Interview (Part 4): Sean Harrigan

My interview with 2023 Black List writer for his script First You Hear Them.

Sean Harrigan wrote the screenplay First You Hear Them which was named to the 2023 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Sean about his creative background, writing his Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 4 of a 6-part series to run each day this week, Sean shares how the influence of the drug’s timetable benefited the structure of the story’s plot.

Scott: One last thing about this brown pill. Just thinking about this character archetypes, the drug is like a Trickster because it does give you this incredible euphoric experience, so it’s an ally in a way, but then it can really mess with you big time with withdrawal hauntings.

Let’s talk about this other character who is Carson, Shae’s ex-boyfriend, comes back around. Speaking of archetypes, he’s like a Mentor figure because he’s been doing this for a while now, like six weeks.

Sean: It always felt fitting to have somebody else come in who’d had previous experience with the drug and drugs in general. It felt like another way to have a foil for Shae, of somebody who has given in to all of this.

At the same time, he created this dynamic where ‑‑ despite Shae having an interest in being straight edge and not having drugs at all — she ended up gravitating romantically to a person who was the opposite of that.

He’s able to cause tension between Shae and Javi and Poppy and act as an antagonist in some ways even though he’s on their side. Somebody to push against their dynamic and push their schism further.

And just logistically, he acts as the mentor character that comes in, who can give you the rules, who can give the background to the horror, but in a way that feels organic and feels right to the story.

Scott: In fact, he even says, “You can’t stop taking it.”

Sean: Mm‑hmm.

Scott: Like literally. That’s a revelation. Right? We talked about these choices that characters make and they should be grounded in who they are, and it makes perfect sense that Shae would, “OK. I don’t want to do this anymore.”

She goes to the drug rehab center and says, “Help me.” You got a great scene there, which really cracks open the horror of this in a very dramatic way. When the person helping her there says, “OK. Well, we’re going to have to go through a detox process, and we’re going to lock you into this room.”

You know, “Oh, man, this is not going to turn out well.” It does it with the emergence of this Crone character because now it’s no longer…Well, I suppose it is still a hallucination.

Talk me through the physics here. This drug…is there like a portal in the realm of the unconscious ‑‑ Again, Jung, the collective unconscious ‑‑ where these demented, haunted souls live, and the drug, it opens that portal, and they come into the realm of the experience of the individuals taking the drugs?

That was my take on it. I’d be interested to hear what your take on the physics of it.

Sean: Yeah. That was my thought essentially. I don’t remember if it’s still in there of Esteban saying something similar — that there are these things that are around us, and when you take something this good, you open yourself up to them.

Some of the idea is that you’re unlocking this Matrix-type of thing with the drug, of seeing the things that are always there or seeing the things that are haunting you and having the drug be a portal or some kind of lifting of the veil. That’s how I saw it as far as what the hauntings are, that they’re things that are always there, and ultimately that all of them are metaphors for the things that are haunting each of the characters.

They’re these manifestations, a personalization of what they’re each going through.

Also, just to highlight with the rehab section and what we were talking about earlier with character motivation, that sequence is a good example of that since it resulted from a note that I got about how it would be cool and fitting if we had scenes in a rehab center.

Which was a great idea but one I had to figure out how to justify, since she’d only taken drugs one time. So I knew I wanted to get to this end result but had to find Shae’s way into it. Which came down to Shae’s sense that she just needed help.

I knew the sensation of having a bad trip, of just wanting someone to get you out of it. And that was coupled with Shae’s knowledge that she knew of people who could help. Plus, having her acknowledge when she got there that she wasn’t sure if she should even be there.

So those things together felt like the way to make it justified for both Shae’s logic and the audience’s logic to have her in the rehab, which ended up being a great set piece to set up, “OK, now you’re locked in here with them, how do you get out?”

Scott: A looming sense of dread, “This is not going to turn out well.” You planted the seed there, too, because her mom had been at the drug rehab place, and so she actually went there, and that’s where she saw her grandmother. All of those things.

I could totally understand someone who had a bad trip experience for the only time they’ve ever taken drugs, that they’re like, “I can’t do it.” That makes perfect sense.

I thought you did something really smart, which is, at some point, the four of them are now together. You’ve got Shae, Poppy, Javier, and Carson. Again, Carson’s playing a mentor‑type figure, but he says, “We all need to time this so that we’re at the same level of drug influence.” Otherwise, if everybody is at sixes and sevens, then you don’t have an opportunity for those scenes where they can actually be processing what’s going on.

They’re all at the same level of sobriety, then at least they can talk through like, “This is what we need to do.” I thought that was a very smart thing.

Sean: In my experience writing horror and studying horror, one of the questions is how do you have that time where the horror pauses and you can have a breath for the character moments in between? The classic thing is that the horror only comes at night.

The drug gave that ability in this. It gave them a chance to pause and all get synced up, as you mentioned. Then, from there, the audience gets a break from the intensity and the characters have moments together.

Then you can break that apart later where then you can say, “OK. Now they’re not at the same place. Javi isn’t able to get more of the drugs, so he can be having a different experience than the rest of them can,” which works with their fragmentation later in the script.

All of them being in the same place felt like it made sense logically for how you survive this thing. How you divvy this thing out to be able to give yourself enough time. While also giving us a reprieve before you ramp up with the next scare or the next propulsive scene.

Tomorrow in Part 5, Sean shares what it was like to experience making the annual Black List.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Part 3, go here.

Sean is repped by Empirical Evidence.

Twitter / X: @swharrigan

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