Go Into The Story interview: Sam Baron

U.K.-based writer Sam Baron wrote the original screenplay “The Science of Love and Laughter” which won a 2014 Nicholl Fellowship. Sam and I had a transatlantic interview in which we covered a lot of territory in a provocative and informative conversation.

Scott Myers: You grew up in Cambridge, England. Is that right?

Sam Baron: Yes.

Scott: When and how did you develop an interest in movies?

Sam: I went to a drama class when I was 12, and me and another kid had this crazy idea to make a feature film. It took a year to write it, then another year to convince a bunch of friends to help us make it, then a year to edit it. But by the time we were 15, it was finished. We had a premiere at the Cambridge Arts Picture House, which is an arts cinema in Cambridge. It was the most fun thing I’d ever done. The movie was fairly awful, but the experience was great.

Scott: Let’s jump back. What was the name of the movie?

Sam: It was called “Can You Survive a Week in Paradise?” and it was about a reality TV producer who invites a bunch of teenagers to spend a week on a haunted island, then starts killing them off to boost the ratings.

Scott: Was it a satire?

Sam: It was as much of a satire as a 12‑year‑old can muster. It probably wasn’t very biting.

Scott: Let’s go back even further. So you’re 12 years old, you have this original inspiration. You must have been a movie fan before then to even have the idea.

Sam: I loved movies, and I loved comedy. I’ve always liked coming up with silly ideas and turning them into things. Me and my siblings used to do little shows in the living room for our family when we were young, just larking around. I guess once cameras entered the equation, it seemed like a fun way to move that interest to the next level. I loved the technical side of it, but also the creative side of it. I liked the fact that it was so collaborative. It felt like a social thing. I wasn’t really sporty, so that was my equivalent of team sports. It was team movie‑making.

Scott: Do you remember some of the most memorable films from your youth?

Sam: I was obsessed with the Life of Brian, and the Naked Gun films. Just very silly, smart-dumb comedy.

Scott: That brings to mind the YouTube video you directed, “Lazy Sunday UK: We Drink Tea”, which has gotten 614,000 views. Did you know that it had that many views?

Sam: I didn’t know it was exactly that many, but I was aware when it crossed half a million.

Scott: It’s a rap video. Basically, two white guys dropping MF-bombs while extolling the virtues of drinking tea. What was the inspiration for that?

Sam: There are two of us who made that video, me and Raphael von Blumenthal. He’s actually the same guy who I made that feature film with, aged 12. We thought, “Well, that was a lot of fun. But maybe we should try and make short things next time.”

That was one of the first short things we made. We were about 16 or 17, and YouTube had just come out. I saw the original “Lazy Sunday” and thought it was great, and was really into that whole New York comedy scene, so I thought, “Why don’t we do our own response?”

It was really fun to do, and seemed to capture something that people were interested in. The transatlantic nature of the back and forth, if that doesn’t sound, which it does, far too high and mighty. God, I can’t believe I just said that.

Scott: Screenwriting. Let’s jump to that. Part of this, obviously, just seems like you learned it intuitively. Were there any specific programs, classes, books, or whatnot that you studied?

Sam: I read all the books, and websites like yours. There was a certain point where I had been doing the YouTube stuff for a couple of years and got a kick out of it, but started feeling like I was interested in telling slightly longer and more character‑driven stories, and maybe moving away from pure comedy, towards comedy-drama and drama. So I thought I’d better teach myself this whole screenwriting thing. I read “Save the Cat”. I also read “On Film‑Making” by Alexander Mackendrick and “Making Movies” by Sidney Lumet. David Mamet has a great book, “On Directing Film”, which is actually almost more about screenwriting than directing. I just devoured all those books, and made lots of notes. Then I would listen to every podcast and interview I could find.

Scott: It’s amazing, isn’t it, the resources available nowadays online?

Sam: Totally. I was just coming home on the train just now, and I was listening to a great podcast with the writers of “The Colbert Report”. I was listening to one with Robin Williams earlier today too. It’s a great way to get the practical lessons handed down to you from people who have figured out how to do it really well. Sometimes what they’re saying might not even by directly relevant to you, but it can trigger a thought, or allow you to put two ideas together in an interesting new way.

Scott: Were you reading movie scripts along the way, too?

Sam: Yes, yes, absolutely. I would download scripts from the internet, particularly for my favorite movies. One script that I looked at a lot was The Squid and the Whale, which is just a brilliantly concise script, with so much character in every line. I like to study different genres as well. One script that I’ve studied a lot is The Talented Mr. Ripley, which is an amazing adaptation.

