Interview (Part 5): Michael Ballin and Thomas Aguilar

My interview with 2021 Black List writer for their script The College Dropout.

Michael Ballin and Thomas Aguilar wrote the original screenplay “The College Dropout” which landed on the 2021 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to chat with with Mike and Tom about their creative background, their script based on a period of time in the life of Kanye West, the craft of screenwriting, and what making the annual Black List has meant to them.

Today Part 5 of a 6-part series to run each day through Saturday, Mike and Tom talk about what it meant for their script The College Dropout to make the 2021 Black List.

Scott: The College Dropout terrific and I highly recommend people read the script. It’s set up at Columbia, is that right?

Thomas: Yeah…

Scott: I thought that was ironic because his first opportunity for a record deal…

Michael: It came full circle.

Scott: Let’s talk about story behind the story, the writing of the script. You come up with this idea. How long was this process of doing the research, breaking the story, the writing, the rewriting?

Michael: We had an initial early idea six years ago. Then it came up again when we were in New York. Putting a number on it’s tough, but I would say a 10-month process maybe, give or take some in there. During that time, we were writing for TV.

Scott: Did you have representation at this point?

Thomas: Yeah, we did have agents. After the show in NYC wrapped, we came back in the fall. It was around November. We had finished the script and we had a meeting with our agents. We were in the office and we said, “Hey,” and we were looking down. We couldn’t make eye contact with our agents at APA Mike Goldberg and Kyle Loftus. They were like, “Guys, what’s up?” We were like, “We wrote a script, and we…”

Michael: [laughs] It was like a Step Brothers bunk beds moment. It was like, “Guys, just say it.” It’s like, “We wrote a script about Kanye, a biopic.” They said, “OK.” We asked, “Are you guys mad?” They were like, “No, guys, that’s awesome. Send it to us.”

Thomas: I think it was, “Can you send it to us before you get to the elevator? We want to read this.” So we sent it to them…

Michael: …the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and then that Monday they called us at 9:00 AM. “Guys, we love it.” We were like, “Phew,” because in our minds we were worried they were going to drop us.

[laughter]

Scott: Let’s jump to the morning of December 13th, 2021, Black List rollout day. Were you all paying attention to it or not?

Thomas: We would be lying to say that we didn’t know when the Black List was coming out or that we weren’t paying attention. We were definitely checking in with our managers at Nacelle and our feature agent Adam Perry at APA.

Michael: The story behind it is we were working on a show in the room. We had our break and I saw a video and I said, “Oh, I don’t think we made it.” I was already telling Tom, “It’s OK that we didn’t make it. That’s not what it’s all about.” Then he cuts me off and he goes, “Dude, we made it!”It definitely was an exciting thing. Again, reading your blog through the years, reading the different interviews you’ve done with Blacklist writers, it’s an honor.

Scott: Have you had any sort of professional boost after having made the Black List?

Thomas: Definitely. People who may not have known us before, now get a chance to read our work.

Michael: OWAs and new opportunities.

Scott: You’ll probably be on all the biopic and musician lists. It’s a terrific script and congratulations. In our emails, you mentioned my blog, how you’ve been following it since 2011. That makes you guys old-school fans.

[laughter]

Michael: When you want to become a screenwriter, there are certain books you need to read like Lumet or Goldman…

Thomas: Adventures in the Screen Trade…

Michael: Yeah and you almost want more. You want to know what people are doing right now or how they think or what they do to get better as screenwriters.

Your blog was a real screenwriter giving you this straightforward advice for free online. Then, you would interview somebody else, and we would almost read them and go, “Are we doing what they’re doing?” You’re comparing, but you’re also like, “What is the advice they’re giving?”

I would send Tom — and we have emails of this — “Advice to Writers.” I would literally copy it, send it to him. We would send, “Look at this one. Look at this one,” and take in any advice.

Thomas: Screenwriter interviews, advice, stuff like that, they took the mystery out of it and you’d think, “These are regular people who are working hard on their craft, and/or who are doing this and that.”

When you want to be a screenwriter, you’re always wondering if you’re doing the right things. You have these images, “this is a professional screenwriter, this is how you get in, and so on” But the truth is: there’s no same path for everyone. Everyone’s different, and it was great to see that on your blog. It gives you a little bit of confidence like, “Maybe we could do this.”

