Interview (Part 1): Jack Waz

My interview with 2024 Black List writer for his script Decoys.

Jack Waz wrote the screenplay Decoys which landed on the 2024 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Jack about his creative background, writing multiple Black List scripts, and his approach to the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day this week, Jack talks about how in pursuing work as a screenwriter, he had a stint working in reality television.

Scott Myers: Congratulations, Jack, on making the Black List. This is your fifth time?

Jack Waz: Yep, correct.

Scott: We need to have that “Saturday Night Live” thing where they bring the frequent hosts…

Jack: The smoking jackets? Yeah. Absolutely I would love to have a green Black List smoking jacket.

Scott: Let’s go back a bit here. When did you develop an interest in writing for TV and film?

Jack: I grew up in Philly. I always knew I wanted to do something funny, something creative. The first of the most formative moments of my life, I went to summer camp when I was a kid. It’s a place called Camp Waziyatah. Actually, the TV show “Bug Juice,” which was a Disney Channel show in the ’90s shot there, which is a weird claim to fame when you’re a kid, “Oh, that’s my summer camp,” is the famous TV one.

My first day there, they had a whole variety show of “here’s what all the activities are.” There are these two genuinely funny, hilarious Canadian dudes named Kurt and Ed. I still remember they were like, hey, this is what improv is. They did an improv scene in front of all of us, and I thought it was just the funniest shit I’d seen in my life. It blew my little 10-year-old mind.

I was like, oh, I want to do that. I started doing that at summer camp. That evolved into, when I was in high school, I did a second city summer program. By the time I was a junior, I was commuting up to New York on the weekends to do UCB classes. Starting at 16, I was going through the whole training program there, did the levels, did a musical improv course with Eliza Skinner, who’s a brilliant writer now.

I knew I liked comedy. I knew comedy was a way. I didn’t always feel happy at home. I didn’t always feel like it fit in. Like most other writers, you always feel like a bit of an outsider. Comedy was my way of breaking through my own mental blocks and introducing myself to others in a fun way. That’s just something that always stuck with me.

The other super formative thing, I went to a Quaker school in Philadelphia. It’s a place called Germantown Friends. Our junior year, they required us during the month of Jan to leave school and get an internship. I had a really tough time in school, but the single best thing that ever happened was this thing called the Junior Project. I left my junior year.

Most kids stayed around Philly, I moved to LA and worked as a PA for a month at this place called G4 which is a video game network that was launched in the mid-2000s. I did four weeks as PA, and boy, did I love it. It was the coolest thing that had ever happened to me, being a 16-year-old kid around a bunch of nerdy videogame-playing 20 somethings.

I looked at them as gods, doing the absolute grunt work of PA, working out their little mascot. They all loved me, had the time of my life. Then I came back being like, I need to do this with my life. I applied to a bunch of schools. My top choice was this place, Emerson College. Got in there early, and that wound up being the best decision I’ve ever made in my life.

Graduated in ’06, went to Emerson where I met the people who are still my best friends to this day. There’s a lot of talk about the Emerson mafia, but it’s absolutely true. For example, my buddy, Dan Perrault, he and I were in a comedy troupe together in college called Chocolate Cake City.

We were really good friends. We lived together. He actually lived in our closet in Boston. He paid rent for a closet, which is the most insane thing any human has ever done. Then we get out to LA, we go our separate ways for years, but then we come back together because my wife wound up producing this movie, “Strays.”

He, my wife, and I have been friends since 2006, and here we are 16 years later in Atlanta together hanging out, making Dan’s movie. Dan was a show runner on “American Vandal.” He has a “Peabody.” He is, I think, one of the only Peabody award winners to ever have paid $500 a month for a closet in Boston.

I was in a place for the first time in my life where I was amongst my tribe. I found the exact kind of people who I needed to be amongst to feel creative, to feel fulfilled, to become the person I was meant to be.

Scott: You got into reality TV, right, for a while?

Jack: Yeah. I was a PA on “Cougar Town.” Actually, that was my first ever job. There’s this whole thing where the show runners had asked me to play “Santa Claus” at a company Christmas party, and I was like, OK, that’s cool and not at all insulting. Let’s do it. We did the Christmas party, and I’m doing the Santa thing, all the cast is there. The crew is there.

It’s on one of the sound stages at Culver Studios. I’m being Santa. People come sit in my lap, say what they want for Christmas, go in their merry way the fun bit. After about an hour, I was getting bored, and I went to my boss. I was like, “Hey, man, can I go hang out with my PA knucklehead friends? We want to join the party too.” He’s like, “Yeah. Don’t worry about it. Go for it.”

I went and grabbed the quesadilla from a border grill truck, and I sat down at the table with all my buddies. I take off the hat. I pull off the beard. I start eating. Then I just hear screaming, just absolute screeching. I look over, and about 10 feet away, there’s a table full of all the show kids.

It’s the show runner’s kids, the actor’s kids, and they’re all looking at me and they’re screaming because Santa took his face off, and Christmas is ruined. I’m just sitting there with a quesadilla in my mouth, like, oh, I’m fucking fired.

Scott: Those kids are all in therapy now due to the shock, right?

Jack: Oh, God, one of them is a pop star, Bill Lawrence’s daughter. They’re doing fine. That was my last season with “Cougar Town.” I went to work in reality for a couple years for a couple of dudes, Scott Jeffers and George Mull. Scott was one of the co-creators of “Jersey Shore,” memory serves, and we were figured out how to make, like, Jersey Shore style shows when I was working with him.

Then with George, he was a fascinating dude. He was a war reporter for 20 years. He got his start covering the Lebanese civil war in the ’80s. Then he left that line of work and became the EP of Behind the Music. He literally knew dictators and rock stars. I think he disappeared for a week one time Stevie Nicks was in town. He just went to go hang out with her. Fascinating dudes to work for.

While I was doing reality, my mom passed away. My parents were in Paris. My mom wasn’t feeling very well. She went back to the hotel room. She had a brain aneurysm and just dropped dead. There was nothing I could really do about it. I got the call from my dad, hopped on the plane, went to Paris. She was just comatose in a hospital room.

I had to do my best high school French translate, figure out what was going on and how we’re going to handle all this. That was, as you can imagine, the most stressful week of my life. She passed away. I went back to my job, and I was like, I don’t want to do this. I didn’t come here to do this. I don’t want to do this anymore, and had one of those crisis of conscience, what am I going to do with my life?

Tomorrow in Part 2, Jack shares what inspired him to write the script “Decoys”.

Jack is repped by UTA and Fourth Wall.

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