I also started working in the film industry over here in London too, as a script reader for the BBC, then I worked in‑house in development for a production company, and there’s nothing better when you’re writing the first feature than just having a stack of a thousand scripts that you have to read for your job. Some of them are awful and some of them are great, but you learn from all of them, you know?

Scott: Let’s dig into your script, “The Science of Love and Laughter,” for which you won the Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship in 2014. Here’s a plot summary:

“A neuroscientist trapped in the wrong job and the wrong relationship finally decides to turn his life around. But when he discovers his wife has cancer, he becomes determined to save his marriage.”

In an article I found, you’re quoted as saying, “I wanted to write something that was a character‑driven story and was interested to explored the themes of love and relationships.” Where did those creative impulses for this story originate?

Sam: You know, that script is very personal and it has really intimate emotional arcs, so people who read it always ask, “How much is true? What’s real? What’s not?”

The way I see it, it’s thematically autobiographical, but 100% fictional. I have personal experience with people close to me getting cancer, and I’ve also been through the breakdown of a relationship, as most people have. But I didn’t want to just tell the stories of what had happened to me, I wanted to explore the ideas and the feelings behind those experiences through a new, fictional story.

Scott: There are two primary characters in the story, Daniel and Emma. They’re a married couple, unhappily together at the start. The narrative is told from Daniel’s perspective. Did you always have that POV in mind?

Sam: I did, and I probably shot myself in the foot a bit with that, but I just thought it would be interesting. How could you tell that story and not have the audience just hate the guy who wants to leave his wife who has cancer? That’s really the most unforgivable thing that a person could feel or think, so I wanted to explore if that could ever be a justifiable thing to feel.

Scott: If I’m getting that right, you had that ending in mind pretty early on.

Sam: Yes. The final scenes in the movie didn’t really change from the first draft. I did a lot of drafts, and everyone who read the early drafts said, “You’ve got the ending wrong.” But it turns out I had the first seven-eighths of the movie wrong.

Scott: Hmm, interesting. It speaks to the wisdom of that thing I’ve heard in Hollywood. You’ve got to know your ending before you start writing your story.

Sam: Yes, and I really did a lot of drafts over the course of two years. I just couldn’t crack it. It felt like I was going around and around in circles. The thing that finally allowed me to crack it when was I opened a blank document and rewrote the whole script from scratch, without looking at the previous versions. I just had one thing written at the top of the screen — “everything needs to support the ending”.

Scott: In most stories, movies, or TV, the protagonist characters generally start off, I call it, in “Disunity”. They’re disconnected in key ways from who they’re supposed to be, laying the groundwork for the narrative, the psychological journey. Daniel clearly falls in that category of Disunity.

I’d like to explore some of those dynamics at work in his character at the beginning. First, he’s a scientist who has a not‑so‑secret ambition to be a stand‑up comic. If you think about those disparate images, a serious‑minded scientist versus a stand‑up guy who’s all about making people laugh, it’s a really disjunctive type of a thing. Could you get into how that dynamic emerged in your character development process with Daniel?

Sam: Well, he’s a guy who’s taken the first thing that came along, in every area of his life. He’s with the first woman who ever fell in love with him. He took the first career path that seemed to be going well. He’s never taken a leap. And I think that trying stand‑up comedy is the most terrifying thing that a person like that can do. For an intellectual guy, it’s the equivalent of a bungee jump. So I was just interested by this guy who has that overwhelming urge to do the bungee jump, but has never left his safety nets.

Scott: Have you yourself done stand‑up?

Sam: I’ve never done stand‑up.

Scott: OK, because I thought it was something interesting just in talking with you up to this point, Sam. I asked you, “What were some of your favorite movies that you remember from your childhood?” It was like, Monty Python and Naked Gun. Clearly, you’ve got that comedic thing going on. Then, some of the scripts you were reading were very serious‑minded, The Squid and the Whale. In some ways, doesn’t Daniel embody both of those? He’s got the kind of drama side and comedy side?

Sam: Yes. You’ve got to find yourself in all of your characters.

Scott: One of Daniel’s character traits is how he goes about his life. He’ll observe a situation, pull out his iPhone, then record his thoughts as a voice memo, basically starting each one with a stand‑up comedy idea. That not only reflects his interest in comedy, but it’s also a great narrative device because you can externalize through dialogue what his character is feeling and thinking inside. Do you remember coming up with that idea, how you hit on that? Were you thinking, wow, this is a great idea, to be able to talk about himself?

