Interview (Part 3): Elad Ziv

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for his script Court 17.

Elad Ziv wrote the screenplay Court 17 which landed on the 2022 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Elad about his creative background, writing a Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 3 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Elad discusses the key characters in Court 17 and how some of them were drawn directly from his own life experience.

Scott: Let’s talk about the characters because they’re so well‑drawn. The Protagonist, here’s how she’s introduced. It’s literally right at the top of the script, the script’s first scene.

“Blistered and beaten hands shake as they anxiously wrap grip tape over the vital handle of a tennis racket. We pull out to see the hands belong to Noa Schulman, 37, slouched on a bench. She’s tall and lean, yet battered and abused by her decades as a professional athlete. Tattoos riddle her arms and legs.”

How would you describe Noa, her state of being at the beginning of this story?

Elad: I know a lot of Noas. My senior year of high school, I went to an academy called Saddlebrook Academy, which is in Wesley Chapel, just outside of Tampa. It’s an academy where tennis players go to either go play college tennis, or a lot of them, to become professional tennis players.

I made a lot of friends when I was down there. A lot of them stuck the course and continued on. This is another thing, on top of everything we’ve previously discussed, another thing I wanted to educate audiences on, is that tennis is not a country club sport played by WASPs and the privileged elite. It is that, but professional tennis is not that.

Outside of the top 50 players in the world, and you could say maybe top 100 and make a good living, I know people who are ranked 400, 500, 700, 800 in the world, you’re making twenty, thirty thousand a year. You have no home. You’re traveling around the world 10 months out of the year. It is a ridiculously brutal, brutal existence.

I really wanted to shed light on this because I think it’s something that is not as glamorous as people think.

I love Darren Aronofsky’s The Wrestler. That movie does an interesting thing, too, of you see Stone Cold…I used to love wrestling when I was a kid. You see The Rock and all these guys, and the glamour of it.

The Wrestler really shows a light of the seedy underbelly of the wrestling world that most people don’t see. I think that COURT 17 does that a little bit with tennis. Noa, on top of everything, was ranked number one in collegiate tennis. She went to University of Texas. She was the highest recruit. She was the number one junior in the country.

She went to the best school. She won a national championship her freshman year. Then she turned pro. Everyone touted her, as Americans do. This happened to Andy Roddick, this happened to Mardy Fish. It happened to Serena, but she actually showed up and did it. It happened to Coco Gauff.

It happened to a lot of players. They get touted. Americans want that next great player. We always want to be the best in everything. We want the Michael Jordan of whatever sport it is. It’s a lot of pressure. Noa came from that.

The pressure’s different, as I experienced in college. Sometimes in practice, I would play out of my mind. Sometimes in matches, I would lose to people who were significantly worse than me because there’s a different pressure in matches that you just can’t practice for.

On a much higher level, Noa experienced that on the pro tour, and it hurt her ranking. There’s a frustration and a flusteredness of, “I’ve been on this tour now for 20 years, little less, but 20 years including college and everything like that, and I have nothing to show for it.”

Her dad died. Her dad was her best friend. There’s also that feeling of disappointment to your parents and not living up to their dreams, and how much they sacrificed for you, and you weren’t able to truly pay them back with your success for all that. There’s a lot of that as well, I think, in her.

Scott: When we meet her, she’s at a crossroads. The stakes are high. If she doesn’t succeed here, she’s going to be demoted, in a way, to the Asian tour, right?

Elad: Futures, Challengers, and all that kind of stuff. That’s something you do when you’re 19 and 20. No one in their late 30s wants to do that.

Scott: It’s interesting. First of all, Noa, I looked it up. The name means motion. Was there any significance to that at all, or did you just pick the name, it just come out of nowhere?

Elad: That’s interesting that it means motion. I’m Israeli, so I speak Hebrew and stuff. I know that, but I didn’t actually think of that. It’s actually accidentally beautiful, to be honest with you. I thought Noa was a really beautiful name. I thought she was such a tomboy character.

