Interview (Part 2): Laura Kosann

My interview with the writer who not only was named a 2021 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting recipient, but also had two scripts make the 2021 annual Black List.

Laura Kosann made quite a splash in Hollywood in 2021. In November, she was named a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting winner for her original screenplay An Ideal Woman. Then in December, that script plus another screenplay Laura wrote (From Little Acorns Grow) were named to the annual Black List. If that weren’t enough, the good news continued when in April 2022, it was announced that Laura had been hired to adapt the female-driven comic book Mercy Sparx for MGM.

Laura was kind enough to carve out some time for us to talk about her background, the craft of screenwriting, and her screenplay An Ideal Woman.

Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day this week through Saturday, Laura discusses what the origin was for her screenplay An Ideal Woman and two pivotal characters in the story.

Scott: Let’s talk about your script which not only made the 2021 Black List, but also won you a Nicholl screenwriting fellowship. Here is a plot summary for your script titled An Ideal Woman:

“Set in American suburbia during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a 1960s ex-actress and housewife finds her house of cards world, begins to tumble as she continues to be pitted against two identities.”

What was the inspiration for the story? Cuban Missile Crisis? The Protagonist? Where did you start?

Laura: I started at the first scene, actually. I’ve said this so many times, but it’s true. When COVID first started, I moved out of the city with my husband, my sister, and her husband. I was helping her with her nephew. It was this rental house on this suburban street I found a little eerie.

And this was when Covid was at its worst. I just felt like it was so odd how everything seemed so perfect and groomed in this suburban world we were in, when the world outside was falling apart. Then one day for some reason, I just had this image of this housewife in the 1960s, standing at this oven about to burn her house down. I have no idea why. I just saw her. I’ve always loved period. I’ve always loved that time period. I don’t know why I just had this image. I didn’t really write anything down, she just literally started to move through the house with me.

I kept conjuring this woman and thinking about who she was and why she was. I found it fascinating that all the feelings that COVID was evoking — the claustrophobia, the screaming silence — reminded me of her.

That’s when I started reading everything from John Cheever to “The Feminine Mystique.” I just started really getting into that time period. And in terms of Covid, I felt like the Cuban Missile Crisis was another time in history when people thought the world was going to end and there was nothing they could do about it. At the beginning of covid, before the vaccines and the cocktails, people couldn’t necessarily buy their way out of it the same way they could not buy their way out of the bomb. It was just this hovering, unavoidable threat.

And in general, I thought it was interesting how socially, politically, and culturally, a lot of what was going on then actually really mirrored a lot of what was going on now. And that thought process got me thinking a lot about this idea of the commercialization of fear, I wanted that to drive so much of what was going on in the screenplay.

Scott: It’s like you had all these influences. You got COVID, you got the claustrophobia, You’ve got that fear. I always tell my students, there’s this weird way in which we’re wrangling magic as writers. You got to believe these characters exist. This character Ann came to you, and you talk about that opening scene. This is how you describe it in the script:

“Ann Weston, 41, stands over her gas stove. It’s searing hot and it started to melt the wall behind it. She watches, clearly contented with the first stages of her home going up in flames.”

Then you do a little bit of commentary here:

“Our heroine spots a few crumbs on the laminate countertop. She sweeps them away with care. This is muscle memory. Muscle memory and being torn between two identities as 1960s housewives so often were. Today, it’s homemaker versus pyromaniac.”

As a screenwriter, you always look to hook the reader right off the bat. With the opening of the script, you stand in a great cinematic tradition beginning with a powerful visual.

There are a lot of movies that begin with this thing that’s essentially in the present, and then we go back in time. You plant the seed like, “How the hell did we get there?” Like Double Indemnity or Sunset Boulevard. Or American Beauty, “A year from now I’ll be dead.”

You’ve got this image with Ann in the kitchen. Where was it along the way you said, “That’s how I’m going to start the script?”

Laura: I’m telling you, that was always my opening scene.

Scott: That was going to be it.

Laura: That was always the opening scene. And that’s many times how it starts with me. Not with this full story. But just an opening scene that suddenly gets me asking questions. Who is she? Why is she there? etc.

Scott: Let’s talk about some of the other characters beginning with the rest of the Weston family. Here’s how you introduce Ann’s husband:

“Stan Weston 40s, stands at the oven making fried eggs. The act of cooking makes him a modern man, and Stan likes to think he’s just that.”

How would you describe Stan as the husband and father in the family?

Laura: What I find interesting about Stan is that he’s not supposed to be this bad character. He’s a product of his time. And there was something that I liked about him thinking he was more progressive or modern as a man than he actually was. It fed his ego.

It’s like when someone says, “Oh, we’re living in the suburbs, but we’re not suburbs people.” I liked the idea that Stan was that kind of father and that kind of husband. In his mind, he’s not like the other husbands…but really he is.

The same way that he thinks that he wants what’s best for Ann and he wants her to fulfill her dreams. That he wants her to be a modern woman. He doesn’t, actually. He takes pride in the fact that he thinks he does. So I really started with how that quality feeds his ego. That was the seed of Stan.

And I love the idea that they really fell in love at a time when they were two completely different people at different points in their life. Then, I feel like life happened. A next stage of adulthood happened. And when that happened, I wanted to explore the drastic difference between what that meant for Stan and Ann separately. He could pivot and be whatever he wanted. Ann could only be a housewife and Mother.

Scott: Ann started off as an actress, a successful Hollywood actress. In some respects, quite a catch for Stan, this beautiful woman, and people probably thinking, “Wow, he kind of lured her away.” Later on he has a line of dialogue like, “I was OK with you thinking this or that.”

He’s lying but once she starts to go out her own trajectory, you begin to see, just like you were saying, that he’s less really about her than more about him. Is that a fair assessment?

Laura: For Stan it’s like — “you can be what my definition of modern is. But if it’s not my definition, if it’s not in my control, it doesn’t work.”

Tomorrow in Part 3, Laura delves into some of the themes which run through her script An Ideal Woman.

Laura is repped by CAA and Heroes and Villains Entertainment.

Twitter: @LauraKosann

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

For my interviews with Black List writers, go here.