Sam: I didn’t think of this character as being someone who was very comfortable sharing his innermost thoughts and feelings with his friends or anything. He has one friend character in the movie, but even that friend is sort of estranged from him. He doesn’t have a close confidante. So yes, I wanted in a way to get inside his head, and that particular habit is something which I do every day. When I have an idea, or I observe something, I pull out my iPhone and record a little note to myself. So I was just doing that one day and I thought, “What if he does that?”

Scott: You mentioned something that I thought was quite interesting, that Daniel is a kind of guy who takes the first thing. There’s another Disunity aspect of his life that he’s grown really weary of this job as an academic that he went at without exploring other options. It reminded me of that Joseph Campbell quote where he says, “There’s perhaps nothing worse than reaching the top of the ladder and discovering that you’re on the wrong wall.” Daniel has climbed the wrong wall, hasn’t he?

Sam: Exactly, or at least, he doesn’t know. This is the interesting thing about having always chosen the first options in life — you have nothing to compare anything to. He’s a guy who clearly has scientific impulses, and science is all about comparison. But always choosing the first thing actually requires a huge leap of faith — to believe that the first thing might also happen to be the right thing. What do you do if the world is telling you that you have a great career, but your gut instinct is telling you to pull away, and you have nothing else to compare it to?

Scott: Actually, there’s a similar way that that plays out in another area. With regard to his sexuality.

Sam: Yes.

Scott: Basically, Emma is the only woman with whom he’s had sex.

Sam: Correct, yes.

Scott: And so, he’s got this lingering concern, even fear, that he’s not really experienced all that he can on that front. That’s your point. It’s how can you compare if you’ve only had one woman? Especially in this current situation where they’re not even being intimate because she’s so angry at him. We see him making these tentative efforts in the course of the narrative to play around on the sexual front. Like he kind of cyber-stalks some young woman. He almost has an affair with another woman. Yet, on a very pragmatic level, sex being about procreation, he does not want to or is at least deeply dubious about having children. There’s a whole mixed bag of things going on with regard to sexuality and Daniel. Could you maybe talk a bit about what you think is going on there with him?

Sam: It’s the same thing as on the career front. This is a guy who is deeply unhappy and doesn’t know why, because he’s just taken the first thing that’s come along in every field of his life. Because he lacks those comparisons, he finds it very hard to figure out what to change in his life, where the change needs to be. I mirrored that in all sides of his life, to make his decision over whether or not to leave this woman, who he’s spent years and years with, who now has cancer, as difficult as possible. He knows nothing, except that he’s miserable and it’s making her miserable. Should he change his career? Should he change his relationship? Should he change something else? There’s no way to diagnose it with science. It’s ultimately just about him getting in touch with his gut instinct once and for all. I don’t want to over analyze it, but I guess that’s the mix that’s in there.

Scott: Then, sexuality is also, we could use that as a bridge to jump over to Emma’s character. Because at the beginning of the story, after you jump from that seven years ago preface, she’s deeply resentful, even angry, at Daniel. One way she takes out her hostility, finds an outlet is she goes socializing in nightclubs, like she goes drinking with people and dancing with other men. But even she’s divided on that front. She flirts to the point of overt sexual intention, then pulls back. Could you get into what’s going on with Emma in regard to her own sexuality and psychological state?

Sam: She is someone who has ended up very unhappy, possibly as a result of Daniel’s unhappiness. She’s yearning to be loved in the same way that he’s yearning for various different things, including to be loved. One interesting thing with her character is that she could really love him. She’s not flirting with other guys because she’s dissatisfied with Daniel on a superficial level. She flirts with other guys because she’s deeply pained by the state of their relationship. I thought that was really interesting. She’s a character who it’s very easy to form a negative first impression of. But hopefully, by the end of the film, we realize that she’s so much more than that, and that so many of those character traits which might initially seem distasteful or something are actually just expressions of her deep emotional complexity, and her capacity for love, and yearning for children, and yearning for satisfaction in areas where it’s not being given to her by the man who nonetheless daily tells her he loves her.

Scott: She discovers a lump in her breast basically toward the end of what you’d call Act One. Then, the story does an interesting dance. I was thinking about this as a writer, how tricky this must have been for you. Because you sustain that reveal of exactly what that means, both the confirmation of her cancer and then the revelation of that to Daniel… you sustain that for a good period of time in Act Two. Actually, there’s a parallel thing going on with Daniel where he’s seriously considering telling Emma he wants a divorce, yet he can’t screw up the courage to tell her. Basically, for the first half of Act Two, you’ve got these two characters each with a hidden agenda, yet they’re not sharing what they know or want. I’m thinking, that must have been a tricky bit of writing, how to sustain those dual secrets and that tension for that period of time. Did you work on that quite a bit do you think or remember?

