Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

• Write On: 'Mussolini: Son of the Century' Director Joe Wright

  On today’s episode, we speak with director Joe Wright whose new limited TV series Mussolini: Son of the Century, explores fascism through the early political career of Italy’s Prime Minister Mussolini in the 1920s. The show is incredible storytelling from beginning to end, mixing opera and techno rave music while drawing chilling comparisons to the current rise of fascism around the world.  “We all have a dark side. We all have the choice to be the best of ourselves, or the worst of ourselves and we usually land somewhere in the middle. Working on Mussolini allowed me the opportunity to look at my relationship with my own masculinity and it helped me understand the man I want to be,” says director Joe Wright about the way he personalized Benito Mussolini’s story to make it more accessible to a modern audience, adding, “I wanted the audience to be at times seduced by him, and then in a Brechtian sense, to kind of pull the rug from underneath their feet, and ask them to apply some critical distance.”  Wright also discusses what he learned about storytelling growing up with his parent’s puppet theater, his early films like Pride and Prejudice, and dealing with his own self-doubts as a filmmaker by making a movie about Winston Churchill called Darkest Hour.    “Darkest Hour is a movie about doubt. When I made that movie, I just made a movie called Pan, which the critics hated and lost a huge amount of money. I was sort of consumed afterwards by self-doubt. I was thinking, what have I got to say? I can't reach audiences anymore, I'm out of step. So, then the opportunity came along to do Darkest Hour, and I immediately perceived it as a story about a little man who was consumed by self-doubt, and who was doubted by others all around him. Yet he persevered and overcame enormous odds to lead a nation at their darkest hour. So, for me, that became a story worth telling,” says Wright. To hear more, listen to the podcast. 

  --------  

  37:23

  --------

  37:23
• Write On: 'The Toxic Avenger' Writer/Director Macon Blair

  “The thing that started it all off was me saying [the character Toxie] should be a guy in a suit. In other words, let’s not do a computer-generated creature, let’s have a person in a suit and have that handmade, hand-stitched kind of quality to it where you can sort of see the seams a little bit and have that be part of the fun. I also said let’s have it be rated R. Hopefully y’all are not interested in a family-friendly PG-13 version of this movie, because that’s not what the fans of the original are going to want, so let’s keep it in the R-zone. And let’s make sure it stays very silly. That silliness is what was so appealing to me about the original, and I just wanted to make sure that we weren’t going to try and do something that was too self-serious,” says The Toxic Avenger writer/director Macon Blair about pitching Legendary Studios his version of how he would reimagine the classic black comedy splatter film for a modern audience while staying loyal to the fans of the 1984 version.  On today’s episode, we chat with writer/director/actor Macon Blair about his previous films like Blue Ruin and I Don’t Feel at Home in This World Anymore, which won the Sundance Grand Jury award in 2017. His latest film is a reboot of The Toxic Avenger starring Peter Dinklage and Kevin Bacon, and is a whole lot of gory, gross-out fun. Blair talks about the need to dig into the over-the-top absurdity of the franchise while still making the modern version of the story feel authentic.  “I’m always looking for something that I can connect to on a personal level. I don’t mean autobiographical. I mean to be able to have that electrical current with what I’m typing out,” he says. Blair tells us about his on-going journey to finding his voice as a writer and what it was like waiting two years to get distribution for The Toxic Avenger. He also explains why he skewers a famous screenwriting trope in the film that involves a cat named Mr. Treats who was apparently quite the menace. To hear more insight, listen to the podcast.   

  --------  

  40:59

  --------

  40:59
• Write On: 'Sirens' Creator/Showrunner Molly Smith Metzler

  “Our goal in writing [Sirens] was to write something that makes you think, and offers the opportunity to re-examine your own assumptions that you made about these characters. And it's taxing. We ask some difficult questions. It's not The Perfect Couple. It's not a murder show. We're going after something thematically that’s really large and really ambitious, and that's why the Greek mythology came to mind. These are epic stories. These are about blood, and moms, and torture, and trauma, and pain. These themes are not tiny. These are complicated, juicy stews,” says showrunner and creator, Molly Smith Metzler about why she wanted to invoke big themes from Greek drama in her TV show Sirens.  On today’s episode, we chat with Molly Smith Metzler, showrunner and creator of the hit Netflix limited series Sirens starring Julianne Moore, Meghann Fahy and Kevin Bacon. The show is based on her stage play Elemeno Pea from 2011. Smith Metzler talks about making the transition from playwriting to television and what she learned about being in the writer’s room for Orange is the New Black.  "Everything you do in a [writer’s] room is an offering. I'm here to serve, I'm here to serve you. Come in with ideas, offer them. If they don't hit, back off of them. You are a sous chef and a waiter," she says.  She also talks about writing edgy female characters unapologetically, like the ones in Sirens, and the numerous times she was asked to remove a certain risqué scene from the pilot script – which she refused to do. "We have to write these women in their truest form – they're complicated, and they don't have to explain themselves, either. My job is not to soften her so an audience won't turn off the TV show," she says.  To hear more about creating Sirens listen to the podcast. 

