Interview (Part 2): Michael Ballin and Thomas Aguilar

My interview with 2021 Black List writer for their script The College Dropout.

Michael Ballin and Thomas Aguilar wrote the original screenplay “The College Dropout” which landed on the 2021 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with with Mike and Tom about their creative background, their script based on a period of time in the life of Kanye West, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to them.

Today Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Mike and Tom discuss how they decided to write a script about Kanye West’s breakout as a recording artist.

Scott: You sort of made that jump from “Yeah, I got an internship at Sony.” [laughs] A lot of people out there struggling to find those type of entry level positions. How did you do that?

Thomas: After all the journalism stuff, I knew I wanted to make movies. I was applying to every job in town , every place I could go. I just wanted to get on a studio lot. That was the goal. How do I get into a studio?

I knew getting an assistant job might be tough to start. So I thought, “I have to get an internship.” I went on a bunch of interviews, and finally, someone was like, “Hey, we can offer you a spot” Luckily, it was a paid internship. The pay wasn’t great but, I said, “I’ll take it.”

Scott: I hope you remember the name of that faculty member at Annenberg who said, “Thomas, I don’t think you want to be a journalist.”

Thomas: Oh, my God. Her name’s slipping my mind. I can get you the name, but yeah.

Scott: I’m just saying, that’s pretty awesome that someone would say that because that really did align with your creative interests.

Michael: At the time, too, that choice was a little bit crazy. People were like, “You’re leaving grad school, USC, to go be an intern and work on short films with your brother?”

Thomas: That day, when I showed up to the set, Mike was with the camera, and I walked to him and said, “All right, what are we doing?” He goes, “Did you just drop out of school?” I go, “Yeah. Let’s do this.”

Scott: What about Mom and Grandma?

Thomas: They always loved that we work together. I think they thought that was such an awesome thing to pursue. I think they were a little shocked, but they were supportive.

Scott: Mike, were you still in school at this point?

Michael: I was still in school. Funny enough, I was reaching my end with short films. I was struggling while directing a project. It was for a festival. We had a week to make it. I remember we shot it. I was like, “This is a mess.”

So I brought it to Tom and I said, “Look at this. Can we do something with it?” It was due Tuesday morning, and this was Sunday night at 11:00 PM. He’s like, “OK, we have something here. Here’s what we do.” He pitches some great saves and asks if we can get the crew back together. We spend the wee hours shooting things and then editing together in his room.

It was the first time as adults we partnered up again. It was like the Avengers coming together.

[laughter]

Michael: There was no time to second guess each other or to argue. We just had to do it, and we did it, turned it in. That same day, I started an internship at a New Line Cinema. We just forgot about it.

But, I was a horrible intern. I always messed up coffee orders. The thing I most enjoyed doing was coverage. I liked coverage, love reading scripts, and linked up with a good executive there, Dave Neustadter. He’d ask me to read scripts and give thoughts. That really helped.

A couple of weeks into that internship, we got a call, “Hey, you guys won Best Drama at this Film Festival.” We didn’t expect the validation. The partnership was born there. That was better than any award. It was the start of something, “We could do this together.”

Scott: Wow. That’s a terrific story. I hear good things about Dave Neustadter.

Michael: He’s great. He was really helpful. He showed me Straight Outta Compton when they had it. I remember just reading and being like, “This is so cool.” It’s kind of the birth of the biopic there a little bit for us.

Scott: Thomas, when you were doing stuff, were you doing the coverage thing, too?

Thomas: Yeah, I was definitely doing coverage at Sony. But soon after Sony, I ended up working at Imagine, and that place was groundbreaking for me. It was a place with so many great execs to work for. At the same time, I got to see the development process. I got to see how projects would evolve, which was nice.

Scott: At some point, you started working in the TV.

Michael: There’s a nutshell version of the story, which was, we were working on a pilot, and it got picked up by a contest. They were like, “Hey, we really like this. We want to set you up with some people.” That’s where we met our agents. The crazy thing about that, though, Tom was working for Once Upon a Time.

Thomas: Yeah, during the agent hunt, I was working for Eddy Kitsis and Adam Horowitz. It was such a great experience. It was a true master class from those guys, to watch them make multiple TV shows and to be a part of that was great. I told Mike, “We got to get our TV pilots in order,” so we started to write a pilot.

Michael: Fast forward and we were up for a couple different shows, but only one gets picked up, Instinct, which was in New York. And the showrunner Michael Rauch picked us to join the staff. So basically, I think we got told on a Friday, “It’s a go.” I had to quit my job as a teacher that day.

We had to get on a plane and fly to New York. First, we didn’t have anywhere to live. We were literally driving around with some real estate guy over there. He picked us up and he was like, “OK, let’s look at some apartments.” We couldn’t find anything. We stayed in a hotel for our first three weeks there.

We just would walk to the writer’s room every day. And this was a big change for us, we were L.A. guys.

Scott: How long were you in New York?

Michael: Six months, and then we’re off. Then, we came back for another six months for a second season.

Scott: Thanks for that background. Now let’s talk about your script, The College Dropout, I see some synergy here with Tom dropping out of graduate school. Plot summary:

“A young Kanye West’s intimate journey to create his seminal first album, that reinvented hip hop music.”

It’s probably safe to assume you’re fans of Kanye West’s music at least early on. What was it that made you think this would make a movie?

Thomas: We were in New York like Mike said, and we had seen Love and Mercy. It’s a story about Brian Wilson and how he created Pet Sounds and his journey to do that. We were walking and Mike said, “Let’s do an album movie.” I said, “That would be cool, but we gotta find the right one” We started talking about different albums.

Mike said, “Let’s do The College Dropout” because it was a huge album for us growing up. I said, “Mike, his music’s too important to us. I’m not sure we wanna tackle this one. And we don’t have the rights.” He’s like, “Let’s just write it, let’s just have fun.” We jumped right in.

Michael: What was cool, too, is that we didn’t want to do it “cradle-to-grave.” It felt like the perfect album to introduce you to Kanye. There were events in there that felt compelling on screen. One of the formative movies that inspired us was the movie Nowhere Boy (2009).

There was something about that movie that when I first saw it, you wanted to see John Lennon with The Beatles, but what’s so great is that they don’t show you that. They show you how he was before that time, and even at the end, they wouldn’t even say the band’s name. We were inspired to make our version of that for Kanye.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Tom and Mike talk about some of the unique challenges of writing a biopic, specifically about such a famous individual like Kanye West.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Mike and Tom are repped by:

Mike Goldberg, Kyle Loftus, Adam Perry (APA)
Matt Ochacher, Michael Pelmont (New Wave Entertainment)

Twitter: @MichaelBallin, @Thomasraguilar

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