Sam: Yeah, for sure. That took a lot of tries to get right. You don’t want to drag it out too long, because then people get frustrated by it. But equally, there’s so much emotional tension there, I felt, and you can use that tension to actually spend decent time exploring these characters without necessarily needing to be ramping up the stakes of the story any higher than they already are.

That double-secret was the first idea I ever had on this project. Wouldn’t it be interesting if one person had a secret that they wanted a divorce, and one person had a secret that they had cancer? Who goes first when you have that conversation? That section of the script was very tricky to get right.

Scott: I think it works very well. That’s actually a good object lesson to aspiring writers, not to just lay out all the facts. She could have easily have said to him, “I’ve got cancer,” and he could have said to her, “I want a divorce.”

Sam: Right. In the first draft she did, and he did, and it did not work at all.

Scott: Yeah, because now you’ve got that question, actually two questions. When is he going to tell her? When is she going to tell him? As I say, it’s like a little bit of a dance. You managed to plot it so that you drew it out, giving you the chance to explore each character individually. Then finally, when the revelations did come out, it felt like a good, sustained release.

Another Disunity dynamic are the various fabrications the couple spins to hide secrets, especially Daniel, who tells a lot of lies. But they’re lying to themselves, too, as they try to avoid dealing with some painfully unnecessary decisions. Could you talk a bit about lying? Where you cognizant about that that much in terms of it as a dynamic for the characters?

Sam: Yeah. I always think about lying when I’m writing. People have spoken at length, and far more eloquently than me, about how movies can be very powerful when characters are not saying the thing they want to say, or when you don’t see the thing that you should be seeing. What’s off-screen or what’s unspoken can usually tell you far more than expositional dialogue.

And of course, people often find themselves in dishonest relationship dynamics when things aren’t going well. It’s incredibly hard to be fully honest with someone all the time.

Dishonesty is a huge part of their “status quo dynamic” at the start and how they each choose to battle it out in this complex, messy situation that they find themselves in, particularly Daniel. But in a way, the ending of the film is about finally giving these people honesty in their relationship. When they are finally able to be honest with each other, it allows them to have the catharsis that they do, despite everything that’s happened.

Scott: It seems to me that Daniel rose to a certain amount of acclaim with this book, the title of which is, “The Disembodied Octopus: Exploring the Science of Love and Laughter.” The title of the script, “The Science of Love and Laughter,” comes from that. But this idea of a disembodied octopus, Daniel explains it’s a metaphor to try and capture the essence of his scientific theories or his studies. But couldn’t we also look at it a metaphor for these two characters? This idea of disunity, that they’re disconnected from their inner truths, disembodied from who they are supposed to be?

Sam: It sounds like a pretty clever theory, so I’m going to say yes. The truth is: that had not occurred to me before. But you sound like a much smarter man than me, so I’m going to go with a “yes” on that one.

Scott: Maybe it’s just synchronicity. Because, why “disembodied octopus?” It’s such a crazy thought.

Sam: I’ve read a lot of science research, and people’s careers can get associated with the strange constructs they’ve used in experiments. For example, there’s a study in psychology about an invisible gorilla. They show people a video of two basketball teams passing balls around. One team is dressed in red and the other team in blue. They say, “Count how many passes the team in red make.” It’s a 15 second video, and at the end they say, “OK, how many passes?” People say, “13 passes,” and they say, “Correct. But did you notice the invisible gorilla?” People say, “No. What invisible gorilla?” Then, they showed them the video again. Sure enough, a man in a gorilla suit walks right through the middle of the video and waves at the camera. But people have been so focused on counting the passes that they don’t notice the invisible gorilla. The researchers who did this study became knows as “the invisible gorilla guys”. I thought that would be so funny, to become known as the something like that, so I wanted something similar that Daniel could be associated with, that would plague him — “Oh, you’re the disembodied octopus guy.” That was the extent of it for me. But I like your explanation. It’s very clever.

Scott: When the movie gets made and you have the onslaught of people interviewing you, I’m sure somebody’s going to say, “Disembodied Octopus, what’s the symbolic meaning of that?”

Sam: Right. I’ll invoke The Scott Myers Theorem.

