S5 Ep3 – The Art of (High-Concept) Screenwriting: A Conversation with Ian Shorr

Creating imaginary management companies as a kid, making huge spec sales, and pivoting in the industry for survival. An in-depth chat with screenwriter Ian Shorr, writer of Splinter, Infinite, and the upcoming Keanu Reeves movie Shiver. With surely more one-word film titles to come. 

Complete with tips for emerging screenwriters—and a few reminders of what not to do … 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Well, first of all, let me start recording, or Michelle will yell at me at the end of the episode. Um because the recording is kind of crucial.

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Yeah, I'm I'm getting uh weird shadows in my face because my my uh the sun just rose here. So let me just adjust.

SPEAKER_05 0:13

Well, that's okay. We don't use video clips.

SPEAKER_04 0:15

Um, oh yeah, this is a good idea. We could um I I did I did really like your shirt though.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Your shirt oh yeah, my uh my uh Japanese exorcist posters.

SPEAKER_04 0:26

That is so cool.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

Yeah, I saw a friend of mine wearing it. I'm like, give me that, take it off.

SPEAKER_04 0:33

Nice.

SPEAKER_05 0:40

Okay, well, this is episode three. Uh last episode, remind me, Michelle. We mentioned that you signed with Talcott Notch. Wonderful age.

SPEAKER_04 0:50

I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 0:51

Did we also mention your sixth book deal?

SPEAKER_04 0:54

Seven.

SPEAKER_05 0:54

It is a seven. I knew it was a seven book deal. I knew it was a seven-book deal. I was wondering if you were gonna correct me and that extra book.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

I should know because is this is this a a deal for you to write seven books or is this your seventh book deal?

SPEAKER_04 1:09

Oh no, um, I have written seven books, and so it's the deal for the entire series. So yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:17

Man, that's awesome.

SPEAKER_04 1:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 1:19

But you haven't written all seven books yet.

SPEAKER_04 1:22

Oh, I did. I did manage. Oh, I didn't that I didn't know.

SPEAKER_05 1:25

Good lord. Is that okay? Don't take this the wrong way. But is it the is it like the ADHD kicking in? Or is it like ADHD?

SPEAKER_04 1:33

No, it's the um what's the word? I don't know. It's it's a type A thing. It's um no, it's it's just like when I'm seized by an idea, I have to like finish it and then like follow it through to the end. I will say like the book book book seven is not finished because I didn't want to finish it because that would mean closing out the whole thing. And so I wasn't ready to do that at the time, but that was years ago, and now I have to do it.

SPEAKER_05 1:58

So you're just being lazy. I understand.

SPEAKER_02 2:01

Six and a half book ass lazy. I know your lazy eyes only writing seven books. Right, yeah. Um three children, I don't understand.

SPEAKER_04 2:12

I I I wrote it after the three children, if that's if that's any uh help. Probably not.

SPEAKER_05 2:18

That's no, that it makes me feel less like less of a person. Thank you though. That's a great though. I I that's a great deal. I wanted to mention it again because I know you were too humble to mention it yourself. Well, my my intro has been fractured, but the voice that you have been hearing in the background is screenwriter Ian Shore. Very popular. He has written um such films as Infinite with Mark Wahlberg. Uh he wrote the series Yeah, thank you, Michelle. Let's let's team up on this bio. I'll take one word and you take the other, and we'll just kind of go back and forth. Do beastie boy style, yeah. This is such an unserious podcast, and that's why we have all these great loyal listeners. Lots of feature films, uh, but wanted to bring them on because of his recent deal for 71 Minutes, which sold to Sony. Uh Jason Reitman is producing and uh TBD director, I believe, but Ian will fill us in on all that. Ian, thank you for being here.

SPEAKER_02 3:12

Hi guys, thanks so much for having me. All right, guys, I I managed to get rid of the uh the the weird fill. The weird lost my uh the uh like the lower section of my face. I feel I feel better about this now.

SPEAKER_05 3:25

That's much better. All right, I do much better lighting. I do like the hair. Everything's checking out for you, Ian.

SPEAKER_04 3:31

Everything's second out.

