Interview (Part 1): Chris Parizo

My interview with 2023 Black List writer for his script Kazan.

Chris Parizo has made the annual Black List two times: In 2020 for his script Viceland, then in 2023 with Kazan. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Chris about his creative background, the craft of screenwriting, and the challenges associated with writing a biopic like Kazan.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day this week, Chris talks about his lengthy stint as a musician, touring and recording albums, and lessons learned along the way he brought to his screenwriting.

Scott Myers: I want to talk about your journey into screenwriting and filmmaking. First, let’s talk about the music thing. After high school, you joined a band and did that for several years. Could you talk about that?

Chris Parizo: Sure. I broke my mom’s heart. It was her dream for me to go to college. And I went because I felt like that’s what you were supposed to do. All my friends were goind. I think within three months of my freshman year, I was done with it, and I wasn’t mature to do it anyway.

I was wasting a lot of people’s money.

I wanted to be a musician. I grew up in Burlington, Vermont, the home of Phish and all these incredible bands that were huge locally and regionally in the ’90s. The Pants, Wide Wail, Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello had a band called The Fags there at that time. Great bands. One of those was this band called Chin Ho!. I adored them. Had their poster on my wall in high school.

If you had asked me, “Name your top five favorite bands,” I would have been like, “Smashing Pumpkins, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Tragically Hip, and Chin Ho!.” They were in that group.

When I got to college, I descended on the radio station. Became the local music director, and I booked them immediately because I knew they did a great live show. And it ends up that their bassist had quit and they had some New England shows lined up they had to cancel. I was like, “I’ll do it! I play bass!” They’re like, “Are you serious?” I was like, “Yeah, I know all your songs! Let’s do it.”

I was lying. I had never played bass before, but I learned and played the shows with them, played 10 songs. Then they invited me to join, and play with the Tragically Hip and Jewel and Counting Crows and all these great bands and performers at the time. So I quit college. Much cooler.

So I called my mom up and told her, “Look, I’ve got this opportunity and I don’t want to lose this. I don’t know if it’s going to go anywhere, but I don’t want to live my life wondering what if. I want to do this.” My mom said, in her very sort of strange wisdom, “Go do it, but your life is mine again when you’re 25. When you’re 25, I start making the decisions.”

Deal! I quit the band and decided to go back to college before I was 25. But I got to spend my late teens and early twenties on tour. Playing The 40 Watt and CBGBs in the late 90’s, and meet my music heroes. It was a wild time.

Scott: You recorded several albums with them.

Chris: Yeah, they had three albums out before I joined, then we did three albums together. One of them was with this Canadian producer named Glenn Robinson, who had worked with everybody from Tori Amos to Voivod, if anybody out there knows who Voivod was. And he worked with Corey Hart, which was funny, such a Canadian thing.

We went up to Montreal, recorded a demo for Elektra Records in ’97 that they ended up passing on, but we got to keep the master tapes. We released it as an EP on an indie label.

We just did our reunion gig. It’s been 25 years since I played with those guys. We sold out the show. We were like, “People remember us. This is so cool.” It was good closure for me because I quit on pretty bad terms. Felt really great to play with those guys one last time.

Scott: Somehow you ended up down in Georgia, went to college, then got a master’s degree.

Chris: The whole band was supposed to move to Atlanta because our booking agent was down there, and we already toured the northeast regularly. We thought we could tour the southeast and go up and down the East Coast forever, and make a living out of it.

My girlfriend at the time decided to follow us to Atlanta. She transferred from Northeastern in Boston to Georgia State. And then the band backed out of the move.

My girlfriend is looking at me going, “I dropped out of college! I’m going to Atlanta, and now you’re not?” So, I quit and moved to Atlanta with her. Then we got married.

And I wanted to go back to college. It was so much cheaper down there. At the time if you were a Georgia resident and maintained a 3.5 GPA or higher you’re tuition was paid for. It was called “Sonny Money” after Sonny Purdue — The Hope Scholarship. I desperately needed it.

And to be Atlanta in your early-mid-20s, when you’re double income with no kids is a pretty great place to be. We stayed there for 13 years. Got our undergrads and our masters degrees. Our four-year plan went for 13 years and then headed back to New England when we decided to have kids. We needed our moms closer to us.

Scott: Literary analysis and then English education. What was going on there?

Chris: I was reading books in the tour van back in the Chin Ho! days. They were cheaper than drugs. I decided to read all the books my high school teachers told me were great, but I thought they were shit at the time (the teachers and the books). I reached an age where I was thinking, “Why does everyone like ‘Of Mice and Men’? I should probably read that on my own for myself.”

I would bring “Moby Dick” with me or I’d bring “Huckleberry Finn” on the road with me. And I was falling in love with them. And found myself not just reading the books, but reading the books about the books, the books about the writers and the books about the analysis of the books. I was falling down a literary analysis rabbit hole.

That triggered in me this idea of, “Wow, you can become a writer by writing about other people’s writing.” That sparked a need to learn more about critical reading and literary analysis as a whole. That led to teaching high school English. I wanted to be the teacher who knew the students hated what we were reading, but wanted to teach the importance of why we read, and what we can learn about ourselves and the human condition from a book like “Catcher in the Rye.”

Scott: You enjoyed that?

Chris: Yeah, I loved it. Loved teaching at Decatur High School and loved Atlanta. I had a great time. The further away from Atlanta I taught though, the less I enjoyed teaching. Boston and Vermont.

In Atlanta, my fellow teachers were my tribe. We were all around the same age. It was an international baccalaureate school. It was very progressive. Being in a progressive school in the South is a phenomenon. Decatur High School was that. It was magical at the time.

There was a music, food, and art scene in this city of Decatur, Georgia. If you watch The Watchmen on HBO, those strange blue pylons are actually the subway station about a block away from the high school. I busted kids smoking weed on those. [laughs]

Scott: You got into writing about music when you were in the band.

Chris: Yeah.

Scott: How did that happen?

Chris: I had to pay my rent! The singer and I published a magazine of Vermont music called “Good Citizen.” We were writing about our friends and bands that we really enjoyed. Trading ads with the local burrito place for free food so we could eat!

When Chin Ho! toured, we’d take the magazine out with us. That and CD compilations. I think we put out 10 or 12 CD compilations in the six years that I was there just to promote the music. We’d send them out to a thousand radio stations.

We would just call the radio stations and push the music, push the music, push the music.

That was a great way for me to learn the ropes of networking, and learn the ropes of collaboration. And to be “good in a room.”

When I moved to Atlanta, I started writing for “Southeast Performer.” Then “Paste Magazine” was out of Decatur and I did some freelance stuff for them. They were right down the road from the high school. In the early days, I did the little side blurbs for them.

Whenever any opportunity came to write something to get published in print or online, I would jump on it pretty much. I love seeing my name in print. Ha!

Tomorrow in Part 2, Chris discusses how he learned screenwriting and the inspiration for writing Kazan.

Chris is repped by Bellevue Productions.

chrisparizo.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8446483/
www.slamdance.com

For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.