Interview (Part 4): Kryzz Gautier

My interview with 2021 Black List writer for her script “Wheels Come Off.”

Kryzz Gautier wrote the screenplay “Wheels Come Off” which made the 2021 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Kryzz about her creative background, her script, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to her.

Today in Part 4 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Kryzz discusses the central subplot in the story: a mother-daughter relationship.

Scott: There’s such an interesting, emotionally evocative, and complex relationship between these characters. It’s like, at any given moment, who’s the parent? Let’s talk about Carla, the mom. Here’s how you describe her when you introduce her in the script. This is right after one of Manoella’s fantasies.

“Real life Carla Nuñez (36) stares from bed. This Carla is more worn than who we saw in the retro fantasy. She may be tattered on the outside, but she has raging lightning storms behind her eyes and more will to live than anyone you’ve ever met.”

Does that describe your mom pretty well?

Kryzz: Yeah. My mom was a twenty-three-year-old dancer who went in for a routine C-section and came out paraplegic. Suddenly, she found herself disabled and with a newborn. She said, “I’m not going to let this defeat me. I’m just not going to let this knock me down. This isn’t going to break me. I have a kid. This won’t stop me from giving her a normal life.” She has more will to live than anyone you’ve ever met. Even in a wheelchair, she became as independent as she could.

To this day, she’s always color matching from head to toe. She will not leave the house unless she has a beat face. Hair blown out every day. There is no difference between her and someone who’s not in a wheelchair. She has never let her disability stop her. She was at every bake sale and every school event. She never allowed me to feel the difference between her and every other mom. I saw plenty of parents who did less than her when I was at school, and my mom was the one in a wheelchair. That’s why I describe Carla the way that I do in the script. It’s because my mom legitimately has more fire in her than a lot of women who haven’t gone through half of the things I’ve seen my mother go through.

Scott: At one point, you describe their little bedroom. “This tiny one-bedroom is a showcase of Manoella’s ingenuity. Everything is stored at wheelchair height and what can’t be is MacGyvered into being accessible regardless.” I was curious about how much research you did. Some of that, I would assume, comes from dealing with your mom in real life, but when you’re extrapolating yourself to the 2060s in the world’s had this post-apocalyptic environment, you had some really cool jerry-rigged things. Did you do much in the way of research? Did that spill out of you naturally in terms of those gizmos and things that she was good at?

Kryzz: I’m familiar with a lot of the things made for people with disabilities. For example, I’m aware of the pulley systems to get them in and out of a bathtub. My mom has never had one, but I’ve seen them, and I know exactly how they work. Throughout the years, I’ve also thought a lot about it. When you’re the child of a disabled parent, your brain is simply wired differently.

Ever since I was four years old, I don’t remember ever being with my mom and not walking into a room without clocking where the exits are. Whenever I’m with her, the thing always at the forefront of my mind is, “How do I get my mom out of here if something goes wrong?” Those are some of the earliest memories I have. I recall being tiny and scouting rooms for the quickest escape routes. My mom taught me how to read pretty early and I remember sometime around the same age of four or five, seeing that elevators have that sign that says, “Take the stairs in case of fire.” That was wildly concerning to little me because if there’s a fire, how the hell do we get downstairs if we can’t use the elevator? “She can’t go down the stairs!” It’s not normal for a child to be forced to think about that all the time.

When writing about what this apartment set looks like, I didn’t have to rely on research because I’ve been ruminating on creative ways to circumvent problems with my mom for years. I have genuinely asked myself, “if the world ended and my mom’s wheelchair broke, could I put her on skates and drag her around to keep her mobile?”. Those are the random things I think about at night when I can’t sleep. [laughs]

Scott: It’s so interesting to put this couple, this mother and daughter, in a post-apocalyptic environment where these issues are even more pronounced. I would imagine then, we tend to be not terribly sensitive to this issue anyhow. I would think that it would be even more problematic in an environment like that. Right?

Kryzz: Right. Of course.

Scott: That’s part of the grand thought experiment. I think like you were saying: “What would happen to the disabled community in the apocalypse?” Before we move on to the third of the Three Amigos, Tony the robot, I do want to talk about Manoella, a writer with these journals.

You mentioned earlier that we tend to think of apocalyptic movies as gray and gloomy, but because she’s got such an incredible imagination, we dip into, I don’t know, eight or nine fantasies maybe?

Kryzz: I haven’t counted, but I think there might be more than that.

Scott: It’s a lot.

Kryzz: You guys got a much older version of the script than the one that already existed when the Black List got announced. There’s more at this point in the latest version. There are probably a dozen now. Guesstimating.

Scott: Each one is a kind of mini-sequence and they’re effective. First of all, you’re learning about our internal world, which is excellent. It’s a great way to visualize that, but the divergence, the diversity of these stories. Maybe you could talk a bit about that. I know you’ve got a great imagination, clearly.

It’s visible in your writing and in talking with you. The decision to say, “You know what, this is going to be a part of the story.” Was that natural flow, or were you saying, “I think this will be a cool thing to do to make the apocalyptic world different?”

Kryzz: It was, one, to make the world different. Two, this is a story that I strived to have well rooted in myself, my mother, our experiences together, and what that dynamic would look like if we were navigating the post-apocalypse. Stemming from that central idea, the script had to revolve around what sixteen-year-old me would do in the off time between when chaotic things happen in the apocalypse. I would for sure be going into my head and having these wild fantasies. I knew that had to be a part of it. That had to color and texture the world.

When you’re living through such harsh conditions, you have to remove yourself from it. You have to. Even if temporarily. That’s why during the pandemic, things like TikTok took off. People are always looking for escapism. What will you look for when you don’t have the Internet and when you don’t have anything else to do? Manoella has TikTok in her mind. [laughs] Basically, she has an integrated Internet in her brain. She’s her own escapism. With her fantasies, she’s transporting herself into these very elaborate worlds she’s crafting.

That’s her version of theater, TV, movies, and video games. It’s not just entertaining herself. It’s how she keeps herself sane.

Scott: Her situation is exacerbated by the fact that it’s just the three of them for the first twenty-five pages or so.

Kryzz: For eight years, it’s been the three of them. She’s genuinely had no one but her adult mother and a robot to keep her company between when the world ended when she was eight and now at sixteen. She hasn’t had another child or a teenager around. No one to commiserate with. Only herself.

You can see the craving for company. It’s not the first, but one of the first fantasies we see is basically what amounts to a high school party sequence but set in the 1920s. It’s a period fantasy, but it’s a high school party at the end of the day. And she meets a girl there. You can infer pretty quickly that at this point in her life, one of her deepest desires is to be around kids her age, party a little, and have a girlfriend. That’s all she wants to experience.

Tomorrow in Part 5, Kryzz talks about other key characters in the script including a two-foot tall robot sidekick, a Nemesis who isn’t an example of a Big Bad, and a character who becomes an Attractor for the Protagonist.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Kryzz is repped by CAA and Rain Management.

Twitter and Instagram: @KryzzGautier.

Website: www.KryzzG.com.

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