Scott: You can claim it as your own, that’s fine by me. You know that trope? Boy finds girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl. You invert that in the script. It’s boy has lost girl, boy finds girl again, boy loses girl. Is that an accurate appraisal of the narrative structure?

Sam: Roughly, yeah.

Scott: That ending, boy loses girl. There’s more a sense of freedom, in some respects, for both of the characters. They come to realize that that’s what they need to do. That ending, were you at all concerned that it doesn’t align with the so‑called Hollywood conventional wisdom of a happy ending?

Sam: That was the whole reason I was interested to do it. I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a ‘happy ending’ to a relationship drama in which the characters divorce?” It’s an anti‑rom‑com in that way, and I thought that would be so interesting if I could get that to work. As I said, it took a lot of drafts to get it right. But I was much more interested in doing the subversive ending than in having these two people decide that they were actually meant to be together all along.

Scott: You subvert the expectations, I think, that some readers would have about the stand‑up comedy dynamic. Once you set that into motion, a script reader would likely think, “OK, at some point, this guy’s going to do stand‑up comedy.” I suppose that the less nuanced type reader would think, “He’s going to get up and do a good job.” You actually have Daniel get on stage twice. Both times, he basically fails. The first time he fails, he’s trying to be funny. He’s got all these notes of comic bits he’s collected through the years, observations that he brings onstage. The bits don’t connect with the audience. He does just enough that the club manager invites him back to do his thing onstage. That really sets the stage for the big, culminating performance where he gets on stage a second time. Emma, through some plot circumstances, happens to be there. He does this “stand up routine”, which is not that at all. Could you talk a bit about how you came to that? Was that always part of the ending, that he was going to be doing this monologue from onstage, and she was going to hear it?

Sam: Yeah, that was always in there. It’s what I said earlier, that the movie is about him finally being able to be honest. I thought, “Can you combine this terrifying idea of intimate honesty in a relationship, and also the terrifying idea of going out in front of an audience of 100 people and baring your soul as a stand‑up comedian, into the most terrifying experience this guy could ever have?” If you could, then I thought that would be an interesting ending. That was one of those instinctual things where it was in it right from the first outline of the script, and I just knew that was the way it had to end. There were five or six things like that, and everything else was just about making those things work.

Scott: You had the instinct for that as the ending, but I’m imagining it was pretty hard to write that monologue.

Sam: That speech changed every draft up until the last draft.

Scott: Even though he, again, fails ‑‑ small F ‑‑ at stand‑up comedy, he succeeds, Daniel, in putting himself also, I guess, Emma, in a way, where they have a chance to climb up another ladder, another wall. Hopefully ‑‑ post‑script ‑‑ having happier lives. That’s a pretty accurate take on the ending, you think?

Sam: Sure.

Scott: You mentioned you worked on this for two years. Is it possible to approximate how many drafts you think you wrote?

Sam: I have 26 different drafts of the movie in a folder on my computer. Some of those were massive overhaul drafts, and some of them were just minor revisions. The drafts were quite fluid, I guess. Bu there were 26 instances where I clicked “Make a PDF”, “Include Title Page”, and sent it out to a couple of friends.

Scott: I was going to ask what type of feedback you were getting and from whom. You had a writers’ group or something?

Sam: Not formally, but I know lots of talented people from making short films in the past, and I have friends who are writers, and friends who work in the film industry. I was working as a runner and a script‑reader and an assistant while I was writing, so there were always other junior people to swap scripts with. I’m a real feedback junkie. I like showing stuff to anyone, I think everyone’s opinion is valid. I think there are three types of notes that you can get. There’s the notes where, even before the person’s finished saying the sentence, it’s like someone’s stabbed you in the heart because you know what they’re saying is true and you know you’re going to have to fix it. Then there’s the notes where you completely disagree, and before they finish the sentence, you know that you’re never going to change a word on that point. Then there’s the notes where everyone else is saying one thing, and you disagree. But then, you have to listen. What they’re all suggesting as a solution might not be right, but you have to really think carefully about those notes.

Scott: I think that’s the greatest articulation of notes I’ve ever heard. Seriously. I’ve never thought about it like that, but I think you’re absolutely right. Three types of notes. That’s great. Let’s get to the fun stuff, here. You write the script, finish it, and now the Nicholl. How did you become aware of that?

