Interview (Part 2): Leigh Cesiro and Erica Matlin
My interview with 2021 Black List writers for their script Cruel Summer.
My interview with 2021 Black List writers for their script Cruel Summer.
Leigh Cesiro and Erica Matlin wrote the original screenplay “Cruel Summer” which landed on the 2021 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Erica and Leigh about their creative background, their script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to them.
Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Erica and Leigh discuss some of the summer camp movies which influenced their approach to writing “Cruel Summer” and how they hit on the story’s central plot element: a dead body.
Scott: As I was reading your script, of course, I was just enjoying it as a writer. I have a lot of writing questions for you. I also put on my producer’s hat. As you know, they operate out in Hollywood with this working ethos of “similar, but different.”
As I was reading your script, I was going, “OK, so you got summer camp.” Meatballs, that’s my point of reference because I’m old. Then you got young people finding a dead body, so now I’m thinking, “Oh, that’s Stand by Me.” They had to schlep this body around and now I’m going back to another ’80s movie, Weekend at Bernie’s.
I’m thinking, producer’s hat on, “We’re awash right now in nostalgia.” It’s a big deal in Hollywood and this is a great time for this kind of project. I thought, “Somebody should step up and make this movie.” Does that seem like a good plan to you all?
Leigh: Yeah, you totally cracked our code with those are [laughs] good reference points.
Erica: Yes.
Scott: Were you thinking, “This is a cool story” or were you thinking, “I could see where producers, or a production company, or somebody would step up and make this thing?”
Erica: I wish we thought that way, but no. We were excited to write something set in camp. We definitely had Stand By Me, Now & Then and Weekend at Bernie’s in the back of our minds while writing it. Maybe we’ll take you on pitches with us, Scott.
[laughter]
Scott: I’ll be there to close the deal by saying, “Buy it.”
[laughter]
Erica: This is going to sound cheesy but since we both get can get caught up in what’s out there and what’s popular, we really tried to have the mindset of “what makes us laugh and what makes us happy”.
And with that in mind, we had read a few other scripts where, instead of looking at them as successful projects, we were like “Oh! It feels like these writers were making each other laugh or had fun while writing and making this movie” So that’s definitely something we started to strive for.
Scott: What about tropes? Were you thinking about that at all because there is that lineage of summer camp movies, like “the underdog camp versus the overlord camp?”
Leigh: Yeah, in looking at the camp tropes, a lot of them do stem from real things and real people that we knew. Even in our camp, we would play sports against other camps and you’d get a taste of a very fancy camp or a more rough-and-tumble camp.
Definitely, we were aware of the tropes in the movies, but more so they’re tropes for a reason. They came from somewhere and we had firsthand experience with them.
Scott: I have to ask you, of course, there’s a ghost story. That’s pretty typical of camps. Dead Fred Wormer, now is that a subtle homage to Animal House because isn’t it Dean Wormer was the dean of the school?
Leigh: No.
Scott: No? Oh, come on.
Leigh: [laughs]
Scott: When this debuts at Sundance and somebody’s going to ask you, the French critic, they’ll say, “The Dean Wormer, this is an homage?” You go, “Yes, absolutely, that’s exactly what we were thinking.”
Leigh: [laughs] It’s a coincidence.
Erica: No, but that’s a great coincidence. One of the owners of our camp was named Fred. The camp in the script is named Camp Brower because the last name of the boy who dies in Stand by Me is Brower.
Scott: There you go.
Erica: There’s some of that. [laughs]
Scott: It’s subtle, getting the nuance in there. I assume that amidst your experience together at summer camps, that didn’t necessarily involve finding a dead body?
Leigh: No.
Erica: No.
Scott: How did that emerge because that’s a central element of the story? You got the summer camp, then boom, dead body, and that becomes the plotline. Where did that come from?
Leigh: I don’t even remember exactly how we came up with the dead body, but it mostly came out of the idea that when you’re at camp, you’re so isolated from the rest of the world, so things that happen in camp are not how they would happen in the real world.
Once we did land on, “OK, so what if they find a dead body?” we would ask our camp friends, “Hey, for no reason, what would you do if you found a dead body at camp?” They’d give their answer and a lot of times they would give us an answer and we’d be like, “Oh, we didn’t even think of that,” and it would go into the script. We had a resource at our fingertips I don’t know how we first came up with, that they have to hide a dead body. Do you?
Erica: I don’t, but I do remember talking about what would happen if we did find a dead body at camp. It became funny to us like, “What if you threw a bit of real world stakes into this camp world?” Not that we’ve seen dead bodies in our real world. Us personally, but well, you know what I mean. [laughs]
Tomorrow in Part 3, Leigh and Erica share their thoughts on how the script’s core group of characters emerged into being.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Twitter: @leighcesiro, @eribmatlin.
For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.