Interview (Part 3): Julia Yorks

My interview with the 2024 Black List writer for his script The Seven Guys You Date Before Marriage.

Julia Yorks wrote the screenplay The Seven Guys You Date Before Marriage which landed on the 2024 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to do a deep dive with Julia into her filmmaking background, writing her Black List script, and her approach to the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 3 of a 6-part series to run each day this week, Julia discusses how the Protagonist in her Black List script reflects the ambiguous nature of the whole dating scene.

Scott: One thing that really stuck out to me was the relationship Avery had with her mom. Her mother, you have a lovely little montage where you slip in the mother’s illness, then eventual death. Talk to me a little bit about Avery’s relationship with her mother.

Julia: There’s a part in it where she says that maybe one of the reasons why she stayed with the ex‑boyfriend so long, even though maybe it wasn’t the right fit, was because he knew her mom.

Scott: Yeah. On Page 67, She says, “If I didn’t end up with Noah, my mom would have never met my partner.”

Julia: Yeah. I think that so often from our parents, we want approval and validation. I think that it’s really just not…For her, it was not being able to have her mom to help guide her along these big questions in life. I also think that when someone passes, we tend to idealize a lot of them in their life, and so she’s really idealized her parents’ marriage and tried to recreate it.

I think what’s so interesting too is it’s not just…The message is it’s not just her parents’ story, but really what I’ve learned in my own life now is you really can’t idealize anyone else’s relationship. You really don’t know what anyone else’s or their life. You don’t know what anyone else is going through. You don’t know what anyone else is dealing with. You don’t know how anyone else’s relationship or marriage is.

So that’s kind of the lesson that she comes away with is that, “I have to kind of find my own love story.” It sounds so corny, but I think what I’ve learned over the past year and what I think Avery learns at the end of the movie is the truest love story is the one that you have with yourself. That’s kind of her journey.

Scott: Joseph Campbell talks about the “parent path,” that if we find a path that’s laid out for us, that’s probably not our path. That’s the path of the parent. That’s the path of “you should do this.”

So, you’ve got these two dynamics going on with Avery. One, she’s talking about the romance of the proposal that happened between her mother and her father. She’s loaded down with that, but that’s an association that exists for her, that the proposal is a really big deal.

So maybe let’s separate the two. So, let’s talk about that. That’s a thing going on there. Right? That’s a pretty powerful association going on with her, her parent’s marriage.

Julia: Yeah. Well, I think that what she says is, “My mom always said that it wasn’t it wasn’t their wedding or when we were born, it was the proposal because it made everything else possible,” and so she’s been waiting for this proposal so that she can start her life with him. I think that that’s kind of the thought process behind it.

Scott: Then the second thing is she discovers this box, which is this little black book that her mother had and this whole thing where she and her dad took a “break” and their mom went off with these seven dates. So that was the thing that producer brought to you. Was that that premise, or you spun that out? The title?

Julia: Literally, it’s the seven guys you date before marriage, and he was like…

Scott: You came up with the idea that the mom had done this.

Julia: Yeah, because I wasn’t sure how to connect it to her. There was a version where…I think her mom had always passed. I grew up reading all sorts of “Cosmo” or “Teen” magazines where there’s always a listicle. You know what’s so funny? This movie was actually at BuzzFeed for a while and they love a listicle. So, it was like, “Oh, OK. Cool. We’ve got…”

So, it was, “How do I turn this listicle into the driver of this plot, into how does that become kind of the catalyst? I think it grew over the years of me working on it to really become more about her relationship with her mom and having that be a through line that she really missed her mom.

Scott: That idea that these paths that were presented to us, Campbell’s point was, “No. We have to create our own path,” which is really along the lines of what she discovers, like self-love and her own journey.

Julia: Yeah. It’s true because even the archetypes are not archetypes that she comes up with. It’s archetypes that her friends come up with, and so it’s really about kind of…I love the moment where she’s like, “I don’t know. Maybe I have to date 38 guys,” and her dad is like, “Oh, no.”

Scott: And he’s like, “I’ve got to get 38 more cans of pepper spray.” That’s pretty funny. So, she does go on this journey in which she’s not replicating her mother’s thing because her friends, Meghan and Ellis, help her come up with this new list of types because it’s different than what her mother’s era was.

It is a similar sort of thing with the…I think she has the expectation that by doing it, she’s going to end up with someone like what her mom and dad had. Is that a fair assessment?

Julia: I think this is something to be brought out a little bit more too, is it, “Who needs this? Who is this for? Is this because this worked with my parents and they found their way back to each other, maybe it’ll work for us. Maybe I just need to show him that there’s not better fish in the sea. Maybe I need to figure out what I want.”

I think she’s like, “Oh, well, this worked for somebody else. This is what our story needs because everything…” They were, instead of high school sweethearts, college sweethearts. Right? So, it’s all of the same elements.

As I’m learning, as I’m seeing, as I’m hanging out with more single people, it is something that you…At first, dating is fun and meeting new people is fun, and then you get to a point where it’s the Charlotte York, “Sex and the City,” like, “ I’ve been dating since I’m 16. I am exhausted. Where is he?” You know?

I think people sometimes settle for the familiar as opposed to what I’ve learned over the past year, not just in relationships, but just in life, is that, yes, the unknown can be scary, but it can also be incredibly exciting. I think so often people fall back on it’s scary and so moving back into safe spaces. I think the takeaway for her at the end of this movie is that it’s exciting.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Julia talks about two key characters who are friends with the Protagonist and the Rule of Three in relation to writing.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Julia is repped by CAA.

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