Interview (Part 3): Kristen Tepper

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for her script Better Luck Next Time.

Kristen Tepper wrote the screenplay Better Luck Next Time which landed on the 2022 Black List. Remarkably, Kristen’s script made the Black List before she had signed with a manager.

I had the opportunity to chat with Kristen about her 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, Kristen talks about the inspiration for “Better Luck Next Time” and shares insights about the two lead characters in the script.

Scott: Is this the first feature script that you’ve written?

Kristen: It is technically the first feature I have written, and that was in January that I started writing this one. It’s probably the second or the third, but it’s the only one that is something that I would show anyone.

I’ve been very fortunate that I’m good with idea, so I can work around an idea. My first pilot was on the Black List. It was just on the other site.

Scott: The Black List website.

Kristen: It got an eight on the reviewed site. I was like, “I have an idea, and I have an inkling of how to structure things.” I’ve been fortunate in that regard.

Scott: Did you do any reading, any of the how‑to books, or going to any classes in terms of story, not just format and whatnot?

Kristen: I actually have a writer’s group that I think has been the most helpful thing to me. All the things you read when you’re starting. I still to this day, though, will Google, “What is the three‑act structure?” When I’m restarting something. I’m like, “What is…? What does do I need to do in this?”

I do a lot of Craig Mazin’s podcast and the “No Film School” or my things that I like to keep in unknown of some sort. Mine was a lot of doing. Mine was very trial and error and writing a whole script and then being like, “That’s not right at all.” Whatever I was thinking, I was doing was wrong. “Let me re‑write it.”

The writing group being able to give notes has been the biggest thing that I think has helped steer what I want to do, and outlining. I outline for a long time.

Scott: I have this working theory that we’ve read, seen, and heard so many stories in our lives, that a lot of this is intuitive. No matter all the various paradigms or whatnot, I don’t think you move too far away from Aristotle and this idea of beginning, middle, and an end.

Kristen: I know.

Scott: I’d like your reaction to something I tell my students. “Okay, you’re in Los Feliz or downtown at a club. And you bump into a producer. They ask what you do. You say, “I’m a screenwriter.” They ask, “What you got?” You’ve got about 5–10 seconds to get their attention. You need that single thing that hooks their attention.

With your script “Better Luck Next Time,” you’ve got that hook. “It’s ‘Unhitched.’”

Kristen: Exactly. It’s really hard. I think loglines and pitching yourself are two of the hardest things about writing.

Scott: Yes, absolutely. There are people that have classes that they’re teaching how to write a logline. It’s simple if you come up with a great idea. If you don’t come up with a strong story concept, it can be problematic.

Speaking of strong story concepts, here’s how your project was summarized for the annual Black List:

“Two best friends run a successful underground service taking women’s toxic exes on humiliating dates, but their friendship’s put to the ultimate test when an old mark plots his revenge.”

Let’s break that down. I want you to go back, you touched on this a bit. Do you remember the first initial thing, where you thought, “That’s it.”

Was it the revenge part? Was it the toxic masculinity in contemporary culture? Was it literally looking at “Hitch” and doing the reverse of that?

Kristen: I don’t know if I remember the exact, but I feel like it was very much the revenge thing. The first kernel of this idea was…Before “Do Revenge” and before “Promising a Woman,” being an idea and never being pushed out anywhere.

It was me and my best friend being like, “How funny would it be if you just made XYZ’s life miserable because he was such an XYZ to this friend of ours.” That was, I think, where that stems from. That was always the basis. There were a lot more dates. I have pages of the bad dates that didn’t make it.

Scott: Let’s talk about some of these characters in the story. I don’t want to give away too much of the plot because it’s quite complex in a good way, it’s got some interesting twists and turns.

You got these two friends. BJ, I think your lookbook describes her this way. “28 years old, quick‑witted and rough around the edges but fiercely loyal with a huge heart.” Here’s how she’s described when she’s introduced in the script: “She lives on the short‑term winds and prefers the fast lane.”

Unpack BJ for us a little bit, what was the inspiration for her character?

Kristen: BJ is who me and all my friends are on our wildest, loosest night out. Where we’re living for whatever’s happening at that time.

