Interview (Part 1): Renee Pallai

Interview (Part 1): Renee Pillai

My interview with the 2019 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Renee Pillai wrote the original screenplay “Boy With Kite” which won a 2019 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Renee about her background as a screenwriter , her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to her.

Today in Part 1 of a 6 part series to run each day through Saturday, Renee relates how the saga of her incredible journey to reach the Nicholl ceremony in Beverly Hills is an apt metaphor for how challenging it is to be a screenwriter based in Southeast Asia.

Scott Myers: You’re from Malaysia. In the Nicholl Ceremony in Beverly Hills, Tyger Williams who was your presenter, talked about the rigors you had to go through to get to the event on time. Can you talk a little bit about what that process was like?

Renee Pillai: When I found out I had become a finalist, I immediately thought, “Oh, no. I have no travel documents.” Then I found out that only Fellows attend Fellowship Week. So I thought, “OK, not a problem because I don’t know that I’ll become a Fellow.”

Then when I found out I’d become a Fellow, that started the whole thing off again, “Oh my God, I have no travel documents!”

I told the Academy I had to get a passport. And that freaked everyone out, because I understand here in the US, it takes a month to get a passport.

Scott: A month or more, yeah.

Renee: So everyone thought, “Oh my goodness, it’s going to be the same for Malaysia.” At that point, the award ceremony was just over a month away.

So I needed — Passport. Visa. Clearance to travel.

Once everything cleared, I applied for a passport and US travel visa. You can only apply online, and it costs quite a lot. By that time, I had used up my savings figuring everything out.

So my friends showed up. Everybody brought their piggy banks, not literal piggy banks but all their small change, whatever they had. We ended up with $160 in a pile of coins. We thought we’d go to the bank to change it to paper money. But we found out you get charged for the conversion and realized, “OK, we’re losing out here.”

So I ended up paying in coins. And bless them, the officers there, they just took that. They closed six counters, and they all counted coins. No complaints.

That wasn’t the problem. The problem started the minute I applied for my US visa. I’d already created the online account on October 4th when I got told we’d become Fellows.

And I managed to get my passport five days later.

When I initially applied, I got the possible interview date of October 16th. That was fine, that gave me more than enough time. But there was a problem with the online payment. And they couldn’t rectify it because it was already the weekend.

By the time it was rectified, the earliest interview date the US embassy gave me was November 8th, which everyone now knows is the day after the awards.

That’s it. I thought, “Game over, man. Game over. It’s not going to happen.”

So I wrote to the Academy, and I said, “This is the situation. I’m not sure what can be done. Yours in distress, Renee.”

They were amazing. They wrote back immediately and they said, “Look, we’re speaking to our legal team. If we have to get lawyers, we’ll get lawyers, because this can’t happen.”

They tried everything. And eventually, they managed to get in touch with the Cultural Affairs Department of the US Embassy in Malaysia.

The Cultural Affairs people said, “We’re not in charge of visas but let’s see what we can do. Let us meet this person first.” I think that was the first time anybody in Malaysia found out that I’d become a Nicholl Fellow.

I met up with them, and we talked. And as it turns out — movies are an international language. They were great movie fans and I think that helped because three days later, I got my visa interview.

Scott: What a wonderful story. Did you ever see when Billy Wilder accepted the Irving Thalberg Award at the Oscars, I believe it was 1988? Billy Wilder told the story about how he had to flee Germany before World War II. He made it all the way to the Mexico‑US border, and they were going to turn him back. He’d go back to Europe and probably be killed. He started talking to one of border guys who just so happened to be a movie fan. They shared their love of movies and eventually, the guy stamps Wilder’s passport, waves him into the United States, and told him, “Write some good ones.” Which I think it’s fair to say, Wilder did!

Renee: Oh my goodness.

Scott: Similar story to yours.

Renee: I actually did not know that. I’m a big fan of Billy Wilder, but I did not know that story. It is amazing. It’s wonderful.

That’s why I said it’s so great that movies became our common ground. And to be specific, it was Alexander Payne’s work that we started discussing, because I think Sideways was the Head of Cultural Affairs’s favorite movie.

Scott: You know that at some point, you’re absolutely going to have to meet Alexander Payne and tell him this story. That’s just fated in the stars, right?

Renee: Yeah, also because my script’s set in Nebraska.

Scott: Yeah, exactly. That’s his home state.

Renee: Yeah, that’s actually how the conversation came about. She was surprised to hear that my story was set there, and that’s how that conversation started.

Scott: Overcoming the challenges to get to the Nicholl is an apt metaphor for the challenges you’ve faced in pursuing your creative dream. In your acceptance speech, you said, “Fact is, I’ve never taken a writing class. I come from 14,000 miles away. I don’t even speak English half the time, and I want to write movies here in Hollywood. What kind of fool thinks that’s possible?”

I’d like to use that as a springboard to go back to the beginning. How does someone in Malaysia become interested in writing screenplays in Hollywood?

Renee: That’s a very good question. That’s the thing, isn’t it? Why it all seems so improbable? But the simple answer is — because I love movies.

That’s what started it all. I remember as a kid, you have to watch the movies your parents like.

My dad loves movies but only one genre. And that is classic Westerns — anything with Audie Murphy, and Randolph Scott, and John Wayne, and Robert Taylor. All those movies.

When you’re a kid, when you’re five, you have to watch whatever your dad wants to watch. But somehow, along the way, it became not that I ‘have’ to watch but more that I ‘want’ to watch. Not that Westerns have become my favorite genre or anything.

But it’s that moment when I realized, “This is really good. I love movies. I want to watch movies.” Also, it was about the same time I started writing a lot.

Not very well because at five, how could it be? But I would write little stories and that love for writing just never went away.

Here is a photo Renee sent me of the coins she used to pay for her visa.

Pretty amazing, right? Here is video of Renee accepting her 2019 Nicholl Award last December:

Tomorrow in Part 2, Renee talks about the inspiration for her 2019 Nicholl winning screenplay “Boy With Kite”.

For my interviews with every Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner since 2012, go here.

For my interviews with 53 Black List writers, go here.