Interview (Part 2): Callie Bloem and Christopher Ewing

My interview with the 2022 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winners.

Callie Bloem and Christopher Ewing wrote the original screenplay “Tape 22” which won a 2022 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with the couple about their creative backgrounds, their award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl Award has meant to them.

Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Callie and Chris reveal the inspiration for their Nicholl-winning screenplay “Tape 22” and how some key characters came to life in their story-crafting process.

Scott: What about screenwriting? You mentioned you’ve written some scripts. Were you learning that at Wisconsin? Did you pick it up along the way, Chris, then Callie?

Christopher: I was initially a short story writer, short fiction. That’s where the money is.

[laughter]

Scott: Big bucks.

Christopher: I kept making these short stories that…I had a teacher very early on that said, “This is a romp. This is very cinematic. This is like…” She kept using these buzzwords to describe what I was doing. It made me feel like, “Oh, you know…”

The stuff that I’m gravitating towards feels like it could be movie‑ish. I had always loved movies. It was like a secret obsession. The music obsession had been so strong and so much a part of my personality that I hadn’t realized how much film was affecting me.

In high school, I would stay up every single night, and watch two movies with my dad. Finding whatever was on HBO or Showtime. I had pretty quickly viewed way more movies than most people should by the age I was. That eventually led to starting independently to figure out how to write a screenplay.

Then, in grad school, that was when my formal screenwriting education kicked in. I had an incredible screenwriting teacher who, in one of her classes, she forced us all to write a feature by the end of the class. I put it off until the weekend before. I wrote a feature in three days, and then it was like, “Great. I can do this again.”

In between that very first one and “Tape 22,” there were six or seven other features that I had written before Callie and I started working together.

Callie: I had no formal education in writing. I always loved writing a lot. Actually, I would write for the student newspaper when Chris was the editor.

Christopher: She was always doing these great movie reviews.

Callie: I love reading. I read a ridiculous amount of books, and now, a ridiculous amount of screenplays. I’ve learned as I go along. A couple of years ago, Chris threw out the idea that we should try to read all of that year’s Black List scripts. We slowly made our way through everything.

Christopher: We only made it halfway through. [laughs]

Callie: I learned a lot from reading other people’s scripts in terms of formatting. I do as I think works, and then figure it out later if it’s not right.

Scott: Let’s talk about Tape 22, which is the script that won you a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Here’s the plot summary for it.

“A music journalist, reeling from the death of his wife, discovers a mixtape that brings her back to life for four minutes and 23 seconds a day, exactly the length of her favorite song. Now, he’s determined to bring her back for good even if he might accidentally open a black hole in the middle of LA.”

What was the inspiration for that part of the story?

Christopher: Tape 22 originated many, many, many years ago. It was something I had started to write on my own. I wrote about five pages, and then put it away. Got busy doing stuff at Hulu, day job stuff.

Then, years later, when Callie and I were both deciding to work together, we both started…I started back in on Tape 22. Callie started in on another script that she wrote basically the entire thing of. They were both dead spouse movies. [laughs] I didn’t get past five pages of mine, but Callie finished hers.

Then, we looked at them and decided that at that point, we wanted to write full‑time together. We had written our first short film together, so that had been the very first experience. We decided to take these partial drafts of what we’d been working on and blend them together to create a super draft that would take over the world.

We had no idea anything was going to ever happen with it. It turned out to be very fortuitous that we combined our forces at that moment.

Scott: You had these two separate projects, both of them with a dead spouse. What is that about that, do you think, that drew you to that?

Christopher: It was being trapped with each other, and…

Callie: Yeah. The pandemic. Probably, what it comes down to is we like exploring the idea of what if you had to start your life over again from scratch. We’ve also been together for 20 years, so we don’t know anything else besides our life together. That’s always an intriguing idea to us.

