Interview (Part 5): Matt Altman & Dave Matalon

My conversation with the writing duo behind the 2024 Black List script Three Hitmen and a Baby.

Action Comedy is my favorite cross-genre, so I’m always happy to see a script represented on the annual Black List. Thanks to Dave Matalon and Matt Altman, Three Hitmen and a Baby made the 2024 List which led to our hour-long interview.

Today in Part 5 of a 5-part series to run each day this week through Saturday, Dave and Matt answer some craft questions and provide advice to aspiring screenwriters.

Scott: Well, congratulations again on making the Black List. Let’s get into some craft questions. It seems like a natural segue when you talk about outlining. What is that process like?

Dave: Once we have concept, we generally just start doing structure beats. Like, cold open, whatever the opening scene is, inciting incident. Then we talk about acts, where act turns are, midpoints, and they’re always character driven. They’re never plot driven.

Matt: And then basically, we’ll usually beat out the first act very detailed, and we’ll try to get the big beats for the second act. And we know where our ending that we’re shooting for.

Dave: We always know our ending before that.

Matt: But we don’t always get the second act detailed until we’re done actually writing the first act. And then we might get into it more.

Dave: I would say generally though, act two, we do 2A and 2B with a midpoint twist. We break down sequences. We try to do 10 to 12page sequences with turns at the end of each sequence. Like ya do.

Matt: But I’d say usually these days, we write the first act before we’ve got like all the details of the sequence.

Dave: We go, “OK. We got this. Now where are they going?” But, again, we always know where we’re ending.

Matt: And we know the big beats usually for the second act at that point.

Dave: But they usually evolve. They evolve.

Scott: Do you use cards or no?

Matt: No.

Dave: We do a beat list.

Matt: There’s no problem with cards. It’s just I generally do everything on the draft, which drives him nuts.

Dave: And I go and I organize it. Basically, I find I’ll do cards when we go back through if we’re analyzing something. Like, if we finish and we’re not happy with something or if we get before we start a rewrite, I’ll do cards or a list just to kind of go, “So here’s our script.

“He walks in the door, we learn this. She walks in the door, we learn that.” Then we’ll go, “Oh, look. There’s three scenes of them walking in the door, learning the same thing. Let’s pull that out.”

Matt: Yeah. It’s definitely more useful for the rewrites for us.

Dave: Yeah, as an analytical tool for sure.

Scott: Dave mentions “character driven.” So for “Three Hitmen and a Baby,” you said, “Well, we have three types.” But then to go from type to the level of specificity of each character having a distinctive voice, a distinctive personality, what does that look like where you go from type to the characters really have come alive?

Dave: You conceptualize these guys, you start to imagine them in your mind. Maybe we’ll have you talk, like, who are you thinking for this? And who do you think will you cast it in our heads?

Matt: Yeah, which we don’t always do, but this one, I think we did for sure.

Dave: Also, that usually happens 20 pages in — We’ll kind of check in. We start to have conversations, like, “I don’t think Tom would say this. I don’t think Charlie would do that.” And in that, those choices, it becomes clear as you write who’s going to do what and say what, if that makes sense.

Matt: And some of it is also finding the character’s voice while you’re writing, which we talked about earlier. Just writing it, writing scenes, seeing how they talk, and trying to find it with within the scene and then going and then pass it to the other person, them saying, well, I don’t think that person would say it like that. That would be a Holland line, not a Tom.

Dave: There’s a lot of that. There’s a lot of dialogue rewriting refinement. We’ll find better things. Entire scenes will get reworked. Especially once you start to know who they are, you’ll kind of go back and go, Tom would never say that. That’s not something Tom would do. And you start to know them in a way as you rework it.

Matt: Especially the longer you work on the script, you get to know the characters more.

Dave: I think one thing I really learned from Matt, because I used to be much more precious, is just write. He was really great at sorting out a draft and of going back and reworking and reworking, and I was more meticulous. In a way, it stopped me from writing as quickly, but in just the doing, you find that you learn more about it.

Also, you allow mistakes to happen, which can be good or bad, but you don’t stop yourself from writing. And I’ll tell you one of our biggest things, and I share this with every writer I know, is sometimes I’ll just write or we’ll just write, something really funny happens here It says something genius here, like the greatest one in the world here.

Matt: You come back to it.

Dave: And then you come back to it later.

Scott: Just to keep that momentum going, that energy?

Dave: Just so you don’t sit there for 30 minutes…

Matt: Because you can. You can sit on a line. That that could be the thing that takes your entire day. You’re like, I don’t know what to do.

Dave: And the irony is some of the greatest lines in movie history have happened on set anyway.

Matt: Or you come up with it in the shower because you’re subconsciously thinking that. Dave has a lot of shower thoughts. I’m like, “Go take a shower. Go take a walk. Go walk the dog.”

Scott: Oh, that’s like Sorkin. Takes 8 to 10 showers a day, supposedly.

Dave: That’s funny.

Matt: It works. It works.

Scott: He’s probably single-handedly responsible for the water shortage in Southern California.

Matt: Probably true.

Scott: When you’re writing a scene, what are your goals?

Matt: That’s a good question.

Dave: I think we want the scenes have an arc.

Matt: Yeah, it has a beginning, middle, end. Usually, you want to convey more than just plots. You want character, plot, plot to move every…You want to move the story forward in some in some tangible ways. Usually, at least a combination of character and plot and then maybe theme and stuff as well.

Dave: The best thing I ever heard is a great scene either advances character or plot, and the greatest scenes do both.

Scott: You mentioned theme. Where does it come into the process?

Dave: At the end.

Matt: At the end, yeah. For us, I think it’s telling a good story with characters who arc and change and characters that are entertaining you, and a theme will come usually through that. If you start writing toward a theme and that’s where you start with, for me, it’s a little stealthy. It limits you in a lot of ways.

Dave: I agree with that.

Scott: Well, with something like “Three Hitmen and a Baby,” it’s like baked into the concept. I mean, the central theme is just right there.

Matt: That was the easy one.

Scott: OK. I got one last question. What single piece of advice would you have for someone who’s out there wanting to write a great screenplay and break into Hollywood?

Matt: It’s very much a marathon. My advice is people get lucky. It’s great and it’s exciting when that happens.

But if you don’t get lucky, or if it’s not a matter of luck, it’s very much a marathon and you have to stick to it and keep working and refining your craft and be ready for any opportunities that come your way, because a lot of luck is being at the right place and being ready for that opportunity, and having the right material or whatever available. If you don’t love doing this, it’s not the best career.

That’s my personal feeling. I love it, thankfully. I don’t think I’d do anything else and be happy, but if you can, you might want to try something else. What do you think, Dave?

Dave: I had someone when I was 18 who said to me “If you can do anything else, do that.” It’s not bad advice…

Matt: Not bad, but…

Dave: Look. I think if your goal is fame and money (or just money), I’d say there are a lot of easier ways to get that than this job.

Matt: Yeah.

Dave: But if you love movies or TV and you love telling stories… When I taught college or writing seminars, I would always say to my students — you can write whatever you want. You can. You could write a story about the old man who collects shells on the beach, and maybe George Clooney will pick that up and start and direct it. Maybe.

But for me writing scripts that sell is also about understanding your marketplace, understanding what producers want. I believe you can write things that fulfill you creatively, while also having an appeal to the market you’re selling to.

If you can write scripts that look at the marketplace and go, “Here’s a movie I know people want. How do I create an opportunity for myself in that world?” I think that’s smart writing.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Part 3, go here.

Part 4, go here.

Matt and Dave are repped by Paradigm and The Gotham Group.

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