From Advertising to Action: Screenwriter Jeremy Drysdale's Journey Through Hollywood's Changing Landscape

Episode Summary:
In this episode of The Fandom Portals Podcast, Aaron sat down with veteran screenwriter Jeremy Drysdale—whose credits span the cult film Grand Theft Parsons, the video game Battlefield 2, and the real‑time thriller In the Line of Duty. Jeremy shares his unconventional journey from ad copywriter to Hollywood, his blueprint for crafting unputdownable scripts, and why he’s pushing the boundaries of traditional screenwriting.

Topics:

• Unconventional Entry: How a pact and some inginuity became Grand Theft Parsons
• Genesis of Ideas: Moving from advertising scripts to original screenplays
• Cross‑Medium Writing: Key differences between film, TV, and non‑linear game narratives
• Structural Secrets: Jeremy’s “bastardized Save the Cat” + step‑outline method
• Real‑Time Filmmaking: Crafting tension in In the Line of Duty
• Research Habits: Relying on Google for gritty realism
• On‑Set Dynamics: Why writers are often sidelined in production
• Breaking Conventions: The daring “no scene headings” approach in Casual Violence
• Industry Insight: Navigating the middle‑budget market and the fight to sell original IP

Key Takeaways:

• Proactivity Pays: Jeremy flew to Nashville unannounced to secure life‑rights—landing his first feature 
  .
• Foundation First: A detailed step outline ensures story beats hit before a single line of dialogue is written.
• Medium Matters: Film, TV, and games demand distinct structures—streaming TV frees writers from rigid act breaks.
• Script Reader Savvy: Scripts are first judged by readers trained in “classic” structure—know their expectations.
• Creative Experimentation: Removing scene headings can speed reading and modernize script flow—if you’ve earned the trust to try it.
• Sales Reality: “If I don’t sell it, it doesn’t exist—just on my hard drive.” Original IP remains a tough sell despite market demand.

Call to Action:
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Apple Podcast Tags:
Screenwriting, Film Writing, TV Writing, Video Game Writing, In the Line of Duty, Grand Theft Parsons, Battlefield 2, Save the Cat, Real‑Time Film, Writing Process, Hollywood, Geek Freaks Network, Fandom Portals Podcast, Script Structure, Original IP

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Chapters

• 0:15 Meet Jeremy Drysdale: Writer and Creator
• 3:55 The Grand Theft Parsons Origin Story
• 8:47 Screenplay Writing Process Revealed
• 13:41 Differences Between Film, TV and Games
• 21:08 In the Line of Duty: Script to Screen
• 35:52 Breaking Rules in Screenwriting
• 43:15 The Future of Original Screenplays

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:15

Welcome to the Fandom Portals podcast, the podcast that explores how fandoms can help you learn and grow. Today, I'm joined by a very special guest guys. His name is Jeremy Drysdale and he is a screenwriter who is responsible for such works as In the Line of Duty, and he's also got some video game credits to his name, including Battlefield 2. Jeremy, how are you going today? I'm good, thanks, lovely, lovely. So yeah, thank you so much for joining me today. We were just talking about how we kind of crossed paths on the reddit scene and, yeah, uh, really, really appreciative of you taking the time and coming to share with me your journey into, uh, screenwriting.

Speaker 2: 0:50

I'm really happy to do that. Most writers just sit in a room on their own and don't talk to anybody for days. So to have the opportunity to just talk to somebody about myself, kind of great. Didn't want to turn that down.

Speaker 1: 1:00

Yeah, no, I definitely appreciate it because you you have mentioned as well that you came about screenwriting in a little bit of an unconventional way, so did you want to share a little bit about how you kind of fell into the profession of screenwriting and what your journey has been so far? Sure.

Speaker 2: 1:16

I started out in advertising. I was in advertising, I started out as a script writer, but for ads, wrote ads and then eventually became a creative director of an agency in London which was really well paid and really massively dull, stultifyingly dull. So I decided just on kind of the spur of the moment, because I love movies, and I went off and looked around for something to write and there was this amazing story that I'd heard about when I was much younger, which I thought was perfect for a movie, which was the true story of a guy called Phil Kaufman who stole Graham Parson's body and drove it across the desert to the Joshua Tree to set fire to it because of a pact the two of them had made much earlier in life when they were drunk. And I thought it was a great story, I thought it would make for a really good movie. So I found the number the telephone number of Phil Coffman, who was obviously still alive, and rang him in Nashville and told him what I wanted to do. And he hung up on me. So I rang him back and, uh, eventually he said what do you want? And I said I want to write, I want the rights to write the story, and he said um, I don't talk on the phone, you have to come and talk to me face to face. He figured that because he knew I was, that you know that would put an end to it and I'd leave him alone. But I didn't do that. I got on a plane. I didn't tell him I was coming, I flew to nashville and I booked a return ticket three days later. I assumed that I would just stay in a hotel somewhere and just work on him and try and convince him to let me have the rights.

