Interview (Part 2): Ian Shorr

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for his script The House in the Crooked Forest.

Ian Shorr wrote the original screenplay The House in the Crooked Forest which landed on the 2022 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Ian about his creative background, writing a Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Ian talks about the inspiration for his script The House in the Crooked Forest.

Scott: Let’s segue into a discussion about “The House in the Crooked Forest” because your script made the 2022 Black List.

Plot summary. “A mother and her young son fleeing Nazi‑occupied Poland, are forced to take shelter in a blizzard in an isolated manner where they discover the Nazis may be the least of their worries.” Obvious question, what was the inspiration for the script?

Ian: There was a specific true story that was the inspiration for this. Back in maybe late 2019, my manager came to me with this article that a producer had sent him. A true story about this woman living in Warsaw when the Nazis invaded. She got kicked out of her house and sent to go live in the ghetto. Instead, she escaped and snuck back into her own house and hid out in her attic unbeknownst to the Nazi captain who had moved in downstairs.

When they sent me that article I was like, “Oh, wow, the Nazi was living in a horror movie without even realizing it.” We started bouncing ideas back and forth abouit, asking “Is there a way to do like a DON’T BREATHE version of this. There’s a fun cat‑and‑mouse game there, but how do you get a 90‑minute movie out of it? My manager John Zaozriny was like, “What if we add a supernatural element? What if it’s a haunted house movie? What if we find a way to take a Jewish ghetto escapee and some Nazi soldiers, trap them in a house together, then have both sides simultaneously realize that the house is haunted?” Once we had that basic structure, we were able to crack the rest of the movie. It all started with that article.

Scott: I know John a little bit. It does seem like he’s pretty proactive in bringing material or facilitating the story development process.

Ian: John is an absolute hustler. I’ve known him since 2008. Before he was a manager, he was an independent producer who I went on a general meeting with. He was looking to hire a writer to do a “American Gangster”-style version of COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO. I brought in a pitch on that, and he rejected me in favor of a dude who went on to write a “Star Wars” movie, so I guess I don’t feel too bad that I didn’t get that job. But at the time I was so mad about him rejecting my pitch that I felt compelled to prove him wrong. Like, “All right, I’m going to bring him my next idea just to show him how wrong he was to hire the other guy.”

I brought him an idea for my next spec. He helped me develop it, and I discovered that dude was amazing at development. He was a wizard with ideas, super easy to work with, really intelligent. We worked on that script for about a year, took it out. Came this close to selling it, didn’t happen. The next one that we did together, that one did sell, and wound up on the Black List, and became the beginning of the next chapter of my career.

Every time I would write a spec, I would workshop it with him. And the stuff I’d collaborate with him on usually sold. So after a few years, he told me he was thinking of becoming a manager. I said, “If you do that, I will be your first client.” That was the beginning of Bellevue.

Scott: Wow, interesting. Fascinating to me that your script started with the haunted house thing. I would have sworn that it started with finding this area: The Crooked Forest.

Ian: That came later. I was looking for some wilderness to set the movie in and I was researching different forests in Poland. Then I come across this thing called the Crooked Forest, which is this terrifying‑looking place where all the trees are bent. They look like witches’ fingers coming up out of the earth. I was like, “Wow, I can’t believe that no horror movie has ever been set here before. The name alone sounds like a scary movie.” So we set it there.

Scott: I was talking about those movie associations, like successful films or films that have gone before. I’m reminded of several of them that came up to my mind. I’m curious whether you were influenced by that at all. For example, Pan’s Labyrinth which was also set during the war.

Ian: Yeah. Let me think back on what the incidences were. I would say definitely Pan’s Labyrinth. I’m a huge Guillermo del Toro fan. I love how he was able to take the realism of a war movie and then infused this creepy Gothic fairy tale sensibility into it. That was definitely an influence.

Obviously, you can’t talk about a modern World War II movie without talking about Inglorious Basterds. That was a tremendous influence as well. I love contained thrillers like Panic Room, and Don’t Breathe. The cat‑and‑mouse element of those movies was something I wanted to build into this.

Beyond that, I love the icky body horror of Clive Barker and David Cronenberg. There’s a reason why the heroine’s last name is ‘Kronenberg.’ Those are the big influences on the script.

Keep in mind, I wrote this during the last year of the Trump administration/first year of the pandemic. That was probably the darkest year of my life psychologically. Those were rough days for me. Being able to dive into something that was somehow even darker than my present reality felt almost like a form of therapy.

Scott: You mentioned your protagonist, Rivka Kronenberg. You describe her in the script as “30s, Polish Jew, street‑smart survivor.” Could you describe the circumstances that she finds herself in and her emotional state at the beginning of the movie?

Ian: We opened the movie with a moment that any parent would be terrified to experience. It’s Rivka, our heroine, and her nine‑year‑old son Hugo, hiding inside a ventilation duct in a townhouse in Warsaw while the occupying Nazis are liquidating the ghetto. Anybody that they find in house They load them onto a train to the Treblinka death camp. This mom’s trying to figure out how to get her son out of this house without getting caught by the Nazis, which turns into them having to escape from Warsaw in a truck and get out to a partisan base out in the Polish wilderness.

The entire first 20 minutes of the movie, they’re a horror film, but it’s a totally non‑supernatural, earthbound type of horror. Only towards the end of the first act, right around minute 25‑ish, does it start to take a turn into something more supernatural, more mystical.

The idea was to just grab the audience by the throat with a type of horror that was rooted in reality and then gradually ease them into something that was more fantastical.

Scott: If you didn’t know where it was going, you’d just say, “Well, this is a straight‑ahead action movie,” because that opening 15, 20 pages is just like boom‑boom‑boom‑boom.

Ian: [laughs] We’ll see how much of that we can keep. We don’t have a lot of money to make this movie. They get chased by wolves on page 20. I don’t know if we can afford wolves.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Ian discusses the mother-son relationship that lies at the heart of the story and the haunted manor in which they find themselves trapped.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Ian is repped by UTA and Bellevue Productions.

Twitter: @IanShorr

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