  --------  

  40:05

  --------

  40:05
• Write On: 'The Home' Director/Co-Writer James DeMonaco and Co-Writer Adam Cantor

  “Write your own anxieties. Get into your own psyche. I think if it scares you – like, I'm terrified of guns, and that's where The Purge came from. But here, there were various generational fears and whatnot that led to The Home, Adam's fears and my fears about getting older and our anxiety. So I would say if it's born from your fear, the majority of the audience probably has a similar fear. I think we are communal in that way. Fears are not singular, so I think you should work off your own fears, and on a practical level, if you can keep the budget small, you're in a much better place getting it made. That was key to The Purge getting made, that it was one location,” says James DeMonaco, director and co-writer of the new horror film, The Home. On today’s show, we talk with both James DeMonaco and Adam Cantor, co-writers of the new horror film The Home. The Home is about Max (Pete Davidson), a troubled young man, who starts working at a retirement home only to realize its residents and caretakers harbor sinister secrets. As he investigates the building and its forbidden fourth floor, he starts to uncover connections to his own past and upbringing as a foster child.  DeMonaco, best known for creating The Purge franchise, and Cantor, an actor-turned-writer, talk about their favorite horror films from the 1970s, the challenge of bringing a 70s vibe to modern horror films, and working with their Staten Island buddy, comedian Pete Davidson and bringing out his intense dramatic performance. DeMonaco also talks about the impact The Purge films have had on our culture.  “I grew up watching Romero and Carpenter films and George Miller. I always thought they put great mirrors up to society, and there was always some kind of smuggler's cinema idea, where they were smuggling socio-political themes into the genre's pieces. So sadly, The Purge is reflective of the world we're living in and becoming, I think, more reflective, which is scary. And terrifying. I wish it wasn't, I wish it was a complete fantasy to purge. Unfortunately, it's not right now, and it's seemingly getting worse,” says DeMonaco who weighs in on whether something like The Purge could happen in real life.  “I used to say, ‘Absolutely not!’ Now, I don't know if I would say that any longer, and that's even scarier to me,” says DeMonaco. To hear more about The Home and the spooky events that h appened on set, listen to the podcast. 

  --------  

  44:27

  --------

  44:27
• Write On: 'Abraham's Boys' Writer/Director Natasha Kermani

  “Vampires hold incredible destructive power, and so we're very drawn to them, sort of like moths to a candle, right? I think that's sort of eternal, and that's the reason every culture, pretty much around the globe has some version of the vampire because it represents that very human conflict of what we desire which is so in tune with and aligned to things that can also destroy us. That just feels very honest and eternal, so I don't think [vampires] will ever go away. I think they will be an eternal part of our mythologies,” says writer/director Natasha Kermani, about the everlasting appeal of vampires on film.  On today’s episode, we chat with Natasha Kermani about her new movie Abraham’s Boys that extends the world of Dracula into a psychological family drama with its own chills and thrills. The movie centers on brothers Max (Brady Hepner) and Rudy (Judah Mackey) Van Helsing, who have spent their lives under the strict rule of their father, Abraham Van Helsing (Titus Welliver). Unaware of their father’s dark past as a vampire hunter, they struggle to understand his paranoia and increasingly erratic behavior. But when the brothers begin to uncover the violent truths behind Abraham’s history with Dracula, their world unravels, forcing them to confront the terrifying family legacy.  Kermani talks about adapting the Joe Hill short story of the same name, shares tips for structuring a short story into a feature film, and ways a writer can bring a classic monster story like Dracula into a modern setting.   “I think it's about examining our world through an eternal lens of these mythologies that don't change. Power dynamics. Authority. Submission. These are eternal. So the question is, if you take that structure, and apply it to our world, how do things fall into place? And when you can start to look at the world around us through that lens, I think you start to get really interesting, truthful stories because you're not trying to come up with a new structure, or a new classic. You are obeying the laws of how our brains work and how our stories work. “I think it's a question of, ‘What are the things that you desire, but also fear? What are you drawn to, like a moth to flame?’ For me, with Abraham's Boys, it's that we're so drawn to the idea of someone coming to you and saying, ‘I know what the monsters are, I know what the heroes are. Follow me and you'll be safe.’ That's very dangerous,” says Kermani.  To hear more, listen to the podcast.

  --------  

  36:57

  --------

  36:57

Meer Technologie podcasts

Trending Technologie -podcasts

Over Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast: Podcasts in familie