Interview (Part 6): Max Taxe

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

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

Today in Part 6 of a 6-part series to run each day through Sunday, Max answers some craft questions and offers advice to aspiring screenwriters.

Scott: I’d like to ask a few craft questions here as we round out. How do you come up with story ideas?

Max: I just try to have a lot of ideas. I mean, even back in high school, when I was writing plays, my friend and I, who I would write with sometimes, we would challenge each other to send ten new, full ideas every night. They were all terrible. But once in a while, one in a hundred was worth going, “oh…there’s something to that.”

So I’ve always had that kind of approach throughout my career. I’ll jot down notes, and send e-mails to myself, and… Every single idea I have, no matter how small, if it intrigues me even the tiniest bit, I’ll write it down. It can be garbage, it can be a thought, it can be a line. Put it down.

From there, once you have this chaotic list of ideas, it’s a matter of whittling it down. Generally one or two stick with me, they keep clawing their way back to the front of my mind, and those I know are the ones worth considering. Over time, I’ve gotten better at identifying the ideas that have the legs to be a full movie or a series. But I’ll also send a list of my favorites to my team to see what they think, and I’ll try to be honest with myself about what I actually want to spend my time on and dig into.

I just try to draw from everything and let it be a free‑flowing process and not filter at all, knowing that they don’t all have to be good. They never are. If one out of one hundred is, I’ll have a career.

Scott: Yeah, that’s like Linus Pauling, the guy who won the Nobel Prize a couple of times as a scientist. He said the best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas.

Max: Someone told me during college, I wish I remember who… They said…if you only have one idea, your career is already over. That’s it. Don’t be precious with your ideas. You’re wasting your time. You’re going to need a lot of ideas, because the next conversation is always: what else do you have? What’s next?

That goes on until your career is over. Don’t be precious. Keep trying to generate new ideas. It’s all an excuse to go out, live your life, take the time to recharge, read for yourself, watch things that inspire you, play videogames, have hobbies, hang out with friends, that’s where all the ideas are anyway. You have to be more than one idea anyway, so run toward the things that give you that spark.

Scott: You mentioned that you read my book. You know that I’m obsessed with character‑driven storytelling. You dropped in this line about who are the best characters for this story. You identify them. How do you go about learning them?

How do you go about getting to know them? How do you go about making it so that you’re starting to hear their voices and see them in action?

Max: It changes every time, and I wish I had some defined process I can follow. It always feels like I’m messing up and flailing with every new project. [laughs]

I generally find my characters through these obsessively long Word documents I have at the start of every project where I keep asking myself questions. Lots of questions, exploring structure, digging into the characters. I try to tie the structure and the character and the theme and the concept as closely together as possible. One leads to the other, typically. And once one of those comes into focus, then the characters and their arcs come with it. So that can give me a broad view of the kinds of characters I’m dealing with.

But when it comes to their voices, and really seeing them for who they are, I’ve realized I’m always looking in those early stages for a scene, or a feeling, or a moment, or a line that becomes a microcosm of who the character, and to a larger extent, what the movie, is. And I latch on to that as my North Star. Like that feeling, that little moment, is what the movie is to me. Or that line, that gesture, that image in my head is who the character is.

I try to identify that early, so that way I know, as everything changes, and everything always changes, that this is what’s important. This is the specific thing that makes me feel like I’m in the right space. And sometimes that thing also changes, but I try to find the thing that hooks me in, so I can keep building off of it.

That’s all…incredibly vague sounding. But… Like with Ripple, I had this feeling of love and loss combining at the same time. There’s a scene early on where Miles and Sadie admit their feeling for each other, and it was so clear to me that that scene, the way they talk in it, their vulnerability, the style of the scene, that was the movie. So I built off of that. Now, in Goodbye, Felix Chester, it was less of a feeling, and more of a character reaction. Everyone in that story knows that Felix is on death’s door, but the way he responded to it defined that character in my mind. Then, again, I built off of that.

My process of finding the characters is a lot like what I said about generating ideas. You keep digging and digging until one thing hits. A detail, an arc, how they sound, what they look like, what they’re afraid of. And over time, you have a fully formed person. But it’s a lot of back and forth, until you can get to that wonderful stage where you know these hyper-specific things about them that never even make the page, but make them feel real to you.

Scott: You mentioned theme several times. What’s your understanding of that? How do you define it or work with it?

Max: For me — in movies, at least — it’s a one-line question. I don’t like making it too clean where it’s the message of the movie, but it’s… It’s the thing that I’m always personally struggling with that’s embodied in the story. An unanswerable question that these characters are unconsciously trying to answer.

Finding that theme just gives the whole movie a spine, and then I can start throwing out any scenes where I feel like it doesn’t quite fit. It helps you know what’s on topic or not, and keeps that propulsion toward trying to solve this one, internal dilemma. Finding that theme also opens up more stories, more characters, because you can look at it and go… What angles am I not exploring in this question?

Sometimes it’s not that perfectly defined, especially early in the process. Sometimes I just have a bunch of words that feel like themes, umbrella topics. And they stay present throughout, but one dominant theme tends to take root.

With Ripple, it was this question of… How do we stay present in our lives when we have these unwieldy pasts that consume us? These pains that make being present impossible? Miles and Sadie both approached that question differently, but both didn’t have the right answer at the start of the movie. The answer is hard to come by, because it’s something we all struggle with, these two even more so. Every other character in the script also has an angle on that question that hopefully differs or complements what those two are going through. And generally speaking, the main character’s arc is the answer to that question in the end. You know it’s a worthy theme when it’s something that’s really hard to answer because then those characters have a lot to work through.

I think the reason why I love theme and obsess over it is… It gives me an overview, it’s a forest from the trees kind of thing, and it makes the script process feel less overwhelming. Here’s the well you’re drawing from, focus on that. Here’s the spine. And it helps the script, the movie, feel like it’s of one piece, cut from the same cloth, and when you have that feeling watching something, that it’s all unified, and the ideas build off of each other, it’s a little more powerful.

And, again, I try to be flexible in all of this. I’ve chased the wrong theme in a draft, and that’s a major part of rewriting — was I asking the right questions? Did I aim the magnifying glass on the right subjects? Being wrong, aiming a bit too far one way or the other, is sometimes the most illuminating thing.

Scott: You’ve been in the business now for a while. What advice would you give or do you give to people who say, “I want to learn the craft. How do I go about learning the craft, screenwriting?”

Max: I mean, it’s the most basic thing, but… Write. You’ll learn the most from writing, and failing, and figuring out why you failed, and then trying to fix it, and starting a new thing with the lessons you learned. So keep writing, keep studying the craft, and keep rewriting. If you love a specific writer, read everything they’ve ever written, study it, see what happens when you emulate them even, see why their stuff works. And fail, as many times as possible, while the stakes are still low. The beginning of your career is prime failing time, it’s total freedom to swing and miss, and then figure it out.

And only pursue this because you love it, because… Otherwise, it’s just not worth it. It just isn’t. I always come back to something my therapist tells me, which is that you have to learn to love the process of writing, because if you’re chasing results, you’re going to be disappointed. Learn to love your own process.

You’ll have great years as a writer, you’ll have awful years as a writer. Every great writer has had a zero year, where they made no money, nothing. If you learn to love the process of actually writing, of sitting down in that chair, of brainstorming, and figuring out a character, and breaking story, even when it’s hell, you’re good. It sounds obvious, but… It’s hard to divorce the process from the results.

I’m still working on that, but I’m trying.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go here.

For Part 4, go here.

For Part 5, go here.

Max is repped by Entertainment 360.

Twitter: @taxe

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