Interview (Part 1): c. Craig Patterson

My interview with the 2023 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

c. Craig Patterson wrote the original screenplay “Tah” which won a 2023 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with c. Craig about his creative background, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to him.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, c. Craig talks about growing up in New Orleans and his extensive film school education.

Scott: I believe you’re originally from New Orleans. Is that right?

c. Craig: I’m from the 7th Ward of New Orleans. Yes, sir.

Scott: How does someone growing up in New Orleans, wind your way toward the interest in filmmaking?

c. Craig: The 7th Ward is a really kind of ultra‑creative space there. It’s always a lot of music. It’s a lot of people living life and having fun and enjoying the city and enjoying each other.

And so, I had that as a backdrop to my life. My mother is an amazing writer. One of the biggest things that has come out of this entire Nicholl experience, it’s inspired her to want to write again. Especially she’s in the story. She’s the little girl in the story.

Scott: Ada?

c. Craig: Yeah. Ada. My mother is Angela, but I named her Ada in the story. Putting her in the story was a big deal to me. She always pushed me to write and to be as creative as possible.

Scott: How did you get into screenwriting?

c. Craig: Completely accidentally. I always wrote for a living. I was an editor‑in‑chief of a small magazine in Texas.

When I got into school in New York, I had an opportunity to choose a path in life. I truly sat down and thought about like, well, I like to write. What can I do for a living in writing? And I was like, I’ll pretend to be a screenwriter [laughs] and I started taking screenwriting classes.

I’m sitting in a class one day and this other guy (Emil Daubon) was there. He asked, what are you studying? I was like, I’m a screenwriter. And he’s like, me too. I was like, oh, great. And he’s like, yo, there’s a group of us that meets, a group of veterans that meets in a coffee shop after classes, and we learn from the MFA, the MFA student teaches us what he learned.

I was like, oh, that’s great, but I’m not a veteran. He’s like, oh man, it’s three of us, so it’ll be fine. That guy, Jesse Gustafson, as an MFA student, he took the time to teach us screenwriting and from…

Scott: This was Columbia?

c. Craig: This was at Columbia. And, from there I just went with it and I’ll continue to do it until people tell me stop. [laughter]

Scott: They’ve got a great program at Columbia.

c. Craig: They do. Story is always first there. They only cared about the written word of it. That was a different type of experience, but I’m so grateful for it, because they just really drilled it in us is that like, if you know what to make a story about you’ll figure out the how.

Scott: So you also did NYU and USC. How did that work out?

c. Craig: It flows into what we were just talking about. So I was at Columbia and getting fairly frustrated that there were no more practical film classes to take. Every class I had was a screenwriting class. I also took Barnard screenwriting classes.

I had ran out of film classes to take and it was really frustrating because I wanted to learn directing and I was doing a lot of directing outside of school. But I found a loophole that I applied to NYU as a visiting student, as though I was coming from somewhere else.

I was just going to both schools at the same time. I was studying directing at NYU and studying everything else at Columbia. Everything was going fantastic. I was learning so much. I had that opportunity to get that directing experience at NYU.

I eventually got busted when I went and asked about financial aid one day. And Columbia made me choose. They very much were like, decide where you go to school, because I was double enrolled. And apparently you’re not allowed to be double enrolled. At least at the particular program I was in.

I was like, all right, it’s Columbia but what was poetic about it was my final class at USC and my MFA was with one of my good friends from NYU was in that class with me and it was like a beautiful ending.

But, yeah, USC came because I heard Spike Lee say that there is nothing poetic about being a starving artist. I was like, oh well, let me go see how they’re doing things at USC because USC certainly takes a much different approach to how they look at filmmaking and they think about the business component too.

Scott: Yeah, they’re much more in tune with the commercial aspect of it. But I bet it’s good that you got the whole Columbia screenwriting experience, the NYU auteur thing, and then USC and the commercial angle.

Tomorrow in Part 2, c. Craig reveals the inspiration for his Nicholl-winning screenplay “Tah.”

c. Craig is repped by Gotham Group.

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