Speaker 2: 2:49

And it arrived in Nashville when there was a massive music concert going on, uh and uh, a big business convention and basically in a hotel room. So I knocked on his door. He was very unhappy to see me and I said I've come around to convince you to let me have the rights to the scripts. I later discovered that about 200 people over the preceding 30 years had contacted him and asked for an option or for the rights, and he turned them all down because he wasn't interested in doing it. But he was kind of stuck with me for three days, and not only was I there for three days, but I didn't have anywhere to stay. So eventually I ended up on his sofa in his house so I was able to bore him so much, uh, that eventually he let me have it. He said I'll let you have it for 12 months and then I said well, look, I haven't really got much money so I can only give you like 500. So you know, disaster for him, for a big film companies had been after the story and they were looking to pay a lot more. Anyway, he very kindly let me have an auction for 12 months and I went off and wrote the script and the film was released.

Speaker 2: 3:57

We were shooting the film in San Francisco, just outside San Francisco, nine months after I arrived at his front door. That's how fast that all happened and the film became Grand Theft. Parsons did pretty well, got a lot of decent reviews, got some bad reviews as well. You always get bad reviews and I thought, well, this is great, I've obviously made the right decision, because it's really easy to make films. You just write them and then somebody makes them and nine months later you're on the set and, of course, realized over the years that followed that it wasn't quite that easy. But that was my, uh, that was my entree into the business. That was 20, uh, 20, 20, nearly 25 years ago, and I've been a full-time screenwriter ever since wow, that's.

Speaker 1: 4:38

That's like a story of dedication as well. Flying all that way with no guarantee, it's almost like it's really risky for one. But then to follow it through and to get that screenplay written Talking about your writing process in that regard so you get the rights or you've got an idea for a screenplay what does your writing process kind of look like in that regard? Do you think of the idea, like you had for the story of Mr Kaufman, or does the character come first, or do you just have an action scene pictured in your mind that you'd like to write about? How does that process kind of work for you?

Speaker 2: 5:12

Well, it differs depending on whether it's existing IP or whether it's one of my own ideas. Most of the stuff that I write is my own, comes out of my head, but occasionally it's existing. I've got a TV thing at the minute which comes from a book. I read the book, I loved it, I optioned it and I'm trying to sell it now. Of course I've sort of launched into the tv market just at the moment that everybody else is leaving it. But if I'm writing, uh, something based on my own idea, I start with a question really. So I've got a, a script which is uh out about at the minute, called Badwater, which is so the quick picture of Badwater is an ex-cop is in a maximum security prison in Nevada and he's told that he has 12 hours to kill his cellmate or his family will be murdered. So he decides to break out of prison, kill the people he threatened his family and then break back in again without anyone realizing he was gone. So he has an alibi. So that's basically where it starts, I think.

Speaker 2: 6:11

Initially with that one I thought it'd be great to have somebody break out of a maximum security prison to save his family. That's the beginning of the idea, and then you sort of knock around the idea a bit. You realize that actually it is a great idea. But there are other things out there which aren't dissimilar over the years, which have people. You know it's just a prison break movie, right, and that isn't that different.

Speaker 2: 6:35

So then I thought I had to make it different. And obviously the way to make it different is then to have him break back in again afterwards, and so you start from that, and then it's like a little naughty problem. You try and work out how to tell it in such a way that an audience would watch the movie and think, well, yeah, I mean that's doable, right, he could escape that way and he could get back in that way. I mean I don't think anybody could escape from a maximum security prison the way that I've written it and I don't think they can get back in again afterwards the way I've written it. But I do believe that an audience, even a cynical audience, could watch that movie and think that it was doable.

Speaker 1: 7:12

Yeah, and I think that's the main thing about screenwriting and things like that.

Speaker 1: 7:21

It just generates from a small idea, or a seed that just grows over time. You know, having dabbled in writing myself, that's kind of like the process I go through, where you have that sort of that genesis idea and it just spreads in almost concentric circles around that until finally you come up with something that's legible and possibly a little bit creative too, and maybe a little bit of lightning in a bottle. You never really know. But yeah, I think it's really interesting to hear that you've gone into so many different sorts of fields of writing in terms of TV, movies and games. When you're writing screenplays and a book and a book as well, yeah, yeah, so when you're looking at those sorts of different writing styles, especially for TV and movies, what's some of the major differences? When you're approaching projects like that for a movie and then for a TV and then also for games, especially like action-driven games like Battlefield, well, I've only written one game, which is Battlefield 2, and that's different and difficult because it's non-linear really.

Speaker 2: 8:14

So you know, the player can take the character in a hundred different directions and you have to write a script that encapsulates every possible route that they may take. Write a script that encapsulates every possible route that they may take. So it's it's uh, it's it's less creatively satisfying because it's, uh, like an algorithm rather than a story. So you know, I'm, I'm, I'm not really telling a story. What I'm doing is I'm telling a hundred stories in in a way that they logically could work. So it's less fun, I, and that's why I didn't do any more.

