Interview (Part 5): Kieran Turner

My interview with 2022 Black List writer for his script Black Dogs.

Kieran wrote the original screenplay Black Dogs which landed on the 2022 Black List. I had the opportunity to chat with Kieran about his creative background, writing a Black List script, and the craft of screenwriting.

Today in Part 5 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Kieran talks about the status of the script after making the 2022 Black List.

Scott: Then there’s Keith. “A customer approaches. It’s Keith, lanky with long dirty hair, ratty T‑shirt, and dirty jeans, joint tucked behind his ear. His T‑shirt bulges in the front.”

I love this guy, because I remember that whole Columbia Records thing. 10 records for a penny. He’s got like a thousand different aliases.

One of the nice things about Act Two is like, “Wow, you’d say you’re going to save the heist for the end,” but there’s so many complications and twists and turns and things that go wrong and one thing spiraling after another.

Scott: Keith has the unfortunate [laughs] experience of being, essentially, kidnapped and taken for ransom from…We’ll talk about this group a little bit later on. Maybe talk about Keith a little bit. Was he from the book as well?

Kieran: Very different. Not necessarily in character, except that I made him a little…There was a scene that I actually wound up cutting out, where you find out that Keith comes from a home where he, not necessarily abused per se, but his mother is pretty awful to him.

The rest of the trio wind up shooting for him, meaning to have him spend the night at their house, so that he can get away from his abusive mother. That wound up getting cut out. Keith was pretty happy, go‑lucky, stoner, and that was about it in the book.

I wanted to make him somebody who felt like he wasn’t worth anything. “If I get this money, I’m going to wind up blowing it. What am I going to do with this? What the fuck?” The initial story had Keith dumped in jail with the Holy Ghosts, and it wasn’t working. There wasn’t enough tension. I was talking with my co‑executive producer. I optioned the book with a partner.

She didn’t write the script with me, but we were talking about how to raise the stakes. I was like, “It’s got to be Keith.” Keith’s got to be put in a situation where they go from wanting to do this heist, to needing to do the heist.

Scott: Needing.

Kieran: It becomes this thing that’s like, “If we do this, we’re going to get money,” to, “Holy shit. If we don’t do this, our pal’s going to wind up getting killed by these murderous bikers.” We had to raise the stakes.

Scott: Let’s talk about these murderous bikers, Backwoods Billy and the Holy Ghosts. What’s up with them?

Kieran: Backwoods had a much smaller part in the book, but he was such a great role. It was such a good role for a name actor, that I definitely beefed him, and put him in a lot more. There are people who were like, “You want to bring him into the heist too?” It’s like, “I don’t know. The script is long enough as it is.” [laughs]

I brought in his religion a lot more into the script, and made him a lot more fair of a person, so that he’s not just this wild…You believe that he’s going to do what he says he’s going to do. The surprise is how fair he is, and how much he does believe in the words that he’s preaching. It makes him an interesting and different kind of character, that you wind up liking him.

Scott: Definitely, he has a pretty perverse, Old Testament view of God. Let’s put it that way. There’s a ’58 Les Paul that they steal. There’s a safe that gets messed up. They need to get $2,000. They need to get the safe back. They need to get keys freed. It’s like this Lebowski set of twists to the plot.

There’s one other element in the story. The guys aren’t really huge fans of Led Zeppelin, but Emily is. “19, Patrick’s ex‑girlfriend, lip gloss, gum‑popping, the best‑looking bad girl in any high school.”

She creates this little Led Zeppelin fan thing.

Kieran: Emily is barely in the book. She only functions as a way for Patrick to get information. There’s a whole thing in the book where they try to do the heist in Baltimore, when Zeppelin is playing in Baltimore. That made it into the script, and I wound up cutting it after a few drafts. They want to find out where Zeppelin is staying in Baltimore.

Patrick says, “This is what I’m going to do.” He puts down the flyer. “I’m going to go see Emily, and I’m going to infiltrate my way into the Misty Mountain Hoppers,” which is the Led Zeppelin fan club that Emily has started. Then, you never see her again. Maybe one more time you see her, after he gets that information. She’s barely a character.

