Interview (Part 2): Kristen Tepper

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for her script Better Luck Next Time.

Kristen Tepper wrote the screenplay Better Luck Next Time which landed on the 2022 Black List. Remarkably, Kristen’s script made the Black List before she had signed with a manager.

I had the opportunity to chat with Kristen about her 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, Kristen discusses how she worked her way into the business by developing a niche creating lookbooks and a social media presence on Tiktok.

Scott: A lot of colleges have programs where students do a quarter or a semester in LA, they get an internship, then hopefully that transitions into assistant position, and that’s the path toward establishing them as a writer. You didn’t have that structure, so what did you do? How did you get your foot in the door?

Kristen: No, it was very unfortunate. Not unfortunate. Obviously, everything has panned out thus far, so everything happens for a reason in that respect. I went on in entertainmentcareers.net, I’m pretty sure it was the website.

I just found every internship that wasn’t a school, they didn’t require school credit and applied to those. I think it was literally 300 applications before I finally got into doing one of those internships.

That was for this really great producer, Matt Rhodes. He does a bunch of action flicks. I think “Cherry” was one of the more recent ones with Tom Holland. That’s where I got all of my experience. I remember, they’re asked on the job internship thing was can you send us an example of coverage?

I was like, I don’t know what that is and so I’ll Google it, and then I’ll just make it up off a movie I saw recently. I did that and I went in for this interview and the kid that was interviewing was so nice.

He’s like, “Interesting that you did it on a movie that’s already out. Normally it’s like a movie that you just read the script for,” and I was that’s definitely what I was going off of. What?

I’m like, oh, my God, I’m so silly. They were really excited to have some female energy around reading these action scripts kind of thing and getting that point of view. I went and worked there and it wasn’t paid. I worked a from home job where I was doing websites and doing social media and marketing.

That’s how I pay my bills still, and from that internship, I got invited into a Facebook group of assistants, which is a private group out here. Once you get to meet all of these people they’ll let you in, and that has a ton of job postings.

I invited my friends because I was like, “Oh, this is nice for all of us.” My friend tagged me in a post for a personal assistant that was part‑time. I was like, “That’s great because I’m kind of making good money. I want to write still.”

I did not think I was made out to be the in‑office exec assistant role. That is just so demanding and their hours are nine to seven. I was like, “I don’t know if I could do it, I have so much flexibility in my life right now. That would be really hard.”

When she saw that personal assistant thing. She was like, “This would be perfect for you.” Went in, interviewed, and it was Brian Kavanaugh-Jones, who I still work with today. He hired me on the spot. He was like, “I really need somebody and you seem competent enough, and let’s go for it.”

That is how I got in. It was entertainment careers and a lot of internship posting and then that Facebook group. I feel like my path was much, not more straight‑lined, but a lot more streamlined than some people’s. Some people have 12 different jobs and assistant things before they meet people that are good to stick around with.

Brian and Fred Berger, they both run Automatik, are really, really good people to work under, really take care of you. They were just randomly talking about how they needed more marketing work. I was like, “I don’t want to be your personal assistant forever. I would do film marketing, that’s cool, you get to meet more people and that sounds up my alley.

They let me run their social and then Alma Har’el was dong “Honey Boy.” She saw it, and she was like, “That girl’s funny. I want her to work on my social for the Honey Boy campaign.” Then from there it was just referral jobs since that, which has been really fortunate for me.

Then I get to meet, I do lookbooks now, like pitch decks for people, and I get to meet directors and producers and other writers. That is how I have a wide network of people that I could send my script “Better Luck Next Time” to…

Scott: Sounds like your college degree actually helped you, too.

Kristen: It did, it did a lot. I think a lot of the business skills I learned from working at home paid off completely. Just like email etiquette, and all of these things that I think, “I did not learn that in college.”

No college course was like, “This is how to respond to an email appropriately, always answer within 48 hours if you’re trying to be polite or on top of it. Here’s how to organize a to‑do list to make sure you don’t forget.”

No class taught me that. The company I worked for right after college, learning that type of business side, and I think to this day people really appreciate. It is the entertainment industry and people are really creative and some people don’t have those soft skills, I don’t know what you call them.

It helps put me a little bit above when it’s like, “Oh, she answered her email right on time. I don’t need to worry that she’s not going to do the thing.” That’s, to the networking, where people are always like, “I’ll always go to Tepper because she’ll always get it done. She has the wherewithal of how this business runs and timeliness.”

I think that’s helped me a lot, but the networking is tough.

Scott: You start off by writing coverage and not even really knowing what it was, to now, the point you’re writing a screenplay that’s making the Black List. Maybe fill in some of the dots there about how you learned the craft.

Kristen: I am a very must‑do learner. I really started taking it seriously when COVID started. I had written shorts before and I had ideas, but it’s really scary the first time to type into my keyboard and say, “I really want to be a writer.”