That might be a Midwest thing and I think Annie is just her fold. In a way that I think women in their late 20s go to those opposite extremes. You’re either living it up and you’re like, “I’ll have kids when I’ll have kids” or you’re Annie and you’re ready to settle down.

My friends are not ready to settle down. She is a culmination of everything I like about all of those people, even her less‑perfect attributes.

Scott: She did have, in her past, the passing of her mother.

Kristen: Yes.

Scott: Unresolved?

Kristen: I think unresolved in the way that both of these characters have dads who didn’t know how quite to deal with them. That manifests in so many different ways. Once you lose your wife, it’s like “What kind of parent am I? Am I both parents, I’m just the dad?” I think women have a very specific relationship with their mom.

When you don’t get that fulfilled, you don’t see what the path is to what you’re supposed to grow up and be like. What are those next steps? I think it just stunted her in a phase of “I just want to have fun. I don’t want to think about everything serious that can go wrong, because it always does go wrong, so I’m just going to ignore that completely.”

Scott: There’s always layers to good characters, multi‑dimensions to them. It’d be interesting just to think about her character in terms of this desire to have fun. How much of that is just trying to avoid certain things.

Kristen: Just running. I think at some point in the script her aunt, BJ, and her auntie have it out. It’s just like, “You just would rather avoid it and pretend like everything’s fine even though something’s on fire” because if something’s actually on fire you have to deal with it. I think that’s really hard.

Scott: You have a three‑page blow‑out scene, we’ll talk about that in just a bit. I was going to ask you how much fun that was to write, I mention the part too because it’s a lot of really honest interaction. From a writer’s standpoint, it must have been kind of a hoot.

Kristen: It was, yes. [laughs]

Scott: Let’s save that because we’ve got to meet Anne first. Annie is the other one. Now, they’re childhood friends. They’ve known each other a long time.

Annie, the lookbook describes her, “29, whip‑smart, ambitious, precocious, and since she was six, she’s been ready to grow up. She loves being the brains of the Better Luck Next Time operations, being the brains, but she knows her fiancé Jesse would not approve. Jesse cares about appearance and this is not an appearance‑appropriate organization.”

Maybe unpack Annie a bit. How did that character come into being?

Kristen: Just in the way, not the opposite of BJ because I think they both like to have fun, I think that’s something that tends to get missed a lot. You just have one character with a stick up their butt and then you have one who’s wild.

I think though Annie is just a lot of my friends who always were like, “I want to get married” and, “I want kids.” There’s nothing wrong with that, it’s just such a different life, at least for me. I am not an Annie.

I’m an Annie maybe in that I like lists and organization, but everything else is very much like knowing what you want, and being so confident and comfortable with that is very appealing to me, because I don’t.

I have friends like that, that just always knew. My mom has always said, “I just always knew I wanted to have kids and a dog and this is good enough for me.” I was like, that’s insane. I don’t understand how you can be content. I want that but I don’t have that, and so I think that’s Annie made into one little character.

Scott: But she’s not honest about it with Jesse. In fact, she’s got this whole other…I work at this really, I forget the name of the company but it’s a reliable financial institution. Where did that come from? Was that always part of Annie’s development as a character?

Kristen: A little bit. Annie thought this was funny, and then things just grow and they grow until you don’t have control of them anymore. I think meeting Jesse and being like, “Oh, I’m going to marry this person,” is the push point of being like, “This person wouldn’t like that side of me.”

Which is something people do in relationships a lot. Like, “I always make my bed,” “I always put the dishes in the dishwasher.” They’re much smaller scale things, but this was just like, “I don’t think this person would like that version of me, and I don’t know if I want to be that version of me, so that’s not part of this conversation when it’s you and me. This is the idealized version of me.”

Tomorrow in Part 4, Kristen digs into other characters in her Black List script as well as key plot elements.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For Part 2, here.

Kristen is repped by Agents First.

• Instagram @Kristentepper — https://www.instagram.com/kristentepper/
• Twitter: @kristentepper — https://twitter.com/kristentepper
• Tiktok: @teppertoks — https://www.tiktok.com/@teppertoks?_t=8dWXLH7ZkIU

Note: Kristen has 18.7K followers on Tiktok and 1M+ likes.

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