I felt like the story was all guys. There were no other women in the script at all. Boogie, in the book, is a man. In the script, I made him a woman. Anyway, I wanted to involve Emily, have her be part of the heist, part of the thing, and have Patrick need to rely on somebody. He comes, and he brings this idea and this heist for all of his friends. Who does he have?

Who cares about him? I wanted him to be able to have that person who loved him and cared about him until we knew what was going on with the rest of his friends. Did they care as much about him as he cares about them? Are they all going to wind up staying together? I’ve loved, loved developing Emily because she’s been a fun character to write.

Scott: One of things I was so impressed with, because it’s a pretty complex set of setups and payoffs. You plant all these seeds, and then through what happens, it’s not just the heist, it’s that you’re seeing one setup being paid off after another. Even with Emily, for example, she creates this group. She’s got some sort of contention with some other woman.

They get in a fight. She gets kicked out of the group. Then, later on, that’s paid off when she’s got these tickets for the concert. There’s another one, too. Alex wants to be an actor at some point. He gets to impersonate with an English accent.

How did you do all these setups and payouts, so that they worked so nicely in the script?

Kieran: It’s funny. I do usually do the card thing when I’m working on my documentary work because that’s such a huge help. With this, I didn’t. I kept looking at how can I deepen these characters? How can I deepen these characters? Every time I did a draft, how can I deepen these characters?

One of the big criticisms or the feedback that I was getting from people, while I was working on the drafts of the script, was we lose Led Zeppelin. We lose the heist. We don’t hear about it again until the third act. It was trying to figure out how to streamline it, how to keep Led Zeppelin and the Led Zeppelin heist woven through, but not shooting your wad too early.

I felt like it wasn’t just about the heist, this story. This story was about these four characters. How they learned to depend on each other. How they think that they are these master criminals. They’re awful. They’re actually awful at it.

They get themselves tied up in the most ridiculous situations. Like I said, not only with Backwoods Billy but with Boogie and with this nefarious detective. It’s like, “Holy shit, if we don’t pull this off, our ass is grass.” They do wind up doing it, and the way that they wind up doing it I think is really kind of funny and kind of ridiculous.

They do finally realize and come to the conclusion, “You know what? Maybe we’re not so good at this. Maybe it’s time for us to figure out what else we should be doing.”

Scott: I thought the way that you handled that in Act 2 ‑‑ you mentioned it earlier. The heist becomes something moving from “want” to something they absolutely “need” to do because of all the different things this Boogie character’s tied to ‑‑ the safe…

I thought that that worked really well. It’s got that kind of classic ending. You literally have a thing where at one point, they think they didn’t actually succeed. That Hollywood ending, which is like, “Give them what they expect, and give them what they want.”

You do have some wish fulfillment because Frenchie gets to actually play with Jimmy Page.

Kieran: Yeah.

Scott: Let’s talk about the status of the script post-Black List.

Kieran: It’s been going great. I’ve definitely had meetings with production companies, and people are mulling it over, and more people are asking about it. Jeff’s been sending me emails and lists of people who are reading it or have read it and want to take it to the next step and set up some time with me, so I’m hoping that we’ll hopefully get a deal for it in the next month or so. Fingers crossed.

I know how difficult it is. I know that even if a deal comes off that, still, it will be a miracle if it gets made. I just feel like, again, as I said, if this gets the right package of people, the right director, and the right producers, and the right cast, it could be something special.

It’s a special story. I credit Jason with coming up with that story and writing that book, which is so great, and then being able to hand the ball off to me and me being able to adapt it and figuring out how to make it a cinematic story but have those characters.

I love that the stories are so different and are told so different because if you love the movie, you’re going to want to go out and buy the book. If you love the book, you’re definitely going to want to see the movie because they’re totally different experiences.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Kieran provides advice for aspiring screenwriters.

For Part 1, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Kieran is repped by Bellevue Productions.

Twitter: @jobriathdoc

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