Interview (Part 3): Kieran Turner

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for his script Black Dogs.

Kieran wrote the original screenplay Black Dogs which landed on the 2022 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Kieran 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, Kieran describes discovering the true story he used as inspiration for his Black List script: How in 1973, Led Zeppelin was robbed of nearly a quarter million dollars in cash while playing a series of concerts in New York City, a case that was never solved.

Scott: Let’s move to the script Black Dogs, which is a terrific read, the script that got on the 2022 Black List. Here’s how it’s described:

Based on the novel by Jason Buhrmester, 1973. Led Zeppelin was robbed of nearly a quarter million dollars, that’s about a million dollars, I guess, in today’s…in cash, while playing a series of concerts in New York City. The case was never solved. We follow four young friends from the streets of Baltimore as they attempt to pull off what is possibly the most brazen heist in rock‑and‑roll history.

How did you discover this book?

Kieran: I’m a late‑in‑life but big Led Zeppelin fan. When I was first starting to get into music, and I got into music very early in my life, Zeppelin was on their way out. The first Zeppelin I remember was “In Through the Out Door,” and I was a little kid. It took me until the ’90s to get into it.

I saw the book on Amazon, and I thought it sounded fun. I was familiar with the situation, and I knew that it had not ever been solved, the case. I wanted to see what this Jason Buhrmester had come up with.

I read the book, and the book is so different than the screenplay. It’s told not linearly. The characters are very different. It’s more about the heist than it is about the characters. That’s not to take anything away from the book. The book is really terrific, and I sparked to the book immediately.

I think the book is a fantastic read, and I urge anyone who’s reading this to go out and get it, because it’s a really, really fun read. It’s so different than what I did with the screenplay.

I immediately saw it as a film. This is back in 2009, and I’m in the midst of working on “Jobriath,” the documentary. I really don’t have much to prove myself, but I got in contact with Jason. He put me in touch with his agent.

Somebody else was in the midst of trying to option the book. I don’t know who they were. They were obviously a lot better established than I was, and so they went with them. I totally understood it.

I stayed in touch with Jason. Every couple of years, I’d be like, “Hey, what’s going on,” because I was paying attention. I was like, “I’m not seeing anything happening with this, and I want it so badly. I know I can do this. I know I can do this.”

It took several years later. Finally, I emailed Jason, and I was like, “Hey, what’s going on?” He was like, “Hey, I finally got the book back, so it’s available again. I’m like, “Oh my god.” He was like, “Well, I live in LA now. Why don’t we meet up?” We talked about it. I told him what I wanted to do with the story and how I saw it.

I felt like it was much more of a character‑driven film. Not that he doesn’t have very clear characters in the book, but like I said, the book is much more plot‑driven.

I gave him a bunch of notes and told him what I wanted to do. He agreed. I started writing it. Initially, I was thinking this was going to be something that I was going to direct. It was going to be much lower budget. We were going to try and do it for five million.

We got with a company who was like, “Hey, we love this. We can finance this, but you’ve got to bring us names. We don’t expect you to get names for the four leads because they’re guys in their early 20s. If you can get us a good supporting cast…”

The thing is that I’m a documentary director. Just trying to get something off the ground like this, it’s difficult. The business, the industry is in such flux right now. Even when I started trying to get this done, people were like, “Who the fuck are you?” I understood, but I kept plugging away probably longer than I should have, wanting to get this made with me as a director.

Then COVID hit. I threw it in a drawer for a year and a half and was like, “Well, fuck it. I guess nothing is ever going to happen with it.” I hadn’t had any representation for a while because I was in the doc world. I have an attorney, who handles all my contracts and everything.

Something came up with “Jobriath.” Somebody had wanted to option the documentary to talk about doing a narrative biopic. I thought, “Oh, I should have some representation working on this with me.” I started sending out to a couple of people that I had known, who were managers, trying to see if they would work with me. They were like, “No, no, no. Not interested.”