Noah is usually a boy’s name, historically, so I thought it was a beautiful name to give her for that reason as well. That she has such a masculine energy to her.

Scott: She’s got some rituals. There’s this thing with the water bottles, which I thought was really interesting, everything is got to be lined up, taller to shorter with the labels organized. Then she’s also got this necklace, that’s from her father, right?

Elad: Correct.

Scott: It’s a hand‑shaped symbol that’s been used for centuries to protect against evil. I’m just curious, that probably popped up out of your subconscious, but why do you think she had these rituals?

Elad: That was actually very purposeful that I put all that. The rituals were a sense of control. OCD is a sense of control. She breaks out of the loop when she figures out. For me this is what the movie is about, and it’s a spoiler, I’m sorry for the listeners who haven’t read it.

The movie is about letting go of control, and being OK with what is. That’s something that’s a powerful lesson in my life, and I think it’s a powerful thing for people to learn, is that we don’t have control over anything.

Being human is a really hard thing, and when you accept that everything is happening for a reason, and that you don’t have control over something, and that you just have to do the best that you can do with whatever you’ve got. I think in Noa’s case that that was a really important lesson for her.

Because coming into this movie, when we meet her slouched on that bench, she is angry at her history. She’s angry at the way things turned out. She’s angry that she didn’t get to number one. She’s angry that she didn’t win multiple Grand Slams or any Grand Slams.

To let go of that, that freeing thing of letting go and being at peace with you got to travel the world, you got to be a professional tennis player. You played the best players to ever play the game. There are so many things to take out of that. Anyway, that OCD stuff is like a microcosm physicality of that deeper meaning.

Scott: Tennis has a history of troubled dads. Like Andre Agassi had a real mixed relationship with his dad. Jennifer Capriati flamed out, Mary Pearson’s dad.

Could you maybe describe the relationship? Because Noa’s father was best friend and yet she does carry a lot of ‑‑ I don’t want to say ‑‑ negative associations, not intentional on his part, necessarily, but she didn’t live up to what he wanted her to be.

Elad: That is something, I wasn’t born in this country, my parents weren’t born in this country. There is a certain, and I’m pretty sure Andre Agassi’s dad was born in Iran that he wasn’t born in America.

There is a certain thing about people who come from humble beginnings and they moved to this country, or even if they come from humble beginnings in this country they want the best for their kids. They want their kids to have a better life than what they had, not to deal with that.

I think Noa’s dad pushed her and wanted her to be the best that she can, so that she didn’t have to deal with what he dealt with in life. Also coming from Israel and coming from his generation and stuff, I think he did the best he did with what he knew. He didn’t know any better, so he just tried to protect her and do what he thought was best for her.

Those lessons of work ethic and never giving up and second place is not an option, and all stuff like that ends up having a lot more, it hurts more than it helps. Even if you are able to succeed, I would imagine it’s the pressure of having to win all the time, it’s just insurmountable and very difficult to deal with.

His early passing, he passed away her freshman year of college, it doesn’t help that, because then he leaves her with all these things that are unresolved, and now she’s on her own, and she’s looking.

That’s why Eric becomes a pseudo‑weird father figure, but he’s not signing up to be a father figure, he’s not suited to be. He’s got his own things to deal with, but she needs that guidance because her father forced that on her her whole life.

Then he exited at such a young age for her that she was left without anything and having to make her decisions for herself. Not that he did it on purpose, but she just wasn’t equipped to handle that pressure by herself.

Scott: You mention Eric, her long‑time coach. He is a surrogate father figure, but he drinks a lot, for one thing. At one point, he says, “I’m going to go take this gig at the University of Texas,” so that’s another thing.

She has an interesting relationship with him. On the one hand, she wants him around. On the other hand, she’s not willing to listen to his advice.

Elad: That kind of hypocrisy, I think we all do it. Sometimes, we want something, but we’re not willing to actually deal with the difficulty of having that thing. I think relationships are like that. I think people want camaraderie, people want to be with people, but I think it’s work. You’re dealing with another human being, and it’s not just commanding. It’s also listening.

