Interview (Part 2): Stefan Jaworski

My interview with 2021 Black List writers for his script Mercury.

Stefan Jaworski wrote the original screenplay “Mercury” which landed on the 2021 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Stefan about his creative background, his script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to him.

Today in Part 2 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Stefan discusses the inspiration for his Black List script Mercury.

Scott: You’re represented by the Lit Entertainment Group in Hollywood, correct?

Stefan: Yeah.

Scott: How did you make that transition into working both in Hollywood and Denmark?

Stefan: It happened around ten years ago, and it was a combination of three or four things that happened simultaneously. I co‑created a Danish crime show called “Those Who Kill”, which was remade by A&E. I had a Danish feature thriller that I’d written, called “The Candidate”, that sold to be remade by Lionsgate. And then I had a spec script of my own that sold to Fox, which also made the Black List that year, actually.

Scott: So this is a double‑dip for you…

Stefan: Yeah.

Scott: …in the Black List.

Stefan: It’s fun. I’m very grateful for that. It’s a fun experience.

Scott: Let’s talk about “Mercury” which I really enjoyed.

Stefan: Thank you.

Scott: Plot summary. “When a first date takes a dangerous turn, down‑on‑his‑luck Michael risks everything to save his newfound love from her past. Little does he know, the night and his date are not what they seem. Michael soon finds himself on a high‑octane cat‑and‑mouse race across the city to save himself and uncover the truth, armed with nothing but his wit, his driving skills, and a 1969 Ford Mercury.”

Stefan: Ha. That’s beautiful. I don’t know who wrote that summary. I love it. [laughter]

Scott: First of all, why a 1969 Ford Mercury?

Stefan: To answer that, I have to start somewhere else. It’s really about craft and process, but to me, to write anything at all, I personally need a combination of two things that elevate each other:

I need a very clear, simple, understandable concept, a clear idea. I need to be able to see the poster, and that poster needs to be something that I would want to see myself.

I have this fictive drawer with 200 “poster ideas”, and then I have another drawer filled with personal shit. [laughs] Which is the other thing I need to write anything.

Finding a story that is emotionally true to me, and is psychologically relevant at a certain time in my life. If I can find a simple high-concept idea in the “first drawer” and a personal story in “the other” that fit and challenge and elevate each other? That’s when I have a sense of “Now, I can write this.” I think Mercury started out that way.

I had recently signed with Lit Entertainment, and was in a conversation with Adam Kolbrenner and Kendrick Tan, my managers, trying to figure out what to write next. I shared a number of ideas, and they responded strongly to this one, which actually originated from a different conversation further back:

I had previously done some research on a project on Ted Bundy and realized in that process that Bundy’s car ‑‑ you probably know this ‑‑ he had a remodeled Volkswagen, a German bubble, where he removed the back seats, and had all of his nasty tools in the back. He drove around, and he picked up these girls. He was very charming, and he picked up these women, drove them to their homes, and these horrible murders happen while the car is parked outside, and then he drove off again with the bodies inside. And I was just horrified by the way his VW-bubble somehow, inside the same night, transformed from a vehicle of seduction to a vehicle of terror.

I was in conversations with a producer about a potential television series about Ted Bundy, and at some point, I was like, “Is there an episode here that is only about that car? Where the car never leaves the shot, and staying with the car dictates the structure of the entire episode?”

That episode would essentially start with the car rolling off the factory line, and then we find it again inside a car dealership. Then, this guy, Ted Bundy, picks it up and he remodels the car, and you just follow the car. So scary, I was like, “This guy drives around. He picks up women. It’s a sexual thing. It’s seduction. It’s a romance somehow. And then it suddenly changes into something horrific…”. The car ended up, as far as I know, in a museum in Alcatraz. That’s where I would end the episode.

That project never happened, but this idea of the car as a transformative vehicle, that almost has its own power upon the story, and helps these characters grow through what they need to grow through, that became the core conceptual idea behind Mercury.

And then, of course, you stumble into all of these amazing reference titles. Stephen King’s “Christine”, obviously. Also, you can’t do something like this without Michael Mann’s “Collateral” hanging heavily over your head…

Scott: Right.

Stefan: There are a lot of really great movies that use the car as essentially a confession chair. These characters forced together in confined space, which organically forces you to make the story a psychological drama about the people inside it. Which is great. But then you have the mobility as well, and the action/thriller aspect that grows from that.

I loved the notion of trying to give the car a little bit of a magical quality, and then I just wanted to find what I felt was a really cool car. Cinematically. And that’s where the 1969 Mercury came from. The story of that car being the fastest car in the world at that time was the decisive factor. Both allowed it to be an actual competitor in the car-chases this story needed. But also gave the whole thing a little bit of elevated history. I love that.

But then. From “the other drawer”, once the whole conceptual thing was in place. There’s this story about, essentially, a hopeless romantic who feels he did wrong, who lives an isolated life because he feels guilty over something that happened, and who just wants to be a hero to someone…

And then, someone shows up who takes advantage of that and forces him to essentially go through what he needs to go through to confront and overcome that ghost and the tragedy of what happened to him.

Scott: Sure.

Stefan: There is a subplot in here between Michael and his father. Who is the personified guilt, Michael is struggling to overcome in this story. A lot of the writing has been focused on how to earn and land the final cathartic moment between them, where Michael finally returns to him. Once he is emotionally and psychologically ready to do so. That father was always there. But there was a version of the story that was more bleak, where Michael went through this transformative experience, and then drove away and escaped the city that has somehow been his prison. At some point, I just felt, well… I’m a romantic at heart. And since the apparent romance Michael pursues with Laura turns out to be a deception, I would love the deeper emotional, cathartic climax to be there in the end.

Tomorrow in Part 3, Stefan talks about how he drew inspiration for his script from such movies as Collateral, Locke, and Buried.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Stefan is repped by Lit Entertainment Group.

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