Interview (Part 1): Callie Bloem and Christopher Ewing

My interview with the 2022 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winners.

Callie Bloem and Christopher Ewing wrote the original screenplay “Tape 22” which won a 2022 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with the couple about their creative backgrounds, their award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to them.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Callie and Chris talk about how they met each other in college and followed a circuitous path toward Los Angeles and a shared interest in screenwriting.

Scott Myers: Congratulations, both of you for winning the Nicholl. It’s a great way to round out 2022 for you, I’m sure.

Callie Bloem: Yes. Absolutely.

Christopher Ewing: Thank you so much.

Scott: Let’s start off getting some background on you. Callie, you grew up in the DC area. Is that right?

Callie: I did. Yes, that’s correct.

Scott: Were stories a big deal in your family — movies, TV, books?

Callie: Books, definitely. My parents are huge readers. We always had books all over our house, but we didn’t watch very much TV or movies. The only TV shows that we watched as a family were “Murder, She Wrote.” We used to watch “Touched by an Angel,” which now, I’m like, “Huh.” I’ll have to revisit that. That seems strange.

Scott: Chris, how about you? You’re from the Chicago area.

Christopher: Yes, the suburbs of Chicago. I grew up in the same town that John Hughes grew up in. All of his movies where he has Shermerville as the town, a lot of that takes place in Northbrook, my town that I grew up in. It’s like the high school from “Ferris Bueller” is where I went to high school.

Scott: How about you? Were you much into stories when you were growing up?

Christopher: Yes. For me, my love of movies was always there, but it was always on the backburner after music. Music was always my first love from a very young age.

Up through high school, I thought I was going to be a touring guitarist for some indie rock band, but very quickly realized that that was maybe not the most sustainable lifestyle. I also couldn’t find a band that I liked being in quite enough.

Scott: That figures into a couple of questions I have later on because the script you wrote Tape 22, there’s such specificity there about the musical instruments and performance, I figured one of you two had to have had some interest in music. If I can extrapolate from your bios, did you both go to school at the University of Wisconsin?

Callie: We sure did.

Christopher: That is where we met.

Scott: That’s where you met?

Callie: Yeah, my first week of freshman year.

Christopher: I scooped her up.

[laughter]

Scott: I think Callie, you studied political science?

Callie: Yes. I studied poli sci and sociology, which were wonderful, but they’re like the basic catchall, not-exactly-sure-where-I’m-going-with-life majors. I did always anticipate working in healthcare, even with those random majors.

Scott: You did for a while later on.

Callie: I did. I worked in healthcare tech for around 10 years before I fully transitioned into entertainment. I very much was following the career path of my parents, and I like to say it was a wonderful career for someone else.

Scott: That’s straight out of Joseph Campbell world there. He talks about, if there’s a path you find laid out in front of you, that’s probably not your path. You got to create your own path.

Callie: Absolutely.

Scott: Chris, how about you? What did you major in at Wisconsin?

Christopher: I started as a business major because I had the wonderful idea of starting a record label/surf shop in Chicago, because I saw a need for it. There were no surf shops in Chicago, and I was like, “This is great. There’s a market that’s open.” Then I very quickly took one macroeconomics class and decided that was not my future.

I switched up and went into a journalism degree from there and also a creative writing degree. I finished both those degrees pretty fast and had my senior year mostly open. I wrote an essay on “Fight Club” that allowed me to bypass a few intro film classes.

I spent most of my senior year taking as many film classes as they would let me as I was finishing my thesis in my other majors.

Scott: Didn’t you get into music journalism for a while?

Christopher: Yes. At Wisconsin, I was the arts editor of the biggest independent student‑run newspaper in the country, “The Badger Herald.” That’s really where I fell in love with music journalism. I was going all over the place, interviewing bands on tour buses, going to gigs, doing tons of record reviews.

One of the big, life‑changing moments was when I was sent to a press junket to see “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” and interview Charlie Kaufman and Michel Gondry. Seeing that movie and then getting to spend time with those two guys reoriented my whole world, and made movies and making movies a possibility.

Scott: That’s why you ended up going to film school in San Francisco?

