Interview (Part 3): Sam Boyer

My interview with 2023 Black List writer for his script Foragers.

In 2022, Sam Boyer received a Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting for his original screenplay “Ojek”. In 2023, his script “Foragers” made the annual Black List. Quite an accomplishment in back to back years. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Sam about his Nicholl experience, writing the script which eventually made the Black List, and writing in the action genre space.

Today in Part 3 of a 6-part series to run each day this week, Sam discusses the two lead characters in the script and why the journey they take in the story is the one they need to take.

Scott: Let’s talk about Andi. They’re a married couple, Andi and Juno?

Sam: Yeah.

Scott: You introduced her this way: “40s, like the massive ‘widow‑maker’ cones of a Coulter Pine ‑‑ sharp, with a thousand facets, full of life.” How would you describe Andi, and maybe unpack a little bit more her background and her personality in contrast to Juno?

Sam: Andi is the planner of the two. She’s a former elementary school vice principal. The vice principals are the ones who do all the work. She’s used to managing a million things, dealing with very different personalities, and knowing the street, actually, because all these students grow up and they become adults.

She had a chance to remember and interact with all of that. She brings a lot of street‑smart reconnaissance, and then a certain level‑headedness to everything. She’s also dealing with a chronic, neurological illness that has only given her a greater empathy for both other people and then understandings of her own limitations.

She knows her limits in ways that Juno doesn’t, because she hasn’t encountered them physically, maybe, in the same way. Between the two of them, I love doing these natural descriptions, I totally had a ball with it, and it was a chance for the Oregonian me to pay homage the different aspects of the state.

They are, to me, this classical fire and water pairing. Andi is more cool and relaxed, and go with the flow. That sort of I think what the tragedy of their lost son has brought upon them.

Scott: Of course, the Portlandia reference to Fred Armisen.

Sam: Yeah, that was fun. [laughs]

Scott: That was fun. I could see him doing it.

Sam: Any famous Portlander, it doesn’t necessarily have to be Fred Armisen, but I thought a lot of my favorite action films have these little moments punctuated with humor levity. I wanted that at some point in the script.

Scott: Let’s talk about this Forager subculture. You made that up. There are bounty hunters and there are people private detectives and whatnot, but this is like a loose association of people who do this thing. They have a code. The code is eight words, “Only the helpless. Only together. Only in silence.”

Could you talk about how this emerged in your mind and then how this idea of this subculture with this code where that came from?

Sam: I really love subcultures in general. I knew I wanted them to be involved with something along those lines. Like I said earlier, one of my favorite things about the whole John Wick franchise is really this community of assassins that they’ve built up.

It’s got like its own esoteric rules. It’s one of those things that gets your gears turning even after the film ends and imagining what that kind of world looks like.

I wanted to do, I think, a similar sort of a world‑building, it’s a word that’s thrown around a lot. I think that’s what I was looking to do in a way. I wanted to do something that felt, I guess, more purely altruistic rather than maybe like a society of people who kill people for hire or something like that.

I thought finding lost people and lost children could be a really interesting application of that. The purpose of the code is…I think you know this from having read multiple drafts, Scott.

Anytime you try to make up a new world, or a new culture, or a new society, the number of ways for things to get blown out of proportion or confusing and trying to keep things tight and streamlined so an audience can really understand through the very first watch is such a bigger challenge than I possibly could have estimated it being.

It’s really hard to remain concise while introducing people to a new world. The code is one of those tools that helps make it digestible and reference‑able for The Foragers and Juno and Andi to use themselves, so you can understand what motivates them and what guides them.

Scott: That was one area that you did address in rewriting the script, was to try and streamline that, not simple in a bad way, but simple in a way that people could download and get this as quickly as possible.

Sam: Yeah. Everyone I spoke to about this was interested in the mythology, but was either confused, or wanted to know more, or wanted it set up clearer at the beginning. In writing, I try to be as diegetic as possible. I want characters to say what they’d really say. I try to avoid exposition at all costs because it just doesn’t feel fun to me.

I found myself in rewriting this that, at certain points, it’s on you as a screenwriter to make the act of conveying this information upfront fun, even if you think it would be best given at page 70 after this moment and that’s what would really happen, no.

