Interview (Part 5): Jack Waz

My interview with the 2024 Black List writer for his script Decoys.

Jack Waz wrote the screenplay Decoys which landed on the 2024 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with Jack about his creative background, writing multiple Black List scripts, and his approach to the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 5 of a 6-part series to run each day this week, Jack answers some questions about the craft of screenwriting.

Scott: You have a moment in there, the Mac/Theo relationship is actually quite interesting because it’s like Mac starts to get seduced by that whole of “broligarch” thing.

Jack: It was really funny in March, I’ll say that. [laughs] Something I was trying to do was figure out what is a villain type or who is someone that we haven’t seen be the villain before? We know we’ve seen arms dealers. We’ve seen terrorists. We’ve seen gangsters.

We’ve never seen someone who’s just really, really rich and kind of an asshole be the villain, and that wound up informing Theo. I guess I had my finger on the pulse a little early, but it’s not something I quite expected to pay off in this big of a way.

Scott: I think what you did with this character, because there’s a monologue, basically, where he explains his worldview, it’s psychopathic, I suppose, but it does make sense. It’s a demented worldview, but they believe it is a plausible perspective. Where’d that come from?

Jack: A lot of it came from, especially after I worked in that tech company in in 2016, I’d never really cared about the tech world before, but I was writing a character specifically to make fun of it called Jeremy Pivot. I learned a lot of the tech barons at the time. It was very interesting working at a tech company during 2016, during the election, it was very eye-opening experience.

That always stuck with me. I tracked those guys. I tracked the Travis Kalanick’s and the Marc Andreessen’s of the world for the next decade, essentially. I wondered what these guys are up to. A lot of Theo’s drive, his worldview, comes from, if you read interviews with a lot of these guys, their worldview is essentially not enough people respect us. They respected us back in the ‘90s.

They respect us in the 2000s, but something changed, and they’re wrong. We’re not wrong. Everyone else is wrong. It’s this very inward focused worldview of, I’m doing everything as I’ve always been doing it. How could I be the bad guy, everyone else changed? Without realizing that the world changes and adapts around you, and you have to keep up?

Once you get to a certain level, you’re no longer creating, you’re no longer growing. You’re stagnant. You’re stuck. You have to do everything you can to maintain your status. I think that’s Theo’s whole outlook because he has created something that has led to immeasurable wealth, but now you can’t make another $250 billion You can only gain slight percentages, slightly get over your competitors.

The one thing that you can’t buy is respect. Tere’s certain unnamed tech executives right now who can spend all the money in the world on social media platforms, but they can’t buy a fucking joke. It’s fascinating what that does to a human. That was what was really fun to explore.

Theo was like, what does it mean if you can never trust anyone around you just due to your wealth? What does it mean to not feel human anymore because you are just surrounded by a buffer of money?

Scott: Yeah. It’s very smart. It’s like the armchair psychologist, sitting here in my own little universe, my own little world, and thinking about these guys and watching their behavior. It just seems like there’s a void, there’s something missing inside, and they keep trying to find external validation through wealth and power.

Jack: That’s the thing, the pursuit of wealth and the pursuit of power leaves you hollowed out. At the end of the day, you can have you can have everything in the world, but if you don’t have human connection, then none of it means anything.

I think that’s what’s so fun about the Theo and Mac relationship, is that Mac is so dumb, he’s such a blank slate that Theo doesn’t see any competition from him. He sees another person he can connect with, another person who he feels kinship with because Mac has the exact same problems as him but doesn’t want anything from him.

Mac, even though he is there to spy on him, is still basically just a dude that’s trying to have a good time. That’s what makes their relationship so fun. Mac is the only person in the entire movie who Theo actually connects with, and it happens to be the stupidest man alive.

Scott: It’s a wonderful script. What what’s the status of it right now?

Jack: We’re bringing it out. Hopefully, someone wants to make it. It’s irresponsibly expensive, especially for a spec. I’m very proud of it. Like you said, I think I picked up on some things a few months ago before any of us really had any idea where this was going. Through sheer dumb luck, here we are.

Scott: I’m sure you’ve got a ton of general meetings off of it too, so that’s good.

Jack: The reason I wrote it was because, we all we all had a traumatic year in 2023, and I came off that wanting to do something that just made me laugh, and would make my friends laugh, make my wife laugh. I wanted to go big, crazy, and dumb and do something just joyous I hope that is the tone I was able to really strike with this was, it is a joyous movie.

It is gleefully silly, but at the end of the day, it’s something that is supposed to bring a smile to the face after years of just trauma.

Scott: It’s a terrific script, and congratulations on it and making The Black List again in 2024. I’ve got some craft questions for you.

Jack: Of course.

Scott: How do you come up with story ideas?

Jack: That is a very good question. I think going back to what you’re asking earlier, it comes from my improv mind. My brain never really shuts off. I have a list on my phone. I have two lists. I have one that’s a joke list that I’ve been keeping from past eight years that is just gags, jokes, one liners, bits of dialogue. After I finish every script, I will do a pass to the joke list.

Be like, is there anything that I haven’t used yet that’d be really funny here? That’s always one of my favorite things to be like, what can I pull from the joke archives? The other thing is, I have a list of just premises, you’ll hear something, I’ll read something.

Fistmas came from, I read a “New York Times” article about a competition [inaudible] in the mountains of Peru or Chile, where there was a fighting tournament around Christmas time every year, and those people settling their beefs. I was like, oh, that seems like great grounds for a Christmas movie.

Baby Boom, I saw plenty of social media stuff about gender reveal parties destroying forests, houses, cars and people. I was like, oh, that feels like it’d be really fun apocalypse movie because I always want to try an apocalypse movie where every apocalypse happens at the same time. That’s how I got away with it. I’m constantly reading.

I’m constantly listening to the news, reading the news, trying to find weird stories, going down weird rabbit holes just to see if anything sparks. My immediate consumption diet is every day I read the New York Times, “Washington Post,” and the “Atlantic,” and try to digest as much information as possible, politics, world events, culture, and then any of these weird one offs that lead to…

I wrote a script a couple years ago called “Bad Hombres” that’s based on a Washington Post article that I read about Mexican federales who caught American who jumped over the border to escape US law, and returned them to America. They got paid in gift cards, which I thought was just insane.

I wrote a really fun two hander buddy-cop combi that’s a Mexican cop to an American con man, planes, trains, automobile in their way from Cabo to Tijuana to throw the con man back over the border. Once they had the cartel guys after them too. That came from, oh, this is a really cool world. What can I do with that? I’ve watched so many goddamn movies in my life.

I can’t remember any basic math, but I can tell you the exact plot of “Hot Tub Time Machine” 1 and 2. I’m always dipping into the archive of, what do I like from this movie? What do I like from that? How do I remix them? How do I combine them?

Also, my guiding light is always, what would Edgar Wright do? Everything I write, write in that spirit. “Shaun of the Dead” is the movie that made me want to go to film school. I would say my style is someone who was trying their best to write an Edgar Wright movie.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Jack provides advice to those seeking to learn the craft of screenwriting and trying to break into Hollywood.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Jack is repped by UTA and Fourth Wall.