Interview (Part 6): Cameron Fay

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

Cameron Fay wrote the screenplay Until You which landed on the 2024 Black List. Recently, I had the opportunity to do a deep dive with Cameron into his filmmaking background, writing his Black List script, and his approach to the craft of screenwriting.

Today in the final installment of this week’s interview series, Cameron answers some questions about the craft of screenwriting.

Scott: You mentioned Steve Conrad. I think he’s from Chicago.

Cameron: He is. I think he lives there. He’s the best.

Scott: You mentioned you read his scripts. I’m assuming then that it’s fair to say that you do read scripts, you enjoy reading scripts, or you feel like it’s an important part of your gig?

Cameron: I think it’s a critical part, especially as you’re starting out as a screenwriter. It doesn’t mean you should ever stop, but what I’ll say is when I was working for that actress after moving out to LA, she was repped at CAA at the time. And she liked to read hard copy scripts. They would send her a package of scripts. Once or twice a week, they would throw it over her gate. I would usually go out and get it and she would let me read all of those scripts. Not that she cared about my opinion, [laughs] but just for me. I got to read all of these….

You know what was so valuable? This is something I tell grads coming out of NYU cause I mentor some of them. I always tell them, “To me, the most important thing, the most important film school for a writer is reading scripts that are set up, that the town is trying to make, but that haven’t been shot yet.”

“You can’t fill in the blanks with a trailer or with any casting. It’s just a script that people have bought and have said, “This is good.” You might think it’s not good. But I read, I would say, hundreds of screenplays at that job that I had to really use my imagination and visualize these scripts as movies. I couldn’t rely on anything.

I just thought that was so valuable. I started to see certain patterns and trends in these scripts. Ways to convey the story. “Oh, I’m getting a Steve Zaillian script. I’m getting a big writer’s script,” and I’m seeing certain ways that they convey things. I just started to emulate them and put my own spin on that.

Not that I’m anywhere as good as them. I just mean it helped me go from a person who wanted to be paid as a writer to someone who is getting paid as a writer. I was reading scripts, and every script, this writer had been paid for this.

I still read scripts now. But usually for different reasons. I read some Black List scripts because I met some of the other writers at the party. I’ll read things that are sent to me, of course, to either rewrite or direct. My friends, I have a group of friends and we give each other notes. That’s that tier system of starting at my wife and ending with the writers that look for every note.

I think being a writer, you have to be Jekyll and Hyde a little bit in the sense that I think you have to have a side of you that thinks you’re brilliant and that everything you’re writing is amazing because that’s the only way to keep going. Then you have to have a side that thinks you’re pathetic. You’re a failure. You’re never going to make it or you’re one and done or whatever and is trying to tear you down. Those two are battling each other to create, hopefully, something great. A great writer.

If you’re just like, “Oh, I’m great all the time,” you’re not challenging yourself. And if you’re like, “Oh, this is horrible,” all the time, then you’re never going to finish anything. I think you have to have both simultaneously.

Scott: That bifurcated nature of being a writer. That’s one of the reasons why the WGA has such great mental health insurance… therapy, right?

Cameron: Exactly. [laughs]

Scott: How about theme? Do you ever think about theme? If you do, how? Are you front‑loaded with theme, or does it emerge over the process?

Cameron: I start with characters. Theme and plot start to emerge after the characters. You’re saying, “OK. Why are these two characters or three characters or however many, why are these people interesting together?”

As you start to answer that why, why do these characters have to be the characters in this movie, and what their traits are and how do they combat each other and go against each other or complement each other. I think a theme will, usually for me at least, start to present itself.

It was probably in the back of my mind anyway, but I didn’t know how to articulate it even to myself yet until these characters started to come to be. The bits of the story started to come to be.

Then you start realizing, “Oh, this is what I’m exploring. This is what I’ve had in my brain, and I’m exploring it through these characters and these situations.” Occasionally, I’ve had a theme in mind upfront, but that’s pretty rare for me at least.

Scott: One last question for you. What’s the single best piece of advice? You already gave one, which is reading scripts, which I completely agree with. For someone trying to enter the business, learn the craft, that sort of thing, what’s the single most important piece of advice you could offer to them?

Cameron: I mean, this isn’t glamorous. It’s probably said a lot. My advice would be to focus on cultivating your voice. There are a lot of things that are out of your control as a writer.

To find your voice, reading and writing a lot is what you need to do. That actress that I worked for, as a birthday present, she bought me a writing class taught by this guy named Jack Grapes. It’s not a screenwriting class. But it is in LA. He teaches a class about writers finding their voice and bringing that out. It’s a class where you just write prose. It’s a focus on cathartic writing.

You’re writing pains and joys of your experiences. He’s making you find your voice. I found the class to be valuable, but I think really the idea of, “Your voice is your commodity. That is the thing that no one else can have, and that is what’s going to get me paid as a writer probably more than anything else.”

The only way you, I think, truly find your voice is by writing a lot. Reading too, of course. But you have to write endlessly to the point that you start to find your rhythms and your way of conveying ideas and images to the world. I think a lot of writers starting out, they focus on all these other things like the business, finding a manager, an agent, networking.

All that stuff is good and important enough, but the most important thing to me is just really focusing on finding that voice and showing why those people HAVE to work with you. That would be my advice.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Cameron is repped by Paradigm and Kaplan/Perrone Entertainment.

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