Sam: When I finished the script, which was a year and a bit ago, I knew it was the finished draft, but at that point, I didn’t have an agent. I didn’t have any way of really getting it into the right people’s hands. So I thought, “Hey, screenwriting competitions.” You always see them advertised, and I just entered every single one. The most interesting thing to me about that process was that the day after I won the Nicholl, I also got rejection emails from two other screenwriting contests for the exact same draft of the script. It just goes to show, it’s so subjective.

Scott: Wow. On the same day?

Sam: Yeah, the day after I got the Nicholl. I was really buzzing and excited. Then I opened my emails and was like, “Oh, OK.”

Scott: That’s too much.

Sam: I laughed really, really hard.

Scott: I laugh thinking about it. Then what happened? Where were you when you got the word that you’d been a winner?

Sam: I was writing in my bedroom when Greg Beal called me to tell me I was a finalist. That was amazing. Then you have to go through various hoops over the next couple of weeks. Then, a month later, I was watching a movie and my phone rang. It said Beverly Hills, so I answered it. It was the Fellowship Committee telling me that I’d actually won.

Scott: That’s wonderful. The first call, you were writing. The second call, you were watching a movie. You weren’t just futzing around. You were on point. You got, I’m assuming, some calls from managers and agents and whatnot?

Sam: Yeah, that was overwhelming. The day after they announced the finalists, the tidal wave pours in. It was a very weird experience and very hard to know what to make of, but absolutely amazing.

Scott: You ended up signing with someone?

Sam: I signed with an agent and a manager over in the US. I already had an agent in London, who I’d just signed with a couple of months earlier.

Scott: Let’s talk about the experience of accepting the Nicholl, going to LA and that whole thing. What was that like?

Sam: That was an experience. It was definitely the most intense week of my life so far. The Nicholl people lay on an incredible week of events and seminars, all kinds of fun and interesting stuff. Plus my UK agent had put together lots of meetings with people in LA, so it was just five days of meetings all day, every day. You go from one to another to another to another. They call it “the water bottle tour”, because each place gives you a water bottle. It was exhausting and exhilarating and scary and exciting and fun and everything in between. Very educational.

Scott: When you win a Nicholl, you’ve got an obligation to write a project. Are you working on that?

Sam: Yeah.

Scott: Congratulations again. Let’s jump into some craft questions, if we could. This one stumps writers sometimes, but I think it’s interesting. How do you come up with story ideas?

Sam: I don’t know. They just come along at the most unexpected moments. Hopefully you have some way to write them down. For me, it’s usually an interesting contradiction, or some kind of emotional bind or moral question. Something where I think, “Oh, that’s interesting,” or “That would be a difficult predicament,” or “That would be awkward.” I guess there’s always got to be tension somewhere, and there’s always got to be ways into the characters. I have ideas constantly, but most of them just float in and float out. It’s the ones that make you think, “Oh, there’s something in there,” that you come back to.

Scott: Do you actually have a list or something where you keep these ideas?

Sam: I send myself emails. Every time I have an idea for a script, I pop it into a Gmail thread. When a script’s thread has around 100 messages in it, that’s when I start thinking about it properly. So things tend to percolate for a couple of months before I actually take them seriously.

Scott: Let’s talk about what we could call “prep writing,” which is where you’re developing the story before you actually type, “Fade in.” Brainstorming, character development, research, outlining. What of those aspects of prep do you tend to devote the most time and focus to?

Sam: I always used to jump straight in. But after doing 26 drafts of my feature, I have now decided to try and spend a bit more time preparing. But every project is different. I’m writing one period thing, so there’s huge amounts of research that go into that. That’s been really interesting, because you just can’t start the freewheeling creative process until you’ve done so much baseline research. For a normal contemporary project, I don’t know. Each one has its own natural way in, but I guess it’s a mixture of brainstorming and then trying to… There’s the creative side and the administrative side. There’s getting all brainstorming ideas down, and then trying to turn those random ideas into some kind of sequential document where they actually lay out in some kind of story form. You think, “Maybe that belongs in the first third, and that probably belongs in the last third.” Then, you read through it a couple of times and build it up. I’m a big believer in the iterative process, where you go over something again and again and again, adding little blocks each time, until you feel, “God, now I’ve just got to write the thing”, or the dialogue is bursting out of you, and you think, “This document is going to get unwieldy if I start writing every line in it.” Then I tend to move over to Final Draft.

Scott: How about characters? You mentioned earlier you wanted to write a character‑driven script for the Nicholl script. I’m imagining you have an affection and affinity for characters. Any specific things you do to get to know them?