Speaker 2: 8:48

There used to be a huge difference between TV and film and that's basically the structure of the script. Tv used to be. There used to be bumpers and outbreaks in different places, and it's very specific structural paradigm for television back in the day when, you know, people used to run it. And it's a very specific structural paradigm for television back in the day when people used to run ads. So they used to need an in and an out for the ad in the same place each time, which made it structurally important to get that stuff right. Now, most TV is bought by streamers and so they don't really have ad breaks. They don't care how long each episode is, they don't care what the structure of it is, really as long as it is it satisfying to the viewer, as long as the story is told in a way that it works. I remember in the early days various different people who wrote the streamers sort of thought really that they were writing an eight hour movie and then they kind of could just chop it into. You know, this bit's a 42 minute episode and this bit's a one hour and 12 minute episode, and you just put your breaks in your episode breaks in where it feels right. You don't have to worry about the other stuff. So where I am in england there isn't any, uh, there isn't very much of a market now for a terrestrial TV drama, uh, so you don't have to worry very much. If you're going to write something, you're probably going to be writing it for a stream. You don't have to worry very much about that structural thing. With a movie, I mean, this is quite, quite interesting, I think and you might want to talk about this a bit more Uh, the, the. The way that movies are written has has always been interesting to me.

Speaker 2: 10:28

When I first started writing film, everybody read these, these books. You know these shitty books, mostly shitty books you know, enormous. They're sort of 300 pages, 350 pages of people telling you how to write a script right, and so you have to have this turning point here, and then there's the journey here, and then there's the call to action and look, that might work for some people. I have never read any of those books, except the only one I read was Save the Cat, and I only read that right at the very beginning because I realized that I needed to understand, get a rough idea of structure. I need to roughly know, because I knew that people who are going to be reading the scripts would expect me to hit certain marks. So I just read that Save the Cat book, which is a good book for you know it's supposed to be a primer, but it's actually the only book.

Speaker 2: 11:17

Don't read Robert McKee or any of those things. Well, I mean, read them if you want to, but it's just a way of prevaricating. It's just a way of not writing, reading a 350-page book and then making loads of notes about what you're supposed to do. It's just a way of not writing a script. So my advice which most people will ignore, of course, is to read lots of scripts.

Speaker 2: 11:38

I mean, these days scripts are easily available online. You can download pretty much anything, especially awards season. If you go onto the Deadline website on awards season, they'll have links for every single nominated movie. You just download them and you can read them. And if you read really good scripts, you'll understand the requirement. You'll know what you're supposed to do, because here is somebody doing it. It's a much better way. You know, if Dan Gilroy writes a script, I can see how to write the script. If Robert McKee tells me how to write the script, I don't think Robert McKee has ever had a movie made. I don't know what I mean. I'm not, you know, beating up Robert McKee. I've mentioned him two or three times. He's just one of those people. I don't understand why I would read. And Gilroy? So you know that's how I learned, just by reading hundreds of movies, and often reading the script while I'm watching the movie is useful as well.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Yeah, I think that's a really good approach because a lot of people learn by doing, learn through experience. And if you've got that tactile thing in front of you that you're reading while you're watching it on the screen and you can see, like the subtle differences or you can see structurally how they're writing something and how it portrays on visual, I think that's really good advice. If we look at like your sort of writing structure, you were gracious enough to send me your script for In the Line of Duty, the movie that you wrote the screenplay for. That's starring Aaron Eckhart, directed by Stephen C Miller. Let's talk a little bit about how the process happened, as to how that script was obviously sent to market and then made into a movie, and then I want to get into a little bit of the structure of that one, just for some little tidbits that you've got through there that I wanted to ask you some questions about, if that's okay? Sure.

Speaker 2: 13:18

Well, can I very quickly add on a bit to the last bit we talked about, which is the way I write, which might be of interest to people, because it's quite a. I think it's a really efficient way of writing. That it might be, uh, it might be helpful. Um, everybody will have their own system, but my system is that basically, I start with a sort of bastardization of the save the cat uh structure. So I've got 15 points and because of the way he he does it in the book, it's very easy to have at the end of each piece of each bit of structure act, break, midpoint, whatever he puts a page number in there 55, 50 pages, midpoint, so on and so forth. So I start with that, I start with those 15 beats, with the page numbers where they're supposed to be at the end of each line, and then I write, um, an outline, a sort of a step outline in that document. So I add the step outline stuff which is basically the scenes without any dialogue, into that document and that immediately means that I can see whether my midpoint in my outline is at the right place, whether it's in the right place. So I've got my 15 points, I've written my step outline within that. And so I've got this great document, which might be 15 pages long, of all of my scenes in the appropriate linked sections with the page number I'm trying to hit in brackets at the end of each one. So I already know even at that point if I'm going to make it work. I already know if I've got too much stuff in the first half and not enough in the second half. I already know if my act breaks are in roughly the same, roughly the right place, and then I save that document and I then write the script in that document. So I still have all of those bullet points, I still have all of those page numbers and I can still see if I'm losing control of the script. I can still see if I haven't put enough in the first section, if my first app break is in the right or the wrong place. It's an amazingly efficient way to write.

Speaker 2: 15:26

So when you finish the script, you probably don't have to go back and do loads and loads of work on it, because it's already structurally right. You probably will need to do a dialogue pass or two or three or four or five of those, but you know that the story works. You know that it hits the beats that it's supposed to hit, and it's a really good way of writing a script. The coen brothers I know, and others. They don't know how the script is going to end when they start writing it. I don't know how you write. Some of your listeners will want to write it that way, but for me I have to know the story because otherwise, you know, I've got 160 pages with no ending. So that's the structure I use and and it's pretty effective just on that as well.