More specifically, with her relationship with Eric, he’s got his own life. She’s been making no money now for a long time, and his pay is 10 percent of whatever she makes, so he’s making 10 percent of very little money for a very long time.

I think that’s a difficult reality to grapple with. This guy has to live his own life. He can’t just service my life. That’s not fair to him. However, I don’t want to do this alone either. Then it’s also the other thing. Going back to the father, the father gave certain lessons for her first 17 years on Earth that she’s very stubborn about, that Eric has a different way of doing things.

That’s why I like the whole thing of her and Eric training, because Eric actually has some great ideas. He’s a phenomenal coach. She just doesn’t let him be one because she holds her father in this holier‑than‑thou light, and puts Eric below him. In reality, maybe Eric’s a better coach than her father. Maybe Eric knows more about tennis than her father.

Her father was like a Richard Williams, where he learned it along the way. He wasn’t a good tennis player, but Eric knows tennis. Tennis has been in Eric’s life his whole life. That’s an interesting subtext that we don’t see, but it’s there.

Scott: That’s one of three storylines. One is obviously the match. I want to talk about her nemesis character in just a second, but there’s the storyline of she and Eric. Then there’s a storyline of another character, which I want to get to in just a bit here. Let’s talk about Anya Khruscheva.

This is Noa’s rival, the match we’re going to see over and over and over again. This is how she’s introduced, Eric and Noa as they meet Anya on the court practice time at the US Open.

“We follow their gazes toward Anya Khruscheva, 18, the new phenom on tour. There’s an underlying beauty to Anya’s intimidating stature. Six foot, three inches of dense muscles, wrapped around bones made of pure Russian steel. Her team surrounds her on the court, her father, coach Yuri, 44, two agents, two assistant coaches, and a trainer.”

Functionally speaking, Noa mentions this later on, she’s like a younger version of Noa.

Elad: Absolutely. I thought that’s an interesting lesson for Noa to learn, to have to see her younger version of herself over and over and over again, until she finally gets it, “What a beautiful journey have I been on.” You know what I mean?

Scott: Yeah. It’s like, Anya’s like the shadow nature of Noa that she’s got to confront over and over again in these repetitive matches. The first match begins with this description.

“Anya and Noa are locked onto one another like two apex predators in the wild. No one dares blink first,” which is a great starting point because the very last match, there’s a whole different dynamic there. That first match, she gets…not blitzed, but 6‑2, 6‑1. That’s not good.

Elad: That’s as blitzed as you’re going to get in a pro tour. 6‑0, 6‑0 doesn’t happen very often.

Scott: Doesn’t happen very often. That looks like that’s it, but then the accident happens. Let’s talk about that. This is the thing that sets into motion the loop. Yesterday, that movie where they had a bicycle thing, an accident that created where nobody heard of The Beatles.

What did you think about it? This is, she’s running and there’s a taxi cab that collides with her. You have to have something that sets this thing into motion. Talk about how you came to that incident.

Elad: I just needed something to kick it off. There were earlier iterations of it that didn’t have the loop aspect of it. I was searching for something that would kick it off. After I won the Script Pipeline award, I worked with…Are you familiar with Script Pipeline?

Scott: Yes.

Elad: The way they work with their winners is that they actually work with them. They do some edits with us, they’ll get us into representation if we need it, or whatever. I worked with a guy named Matt there, and we came up with that together, that we need something to really kick it off. The taxi cab thing is just so jarring.

To be honest with you, I love it the most because she dies, or you think she dies, and then it’s like, “OK, I’m in the first act. Where is this…” That’s the main thing of it, is I really wanted to shock the audiences to be like, “OK. Where can this possibly go?” Then there’s a beautiful, whimsical thing that you can carry it, where I love when things are up for interpretation.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Elad and I discuss how the Protagonist’s experience stuck in a loop, playing the same tennis match over and over, is at its core a journey into her inner being … and a journey she needs to take.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For Part 2, here.

Elad is repped by Bellevue Productions.

Twitter and Instagram: @eladziv

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