Sam: That’s a good question. I think it’s all about point of view or perspective. One of the most important things I read in one of those screenwriting books was that every character is the protagonist of their own life. There’s no such thing as a two‑dimensional person in real-life. So you can’t really write a character unless you know them as a person. There are great articles about this, which will say this much better than I can. But there’s no such thing as just “the receptionist” or “the security guard”. Those people all have families. They all woke up this morning. They all heard something on the way to work. I think it’s just about taking their perspective and thinking, “Who is this person as a human being? What else is going on in their day?” If they’re a security guard, they don’t just care about stopping a person coming into the building. They’re also thinking about how they just got caught speeding and they have to post that form off to the place, otherwise they’re going to get points on their license. Or they’ve just forgotten their mother’s birthday. They’ve just been dumped. Whatever it might be. It’s all about the human way in.

Scott: That reminds me of that line ‑‑ I can’t remember who said it ‑‑ but, “Even bad guys have mothers.”

Sam: Exactly.

Scott: All the characters have. They live in that story universe 24‑7–365. As far as they’re concerned, they are the protagonists of their own stories.

Sam: Exactly.

Scott: Dialogue. I’m imagining it’s probably a pretty intuitive thing for you in terms of how you find their voices?

Sam: Mixture. Sometimes it is. Sometimes, you have to work at it. When I was younger, I used to just write dialogue because it would be funny, or whatever. But now, you have to see the virtue of each line, not only in terms of revealing character but also in terms of, “Why is this line in the script?” Dialog really needs to pull its weight from a broad story or theme or emotional perspective as well as just a character perspective and as well as just being funny or whatever. Someone very smart once said “dialogue is verbal action” — i.e. you’re using words to do something to someone, or to achieve a goal.

Scott: Right. Dialogue is conversation with purpose.

Sam: Exactly.

Scott: You just mentioned theme. That seems to be one of those concepts that writers have a lot of different ideas about what exactly that means. I’m curious. Do you have any specific thoughts about what theme is and how important it is to you? Do you start with themes, or do they arise in the context of developing and writing the story?

Sam: Anytime I’m thinking of a new project, as I said, I throw ideas into a Gmail thread to myself. Often I’ll be sitting on the train or whatever, and will come up with an idea that doesn’t have any script attached to it, but I think, “That’s an interesting observation,” or “That’s an interesting character trait,” or “That’s an interesting quirk of the world”. I write it down, and then I have to think, “Which Gmail thread do I put this idea into?” The answer to that is how I define theme. For me, scripts start off as this jumbled up thread of ideas and characters and story beats, endings or beginnings or twists — and the theme is what unites them. It’s why they’re in one Gmail thread as opposed to another.

This script was about honesty in relationships. It’s about taking chances and those kinds of things. But I was also writing a couple of other things alongside of it, and there’s a reason why things ended up in this script as opposed to another script. It’s the theme.

Scott: What do you think about when you’re writing a scene? Do you have specific goals in mind?

Sam: There are some great quotes that I always keep in mind. One is the David Mamet quote “Who needs what from whom, and what will happen if they don’t get it?” The other is the Alexander Mackendrick quote, “What is happening now is never as interesting as the anticipation of what may or may not happen next.” Those two things, I think about at the beginning of every single scene. And the scene is not good until you can address those two things.

Scott: The first speaks to conflict, right?

Sam: Yeah.

Scott: The other speaks to tension.

Sam: Right.

Scott: Yeah, that’s interesting. What’s your actual writing process like? Do you write every day? Are you one of those writers who do sporadic bursts? Do you work in private? Do you go to coffee shops? Do you listen to music?

Sam: All of the above, apart from listening to music. I can’t do that. But yeah, everything that you just said in various permutations. Sometimes I write alone, sometimes I co‑write with people. Sometimes I write in my bedroom. Sometimes I write in public. Sometimes I like working on pen and paper, sometimes I like working on a laptop. Usually, if I’ve been working a lot on a laptop, then I switch over to pen and paper because I get sick of the bloody laptop screen. I just try to always shake it up.

I also direct stuff as well. So I don’t write every day, because if I’m directing then I can’t really be writing. But I’ll still be on the way to set, or doing some other thing in my life, then have an idea and just send myself a little note about it on my Gmail. It happens every which way, and you just have to be a bit flexible about it.

Scott: I remember reading something where Judd Apatow, when he was directing some movie ‑‑ I’m not exactly sure which one it was ‑‑ I think he was doing 40‑Year‑Old Virgin. While the crew was setting up, he would do something similar to you. He would send emails to himself for Knocked Up, and that’s how he developed that story.