Speaker 1: 16:09

That's a good, a really good way to like keep you, keep you disciplined and, um, obviously right towards a, a tailored ending in terms of the the line of duty, the ending that you kind of wrote through in that one where everybody sort of congregates around the, the cemetery scene, like that. That's obviously the point that you have to get to. But the question being, like I really wanted to know how that sort of got off the ground from idea to production and then also had some little questions in regards to just some of the things and the technical aspects of the script in there. I guess you could say so. First of all, how did the In the Line of Duty script come from page to production? How did that come about?

Speaker 2: 16:49

The story itself came from my desire to write a real-time movie.

Speaker 2: 16:55

There have been a few, taking a Pelham 1C3, the first one that's real-time. There are a few real-time films but not very many, and most of the ones that there have been don't quite work. And the reason they don't quite work is that often it looks like you're bolting a story into a real-time structure because you want to write a real-time movie and and most films then look forced, uh, so there are very few that work and you know it's debatable whether in the line of duty work, although I told everybody at every point that it was supposed to be real time. I think they kind of cheated that a bit and they didn't need to. But so that was where the idea came from, so obviously quite easy. Then you think, ok, so I've got to find an idea, a structure that fits real time. And you know, a very straightforward structure is that there's somebody in a crate that's running out of air. Originally it was somebody running out of air that they put water in the actual movie, which is fine, it works okay and they got 75 minutes of air and the only person who knows where that person is, where that child is, is either dead or uh doesn't want to test that, doesn't want to tell anybody so. So then you think, okay, well, that's, that's how that's the story. I uh doesn't want to test the test point, tell anybody so. So then you think, okay, well, that's, that's how that's the story. I wanted that I want to tell that's the the structure.

Speaker 2: 18:10

So then you think, okay, well, I've got a cop who shoots the kidnapper because he thinks they're gonna, uh, pull a gun, but actually they're pulling out a ransom note, and uh, and then that kind of works, that's fun, because if you shoot somebody on it, you know that's fun, because if you shoot somebody, even in America, if you shoot somebody, your gun and shield are taken and you're sent back to their base and you have to wait while there's an investigation to see whether that shooting was legal, and so he's not really a cop anymore. He can't do any of those things that cops do. So you think, okay, well, that works, because he feels that he's got to find this kid because he's killed a kidnapper and she's going to die, but he doesn't have any of the things that policemen normally have. And then you think, okay, well, is that kind of works, and then we'll make him a shit cop. Right, we'll make him one of those cops that's a bit overweight. I mean, aaron Eckhart is not overweight, but in the script he was a shit cop and he was, you know, in the last months before retirement and he wasn't very good and he hadn't had a great career.

Speaker 2: 19:10

So this is his moment to do the right thing, to show what he can do. And then you know, you think, well, okay, say the girl came later. You've seen that. Have you seen the film? Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 19:23

There's a girl who's a sort of a news, one of these internet news people with a little camera, and I put her in because it's impossible to tell the story if you don't have a focal point, if you don't have a perspective. So she becomes our perspective. She's a girl that doesn't like the cops very much, she's new to the job and she just follows him around and eventually becomes part of his part of the chase with him. And originally you've read the script so you know that originally I had a huge amount of different perspective in the script. I had CCTV, I had different news channels, there were TVs in shops as you walked down streets showing the chase that was going on. And that was the idea was to have all these different perspectives, and presumably for cost reasons they didn't do that. It was just really hurt, and so I think it was slightly less effective in that way. But you know, it kind of works, because with a real-time movie generally, people in the audience can get bored. Right, I'm just following this person around. That's quite boring. I watch a normal film. I watch a normal film. I can see all this other stuff happening. Real time is a discipline that's very hard to pull off. So the way to do it, I think, is to have these different perspectives and to make it work that way. So that was the idea. I wrote the script.

Speaker 2: 20:40

I had a manager in America at that time who was talking to a production company that needed a project. They needed something to go quite quickly and he sent them the script script and they liked the script. It was ready to go. They sent it out to various different actors and Aaron Eckhart liked it. I think that you know he had done some action stuff. He's done a huge amount more of that stuff since this film, but I think at that time it was a little bit more unusual for him and he grabbed it and he ran with it and, just as an aside, I did go on the shoot for a week. I went to Birmingham, alabama, spent some time with everybody and he's a really lovely guy. So, just as an aside, aaron Eckhart, nice guy.

Speaker 1: 21:25

Very good. Yeah, a very far cry from his character of Harvey Dent in the Batman, that's for sure of the dark knight, um, yeah, so, so that's that's really interesting. You know, talking about the, the various different sort of perspectives that you want to tell the story of the real time time movie. Uh, one thing I noticed that you do in the script as well, and one thing that I think is pretty common in movies like that is you really got to keep the tension tight because you know the, the stakes are there, the girl is in the crate and her air is definitely running out. So, from a writing perspective, knowing that those stakes are present, knowing that those perspectives need to be seen, how do you incorporate like tension in your, in your writing to make it something that the audience would feel well, how does that work for for a screen?