Michael: I was going to add, we didn’t go to film school or grad school. Your blog was film school. There were so many different things, like your “Looks” PDF, but also, one of the things, 1, 2, 7…

Scott: 1, 2, 7, 14. Read one script per week. Watch two movies per week. Write seven pages a week, one a day. Do fourteen hours of story research and development per week, two hours per day.

Michael: That was the syllabus. “If we just follow this, we’ll get a little better every day in terms of writing scripts.”

Scott: I’ve been hosting the blog since 2008, it’s always great to hear when writers say they benefit from it. That naturally leads to some questions about the craft for y’all.

Michael: Sure.

Scott: Let’s start with this one: How do you come up with story ideas?

Thomas: We’re brothers, we’re super close, so we hang out a lot. Sometimes, we’re sitting there, and wondering if something’s a movie. Sometimes, it’s an experience that you’ve had and like, “I’d love to capture this.” Mike can probably speak to more of them.

Michael: Tom’s right. People don’t realize that it’s one long conversation. There should be a book of me and Tom’s calls because we are on the phone for hours before we’re going to be working on another project, and it’s just talking. It comes up naturally.

Tom sometimes will be like, “Here’s an idea for this. We’ll never do it.”

He doesn’t write it down, but I am always taking notes. I’m like, “Dude, remember when you said that thing?” Which is, “Let’s do that,” and he’s like, “Oh, yeah.” We’re writing stuff down at family events where someone says a funny joke, and we’re like, “Is that a movie?” [laughs]

Thomas: You watch a movie, and sometimes, it’s like, “That movie was good. I liked it. I’m not sure how I felt about all of it, but I love that one character.” They were whatever, and you’re like, “What if there’s a movie there?” or, “What if you look into that guy’s life, or that person’s journey?” or something.

Scott: My favorite movie is The Apartment. Billy Wilder, that’s exactly what happened. Wilder saw this old German movie and it had that one character who was giving up his apartment for these people to have their extramarital affairs. The guy was a side character, but that was the character that interested Wilder the most, and that was the inspiration for The Apartment.

Thomas: There you go.

Scott: That’s that thing I tell my students all the time. You can shift Protagonists. You take a story and take it from the perspective of another character as the Protagonist. There’s the movie The Wizard of Oz, then the Broadway play taken from the perspective of the witch…

Thomas: …Wicked.

Scott: …Wicked. Then, there was Oz the Great and Powerful, and now there’s a movie project called Toto, doing the story from the perspective of the dog.

You can take pre-existing stories out there, and just switch the perspective of who’s the protagonist. All of a sudden, you’ve got an entirely different movie.

Thomas: Yeah.

Scott: There you go. A writing tip right there. Let’s talk about your story-prep process, you’re breaking the story. Are you big into outlining to have the story all laid out before you start to page writing?

Thomas: The thing that we love to do is — Mike could speak more to this, too — We love to do these visual outlines…

Michael: Slides. Essentially, we stole this idea, we’ll attribute it. Meaghan Oppenheimer, a screenwriter, she posted about this doing the We Our Your Friends script.

She broke down note cards on PowerPoint, and we were like, “That’s an efficient way for us to get it out.” You don’t just have the text of the outline. We put an image, we put a link, we put what the scene is, we put what the theme of the scene is, and we do this thing Francis Ford Coppola does. Every scene, he has a little five-point process of what’s the scene, what’s it really about, what are the clichés of this scene?

We attach that with every scene and go, “Answer those questions, make this thing, and get excited to talk about it, and then see it,” and then you have a little movie in your pocket. You’re looking on your phone, and you’re like, “We can start writing this now.” It leaves room for us to freelance with the script too.

Scott: Right.

Thomas: In TV, it is oftentimes much more traditional.

With this, our goal is how do we keep a little freedom in there? Sometimes, you are writing and you are in the middle, and you’re like, “What if this?” or your day affects something, or whatever comes and inspires you in that moment. It’s a guide point, but also giving you some freedom.

Tomorrow in Part 6, Tom and Mike provide some tips on the screenwriting craft and advice for aspiring screenwriters.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Part 3, go here.

Part 4, go here.

Mike and Tom are repped by:

Mike Goldberg, Kyle Loftus, Adam Perry (APA)
Matt Ochacher, Michael Pelmont (New Wave Entertainment)

Twitter: @MichaelBallin, @Thomasraguilar

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