Interview (Part 3): Leigh Cesiro and Erica Matlin
My interview with 2021 Black List writers for their script Cruel Summer.
My interview with 2021 Black List writers for their script Cruel Summer.
Leigh Cesiro and Erica Matlin wrote the original screenplay “Cruel Summer” which landed on the 2021 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Erica and Leigh about their creative background, their script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to them.
Today in Part 3 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Leigh and Erica share their thoughts on how the script’s core group of characters emerged into being.
Scott: I’ll throw out an adjective here with reference to that, that you may not think of associating with this type of material. It’s rather “elegant” to see because it’s a very simple but effective way of establishing stakes. It gives you this clothesline that you can just keep dropping these things in, these moments, and these bits of business. It works quite well.
Let’s talk about these five counselors, who discovered this body, learn a little bit more about them. I’m curious how you came up with this “family” of characters, and maybe it is just people that you knew or based on them. They’re led by Sam, who you describe is 19, funny, and self-assured. How did Sam come into this crew of counselors?
Leigh: I think it’s really just that we needed the leader, the responsible one. In every friend group, there is the responsible one.
Erica: We needed the straight man to bounce off of, and then make everyone else slightly more heightened.
Scott: That’s Sam. Then there’s Jayne. 19, effortlessly cool with a mischievous streak. How would you describe her, and how did she come into being?
Erica: Jayne is probably the one mostly, loosely based off people from camp. I think we were intrigued, again, going back to this idea of bringing the real world into camp world. How would someone like Jayne, who is nonchalant and at this crossroad of wanting to stay a kid and wanting to be an adult, how would she handle something like this? What kind of friend would that make her in this situation?
Scott: They do have a friend. I mean, you mentioned that earlier that this is a story, in terms of the small story, the emotional story. It’s about the friendship between these two characters Sam and Jayne. How about Alexis, 19, sassy, daddy’s girl?
Leigh: She was the most fun to write. I guess, she’s also based on real people in the same way that there’s a responsible one in every friend group. There’s always the ridiculous one who like you roll your eyes at them in the most loving way at anything they say, but then sometimes say brilliant ideas, not even knowing it.
Erica: Yeah.
Scott: I’m worried about the state of her hair at the end of the movie.
[laughter]
Scott: She goes through quite an ordeal.
Scott: Another character: Benji, sweet, rule follower.
Leigh: He’s the most sincere one. When you’re at camp you take very small things very seriously, but you never wanted to let on how seriously you were taking these things.
Through a character like him, he could just say, “You mean so much to me as a friend,” when you would never say that really out loud, but it’s maybe what you’re thinking.
He just became a way to be sincere and sweet. He wants to sing all the time, and maybe it’s not cool to be singing all the time, but he just does it anyway.
Erica: In terms of somebody having to keep the secret of hiding a dead body, we figured that would be the hardest for Benji, who can’t because he’s so sincere. He doesn’t put on a mask. It would be hard for him to keep that a secret.
Scott: I’d say that brings back that word elegant again. As soon as you have this dead body, they decide, they’re not going to talk to anybody about this. Then it becomes this ticking bomb-like, “Oh, oh.” You’re right, Benji would be the one you’d think would be the one to break on that group.
The fifth member of the crew you describe as, “Grunch, 20, drinks non-dairy milk years before anyone thought to milk an oat), sitting cross-legged under a tree, reading. This would be hot at a liberal arts school but this is camp.
Was there a Grunch in your past, or is this just a wish-fulfillment for a character? How did this character come about?
Leigh: I think he’s the only one that 100 percent is based on one single person.
Erica: He was also a fun character to write because with this idea of being inside the camp bubble, similar to a high school cafeteria, you brand people in your head, you grow up with these people. Then it’s so funny to look at them in a different way.
It’s like, “Oh, my goodness, this is the most good-looking person I’ve ever seen,” or the opposite like a fact of having, “Oh, my God, Why do I think that person is so attractive?” [laughs]
Scott: Yeah, he’s got his own little subplot because at first Jayne and Sam are like, “I don’t see what they see in this guy.” Then, all of a sudden, they shift the perspective and there’s this hot pumping pony party music. He’s brushing his hair back and even Benji falls under the sway of that same plot, which is a really nice little twist.
You’ve got this relationship between Sam and Jayne, where was that in the process here? It’s a fun summer camp movie, but there is some emotional resonance between these two characters. How did that emerge?
Leigh: I think that was definitely the hardest part of the whole thing. The comedy parts came pretty easy. You find the body and it’s funny and they do these crazy things, but to give it any emotional depth, there had to be a friendship at the center of it. Everything is so heightened when you’re 16 and then to compress it even more in camp, everything is such a big deal. You can’t step outside of yourself to be like, “Why don’t we take a second and look at what we’re doing.”
Everything is life or death, whether it is a dead body or not when you’re that age. The camp part takes things to an emotional extreme, because you’re living together with these people for two months and your time with them will run out. I don’t know if I’m explaining it well. You want to…?
Erica: Yeah, obviously it makes sense to me. [laughs] I will say, when we were originally writing the script, it was much more of a four-hander between Sam, Janye, Benji, and Alexis. Then, we pivoted to focusing on Sam and Jayne’s friendship, and how discovering the body serves as a catalyst for them recognizing perhaps how fragile their friendship really is.
This is very specific, but when you have someone in your life who is your person, and you look at them when something happens but they don’t look back at you, how does that cut you? How do you move forward from that? Which is a very not-funny thing and a challenge, as Leigh said, to put into a comedy.
We were interested in these insular friendships and what happens when you bring outside drama into them.
Tomorrow in Part 4, Erica and Leigh discuss how their training in improv and sketch-writing influenced how they approached writing Cruel Summer.
For Part 1 of the interview, go here.
Part 2, here.
Twitter: @leighcesiro, @eribmatlin.
For my interviews with dozens of other Black List writers, go here.