Speaker 2: 22:05

uh, play, well, it's really easy if you do the step outline first, if that's the bit of the script that you do first you write a step outline and then you sit there with a highlighter and you just, I mean, it's not rocket science, you just highlight the action beats and you can just see immediately if there are gaps, if there are areas of the script where not enough is going on. And so the step outline starting with a step outline, for me at least is is a really good way of making sure that I'm hitting my beats all the way through, that I haven't got gaps in action, and it's really simple, it's really easy to do that. People get carried away with dialogue, I think, especially when they're starting out, and character and dialogue and character are vital, I mean really important. But if you start with the right structure, if you know your story works, then you've got latitude to do all of that other stuff and it's it's much easier, it's really straightforward to do it that way. It's it just it's on wheels.

Speaker 1: 23:01

You can't really go wrong because the action really does move in the in this movie in the line of duty. Um, there are a lot of elements that you were talking about, especially from from reading your screenplay. There's a lot of like call-outs and various different sort of terminology from police and action sort of movies like that. What's the research process like for you in terms of knowing the kinds of realism to insert into a script like that? Is there a research process for you or do you have any sort of contact or what's that sort of look like process for you or do you have any sort of contact or what's that sort of?

Speaker 2: 23:31

look like no, I don't, I just do it, I just write when I'm doing, when I'm writing the script, I just Google it. I mean, my Google search history is, you know, appalling. I'm amazed that I haven't had a knock at the door. You know how do I pop someone's eye out with a thumb? What's the easiest way, what's the quietest way to kill someone? There are terrible things available on the internet, so it's just Google. I mean, I've written scripts set all over the world and I've never been to. I wrote a whole script set in Malmo. I've never been to that country. The internet is an amazing resource and it's as simple as that.

Speaker 2: 24:13

I guess you know, being a writer and having a degree of ADHD, it's quite easy to get caught up in that stuff and not actually doing the writing itself. But you know, as long as you have a bit of discipline, you can do it. I mean, I tend to do most of my writing in the afternoons. In the mornings I answer emails and do if mean I tend to do most of my writing in the afternoons and the mornings. I answer emails and do.

Speaker 2: 24:31

If I've got research to do, I do the research and read over what I did the day before and and then I write from about half past one to about five. It's, you know, it's, it's quite easy to. Everybody will have their own. I'm a bit, I'm a bit nervous about telling people that stuff because it might not work for your listeners. Right, they might have their own way of going to do things. So for me that works. The only thing that I would be prescriptive about is the step outline at the beginning. That's really important. But other than that, you know it's all viable, it's all flexible yeah, and I think that's good for for creativity purposes as well.

Speaker 1: 25:07

You know you've got your, your guidelines that you sort of stick to in terms of structure, but, um, when you're actually talking about the creative process of writing something or writing something that you enjoy, um, if it's prescribed too much or if it's, you know, something that's really feeling oppressive, then it can like fizzle out before you you finish something. So I think the excitement comes from that creative juice that is allowing a little bit of freedom, but also that structure. So it's almost like a safety net. So I definitely like that as well With In the Line of Duty as well. You mentioned, and I also noticed, that some changes had occurred between the film version and your screenplay version. How much of that is talked to you about in terms of whether the director or the production talked to you? None of it, none of it?

Speaker 2: 25:48

Yep, none of it. They never have a conversation with me, I'm never told. So if you've read the script and you've seen the film which I know you've done both of those things you'll see that there is a twist in the script towards the end of the script, which isn't in the film, and I never found out why that was dropped. It didn't cost anything to put it in. It was, you know, there were no cost, uh implications. So I suspect that at some point somebody who was marking up the script deleted that scene without knowing, yeah, and so, um, you know, if you watch the film, there's a it works, it still works the ending, but but it there was another twist before the finale which made it work better, which isn't in there, and I I asked why it wasn't in there and nobody seemed to know.

Speaker 2: 26:37

It drives me crazy not specific to my work, but in general that uh screenwriters are not welcomed onto sets for their movies because what? What tends to happen is that the director generally finds one of two things happen Either they find a different way of telling the story that they like oh, it would be nice to do this, or something happens and they can't shoot it exactly the way it's written. So they have to find a workaround, and in both of those instances the screenwriter should be on set, because the screenwriter is able to do that work and make it fit. And nothing is really worse than watching a movie that you've written that has been fucked up because they haven't asked you what to do. So when you're writing dialogue, for instance, you should be able to put your hand over the name of each character in the script and to know who's speaking by the way they speak. Everybody obviously has a different cadence. They all speak differently. Some of them are very staccato, some of them are very poetic. Everybody is different and I, like most screenwriters, spend a lot of time making sure that everybody's dialogue is congruent, that it fits that character. Nervous people speak differently to confident people, right. So you write the dialogue in that way and then when they shoot the movie, they just change. Quite often the actor just does it a different way. They just change the dialogue because they want to change it right, because they want to add something to the process, and what that generally means is the character ends up sounding like the actor instead of the character, yeah, or it all sort of melds into everything, melds into everything else. So all of that work that you've done I'm not trying to sound precious about it, it's just for the benefit of the script All of that work that you've done I'm not trying to sound precious about it, it's just for the benefit of the script all of that work that you've done is wasted because they've allowed the actor to change the dialogue, or the director has added stuff and the writer isn't there, and so it just changes the script.

