Interview (Part 1): Sam Boyer

My interview with the 2022 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Sam Boyer wrote the original screenplay “Ojek” which won a 2022 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Sam about his creative background, his award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to him.

Today in Part 1 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Sam talks about his longstanding interest in writing which led him to pursue the subject both as an undergraduate and graduate student.

Scott Myers: First off, congratulations on winning Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. That must be a nice way for you to go into the holiday season.

Sam Boyer: Oh, yeah. It still feels totally surreal, like it hasn’t happened. Like, there’s a clerical error and there’s some other Sam Boyer out there somewhere, who wrote a good script, and I feel for him.

Scott: I’d like to learn more about your background and especially your creative aspirations. Let’s start with this. Where’d you grow up and how did you discover your interest in writing?

Sam: Let me see. I was born in George Washington Hospital in Washington, DC. My due date was a fourth of July. I was named Sam, after Uncle Sam. Needless to say, I was a very American baby.

My mom was an immigrant. She’s Indonesian and my dad is White. They both met in Maryland, actually. They were in architecture school. I grew up around the Maryland, DC area, mostly.

My parents divorced when I was 10 years old. I grew up between two very different houses, different cultures. That was a big influence in my writing and my life, but my parents, despite being very different people, shared a love of story and a love of movies. It took me a while to put two and two together. I don’t think I grew up thinking, I would be a writer or in the film business.

When you grew up on the east coast and both of my families are from science background, movies were something we knew that people made them, but we didn’t know how or who is involved in a way there.

I grew up about as far from it as you possibly could, while still being in the country and having a dad with an original blockbuster card membership. We watched a ton of movies growing up, but I thought they’re something people enjoyed and not necessarily a career in anyway.

Scott: Do you remember some of the movies, when you were a kid, growing up that made a strong impression on you?

Sam: It’s such a classic answer, but The Shawshank Redemption is one of my favorite movies of all time. I share the very universal experience of walking in while TNT is playing it. No matter where you are in the store, you’ve got to sit down and finish the rest of it. I’ve started and finished Shawshank Redemption every possible interval within there.

That’s a seminal, classic, beautifully‑done film, and Frank Darabont knocked it out of the park. I’ve never written a prison movie. I probably never will. I think the themes of that are so timeless, and resonated with me a ton despite being a 12‑year‑old who had never been in those conditions.

Scott: That’s one of my favorite memories in Hollywood. I went to the premiere of The Shawshank Redemption.

Sam: Incredible.

Scott: It is one of those movies that when you watch it, you keep discovering these new little grace notes that are in there. It’s not surprising it’s the number one movie of the IMDb 250.

Sam: That’s one of the times I do believe in democracy. We’ve all gotten it right on that one.

Scott: You got a BS in Business Administration, and a BA in Film and TV from USC. Was that in that order?

Sam: It was concurrently, at the same time. I applied to both the business program, and the film program. I’ve decided that if I got into one, I’d do that. I, through another clerical error, got into both. Discovered I just wasn’t very good at most aspects of film production. Whether it was cinematography, or editing, or directing, I didn’t have a lot of talent for it.

I had much less knowledge than my peers just because I hadn’t grown up with those aspirations. I fell in love with writing while I was in that program.

Scott: That’s where you discovered screenwriting then?

Sam: Yeah. I remember my first screenwriting class, taught by Siavash Farahani, who is still a mentor of mine to this day. I remember having to do one of the first assignments where you would go eavesdrop on a conversation and try to write a scene based off of that.

Immediately, I felt like, “Oh, this is something I gravitate towards that I want to do.” It didn’t feel like schoolwork at all. It became what I thought about whenever I was doing something else. That said, I still wasn’t sure it was the right thing for me throughout school.

I started to get encouragement. I would say, towards the end of undergrad, I wrote a few short film scripts. I got grants from the school to be produced and then working with other students as a writer while they’re producers and directors and all those other craft elements.

It was so invigorating and exciting, and it took me years and years after that to be in a position where someone would be making something I wrote again. I should have cherished that more, but I got the bug then, and I haven’t lost it since. Some people graduate and they get their degree and they’re not even sure they want it.

Film school can be that intense and discouraging at points, but I definitely still knew or felt it was something that I wanted to do.

Scott: You followed this up by going to a very prestigious MFA program, the Michener Center for Writers at University of Texas at Austin. Was that directly after USC?

Sam: No, there was a period in between. I went and lived and worked in Jakarta, actually, at the time, which served as the fuel that inspired this script. That helped to reinforce one, that I had stories I wanted to tell that I wanted to come back to the US and try writing.

Two, I worked a number of different jobs that weren’t writing related, and I feel like getting that life experience is key and continues to inform what I write. In LA, I worked for a brand consultancy for a while, and both in Indonesia and in LA, I was putting that business degree to use. I was so grateful for it. It was a fantastic experience, just as important as film school.

Scott: How long were you in Indonesia, then?

Sam: Not super long, honestly. It was maybe five months or something like that.

Scott: When you read the script, it’s like, “Wow, this guy knows this place.”

Sam: I think a lot of that is a credit to…It’s not like I was going to school there. I was truly working a traditional 9:00 to 5:00 job. My family is Indonesian, and in Jakarta there, too, so I was spending a lot of time with them. I got indoctrinated with a local perspective really early, and it left a huge impression on me.

It’s been years, and there’s still very strong memories. When I came back, I immediately wanted to commit them to paper or at the very least, final draft file.

Tomorrow in Part 2, Sam talks about how a stint living in Indonesia led him to conceive his story’s Protagonist and inspired him to write his Nicholl-winning screenplay.

Sam is repped by Range Media Partners.

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

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.