Interview (Part 3): Matt Altman & Dave Matalon

My conversation with the writing duo behind the 2024 Black List script Three Hitmen and a Baby.

Action Comedy is my favorite cross-genre, so I’m always happy to see a script represented on the annual Black List. Thanks to Dave Matalon and Matt Altman, Three Hitmen and a Baby made the 2024 List which led to our hour-long interview.

Today in Part 3 of a 5-part series to run each day this week through Saturday, Dave and Matt discuss the three hitmen who play the leads in the story and how each evolved in the writing of the script.

Scott: Let’s talk about these three characters, the Three Hitmen. You’ve got Tom and Charlie and Holland. Break them down for us. Like, if you had to describe Tom in a thumbnail sketch at the beginning of the story, what’s Tom’s deal?

Matt: He’s sort of the suave like James Bond kind of professional hitman. Oh, he’s also the more charming slick of the three.

Dave: Basically, we broke them each down to archetypes because we want to really have them separate. Tom’s the professional who basically he’s got problems with his Peter pancreas, so we say he can’t grow up. That’s his major flaw. He’s afraid of commitment.

Charlie is the brute. Charlie, his past is sort of he doesn’t think he’s fit to be a dad. He doesn’t think he should…and so he just has this hard, rocky exterior, doesn’t let anyone in.

Matt: Yeah, he’s very much a loner and very much isolated.

Dave: He’s the loner, there’s no one. He is the island, and no one shall sail to him until Millie comes along, and she just melts all that. Then Holland is our GenZ socially inexperienced guy.

Dave: He’s savvy, but not people savvy. We really wanted them to have very distinct flavors.

Scott: Was Tom the first one to come pop up?

Matt: I think we sort of came up with all of them together. We knew that we wanted them to each be sort of a different archetype so we can separate them. We knew Holland would be the youngest.

Dave: Yeah, we also knew that they were going to be like kind of each 10 years apart. Just separate them a bit.

Scott: What about the bad guy here, Volkov? How did that guy emerge?

Dave: He is interesting.

Matt: He’s changed a lot. We had a bunch of versions of Volkov.

Dave: We liked his latest version the most. Right?

Matt: Yeah. Our original view of him was sort of this thuggish Russian gangster. Right? That was the first?

Dave: Yeah, he was sort of like the Russian version of The Rock. He was big and muscular.

Matt: Scary and scarred. And then he’s evolved a lot since then. He’s no longer scarred. I don’t know if the draft you read is this, but now he’s much more of a guy who wants to be a father while these guys don’t want to be a father. His only problem is he’s a FSB colonel and he doesn’t have a family.

And, he’s like, “I’ve got a steady job. I’ve got health insurance. I’ve got tickets to the Bolshoi.” But he’s also homicidal, psychotic, and he wants the baby more for his own promotion and ego because he loves the baby.

Dave: The joke with Volkov is of all of them, he is probably the most qualified and fit to be a father… except for the psycho part.

Matt: Murderous psycho.

[laughter]

Scott: Let’s talk about that because I don’t know how and when you were revising this character in that direction, but it feels contemporary with the whole tech-bro plutocracy phenomenon.

Dave: We can’t say too much, but a lot of that plot that was in the original script that was on the Black List has been pulled out, and it’s really been retooled to be…

Matt: More focused on the baby.

Dave: A lot of the tech stuff is no longer part of the movie. It was fun stuff, but when you start to rewrite, you have to suit the needs of what the production wants it to be.

Matt: The original reason for putting that in was, first of all, to give him a plot, a big strong plot hook, and maybe make it a little bigger than just with the baby. But, honestly, we always like focusing on the…that is the core issue because it’s all about characters. That’s the thing that’s personal to everyone. The other thing is basically a MacGuffin.

Scott: It’s like without that emotional connection, it’s just a bunch of noise.

Matt: Yeah.

Scott: I was really impressed with your first act. You’ve got to introduce all these characters and set the plot into motion, but it’s both entertaining and efficient. I imagine you slaved over that first act a lot.

Matt: We did. We worked that one a lot.

Dave: We tend to really make those first 25 pages really as tight as we can to get you in, get you hooked, and set you up for the ride. It’s probably the most important part.

Matt: Luckily, Dave and I are pretty good, are pretty fast as writers. When we’re doing a rewrite, we’re actually even faster. We can do many passes through in a week or two.

Dave: We’re also pretty good at not holding onto things. There’s stuff that we’re like, yes, that’s a definite, but we’re also pretty good at killing our darlings and going back and going okay — let’s cut that. Once you see it, especially, you start to understand what’s essential and what’s not to the story.

Scott: How do you write? Do you get together, or do you write separately?

Matt: We do everything. We sometimes get together.

Dave: Sometimes we’re on the phone one of us typing. Sometimes we’ll just pass it back and forth. Sometimes, especially when we’re starting a script, we’ll outline since we have to be on the same page, and we’re figuring out what the script is.

Then once we’re at that stage one of us will take the first few pages, pass it to the other, the other person will go over that, and then push on a bit. Then usually at a certain point, we’ll start getting on the phone and one of us will be typing and the other will talk and then pass it back and forth and go over it. We just go over everything.

The reason I think we’re so fast is because we’re always going over our stuff and pushing on. Like Matt might take an action beat, and I might take the emotional beat. Stuff like that happens all the time, and then we’ll go back and forth.

Scott: Sounds like you’ve gotten to the point where you recognize each of your respective strengths.

Matt: I mean, honestly, we do everything. it’s just sometimes one of us will be more interested in doing an action scene, or one of us will be more interested in doing this different thing.

Dave: Yeah. Or, you’re just like, “Hey, why don’t you jump start this? I’m not really sure what to do here.” Then it just helps sometimes to just put something on the page. Even if it never even makes the script, just go, wait. Wait. Not that, but this instead.

Matt: Yeah. One of us might have a great idea for one section that the other person just doesn’t either get when we’re talking about it or it’s like you start that and I’ll…

Dave: Or sometimes, he’ll write something and I’ll go, well…

Matt: That’s not right, but I’ll…

Dave: I like taking it this way instead of that way, and then make changes.

Matt: But, again, we’re not married to anything.

Dave: For sure. But it is so much easier when there’s something on the page to stimulate other thoughts than when you’re staring at a blank screen.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Matt and Dave discuss the importance of answering this question when writing an original screenplay: “Why them, why now?”

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Matt and Dave are repped by Paradigm and The Gotham Group.

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