Speaker 2: 28:43

And if you talk to people like Martin with Donna, they obviously has the advantage of directing their own script, right? So it's slightly different. They don't let anybody change anything ever. The script is the script and that should be always the case. And if it isn't always the case, if there needs to be a change for a certain reason, the writer should be the one that changes the script, because the writer is the one who knows characters, right, nobody else. The director knows the story, the actors know their character, but nobody has that sort of helicopter view, which is awful expression, but nobody has that vision other than the writer. So that drives me crazy actually. I mean not we're not being specific to my own stuff, but just in general that the moment a script is bought, the writer is often mostly sort of shunted off and then it becomes the director's vision. And that's fine, because it is at that point that that it becomes what the director wants it to be. But the writer should be involved in that bit of the process I think it's also a little bit silly.

Speaker 1: 29:45

You know, having someone of that um like knowledge base in terms of the story as a whole, not utilizing them as a resource on a production, is just. I think that's just like a bit of an oversight, because obviously no one knows the characters better than the person that write it. No one knows the nuances of the character and the arc that they're intended to go through through the movie better than the screenwriter intended to go through through the movie better than the screenwriter like, for example, off the officer penny we're talking about in in this movie in the line of duty. You obviously started him off in the screenplay as being a cop that you know. He's four minutes away from his, his end of shift before all of this happened.

Speaker 1: 30:19

So he's really sort of like a police officer that really is just counting down the minutes until the end of his shift and has no real care about it in the world until when the script eventually, like, progresses and he gets involved in the case.

Speaker 1: 30:32

He is then counting down the minutes to the time when he's supposed to save this girl and eventually it comes to the point where an entire community of people based on the um, like the, the, the media coverage that he's gotten through this investigation, they all come to sort of help him out. So there's that journey that he goes through from being just this sort of deadbeat end of his career kind of police officer to somebody who's really just trying to prove his worth is what I took out of it at least. And then he's got things like you've written here, you know, like there's financial planners, dental hygienists, postal workers, electricians, skateboarders, hobos, teachers, all those kinds of people come in to try and help dig out this young girl and it says as well, you know, they're all trying to help him out. And I think that that sort of character arc and also like that there's something that's missing there if you don't consult on, like the screenwriter's process or character.

Speaker 2: 31:27

That's not in the film, right? I mean, there is a bit of that in the film. There's a little bit at the end and that's it.

Speaker 2: 31:32

Yeah, yep, so the changes that were made, I had no idea what they were doing. They didn't speak to me at all. I mean, basically, the moment they bought the script I was kind of, you know, I was kind of gone and I understand that. I fully buy that. The director, not this director, I'm not talking about this script in particular. I think Stephen C Miller is a really good director and he did a good job with the movie.

Speaker 2: 31:55

But directors in general they're a bit nervous at the writer because they don't really they want to make it theirs and the writer is irritating in that respect. So it's kind of like, okay, you have a kid and then somebody adopts your kid or your wife remarries and the kid has a new dad, the director being the new dad. He's going to be irritated with you if you start getting involved in his way of bringing up the child, right, so he's not interested in asking your advice on how little Johnny should be treated. So I think it's kind of a bit like that. And often they don't invite you on the set at all. I mean, I've never been invited on the set. I was gone but I had to pay my own way and on that film. Really generally it became, you know, I think even often actors don't really like screenwriters on the set because they want to also make their character, their own, and they think that this weird guy standing over here is going to be judging them if they make changes. And probably they are judging them because the characters mostly come out of the head of the person that's standing and that person is either not standing there because they've not been made welcome on the on the set or they're not. They're standing there but they're not being asked, and I just think everything I do is for the benefit of the script.

Speaker 2: 33:16

So I don't know if we're going to talk about notes at any point, but if we talk about notes, I just my only job, once I've written the script, is to protect the script, and so if I'm getting notes from people, from producers, from directors, I'm very open to that, but only if they make the script better.

Speaker 2: 33:35

If they don't make the script better, my job then becomes to protect the script, and I've had numerous times conversations with people who never made a movie before, never written a film, which are wrong. I've had also notes that are great, but the ones ones that are wrong, your job is to push back on these in a polite way, in a firm way, and explain why they don't work and say look, you want me to do this? I have a script I wrote with a french company and it there were four producers on it and they all had separate notes and some of those notes contradicted the notes from the other people in the group. And you know you have to be responsible for the script. You have to say I don't think I can do that because if I do that the story doesn't work for this reason. So it's a really difficult thing. Everybody always wants to get involved and oftentimes it damages the script.

Speaker 1: 34:33

Sometimes it does, I think in terms of a script, I think a clear vision is definitely important when it comes to presenting the message of the movie that was intended, at least Just going on notes and things like that. And structure of your screenplays. I know you said before it's a bit unconventional, but, um, I noticed throughout the screenplay that you have here for in the line of duty, you do um, like, you use capitals at times and you also underline, uh, various different things, for example, penny moves, and then there's another underline that's like silently parts the flower stall, ava arrives. Are those intended for like a director's note or a cinematographic, like a cinematography sort of note in terms of that's what you want shown on camera at that time? That's what's important. Is that what that's all about with the, the screen structure there?

