Interview (Part 2): Elad Ziv

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for his script Court 17.

Elad Ziv wrote the screenplay Court 17 which landed on the 2022 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Elad about his creative background, writing a Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Elad reveals the inspiration for his Black List script Court 17 and why he felt there was room for another time-loop movie.

Scott: It’s actually a nice segue to your script, COURT 17, because that’s part of the journey that your Protagonist Noa has. She’s got to open up and make herself vulnerable.

Elad: Absolutely.

Elad: Let’s talk about that. Here’s a plot summary.

“An over‑the‑hill tennis pro, trying to salvage her career, finds herself stuck playing the first round of the US Open over and over again against one of the top players in the world. The only way to stop the loop is to win the match, a seemingly impossible task due to how overmatched she is.”

The script not only made the 2022 Black List, but I was doing a little research and I found this article. Forbes Magazine had an article. The title was called “The 15 Most Intriguing Scripts On The Newly Released 2022 Black List.” COURT 17 was Number One on the list. Did you see that?

Elad: I did. That day of the announcements of the Black List was such a whirlwind for me. I don’t know. I truly went into that day with no anticipation and no expectations on anything, and it blew me away from finding out I was on it to finding out my ranking.

It wasn’t till that night that my career coach actually texted me the article. She was like, “You must be so psyched about this.” I was like, “I didn’t even see that. What is that?” Then I read out like, “Oh, my God.” Then I sent it to John.

That was almost as sweet as the Black List, honestly. That’s also something where I’m from Buffalo, so no one in my family is in the industry, no one understands anything.

The Black List means less to people outside of LA, but Forbes Magazine was a nice little tip of the hat to be like, “Hey, mom and dad, I know I’ve been doing this for 15 years, and you haven’t heard many things, but maybe this it’ll show you that it was worth it this whole time.”

Scott: You have a tennis background. You went to Temple University and played tennis there. I’m curious. What was that moment of inspiration for the script where you said, “All right. This is what I’m going to do.” Was it tennis? Was it a female athlete confronting the checkered past? Was it this conceit of an athlete being forced to play a match over and over again? Do you remember where you started the actual process for writing COURT 17?

Elad: The actual process started with an idea I had to write a loop movie at the beginning of the pandemic about a writer who cannot figure out what to write, and the day keeps repeating itself until he can figure out what to write. I was doing loglines for it, and trying to figure it out. It was so boring, and I couldn’t figure out the movie.

I wasn’t excited, and I really set out to write a movie that was higher concept. I set out to write something that would be seen by people. That would give people an excuse to see my writing because I felt like before, no one ever gave me a chance because as soon as they read the logline of something, they wouldn’t even open the script.

I kept thinking and racking my brain. My first script ever that I wrote was called “No Man’s Land.” As I mentioned, it was a tennis story. It was an Israeli‑Palestinian Romeo and Juliet story seen through the eyes of an Israeli tennis player. I had like, would go in and edit it and stuff. I even did that during the pandemic a little bit.

That tennis and loop thing, when I considered the two and considered the fact that no one had ever done a sports movie that was a loop movie, and it started there. Then the more I thought about it, it was such an organic marriage. It was like you mentioned earlier athletes, they practice every day, they do the same things over and over again.

With tennis, I would hit a thousand forehands, I would hit a thousand backhands, a thousand volleys, overhead, serves, slices, topspin, whatever, so that when I stepped onto the court, everything would be second nature, everything would be subconscious, it would be in my DNA. That’s what a loop is, is you’re doing the same thing over and over again.

There were so many organic…That’s where it started. It started with that concept of merging two genres into one that had never been done before. That no matter what angle I looked at it from seemed so…It was one of those beautiful things where you come up with a concept and you’re like, “How did no one ever write this before?” Or at least I’ve never read it before.

It started there, and then as I kept writing, she was originally a man and then I changed her into a female. Then right when I changed her into a female, Naomi Osaka withdrew from the French Open for mental health reasons. Exactly. That opened up a whole new thing for me, because as you see with Noa, Noa grew up in the same era of tennis as me.