You can try that over and over again, but I think doing things early and clearly is something I’ve definitely learned through this experience.

Scott: There are skip tracers like in Blade Runner or bounty hunters like in The Hateful Eight. There’s that, but then for Andi and Juno, you do have that personal loss of Lucas, where you can see why their motivation would be to get involved in this type of activity.

Sam: Exactly. People enter a profession like that for different reasons. You have limited time in a script, but it’s fun to explore more of them, and not everyone is necessarily motivated by loss.

Scott: As I was reading the script, I thought that in combination, Andi and Juno, they brought to mind the Coen brothers’ take on Rooster Cogburn in True Grit, because they had that homespun ruffian philosophy. They only remain lost when we stop or there’s something. You know what I mean?

Sam: Yeah.

Scott: There was a saying. I can’t remember the exact quote: “They’ve got grit”. They get put through the ringer physically, and then they are committed to doing the right thing, then seeing it through to the end. Does that comparison ring true to you at all, Rooster Cogburn and the Coen’s version of True Grit?

Sam: Totally. I’m a big fan of both True Grits. I might even like the first one more. I love just as a singer too.

He is fun. Yeah, I totally see the comparison there. I want things to feel in a way that’s like hard scrabble. The Coen brothers often, they’re inevitably very stylized in the stuff that they do.

I try to do some of the same stuff. I want things to feel stylized or a little different from the exact reality of this world because I’m taking a huge swing and departing from things that actually happen. Society does not exist. I’ve totally been in meetings with people where they’re like, “Is this a real thing?” It’s absolutely not.

I’m playing in the world of fantasy, in the same way that True Grit what brought a certain level of, not to borrow from the title, but like a really grounded style to the Western that was ultimately half futile and tragic. I tried to, I think, maybe do some of that in the secret society of badasses action‑thriller genre.

Scott: Of course, if you’re dealing with Foragers, who are out trying to find people, you got to have someone who’s lost.

In this case, actually the script starts with this character Maria 19, but described this way, “Defiant and solitary like a sapling growing in the middle of a river.”

She’s set up as a mysterious figure. We have this weird conversation about her and something about her father and a secret there. Then, there’s an intimation that she disappears. Maybe you could talk a bit about Maria and why she’s so central to the story.

Sam: At the end of the day, Juno and Andi need a task, a job that takes them from A to B to C. In a profession like this, it’s going to be a lost child. The question you’re always asked when embarking on any script or any story is “Why now? Why this story? Why this time? Why not a routine job?”

Maria, I felt like lived at this very interesting intersection of being…There’s this question of she’s a child of a billionaire, but at the same time, she’s not necessarily recognized, hasn’t enjoyed any advantages of that and is helpless in her own way too.

I think there’s that conflict that exists within her that I wanted to explore a little bit. The challenge in any of these stories especially when it’s like, “Find a person X,” or, “Get rare thing Y,” I never want the MacGuffin, especially if it’s a human, to not be a real character.

I’ll be totally honest, it’s something that came out of it in future drafts and in more writing. In the first draft, there was substantially less Maria than there ultimately is now.

What really motivated writing that teaser with Maria at the beginning is the importance of understanding who this character or who this person might be, even if it’s just a glimpse before you see her for the first time.

It’s really a challenge to write someone who is supposed to be like a complex kid in a very difficult situation, who also has to, at the very end, be this thing that helps Juno and Andi reconcile their loss and move forward with their life.

It’s a huge burden on this character’s shoulders. It’s something I’m still figuring out and iterating with these polishes and passes, honestly. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s really made me try to improve my writing, honestly.

It’s so easy for a character like that to feel really rote and especially when you have limited real estate. I don’t want her to be a proxy or a MacGuffin, but she does have to do some real heavy lifting in the narrative.

I think it’s this idea of being a kid with the lineage, but none of the advantages and existing in that strange outsider caught between world space, which is what I gravitate towards too, in terms of characters and in my own writing. That really helped.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Sam talks about the Nemesis figure in his script Foragers.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

To read my 2022 interview with Sam about his Nicholl-winning screenplay “Ojek,” go here.

Sam is repped by Rain Media Partners.

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