Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast

Final Draft
  • 0.0 (0)
  • TV & FILM
  • MONTHLY

Designed to help you navigate the screenwriting industry, Final Draft, interviews working screenwriters, agents, managers, and producers to show you how successful executives and writers make a living writing and working with screenplays, and how you can use their knowledge to break into the industry. Subscribe today to catch every episode!

  1. 23 HR AGO

    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 min

  2. 28 AUG

    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.

    41 min

  3. 12 AUG

    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 min

  4. 25 JUL

    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 min

  5. 14 JUL

    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.

    37 min

  6. 30 JUN

    Write On: 'Countdown' Creator/Writer Derek Haas

    “One thing I’ve found in the crime genre is that homicides are always interesting. When somebody’s killed, whatever that case may be, it’s usually compelling drama. So then it’s up to you as the writer to surprise the audience and do things that they didn’t think were coming. I’ve described it like this before: If you can hit the sweet spot of, ‘I didn’t see that coming! I should have seen it coming, but I didn’t see it coming,’ That, to me, is the best writing. It’s like, when you got to the end of The Sixth Sense, and you were like, ‘Oh my god, I should have seen that coming!’ That was great writing,” says Derek Haas, creator and writer for the show Countdown on Prime.  You may know Derek Haas from the popular NBC procedural dramas like Chicago Med, Chicago Fire and Chicago PD. Now, he’s got a new crime drama on Prime called Countdown that tells one twisty crime story over 13 episodes – all written by Haas. Set in Los Angeles, Countdown follows a secret task force who discover a sinister international plot that threatens millions of lives. The show stars Eric Dane, Jensen Ackles and Jessica Camacho as undercover agents all harboring dark secrets of their own.  On this episode of the podcast, we chat with Haas about starting his career as a crime novelist, writing movies like 2 Fast 2 Furious, 3:10 to Yuma and Wanted before making the switch to TV. Haas talks about working with director John Singleton, prolific TV producer Dick Wolf and writing characters that hook audiences. He also shares his advice for writing action sequences that both stun visually and surprise the audience.  “When I think about action sequences, I always go back to Raiders of the Lost Ark. My favorite action sequence of any movie ever is when Indiana Jones has to fight this gigantic Nazi guy, and – in any other movie – that would have been the only thing that’s happening. But they put Marion in a plane where she gets trapped because the cover of the plane closes. Then the plane’s propellers start spinning. The plane starts spinning, gas is leaking out of the plane, there’s other people running by with machine guns. So it’s not just, ‘Oh, here’s a fight,’ it’s ‘Here’s a fight, but there’s eight other things happening at once.’ I really try to do that in these chase sequences, because you have seen a million of them. What’s the other factors I can bring to it? How can I show you something you haven’t seen before? Sometimes it’s character, and sometimes, it’s the stunt itself,” says Haas.  To hear more screenwriting advice from Haas, listen to the podcast.

    38 min

  7. 16 JUN

    Write On: 'Apple Cider Vinegar' Creator and Showrunner Samantha Strauss

    “In my mind, Belle is going through life, at least our version of Belle – I've never met the real Belle – she’s going through life with this hole inside, this overwhelming need for approval, that social media absolutely capitalizes on and she just keeps trying to feed the beast. She hasn't grown up with the healthiest of role models herself. She has learnt that being sick is a shortcut to being loved and to getting attention,” says Samantha Strauss, creator and showrunner for the Netflix limited series Apple Cider Vinegar, about understanding her main character’s disgraceful motivation to lie about having brain cancer.  Adapted from the book, The Woman Who Fooled the World, by Beau Donelly and Nick Toscano, Apple Cider Vinegar chronicles the incredible and heartbreaking rise and fall of the real Belle Gibson (Kaitlin Dever), a notorious health and wellness “scamfluencer.” Strauss talks about starting her young life in Australia as a ballet dancer before a terrible injury led her to discover TV writing. She also talks about how her previous TV show, The End, got the attention of Nicole Kidman, who championed her writing career. Strauss gushes about how she was inspired by Kidman’s, “Fierce intelligence, just exactly what you'd expect, and rigor. You know, she would be giving notes at the end of a really long day of filming. She wasn’t resting on her laurels at all. There's just such a generosity of spirit there and to think she’s helped other emerging Australian creatives is pretty special,” she says.  Strauss discusses the challenges of adapting a true story while the subject is still alive, tips and tricks for making the show feel immediate and seductive while mimicking the addictive nature of social media, and getting the primal relationship of mothers and daughters authentic on screen.  To hear more about Apple Cider Vinegar and Strauss’s advice for writers adapting true stories, listen to the podcast.

    40 min

  8. 9 JUN

    Write On: 'Matlock' Creator & Showrunner Jennie Snyder Urman

    “The most important thing that I've learned as a storyteller is that I have to treat every character in the show as though they're the lead in the show, and they are never doing anything so that I can prompt a move from another character. They are doing things that are true to what they want and their motivation. So that's what makes that architecture hard, because you know you want things to happen, but they have to happen coming out of character, not coming out of what the room wants to see happen. So it's like the merging of those two. We know what architecture we want, but if it doesn't feel true to the character, the character wouldn't do it. Every time, you’ve got to say no, even though it's tempting, because that is who you have to protect – your characters,” says Jennie Snyder Urman, creator and showrunner of Matlock, about creating story architecture in a series.  On today’s episode, we talk with Jennie Snyder Urman, who created the reboot of Matlock starring Kathy Bates as Madeline Matlock. We chat about reinventing the beloved character once played by Andy Griffith, the joy of building a show around an older female lawyer and the generational changes in social attitudes women experience, and the sacrifices women often make when it comes to sexual harassment, including Matty herself.   “[Matty] realizes now, coming back [to the legal profession], what it cost her. And it's not like every day she was thinking about it. It was just, ‘Oh my gosh, I made these changes to avoid this. And why do I have to make these changes? Why didn't that person make the changes so I could be in the space where I was comfortable?’ And I think what's so exciting about Maddie is that she's still learning new things at 75. I think there’s also a little bit of a wish fulfillment, that you can still evolve, and you still learn, and you still feel new things,” says Urman.  To hear more about Matlock, what we can expect from season 2, and Urman’s advice for writers, listen to the podcast.

    38 min
See All (100)

About

Designed to help you navigate the screenwriting industry, Final Draft, interviews working screenwriters, agents, managers, and producers to show you how successful executives and writers make a living writing and working with screenplays, and how you can use their knowledge to break into the industry. Subscribe today to catch every episode!

Information

You Might Also Like