I just started reading a lot of scripts. Working at that production company, and then working for BKJ and reading, all of the time, what was coming in for them really did help me figure out the common things about scripts that screenwriter Twitter could have a field day on, “Whether you build the slug line or you don’t,” or, “Do you capitalize the person?”

All of those things, I could see themes and consistency in all these scripts. I was reading them and I was like, “Loved that one, hated that one.” I’m like, “OK, if this person can do it and this script can be not the best thing I’ve ever read in my life but it’s in the hands of all these very fancy producers, I should be doing this.”

I took the “Dead to Me” script, the pilot. I loved that show. It was the perfect mix for me of dark and funny. I took it and I put it, I have two screens. I put it up on my one screen. I had had an idea for a while that I outlined in a Google Doc. I just started writing it. I think I used Celtix or WriterDuet, I don’t remember which one.

I was emulating the flow. If the scene was one page, “Maybe I should do my scene in that one page, what does that look like?” That was my first real go of understanding what I wanted to write, or how to write.

From there, for “Better Luck Next Time” specifically, me and my, she’s my roommate, she’s my best friend, I don’t know when it was, but we were toying on ideas like, “What really is sticky and what would make people stop?” It was this idea of a “Hitch,” but horrible. It was like, “Yeah, everyone thinks that’s funny.”

Because “Hitch” is a great movie, what would happen though if you were unhitching people? It was a TV series, and I was like, “This is not working this way. No one’s going to give me a bunch of money to make a TV series, no one knows who I am.” I was like, “Whatever, I’ll do it as a feature.”

It got rewritten a lot. I went through probably 14 drafts. Up until the week before it was the Black List, it was still getting changed because I was like, “This could be different. This could be different.”

At that point in June of last year I had started sending it out to my friends, because I was like, “This is the idea that’s sticky.” Everyone gets it, I could say it in 30 seconds and people are excited about it and it makes them laugh. I was like, “That’s how I want my first pitch to be.”

Sent it out to a few friends. I had a lookbook because I love lookbooks. These are all the people that I met from doing their pitch decks or helping on different projects or they worked at one of the production companies I was working with.

They were like, “I love this. What are you doing?” I was like, “I’m not doing anything.” It’s just a project that I like, and I think something could happen. This is the famous Hollywood thing and it’s the packaging conversation where everyone’s like, “Well, let me know if you get anyone attached or this happens or this happens.”

You’re like, “Yeah, I don’t know how to do that part. I thought that was what you guys do.” I think the other thing, everyone’s all so busy, everyone’s got their passion projects. You were flinging this thing in and being like, “Maybe they’ll like it.”

The best note is that they all do like it, but they’re like,” I just don’t have it on it and there’s nowhere to slate that exists for me for this,” so I just let it go. I kept writing. I think 48 hours before Black List voting ended, my friend Kirsten, who had read it, was like, “I’m voting for you for Black List.”

I was like, “What?” She was like, “Yeah, and I sent it to a few other people. I think that you could get on the Black List with this. I don’t know who else is going to vote but go tell people. Remind them that you have this script. Do a lookbook update and send it back out and tell them.”

I was like, “I don’t know. That feels weird.” She goes, “That’s what all the agents and managers are doing right now. They’re pimping everybody out and showing off their client’s work because they want to get on the Black List. That’s a salesman’s game. You don’t have anyone, so I’ll help you. You go figure out some of those people.”

I did. I literally sent a lookbook out, sent the deck, and the script. I was like, “You remember this one? You read it back in May or in August.” People were like, “Oh yeah. My God, I haven’t voted for Black List yet. Let me put this on there.” I was like, “Maybe I’ll actually get it.”

You don’t know until that day. You’re just like, “Maybe, maybe I didn’t, maybe I did.” Luckily enough, everyone pulled through, or most of them did. That was how that came to be.

Scott: Wow. It speaks to the proximity, the fact you’re there. It speaks to your perseverance and it speaks to your personality and your professionalism and, frankly, courage, just put stuff out there.

Kristen: Definitely the scariest part. I was in a huge slump a year ago. I was like, “How do I get in? How do you break into this industry?”

Black List was not what I thought was going to help me. I was like, “I don’t know how you get on the Black List. I’m not a huge feature writer either.” When he said that last night, I was like, “That’s the most accurate thing I’ve heard in a while.”

Here is one of Kristen’s Tiktok videos about screenwriting:

Tomorrow in Part 3, Kristen talks about the inspiration for “Better Luck Next Time” and shares insights about the two lead characters in the script.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Kristen is repped by Agents First.

• Instagram @Kristentepper — https://www.instagram.com/kristentepper/
• Twitter: @kristentepper — https://twitter.com/kristentepper
• Tiktok: @teppertoks — https://www.tiktok.com/@teppertoks?_t=8dWXLH7ZkIU

Note: Kristen has 18.7K followers on Tiktok and 1M+ likes.

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