Interview (Part 6): Jonathan Stokes

My interview with the 5-time Black List screenwriter.

Jonathan Stokes has written five screenplays which have made the annual Black List. They are:

• Blood Mountain (2011)
• Murders & Acquisitions (2011)
• Border Country (2012)
• Tchaikovsky’s Requiem (2013)
• Murder in the White House (2020)

For that reason alone, I thought it would be a great idea to interview Jonathan, but there’s much more going on with this prolific writer. For example, Jonathan hosts a blog.

I reached out to Jonathan to see if he’d be up for a Go Into The Story interview and he kindly agreed. We had a terrific conversation which could have gone on for hours.

Today in Part 6 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Jonathan gives advice to writers who are trying to break in as Hollywood screenwriters.

Scott: I want to talk to you about your video series, which is terrific, “Raising the Stakes.” What was the inspiration for that?

Jonathan: Thank you. The next season is out now!

Scott: If only there were a blog that could promote your videos…

[laughter]

Jonathan: Thank you. I’m so pleased you connect with them. It means the world to me.

Scott: Terrific.

Jonathan: I appreciate it tremendously because I’ve learned so much from your blog over the years. I so sense a kindred spirit in the way that you geek-out over story structure, and the way that you and I both worshiped at the altar of Joseph Campbell.

The video series in a catastrophically poor use of my time, but I love doing it because I love story structure. It’s what I live and breathe. It’s one of the great passions of my life — being a student of story.

When I start to get cocky and think that I really know what I’m doing, I’ll read some new screenwriting book that gives me a completely different perspective on this ever‑evolving craft of ours, or I’ll watch some new TV show that brilliantly violates some rule that I had fixed in my mind.

I’m doing the video series to — in my own tiny way — be a part of the conversation as we all try to figure out story structure together in this ever‑evolving discipline. I want to explore. There’s something called the Sapir‑Whorf hypothesis, which says that if you have a vocab word for a concept, it’s easier to grasp the concept. It’s hard to experience nostalgia if you don’t have a word in your language for nostalgia. I think that there’s a lot of screenwriting concepts out there that we need words for. As soon as someone points a finger at a concept and defines it, it becomes easier to understand, and then we can all get better at this craft together.

By making these videos, I’m following my bliss, Campbell‑style.

Scott: We are kindred spirits. It’s like when I started the blog, people are like, “You’re going to do this every day, and it’s going to be content that’s free, and you’re just giving it away.” I was like, “Yeah, I just feel like it.” As a result of that, I’ve had so many things happen.

You’re right. Exactly. With my students, because I teach, I’m constantly looking for metaphors for ways…You have this like the objective correlative, for example, is one of your videos. That’s an interesting way of talking about how it’s visual storytelling. If there are objects that we can find, I call them talismans.

Like if there’s an object with a symbolic or psychological or emotional meaning that’s saying, going back to your photography experience at that school, when they say a picture is worth a thousand words, there’s truth to that.

I do feel like there’s a kindred thing here. We’re, both of us, fascinated by story. Both of us are interested in story structure. Movies have been around for 100 years, but that’s still pretty young as far as dramaturgy is concerned, the Greeks going way back when. When you say you’re a student, what are you studying? What do you do to inform your understanding of all this stuff?

Jonathan: You mean, what am I reading right now?

Scott: This is one of your five things you wouldn’t give up, reading.

Jonathan: At all times I have to be reading a screenwriting book. Whenever I pound the table and say, “I have read every single screenwriting book ever written,” I’ll inevitably end up in a conversation within the week, where a writer will ask, “Oh, have you read so‑and‑so?” And I haven’t. In those moments, I realize I will spend the rest of my life endlessly researching this ever-evolving craft.

I’ll get into weird tangents with story structure. I got into linguistic positivists for a while; I got into Freud, Jung, and Adler for a while. It’s an endless list. Even the Comparative Mythologists — there’s so many guys who did what Joseph Campbell did before Campbell did, guys like Claude Lévi‑Strauss or Vladimir Propp. We all think we’re inventing the wheel, when this wheel has been invented so many times before us. It’s very humbling.

When you asked me before what was my motivation to keep doing this… I think I had no choice. Just like you, I had no choice. Why would Scott Myers write, what, 4,000 blog posts every day for years, for free?

Scott: Yeah, except for when I had shoulder surgery. Two months I was out, but yeah, for free. Exactly.

Jonathan: It was 4,000. Is that a safe estimate?

Scott: Yeah, that’s right. It’s almost 5,000 at this point.

Jonathan: Almost 5,000. You were doing…

Scott: Days.

Jonathan: Consecutive days. I can’t get a Duolingo streak going for more than two weeks.

[laughter]

Jonathan: Part of what drives me to do the video series is that I was hardcore into Wikipedia. I was a Wikipedia editor, and edited on a lot of different Wikis back in the day. It’s a legit question: who are these morons like me writing Wikipedia? It’s a thankless task. You’re not paid any money. You’re only ever returned with weird edit wars and vandalism, and yet you’re devoting your time toward sharing your knowledge for free with strangers you will never meet. That is a beautiful thing about the Internet.