Christopher: Yes. I spent the year after I graduated working in a warehouse, cutting out and laminating those big posters you see in Gap stores. At the same time, Callie and I made a movie that was going to be a feature. That was the idea of it. When I wrote it, it only turned out to be 43 pages.

It was a Richard Linklater‑style meandering, philosophizing, 43‑minute movie. That was the exact perfect length to not get into any festivals at all or never be seen. It only played one film festival. And that was right before a bank of amateur pornography.

Scott: At some point, you’re together. I think Callie, you went out to San Francisco, too. You were out there. Like you said, you had a nice office in the Presidio.

Callie: I did. It was so beautiful. It was right across from ILM. You could see sometimes the animators put their sketches up in the windows, which was really neat. It was an amazing place to work.

Scott: Sounds like the gravitational pull of entertainment was working its way into your life experience there.

Callie: I really think it was just not something I’d ever considered as a career growing up. As I said, I didn’t watch tons of movies growing up, but I always loved books. Then, weirdly enough, when Chris and I first met, the very, very first thing that we started talking about was he had a poster from the movie “Happy Campers,” which was a Sundance movie, on his wall.

I was like, “You have a Happy Campers poster?” Not a ton of people had seen that movie.

Christopher: No. I think it’s a relatively obscure film.

Callie: I’m not even sure how I came to see that movie. I think that’s when we immediately hit it off. Then movies became a huge part of our life together, and music. All of these shows he was going to, I was there, too.

Scott: You relocate to LA. At this point, Chris, you’re directing commercials and music videos. Callie, you’re doing the healthcare thing. Is that right?

Christopher: Yes. When we first moved to LA, I was not yet employable as a director of very many things, so we were making micro‑budget music videos. Callie was already producing those. She just has a mind for many aspects of the producing side that I don’t.

For other work, I was still working as a music journalist. I was trying to do unpaid internships at as many film production companies as I could. I was at Muse Productions for a while, while they were making a Michael Winterbottom film, just racking up that kind of experience.

I was also AD‑ing and boom‑operating on independent features and Web series. That was the heyday of Web series, so I was working on a lot of those. I also had a spec that had gotten me a little bit of attention. I was going into a lot of generals and had an initial manager for a little while. All of that wasn’t really generating enough money to live on by any means at all.

Eventually, what happened was I had a mentor who had seen my thesis film in grad school. A guy named Miguel Sapochnik, who went on to do “Game of Thrones,” and now, “House of the Dragon.” He took me under his wing for a couple of years. Eventually, he referred me to a job at Hulu. I got that job, and then I was there for the next nine years.

Scott: That worked out very nicely. Somewhere along the line, of course, you have this little girl. As I’m reading this bio, I thought, “Well, that’s an interesting choice that Callie made here.” It’s like, “You know what? I got this nice secured a gig in the healthcare business. I have a kid. Why not become a producer?” [laughs]

Callie: Right.

Scott: That’s counterintuitive. How did that work for you?

Callie: Ever since we moved to LA, Chris was always on various gigs. I would produce as many of them as I could. I got more and more interested in that world.

I also traveled a lot at my job. I was going back and forth from Canada every few weeks, and it was taxing. Chris and I would always daydream about wouldn’t it be amazing if we worked together someday?

Then, as I was going on maternity leave, I had my existential crisis of how can I be having a child that I want to tell to follow their own dreams when I’m not following my own dreams? Putting it that way made it pretty easy to give it up.

We also were pretty lucky. That was right when we got our first big gig for our own production company that we had started where we did a series of short films for Sega in support of their Yakuza 6 video game. Chris used his paternity leave to go direct them in Japan while I produced from here with a newborn.

I was like this is far better than going into an office every day. It is nice having a salary and benefits, but that’s OK.

Scott: I would say we’re back with Joseph Campbell. Follow your bliss.

Callie: It’s true.

Scott: Find that thing that enlivens you and energizes you, you got a talent for, you want to share with the world, do that. May not be the easiest life, but it’s going to be the chance you have to live your most authentic lives.

Callie: Absolutely.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Chris and Callie reveal the inspiration for their Nicholl-winning screenplay “Tape 22” and how some key characters came to life in their story-crafting process.

Callie and Chris are repped by Grandview.

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

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.