Interview (Part 1): Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz

My conversation with the co-writers of the movie BlacKkKlansman.

The provocative movie BlacKkKlansman opens in North America this weekend. Directed by Spike Lee and starring John David Washington and Adam Driver, it was originated and co-written by screenwriters Charlie Wachtel and David Rabinowitz.

Today in Part 1 of my five-part series interview with Charlie and David, we learn about the duo’s backstory:

Scott Myers: Both of you hail from East Brunswick, New Jersey, so I figured that’s where you intersected.

David Rabinowitz: Yes.

Scott: How’d that happen?

Charlie Wachtel: Yes. We’ve known each other since about the sixth grade. We’re childhood friends.

David: In high school, instead of doing reports, we would make videos together, learn about shooting, editing, writing stuff.

Scott: Did the school have a film program or were you just doing this on your own?

David: We were just doing it on our own. We would ask, “If everybody else is doing a paper on it, can we do a video instead?” They were exclusively like, “Yeah, sure.”

Charlie: We also did have a film appreciation class in high school that we both took…

David: That’s true.

Charlie: …which got us to see film in a different, more academic light.

Scott: When you were growing up, you met each other early on. You both had an interest in movies?

David: Yeah. In high school, I got super into movies and filmmaking and screenwriting, specifically. At about the time that we were making videos, I started writing scripts, some pretty bad feature scripts, but it was fun.

Scott: Where were you learning the craft from at that point? How were you picking it up?

David: Mostly, I was reading scripts and watching movies. There was some stuff online at that point, but it was mostly from reading scripts from people like Tarantino or the Coen Brothers, and just trying it myself and seeing that what I was doing wasn’t that good. I wanted it to be better.

Scott: These were all PDFs you downloaded from online?

David: Yeah. PDFs and web links.

Scott: Charlie, you attended American University and studied in Prague. Could you talk about that post-high school education and how that influenced things moving forward?

Charlie: Yeah, sure. I was at a crossroads when I graduated from high school because I was very heavily into political science and things like constitutional law and international relations.

I had to decide, do I want to continue to pursue this as much as I was in high school or do I want to just go for my creative passion and see what I can do with that. Obviously, that being the riskier path to take. American, I studied film production and I minored in cinema studies. I went for it and Prague was my study abroad session.

Then, of course, there was Netflix. Netflix was just starting and I was getting the three DVDs at a time. I would say that probably was where most of my film education came from because I was very aggressive in pursuing titles in genres that I was interested in. I wanted to know the space as well as I possibly could.

Scott: That’s a basic piece of advice that I think we give to any aspiring writer. Immerse yourself in whatever it is you’re interested in.

Charlie: For sure.

Scott: David, you went to Quinnipiac University. What’d you study there?

David: Correct. I studied…it wasn’t quite film. It was called media production at that point. It wasn’t film school, but there were some production classes. It was more of a practical education. Learned about shooting, editing, whatnot, but that was helpful in getting me my first job after college.

Scott: Where was that?

David: That was at the “Wall Street Journal” video department. I was working there in New York for three years after college.

Scott: So both of you have some production background?

David: Yeah. In that case, I was shooting interviews and editing interviews, doing studio work, working on the live shows that they had, learning all of those things. It was a lightly creative job, more technical than anything else.

Scott: Charlie, you went the more traditional route, you moved L.A. and became an assistant.

Charlie: That’s correct. Very traditional route.

Scott: What were some of those gigs?

Charlie: My first gig was an internship at Warner Brothers, Weed Road Pictures, which is Akiva Goldsman’s company. I got that from a friend of my older brother’s. He referred me.

The second internship I got, I got on my own. That was at Echo Lake Entertainment. At the time, they had represented John Carpenter, so that really excited me. I just cold emailed them and was able to get in the door that way.

I split the week at both of those companies and then eventually landed at a talent agency, where I was finally getting a paycheck, which was nice. I had wanted to go to a production company, but I had applied everywhere and it seemed, at that time, you had to get in the mailroom if you wanted to pursue jobs working for producers.

I worked there for, I want to say, a little over a year and a half. Then I got my first check job working for a producer. It was an independent producer and financier, Michael Benaroya. I was his assistant. He did movies like Margin Call, The Words.

I worked for him for a couple of years, and then I started working for a commercial director. That went on for about a couple years until I finally fell into advertising as a copywriter.

I worked in advertising for the last…I would say up until the fall, for four years. Then, all the while, independently I was writing, directing, and producing short-form content like short films, web series, spec commercials for contests, stuff like that.

Scott: David, were you back still on the East Coast, because you’re now in LA, is that right?

David: Correct. I moved out from New York to LA in 2012. When I moved out, I didn’t really do the Hollywood job route at all. I was doing freelance work, mostly video editing and motion graphics. But I was writing scripts on the side. That’s why I moved out to LA — to write.

Before I moved out I’d been sending my stuff to Charlie. He’d been sending his stuff to me. We’d give each other notes. Then, not long after I moved out, we decided we should join forces and write together.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Charlie and David reveal how they found this story and went about developing it.

Here is a trailer for the movie:

Movie Website

Twitter: @therealcwach, @BlacKkKlansman.

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