Go Into The Story Interview: Scott Beck and Bryan Woods

My interview with originators, co-writers, and executive producers of the smash horror thriller A Quiet Place.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “Bryan and I first met when we were 11 years old. At the time, neither of us knew we had an interest in making movies. We just had a mutual friend that introduced us and, over talking, discovered that we both used our action figures to make stop motion movies. Because we had that interest, we joined forces because nobody else we knew was making movies.” [Scott Beck]

Part 2: “We wrote those 15 pages and did nothing with them. We put them in a drawer. We were just like, “Eh, this is interesting. Maybe we’ll do something with this. We don’t really know what.” [Bryan Woods]

Part 3: “She was always a character that we felt could be the beacon of hope that’s keeping this family together. Obviously, she’s pregnant in the film. You can read that one of two ways. You can read that as, “Oh, that’s a terrible decision to make in this post‑apocalyptic world,” or it is an eye towards the future.” [Scott Beck]

Part 4: “We wanted to make sure that producers and studio heads would read the script. Normally, dialogue is the easiest thing to turn the pages because it takes up the least amount of space, it’s blocked down, it’s easy to turn the page and read dialogue. Producers and studios hate reading blocks, and blocks, and blocks of description.” [Bryan Woods]

Part 5: “We always like to incubate our ideas for a long time, sometimes to the frustration of our agent or manager who just want us to write faster, but we feel and our hope is that if we take a little more time, that it will be a much stronger final product.” [Scott Beck]

Part 6: “I think reading is so crucial. Reading other scripts, other screenwriters. Doing the work of just familiarizing yourself with the medium is huge.” [Bryan Woods]

Entire Interview

Scott and Bryan are repped by ICM Partners and Madhouse Entertainment.

Twitter: @beckandwoods.

For nearly 200 Go Into The Story interviews with screenwriters, filmmakers, and Hollywood insiders, go here.