I just cold‑emailed Jeff Portnoy at Bellevue. The crux of the email was, “I made this documentary. I’ve got these people who want to option it. I really need somebody to help handle the deal for me and help me figure out if this is the way that I want to go. By the way, I’m doing these other things.” The last line I wrote, I adapted the script about the Led Zeppelin guys.

Not even half an hour later, I get an email from Jeff. He goes, “I’m the biggest Led Zeppelin fan.” He didn’t say anything about anything else. He said, “I have to read the script.” I was like, “Oh, sure, sure.” I sent it to him.

The next day, he calls me. “We have to talk about this. When do you have some time? Let’s get on a Zoom.” He loved it and was big on it. I was like, “Look, I have completely dropped the idea of wanting to direct this thing. I get it. I just want to see it done. I just want to see it get made. I’m so passionate about this.”

We talked a lot about the script. Jeff had some great insights into how to make it even better. There were some ideas where I was like, “Yeah, let’s do that. That’s such a great idea.” There were some ideas where I was like, “Yeah…” but then they got me thinking.

It got me to open up about the script in a way that I hadn’t because I hadn’t worked on it for quite a while. Just sitting down and having that one conversation with Jeff made me see that there was still work to be done. I actually can’t believe how much better the script is now. It’s like, “Holy shit, is that what a manager does?”

[laughter]

Kieran: It’s like, “Jeff, you are the best thing in the world.” We’re so on the same page with so many things.” We started taking it out in the fall, and we had some meetings. He’d said to me, I don’t remember when, but he was like, “The Black List is coming up.”

I don’t know how that thing is done. I know that there’s the thing where you submit, you pay, and they have the thing every month and I never did that with anything. I knew that there was this other one and I had no idea. He mentioned that it was coming up on the 12th of December.

This was before Thanksgiving, and I had completely forgotten about it. I was out early the morning of the 12th, and I started getting all these texts. I finally had to pull over to see what was going on, because I could see in my little nav system on my car, Jeff Portnoy, Jeff Portnoy, Jeff Portnoy.

Finally, I pulled over and he was like, “Hey, you got in the Black List.” I was just, it’s great. Then that blew up getting inquiries from everywhere. I’m hoping that the right place will come aboard and love the script and love the characters. To me the script is, I don’t know where it lives. I don’t know if it’s theatrical. I don’t know if it’s streaming.

I don’t think it much matters. Again, the industry is in such flux right now. Of course, any screenwriter will tell you that, what a thrill it would be to get to go see their movie on a big screen with audiences and get to experience that. Shit, I’ve been going to the movies since I was five years old and that’s all I would do for a long while.

I grew up worshipping the movies, but I feel like Black Dogs if it’s done correctly and the way that it’s written, is something that could endure that 10 years from now people will be going back to it because of the story, because of the characters, because of…It’s a story about people who have been told their entire lives that they’re nothing, that they’re worth nothing.

They may have a strange way of going about figuring out how to make themselves something, robbing Led Zeppelin. These are four guys who have decided that, we are each other’s family, and we need to stick together and we need to not listen to what everybody is telling us that we’re garbage.

It’s quite a lovely story about friendship despite the fact that it’s a “Heist” movie and it’s a “Rock N’ Roll” movie and it’s got a lot of cool fun bad guys and stuff.

Scott: The fact that you persisted in pursuing this over time, the project is an object lesson for people who read this, that you got to have that persistence. You say that the business is in flux and it absolutely is, and particularly trying to get original material made if it’s not some Marvel franchise thing.

You always look for that hook that thing that…I always tell my students, you’re in a bar in Los Feliz and you bump into a producer who says, “What are you working on?” You want to have a thing that’s going to… over the noise and whatever, hook them. You go, Led Zeppelin period, Heist period They’re hooked.

Kieran: Absolutely.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Kieran goes into detail describing how some of the script’s characters came to life.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

Kieran is repped by Bellevue Productions.

Twitter: @jobriathdoc

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