Interview: Samy Burch

A conversation with the screenwriter of May December.

The movie May December has a provocative story concept: Decades after their scandalous relationship made headlines, a couple starts to unravel when a famous actor arrives to research them for her new film.

Starring Natalie Portman, Julianne Moore, and Charles Melton, and directed by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, I’m Not There, Carol), the screenplay was written by Samy Burch (story by Burch and her husband Alex Mechanik who also edited the movie).

Here are some excerpts from an interview Burch did with The Hollywood Reporter.

What was the origin of this script?

I was thinking of how all of these tabloid stories from the ’90s seem to be getting reassessed one by one. It struck me at some point with the Mary Kay Letourneau case that those children were probably adults. That idea of an empty house of a couple like that felt really visceral to me. All of the basics came from a conversation between me and my now-husband, Alex Mechanik. Right from the beginning, we knew we wanted to fictionalize it, and it was always going to be on this precipice of high school graduation — the idea that Joe having for the first time to confront what had happened and the media blitz that followed. And this network television actress with something to prove felt like a way in that, with the amount of time and difference, gave more space and more air for these different elements to braid together so we’re not just staring at a horrible re-creation [of what happened].

The tone of the film is interesting. You’ve mentioned the humor and the satire, and there were many times I laughed throughout. Even the Golden Globes classified it as a comedy. But how did you manage that levity within a story that has very dark undertones?

It’s been so interesting the way in which people have responded to the movie. Some people are able to see the dark comedic elements and the heartbreak, and some people are only seeing the heartbreak. I’d be more concerned if there were people that are only seeing our comedy and not taking any of it seriously. And I think some people are maybe misinterpreting what the other group thinks is funny. There is no comedy at the expense of Joe. It always has been designed to give way to something that’s very humane and very tragic.

It is exciting when things are hard to classify. There’s a bit of a litmus test that happens in watching this, especially watching it alone or in a crowded theater. People have different senses of humor. I keep thinking of it as one of those hologram cards — you can see both things depending on how the light hits it. There are a few different types of humor in the script; some of it is more glib, an indictment of the true-crime machine, or of actors, or just everyone’s foolhardy ego in searching for the truth. There’s something comedic about that. But then some moments are release valves. It’s so uncomfortable. The New York Film Festival screening [had] a great amount of laughs, and then they stopped, and you could feel when people were going, “Oh …”

Here is a trailer for the movie:

Per The Hollywood Reporter article: It’s what most aspiring screenwriters dream of: An Oscar-winning actress reads your spec script and convinces one of the leading indie filmmakers of the past 25 years to make it. Then, it premieres at the Cannes Film Festival and sells to Netflix, all in time for an awards season push.

A spec script. Watch this interview where Natalie Portman talks about being “blown away” by the script.

Character. Or as I tell my students: Care. Actor. Write characters actors care about and want to play.

For the rest of The Hollywood Reporter interview, go here.

For 100s more interviews with screenwriters and filmmakers, go here.