Christopher: Then, that combined with the idea that music has this power to pull you back into memories, to make you feel supernatural in certain ways. We thought that it was a fun metaphor and a fun high‑concept way into talking about grief and pain and healing and all these big concepts.

We could make it more fun and weird and interesting by hiding those within a high‑concept idea.

Scott: Let’s talk about these two lead characters in the story. First, there’s Hutch. Could you describe who he is, what he does professionally, and where he is at the beginning of the story? Because it’s six months after his wife has died. Where is he in the grieving process?

Callie: Hutch’s life is on pause. It’s been about six months, and he’s retreated into his own little bubble. He’s not handling grief well. He’s become a recluse just staying inside his house, not knowing how to manage his life, because Sam did all of that for him. She paid the bills. He doesn’t know what credit cards are on auto pay or if he has to contribute to their health insurance policy.

He’s stuck. He was feeling a little bit stuck in his life before that because his career had been dwindling a little bit and…

Christopher: He’d had the fifth hottest music blog of 2013. He was on the decline a little bit. A little bit of like an Indie version of A Star Is Born. Sam’s career was skyrocketing as his was tapering off a little bit. He was already headed towards a bad place and then Sam’s death just pushed him over the edge into near‑comatose world.

Scott: Five stages of grief. Is he more in that denial stage at this point or depression?

Christopher: He’s probably in the depression stage. He has numbed himself to the world. We had early drafts where it was important that he never listened to any music, and he avoided hearing any music out in the world as a result of the trauma of losing Sam.

That idea didn’t stick, but that feeling of him retreating from the world and from having new experiences without Sam did stick and was the entry point for the audience to meet him.

Scott: Let’s talk about Sam who died six months previous to the beginning of the story. How would you describe who she was, what did she contribute to the partnership both creatively and personally? Give us a sense of who this character was?

Callie: Sam is a tough cookie. She is a music producer in a sea of mostly male producers. Her heart had been set on doing this ever since she was young. She doesn’t want to stop at anything before she gets this number‑one album someday. Hutch is her equal, her sparring partner.

Christopher: At the same time, Hutch has always had a more meandering life and career, whereas Sam has always been laser focused on her goals. Hutch was able to hitch a ride on her, in a way, that he was going to follow her through life. When she dies, all of a sudden he finds himself unmoored and lost without the one thing that was propelling him on a path toward anything.

What we love about Sam and Hutch, their relationship, is that it was forged in both of them being equally obsessive about music and having music be the guiding force in all things of their lives. That being said, it was always a stronger and clearer path for Sam. Hutch was the one that was a little more wayward.

Scott: There’s this inciting incident where he discovers samples of these mixtapes. Do you remember when you came up with that idea as a grieving spouse, he’s going to find these legacy items of the deceased member of the partnership?

Callie: That was actually probably the very, very first thing. We really like those high‑concept ideas. The first Tape 22 iteration was Chris jotting down a little note that said, “Man finds mixtape that brings his dead wife back to life” or something along those lines.

Christopher: It was partly because when Callie and I first met, I made her mix CDs that I’d send in the mail. I don’t think you ever sent me one…

Callie: I didn’t want to spend the time writing all of the little names.

Christopher: It’s true. I wrote little messages in between the tracklisting on the CD itself and all that kind of stuff. I think that the idea of mixtapes just being this special thing pre‑Spotify playlists, it’s like writing a love letter to someone, and having that physical thing that then has a power like Sam’s tapes in Tape 22, it’s kinda like the JJ Abrams mystery box.

Having an item that shouldn’t have any power and should be relegated to your garage or your attic, all of a sudden being this thing that can transcend time and space and life and death was a really fun idea because that’s how important those old mixtapes feel, even if they don’t have that currency in reality.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Chris and Callie reveal why the number 22 and discuss the physics behind the metaphysical conceit of bringing someone back from the dead for four minutes and twenty-three seconds.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Callie and Chris are repped by Grandview.

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

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.