Speaker 2: 35:19

like most things, this is a kind of debate in the screenwriting community, right? So the idea is you're not supposed to do that, you're not supposed to put anything on the script that could be regarded as a director note, because directors don't like it. Basically, I think when you write a script, two things. First thing is, when you write a script, you're writing it for the reader. You're writing it for the person that you might buy it. So anything that makes it easier to tell that story is is beneficial to you. Secondly, I think you should just do what you think is right for you, for your telling of it, of the story, and if they tell you, don't put direct. You know I always put stuff in about action beats. I always, you know, do that capital thing, although I don't always do it. Actually, we can go on to casual violence, which I sent you a bit of, in which I don't do that, but I do do something else that you're not supposed to do. I just think there are too many rules, there are too many restrictions put into our writers. I saw a massive thing on Twitter recently screenwriting Twitter where there was this sort of huge debate as to whether you can put a quote on the front cover to sell what kind of a story you're about to tell. I mean, people are crazy, right, just write the script. You have to be careful now because oftentimes and this is really important, actually these days producers often don't read scripts. Buyers don't read scripts. The scripts are read by script readers who they pay $50 to do a little report. Is it good, is it sellable, does the story work? And it might be actually that your script is never actually read by anybody who's put money into it, that they just read these one-page things. So you have to have in the back of your mind that you have to write the script in such a way that the script reader is going to feel okay about that. Then they're going to like what you've done. That's your market when you first write the script. And the script reader has nearly always been to film school, and if they've been to film school they have a firm. These film schools are a waste of time, but but they teach structure right. So if you do anything that doesn't fit the structure that they're expecting, they'll say not structured right, okay. So that's why films are not as good as they were before. It's one reason why they're not as good as they were before, I think is that things are much more conventional in the way that they're done, unless they're small movies like a Nora, where he could just do it however he wants to because he's going to direct it. But in general terms, because you want to get past the script reader at the beginning and the script reader has been taught that the script should look in a certain way. That makes it tough to do something different. So obviously Quentin Tarantino doesn't get anything made now, if he isn't already Quentin Tarantino, because he doesn't write the way that you're supposed to write.

Speaker 2: 38:14

You've got a few pages of a script of mine, which is the last thing I wrote, called Casual Violence. Yeah, that doesn't have any scene headings. I have no scene headings in there, not a single one. And the reason I don't have scene headings in that story is because they slow the reader down, so I just remove them. I know I've had to work quite hard to move the action on in a certain way that you know where you are, you know when you're there, but I don't have a scene heading. I don't have interior lounge house day. I don't have that. They've all gone. There's not a single one and it works really well. It's gone down a storm and it's a really easy read because you don't have to keep going through those scene headings but you still know all the information you need is there.

Speaker 2: 38:55

And at some point, if they make it, somebody will have to put in scene headings because that then fits in with the budgeting software that they're going to be using, so they know where everything is. But it's easy to do that Now because I've had movies made. I think I can do that and it can go to people. And it can either go to people because the producer will read it now because I've had movies made, so that they're a bit more interested, or the um script reader. If it's still going through a script reader, he's gonna think, oh, actually he hasn't got any scene headings in there, but he has had movies made, so it's probably okay, right.

Speaker 2: 39:33

But if I'm completely unknown and I do that or I send it off, the script reader is going to think where are the screen earnings? And he's just going to say it's not structured properly and you won't sell it. So they say don't put anything that could be a director's note in there, because they don't want to piss the director off when the director reads the script. They don't want the director thinking why is this bloke? Trying to direct it on the page Makes it an easier read. Remember the script that you're writing, that you're sending out to people, is never going to be the script that goes to cast when they're shooting it. Because the markets are different. The viewer is different In the first place. I'm writing script just to sell, so I'm writing it for the reader. Later on I'm writing the script for the viewer or for the director or for the actor, so it looks different.

Speaker 1: 40:23

No, no, that makes sense. And I did find when I was reading Casual Violence that it was a very like it flowed very well in terms of when I read it. There was like, for example, you've got you know inside the pub, so we know where we are, and then it goes down into your descriptions of the scene and then there's some dialogue in there as well, and I think that that was a really well-structured and flowing read for the casual violence script there, so that came from that way of writing came from an interview I read with dan gilroy when he was talking about writing, uh, nightcrawler, and I'm going to paraphrase he just said you know, I just didn't want to put scene headings in there because they slowed down the read and it's, it's a kinetic story.

Speaker 2: 41:07

I didn't want to do that, so I just didn't do it. I just didn't put him in there and, uh, it's great, and now I don't do it. And he said and of course william goldman often didn't use them. And I thought really that's interesting. So, uh, I looked at some old william goldman scripts and he's right, uh, although goldman sort of sometimes uses them and sometimes doesn't, in the same scripts.

Speaker 2: 41:26

And I think you're either going to use the way you're not going to use, but you can get your. Your viewers can download free a copy of the nightcrawler script by dan gilroy and they can see how well it works. But again, you shouldn't probably do it right at the beginning of your career, because the people who are reading your scripts probably aren't going to like it because it doesn't conform and they're looking for a reason to say no, to pass on it, and so anything that gives them that opportunity to say no should be avoided, so but it's a really useful exercise I was just wondering as well when you're, when you're writing a script like this with no scene headings, does it help your writing process in terms of the flow of when you're writing?

Speaker 1: 42:09

is it a quicker sort of process? Is it more free when you're writing it that way, instead of having to stop every couple of beats to put in that scene heading? Well, I've only written.