I see this a lot on YouTube, where any time I need to learn anything, like how do I fix the garden hose that’s rusted onto the spigot? I watch a YouTube video.

So many strangers have benefited my life with no monetary reward. I want to pay into that system. Is it a great use of my time to spend hundreds of hours editing YouTube videos? Arguably not. But you just do it out of joy and honor. Like pursuing a screenwriting career. [laughs]

Scott: Yeah. You never know. It’s like Johnny Appleseed. You never know a comment you make. You’ve had this experience. I’m sure faculty, teachers, mentor figures. I just got in touch with Harry Gamble, who was a faculty member of mine at UVA because I had the book come out, and I hadn’t…He was like a mentor.

He’s literally the person who said, “Scott, when you go to Yale, make sure you take the three‑year degree. It’s a terminal degree that may come of some benefit to you later on in life as opposed to the two‑year and masters before you go and get the doctorate.” That did. That’s how I’m on the tenure track at DePaul because I got a three‑year degree because of Harry Gamble.

I contacted him recently, and he’s like 82 years old, and I said, “Thank you.” He said, “Oh, I remember you.” I’m sending him a book. As a person who…We live in this cycle. We live in, and with the Internet, it’s even crazier. You influence people. I get emails all the time from people all over the world.

Again, we’re kindred spirits. Put it out there. You never know. One comment could elicit someone coming up with the most incredible story that could transform millions of people’s lives, and you just put something into the universe and hope that it lands. Does that make sense? Does that resonate with you?

Jonathan: Yes. If we have seen further, it’s because we’re sitting on the shoulders of giants. I couldn’t write whatever it is that I write if it wasn’t for Christopher Vogler or David Mamet.

How do I pay that forward in my own tiny way? You’re right. If I write one sentence about story structure, or have one thing that I can say in a video that’s one‑quarter bit insightful, then I’ve paid back into that system that I have benefited from.

Scott: You’re certainly doing that, and I look forward to seeing more of the video series. Final question. For people outside the business now, what is your go‑to piece of advice when they ask you, “How do I break into the business, or how do I learn the craft, or whatever?” What do you tell people?

Jonathan: One of the books that I’m reading right now is the new Amor Towles — The Lincoln Highway. He had a sentence that rocked my world…I hope I get this. He said something like, “Time is what God uses to separate the idle from the industrious.” I believe that success is a function of time. It’s F sub T, where T is the unknown variable.

We have to solve for T, and you don’t know if you’re going to be one of the lucky few that breaks in after waiting tables after college for three months, or is it going to take you 20 years?

You don’t know! And that is a good thing because it will separate the idle from the industrious. It will separate the deserving from the undeserving. It will separate the system‑cloggers from the ones who truly love this craft.

For better or for worse, my life hit a point where I was going to write screenplays for the rest of my life while piano teaching, and it didn’t matter anymore. I didn’t care about the money. I didn’t care about success. I just cared about the writing because I had essentially given up hope of any external reward for screenwriting. [laughs]

Anyone can serve a prison sentence, I think, if you know exactly how many days you’re in that prison. If I tell you you’re going to be in that prison for 481 days, you can probably serve out that sentence, because you can mark it on a calendar. But if you have no idea how long your prison sentence is, that’s when it gets really hard. I think that is when your quest becomes honorable.

If you truly just devote yourself to working hard at your craft. If you are Jiro, and you care about sushi so much that you dream about it at night. Jiro didn’t get into sushi because he wanted to serve sushi for Barack Obama. He didn’t get into making sushi because he was going to become the first sushi restaurant in Japan to get three Michelin stars. He did it because he loves sushi, and that is the only reason to do it. You have to fall in love with your craft, and become a shokunin. [laughs]

You have to do it with no hope of reward. This is what Immanuel Kant wrote in — I think it was in the “Grounding for the Future of the Metaphysics of Morals.” He said that if you’re rushing into that burning building to save the cat so that you can get a financial reward, your action is not honorable. If you’re rushing into that burning building to save the cat so that you can get your name in a paper and be famous, your action is no longer virtuous. If you do it to impress a girl, same deal.

Kant says that we can only truly know that your action is virtuous if you rush into that burning building with no hope of reward. And not only that, Kant says you must even get slightly injured ‑‑ it must cost you something. Only then can we truly know that your action was virtuous!

That’s how I feel about any craft. To be truly honorable and truly a servant of your craft, you have to work at it every day of your life with no hope of reward. I don’t know if that’s good advice or bad. Don’t think about breaking in. Think about mastering your craft.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Part 3, here.

Part 4, here.

Part 5, here.

Twitter: @jonathanwstokes

Website: https://www.jonathanwstokes.com/

Jonathan is repped by UTA and Management SGC.

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