Sam: I’ve got more projects on the go now than I’ve ever had before, so you just have to be fluid about it and be able to keep throwing ideas into one melting pot whilst honing another melting pot into an actual script.

Scott: So directing. What are you doing exactly?

Sam: I’ve made a lot of short films over the years and did a lot of YouTube stuff, as we talked about earlier. Then I just did a 25‑minute short film, and the plan next is to direct “The Science of Love and Laughter.”

Scott: Are there any lessons for writing that you’ve learned through your directing?

Sam: What an interesting question. Almost certainly. I just learned a lesson the other day, which was you got to have more than one thing going on at the scene. That’s probably not a generalizable rule, but certainly, we were just doing a scene the other day on this movie. There wasn’t just enough happening in it. There’s a great quote which says, “If a scene isn’t coming into life, have your characters be broken down by the start of the road and having to change a tire whilst they’re having the same conversation”. There’s a great scene in Rachel Getting Married, where the family is having big this explosion over argument and they have to learn the dishwasher and they’re all trying to load the dishwasher. The thing that you sometimes forget when you’re writing is that the more you can give actors to do at any point in time, the more interesting it will be for them to play, especially if the activity they need to do and their scene-goal are in conflict.

Scott: It’s interesting you mention that. I call those BOBS, little Bits Of Business. The business that they’re doing and that scene you’ve mentioned from Rachel Getting Married is so great. I actually met Jenny Lumet and asked her about that scene. She said that actually happened in real life. Her father Sydney thought of himself as an expert at loading a dishwasher, so he and a guest had a competition. But, of course, in the movie, this rather humorous moment, this Bit Of Business, turns into a dramatic moment when Kym, Anne Hathaway’s character, pulls out a dish that her younger brother had made, the boy having died. That visual turns the mood instantly.

Sam: Yes. You’re right. It does.

Scott: Here’s a question I like to ask. What’s your single best excuse not to write?

Sam: That’s a good question. The best excuse is that I’m directing, but the worst excuse is “Gosh darn it, I don’t know what the hell I’m doing and I don’t want to today”.

Scott: Right.

Sam: If I go through a whole day without doing one or the other, then something’s wrong.

Scott: Conversely, what do you love most about writing?

Sam: Well, here’s another quote. George R.R. Martin said, “I don’t love writing, I love having written.” When I read that, I was like, “Ugh, so true.” There is something very satisfying about cracking a script, and there’s something very fun about the challenge of trying to crack it. But God, there’s also something absolutely miserable about the experience of not being able to crack something. It’s a very strange pursuit and I don’t know why we do it, but there’s the compulsion.

Scott: It sounds like, because you mentioned several quotes, you and I are cut from the same cloth. Because I am constantly drawn to writing quotes. Do you have any sources you use or do you just, in the general course of your life, you run across these things?

Sam: Yeah, I don’t know. I just read a lot of articles about writing. I have a document that I keep for myself, which has some great ones in it. Stuff like the great Stephen King quote, “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open”. Whenever I come across a good one that seems to distilled something that really speaks to me, I keep a note of it.

Scott: Finally, one last question, and maybe zero in on the specific aspect that you are a UK-based writer. What advice can you offer to aspiring writers about the learning of the craft and breaking in to the business?

Sam: Well, I guess you have to write what you love writing, because you’re always going to hate every project for a significant portion of it. But you’ve got to power through to the end, so you’ve got to love that thing.

Also, I’d like to say that no first draft is ever any good. No one is really a genius. I’m certainly not, anyway. So I think it’s about not losing hope, if people tell you that your thing is no good. Because actually, it’s just no good yet. Because whatever got you excited enough about it in the first place to try writing it, to try to bare your soul on paper, or try and make people laugh, or whatever the hell you’re trying to do, scare people, or whatever — there are other people who are going to connect to that same core idea. So it’s just about cracking the thing. I guess it’s that really. I want to encourage people to stay the course if they really love it. It’s going to take a long time and it’ll be hard, and you won’t always enjoy it, blah, blah, blah. But if that’s what you’re interested in doing, then I truly, truly believe that anyone can do it if they want to. So it’s just, it’s just about not getting disheartened, because it’s easy to.

Scott: I think you’ve just probably added your own quotes to the writing list, because that was great. I’m going to probably quote you on a couple of those things. Don’t be surprised to see yourself on Twitter.

Sam: I’ll look for that!

Here is Sam with his Nicholl Fellowship acceptance speech:

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