Speaker 2: 42:18

I'm writing all my stuff that way now, but that's the first one I've written that way and it wasn't faster because I constantly had to think about not putting scene headings in, because that's what I've done for 20 years. But I now I'm writing a new script now that has no scene headings. I suspect that it'll get quicker. I also thought that I would get more pushback from people that my agents would say you know, this is not good, you need to do it the right way. I never had that. I never had. Anybody has nobody's ever said why are there no scene headings? But you have to make it work. It has to be right, but if you can make it work, then you know that's great, it's better.

Speaker 1: 43:00

So this screenplay that you've got here for Casual Violence you said that that one's out to market as like at the moment what are your like, what does that sort of mean and what's your expectations for this one?

Speaker 2: 43:11

Well, what it means is sort of mean, and what's your expectations for this one? Well, what it means is you just don't hear anything for a while while your agent's trying to sell it. It's a very dark script. It's quite brutal, it's very dark.

Speaker 1: 43:23

You don't have the whole script. No, I only got the first six pages. It kind of ends with the interview in the police station.

Speaker 2: 43:31

Yeah, it's not the easiest thing to sell, but I love the script. I really like it. It could work for TV, it could work as a movie. My expectations are you should never expect a script to sell. It's brutally hard to sell a script these days that isn't based on existing IP and for the most part, I've got a couple of TV things that are based on existing IP and for the most part, I've got a couple of TV things that are based on existing IP that I'm trying to sell, that my scripts, generally speaking, are my scripts that come out of my head, and so there's no existing IP there and buyers are quite risk averse.

Speaker 2: 44:09

They've always been risk averse, but now more so, and they're sort of confused. I think at the minute many of them. So up until for the last 10 years, they liked graphic novel stuff, they liked Marvel characters, adaptations, they liked that, and now suddenly the wheels are actually coming off of that stuff, and not all of it, but a lot of it is underperforming, because people want something different, and I think that what they want that's different is original stories. Yeah, I think so too. Like we talked about bad order earlier, right, break out of the prison without anyone knowing break back in again original stories, but the buyers are still very resistant to that because they don't want to take a risk on something that doesn't have an existing market, and I can see why that would be the case, but eventually they're not going to have much choice.

Speaker 2: 45:04

This is coupled with the fact that that middle part of the market, the bit you've got the marvel stuff up here, which is 200 million dollars, and you've got the micro stuff down here which is less than a million dollars, and then you've got this chunk in the middle which was sort of 30 million dollar movie, which is kind of the thing that I write um and and that's not getting made very much now and I don't know quite why.

Speaker 2: 45:29

I've read lots of articles about why it's not getting made, but there doesn't really seem to be much logic to it. It seems to me that if you make a $20 million movie, you can make 10 of those to fit your $200 million movie that you're making up here that actually people don't really want anymore, and you only got to have two of those things do well and you've covered your cost. So logically, it seems to me people should be making those movies now, but they're not really very much and so it's very tough. I mean, I've been doing this a long time and it's as tough as it's ever been. There was that little bubble when everybody was getting TV shows made, and that's gone as well now.

Speaker 1: 46:06

Even from someone like myself who consumes movies on a sort of casual basis as a podcast, I can see that the business of movies is now sort of changed. When I was growing up in the 90s and the early 2000s, there was a lot of those standalone action movies that were really enjoyable and original IP and brought stars to your home like your Schwarzeneggers and your Stallones and your Bruce Willis and things like that. Those are the sorts of movies that we're kind of missing now. So can definitely see what you're saying, where there's that sort of middle ground where we really need to reply. I really believe we need to return back to that, because that was some entertaining cinema as well. And yeah, they're definitely going with the higher tier Marvel or the lower tier sort of indie, a24 sort of stuff that definitely gets sort of award nominated, but there's space for more in the middle.

Speaker 2: 46:51

The market wants that. You're right, the market wants it. But the producers aren't producing it. They're nervous of it because they've got to justify the spend, and they can justify it. If it's a best-selling graphic novel or if it's a best-selling book, they can justify it. Well, those are people who already took a risk on this stuff and it's paid off. But the stuff that comes out of someone's head, they're worried about that. Their job is on the line right?

Speaker 1: 47:22

Yeah, I definitely agree. All right, thanks for joining me, jeremy. Before I let you go, I do want to ask a last question what's exciting you currently about screenwriting, and where do you want to move yourself and experiment with in the genre in the future?

Speaker 2: 47:38

Yeah well, so I'm happy writing. I mainly write thrillers and action movies and they're good for me. I'm going to stick with that. I've got a couple of horror movies as well, which are fun probably slightly less fun, if I'm honest. But the thing that excites me is trying the no scene headings thing and trying to fuck with the paradigm a bit and do something in a slightly different way. I'm excited by selling films. That's the thing that excites me. If I don't sell it, it doesn't exist, just on my hard drive. So you know I want to sell stuff, I want to see it made, and it's a really tough journey. It's really hard but very rewarding when it happens.

Speaker 1: 48:18

Yeah, and I can definitely see your passion in it too. Yeah, I really, really thank you for coming in and sharing your insights with me, and your process and and and yeah, just taking the time to really just have a chat with me today, jeremy. It's been a pleasure with me today, jeremy, it's been a pleasure Really. Appreciate you, my pleasure, aaron. Have a good day you too. Thank you very much.