Interview (Part 1): Kieran Turner

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for his script Black Dogs.

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

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Kieran talks about how his background as an actor led him to develop an interest in filmmaking and screenwriting.

Scott Myers: Kieran, great to have you here and congratulations on making the 2022 Black List. To start off, how did you develop an interest in writing for movies?

Kieran Turner: I’ve actually been in and out of the business in one form or another since I was about six years old. I was born and raised in Florida. I started as a child actor at about the age of six, mostly doing commercials. I worked a lot in New York. I worked a little bit in LA. I did that for about 10 years.

I was just finishing up my time in acting thinking I was going to continue as an actor when I went into college. I went to NYU. I started as a drama major at Playwrights Horizons, which was one of the studios at NYU,

At Playwrights Horizons, they made you do everything. Every week you had to write a new scene. You had to direct a scene, cast it, stage manage it, art‑direct it, and all that kind of stuff.

I realized two things. One, that I really enjoyed the writing and directing aspect of it. Two, that I was really a terrible actor. What I was able to coast on and get away with as a child was not going to serve me as an adult. I didn’t quite have it as an adult.

Thankfully, I realized that fairly early on and realized how much I loved doing the behind‑the‑scenes. I stayed at Playwrights for the first year, was also a massive party boy.

This was tail end of the Club Kid years in New York City. I had been living in New York since I was 16, so I was already used to going out and doing all that stuff, going to Tunnel, The World, Mars, Nell’s, and all those places.

My first year at Playwrights, I was flunking out. It was really hard for me to get up and get to school by eight o’clock in the morning, because I was just coming off of being out at four o’clock.

I rehabilitated myself, my grade‑point average, in the second year, and then was able to get into film in my third year. I fell into the radio department at NYU.

I wound up having my own show, which was something called “Headphone Theater,” which was a weekly, half‑hour show of radio plays, skits, and pieces. I had to write a lot of my own stuff.

By the time I graduated as an undergrad, I knew what I wanted to do. But because I had fucked around so much, I didn’t really know how to do it. I decided, “Oh, shit. I have to actually go back to school now. I have to go to grad school and actually go to grad school for film.”

I applied and got into NYU as a film major. That was where my focus was. I knew I wanted to make films.

Scott: A lot of professional screenwriters question the value of film school. What’s your take?

Kieran: If I had it to do over again, I don’t know that I would have done it, I mean, going to grad school, or I might have looked into something like SUNY Purchase, which was a little less money.

Also, when I was at NYU, it was a really bad time. I got in interviewing with the producer, Jerome Hellman, who had produced “Midnight Cowboy” and “Coming Home.”

Because I kept falling through the cracks in undergrad, the way I was able to do my undergrad thesis was producing it, producing somebody else’s film. When I got in and interviewed with Jerome, we talked about producing.

He was so excited that there was somebody who had producing experience and was interested in doing that, as well. I walked out of there going, “I’m not certain about a lot, but I am certain that I got it.”

I did, and I was so excited. I was like, “It’s so awesome. Jerome Hellman, I’m going to have him as a mentor.” I walked in to find out that he was no longer there.

He had wanted to make a bunch of changes to the program. They basically told him, “No, you’re only here as a figurehead.” He was like, “Fuck you. I’m Jerome Hellman.”

We never had a real chair for the department for the entire three years that I was there. The program was just in complete disarray. I just don’t think that we got the education and the help, I guess, the support that we should have gotten and might have gotten if it was another time.

Scott: Clearly, you’ve somehow managed to learn the craft of screenwriting. What were your major influences in that regard?

Kieran: I actually look back to the radio part of it because, with the radio part of it, I had to come up with so many pieces every week. There was no time to wonder or worry about whether they were good. You hoped that they were good. You hoped that what you were writing would strike a chord with somebody, but it was, “We got to get this done. We got to get this done. We got to get this done.”

Through that, I actually learned what was bad and what didn’t work. That was the most amazing training ground because when you’re doing that for a year and a half, you have to understand that what you’re doing isn’t going to be good.

You can’t sit there, do that for a year and half and go, “Oh, everything I write is golden.” I knew it wasn’t. I could tell, but I could recognize what I was doing wasn’t working or what was working. That helped, I think, hone my craft and to be able to figure that out and take it to another place.

When I got into grad school, I was writing a lot. Of course, in NYU, you have to do a certain amount of short films every year. Then your second year, you do a certain amount of stuff. Of course, there’s your thesis. I decided that I wanted my thesis to be a feature. I had been working on this feature for a while and rewriting it and reshaping it.

One of the things that I like to do, and maybe it’s because of not being able to do it as much when I was doing the radio stuff, is I love to rewrite. I love to figure out what doesn’t work. I love to give people stuff, have them read it, get their feedback and then figure it out from there.

I find that getting that kind of feedback is so helpful because even if it’s not something you can use, you never know what’s going to spark you. That was helpful.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Kieran describes some film projects which laid the groundwork for him to write Black Dogs.

Kieran is repped by Bellevue Productions.

Twitter: @jobriathdoc

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