw from everything and let it be a free‑flowing process and not filter at all, knowing that they don’t all have to be good. They never are. If one out of one hundred is, I’ll have a career.

Scott: Yeah, that’s like Linus Pauling, the guy who won the Nobel Prize a couple of times as a scientist. He said the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Max: Someone told me during college, I wish I remember who… They said…if you only have one idea, your career is already over. That’s it. Don’t be precious with your ideas. You’re wasting your time. You’re going to need a lot of ideas, because the next conversation is always: what else do you have? What’s next?

That goes on until your career is over. Don’t be precious. Keep trying to generate new ideas. It’s all an excuse to go out, live your life, take the time to recharge, read for yourself, watch things that inspire you, play videogames, have hobbies, hang out with friends, that’s where all the ideas are anyway. You have to be more than one idea anyway, so run toward the things that give you that spark.

Scott: You mentioned that you read my book. You know that I’m obsessed with character‑driven storytelling. You dropped in this line about who are the best characters for this story. You identify them. How do you go about learning them?

How do you go about getting to know them? How do you go about making it so that you’re starting to hear their voices and see them in action?

Max: It changes every time, and I wish I had some defined process I can follow. It always feels like I’m messing up and flailing with every new project. [laughs]

I generally find my characters through these obsessively long Word documents I have at the start of every project where I keep asking myself questions. Lots of questions, exploring structure, digging into the characters. I try to tie the structure and the character and the theme and the concept as closely together as possible. One leads to the other, typically. And once one of those comes into focus, then the characters and their arcs come with it. So that can give me a broad view of the kinds of characters I’m dealing with.

But when it comes to their voices, and really seeing them for who they are, I’ve realized I’m always looking in those early stages for a scene, or a feeling, or a moment, or a line that becomes a microcosm of who the character, and to a larger extent, what the movie, is. And I latch on to that as my North Star. Like that feeling, that little moment, is what the movie is to me. Or that line, that gesture, that image in my head is who the character is.

I try to identify that early, so that way I know, as everything changes, and everything always changes, that this is what’s important. This is the specific thing that makes me feel like I’m in the right space. And sometimes that thing also changes, but I try to find the thing that hooks me in, so I can keep building off of it.

That’s all…incredibly vague sounding. But… Like with Ripple, I had this feeling of love and loss combining at the same time. There’s a scene early on where Miles and Sadie admit their feeling for each other, and it was so clear to me that that scene, the way they talk in it, their vulnerability, the style of the scene, that was the movie. So I built off of that. Now, in Goodbye, Felix Chester, it was less of a feeling, and more of a character reaction. Everyone in that story knows that Felix is on death’s door, but the way he responded to it defined that character in my mind. Then, again, I built off of that.

My process of finding the characters is a lot like what I said about generating ideas. You keep digging and digging until one thing hits. A detail, an arc, how they sound, what they look like, what they’re afraid of. And over time, you have a fully formed person. But it’s a lot of back and forth, until you can get to that wonderful stage where you know these hyper-specific things about them that never even make the page, but make them feel real to you.

Scott: You mentioned theme several times. What’s your understanding of that? How do you define it or work with it?

Max: For me — in movies, at least — it’s a one-line question. I don’t like making it too clean where it’s the message of the movie, but it’s… It’s the thing that I’m always personally struggling with that’s embodied in the story. An unanswerable question that these characters are unconsciously trying to answer.

Finding that theme just gives the whole movie a spine, and then I can start throwing out any scenes where I feel like it doesn’t quite fit. It helps you know what’s on topic or not, and keeps that propulsion toward trying to solve this one, internal dilemma. Finding that theme also opens up more stories, more characters, because you can look at it and go… What angles am I not exploring in this question?

Sometimes it’s not that perfectly defined, especially early in the process. Sometimes I just have a bunch of words that feel like themes, umbrella topics. And they stay present throughout, but one dominant theme tends to take root.

With Ripple, it was this question of… How do we stay present in our lives when we have these unwieldy pasts that consume us? These pains that make being present impossible? Miles and Sadie both approached that question differently, but both didn’t have the right answer at the start of the movie. The answer is hard to come by, because it’s something we all struggle with, these two even more so. Every other character in the script also has an angle on that question that hopefully differs or complements what those two are going through. And generally speaking, the main character’s arc is the answer to that question in the end. You know it’s a worthy theme when it’s something that’s really hard to answer because then those characters have a lot to work through.

I think the reason why I love theme and obsess over it is… It gives me an overview, it’s a forest from the trees kind of thing, and it makes the script process feel less overwhelming. Here’s the well you’re drawing from, focus on that. Here’s the spine. And it helps the script, the movie, feel like it’s of one piece, cut from the same cloth, and when you have that feeling watching something, that it’s all unified, and the ideas build off of each other, it’s a little more powerful.

And, again, I try to be flexible in all of this. I’ve chased the wrong theme in a draft, and that’s a major part of rewriting — was I asking the right questions? Did I aim the magnifying glass on the right subjects? Being wrong, aiming a bit too far one way or the other, is sometimes the most illuminating thing.

Scott: You’ve been in the business now for a while. What advice would you give or do you give to people who say, “I want to learn the craft. How do I go about learning the craft, screenwriting?”

Max: I mean, it’s the most basic thing, but… Write. You’ll learn the most from writing, and failing, and figuring out why you failed, and then trying to fix it, and starting a new thing with the lessons you learned. So keep writing, keep studying the craft, and keep rewriting. If you love a specific writer, read everything they’ve ever written, study it, see what happens when you emulate them even, see why their stuff works. And fail, as many times as possible, while the stakes are still low. The beginning of your career is prime failing time, it’s total freedom to swing and miss, and then figure it out.

And only pursue this because you love it, because… Otherwise, it’s just not worth it. It just isn’t. I always come back to something my therapist tells me, which is that you have to learn to love the process of writing, because if you’re chasing results, you’re going to be disappointed. Learn to love your own process.

You’ll have great years as a writer, you’ll have awful years as a writer. Every great writer has had a zero year, where they made no money, nothing. If you learn to love the process of actually writing, of sitting down in that chair, of brainstorming, and figuring out a character, and breaking story, even when it’s hell, you’re good. It sounds obvious, but… It’s hard to divorce the process from the results.

I’m still working on that, but I’m trying.

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