Which is in college, if my body was physically healed, there was no way my coach was not going to let me play. If I said, “I’m having anxiety, I don’t feel like…” There’s no way. If my arms were working and my legs were working, I was playing that match.

When Naomi Osaka withdrew from that tournament, it opened my eyes and I was like, “This is a whole new world of sports that I’m no longer a part of.” I hadn’t been a part of tennis in a long time. How interesting for this player to be a part of it now? She’s “old school” as far as sports is concerned. She comes from a different era.

How would she deal with that? Then the whole idea of the onsite clinician came up and all these other things. That was another beautiful happy…Again, the loop movie, it could drive you insane to live the same day over and over again, that also beautifully lends itself to the mental health of athletes.

Then I read…Kevin Love did a beautiful piece in “The Player’s Tribune” about his mental health. He was an all‑star basketball player for the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Minnesota Timberwolves. All these things beautifully melded with each other and helped create the story because then it became…then I had a cool concept.

It’s a loop movie, and it’s sports, and it’s drama. I also never wanted to do a comedic loop movie because I love “Edge of Tomorrow,” but I thought so many loop movies…That was one of the biggest challenges was trying not to make it funny because loops there’s something inherently funny about the same person…

I didn’t want it, I wanted it to be that manic insanity of, “This sucks, get me out of this day.” Then after that, it became more about shining a light on the mental health of athletes.

I honestly think…I’m not a woman, but I do think that it is much more interesting the pressure of the mental aspect of sports is much more interesting on women than it is on men, because our society, we do have this inherent sexism against the age of women more than we do against the age of men. In sports that plays out in a different way.

A woman in her mid‑30s is different than a man in his mid‑30s when it comes to playing sports. When it comes to everything, but especially sports. It’s one of those happy acts, the timing of that. If Naomi Osaka didn’t withdraw from that until four years later, until now, it would have been completely different.

Maybe the script wouldn’t be about that, but that helped me dig deeper and find another unbelievable level that connected to me, and that I cared about.

Scott: You mentioned these loop movies and there’s a lot of them. Groundhog Day, Palm Springs, both comedies. There was a horror movie called Happy Death Day. That also had a comedic bent to it. Then Edge of Tomorrow had some humor to it as well. There was the TV series, Russian Doll. Comedy.

This is different. To me, putting my producer’s hat on, how Hollywood operates, similar but different. That’s their whole thing. They’re like, “Those were all successful movies. This is different. It’s a sports drama.” I can see why that would slot into the similar but different model.

Elad: That was the other thing for me. There was an interesting “New York Times,” another reason, so another motivation that subconsciously helped me discover the tennis loop thing. There was a New York Times article, I think it was four or five years ago that came out, and it interviewed all these professional tennis players on the lack of good tennis movies in Hollywood.

This was before obviously, King Richard came out, well before, I think before it was written. It spoke about how there hasn’t been a good tennis movie. There hasn’t been a movie where a professional tennis player can walk into the theater and be like, “That’s what it’s like.”

I have always been chasing that, and that’s what I chased with my first movie as well, with my first script, Excuse Me. That was another guiding thing for that.

Match Point it’s a great movie, but the tennis in it is not…Woody Allen doesn’t know what it’s like to be a professional tennis player. He’s a phenomenal writer, you know what I mean? It’s not accurate. I didn’t buy Jonathan Rhys Meyers as a professional tennis player. Wimbledon has its great parts, too, but I didn’t buy Kirsten Dunst as a professional.

There’s all these things that led up into that. It was a big part of really wanting to write a tennis movie from a tennis player’s perspective, something unique that I can do. I will say since then King Richard was a phenomenal tennis movie. I think King Richard is the first phenomenal tennis movie that I’ve seen.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Elad discusses the key characters in Court 17 and how some of them were drawn directly from his own life experience.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Elad is repped by Bellevue Productions.

Twitter and Instagram: @eladziv

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