SPEAKER_05 3:33

Uh so 71 minutes, uh, huge spec sale, um, by any metric, but especially uh you know in this economy. How did it I read in one of the articles that you had co-developed it or uh was an idea based on somebody from Boulder Light?

unknown 3:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:51

Tell us how that kind of came about.

SPEAKER_02 3:53

Uh so that was a um that was an idea brought to me by an executive named Lewis Winters, uh, who's uh works works at Boulder Light. I went in for a meeting with him two years ago, and he pitched me kind of the broad version of what became 71 Minutes. And to give you the basic concept of this movie, it's uh a thriller that takes place in real time about uh a guy who wakes up buried alive in a coffin with amnesia. He has no idea how he got there, no idea who he is, somehow manages to dig himself out, discovers he's out in the desert at three o'clock in the morning uh being hunted by strange armed people uh trying to kill him, and figures out that they're trying to kill him because they're vampire hunters and he's a vampire, and the sun's coming up in 90 in 96 minutes, there's nowhere to hide. Uh, and uh it's it, you know, like the entire movie is a gigantic chase, like like Fury Road style. Um he pissed me that. I'm like, hell yeah, that is absolutely a movie. Uh that's like it's like five movies I love in a blender. We should uh we we should have him protecting a kid of some kind, you know, give it like give it some emotional stakes. Uh, you know, we we should really lean into the the ticking clock of the sunrise. We should we should build out this whole mythology around the the bad guys that we just tell entirely through visual storytelling. Uh, you know, we should um originally I was like, we should do it all in one shot. We should do it like 1917. Like that was the the the one uh the one ambitious thing that we wound up pulling back on. We we we uh we got rid of the one shot thing. But uh any anyway, he uh he he asked me, like, you know, do you want to spec this for me? And my immediate response was absolutely not, you know, but I I like you, but I I I don't uh I don't spec stuff that's not mine. But I'm like, this is such a cool idea that I uh I'll I'll write a short story of it because you know that there's less of a time risk with that. So I went home and over the course of the weekend I I wrote basically the first act of the movie is a short story, like a twelve like a 12-page error, and uh turned that back in. Um and we took it around to a bunch of different places seeing if we can find a home for it, and we got lots of uh really lovely praise and no-takers. It was yeah, like the uh my my favorite quote about Hollywood is uh Hollywood was invented the day somebody figured out that enthusiasm is free. Um this this was an example of that. So by that time though, like I had already, you know, like spent so much time living in the world in my head and thinking about what it could be and imagining where this the story could go. Like I I already knew what the ending was, and it was gonna be the best ending I'd ever written of anything. And so I at that point I was like, okay, yeah, I I will uh I'll I'll write this on spec. Let's you know put you know a deal in place that protects me and and uh you know this will be my next spec. So I uh you know, I've spent the the year after writing that, you know, uh showed it to to Lewis and Boulder Light uh at the uh at the end of that and wound up in a situation where uh they uh uh Boulderlight has a um a big deal with uh with with Paramount. They they run essentially Paramount's version of New Line now, like this thing called Paramount Primal that does their uh I think they like to call it premium pulp. They're they're like they're like it's it's their genre arm. It's like what dimension used to be for uh for Weinstein. Um anyway, the uh they they took that place as a territory and they said, you know, you can you can have the the rest of the town to you know to pick and choose your your producers. So my uh my team didn't realize that they were gonna do that. They they thought it was gonna be an exclusive thing. So when when they um when they they realized that was happening, they did something really rare, which is they carpet bombed the town with the script. Like most scripts that go out these days because you know the the spec economy is so rough, um most time most of the time they don't do like a carpet bombing approach. They'll be super targeted. Like my last thing, the the shark movie Shiver had an extremely targeted approach going in. We we never went wide with it, we just showed it to some producers and put it together step by step internally. With this, they we would it it became 1996 all over again. Like we were we were parting like it was the uh the the Clinton years. So we uh we took it out to you know, I don't know how many people, 26 producers raised their hands on it. Next thing we knew, we were sorry, 26.

SPEAKER_04 8:42

Wait, 26.

SPEAKER_02 8:43

26, yeah, to 26. The number 26. Yeah, so like I don't know how many like we we went out to, I know we I knew it was a lot, and 26 producers came back raising their hands saying, Yeah, we want we we want to buy this, which is or we we want a territory for this, we want to take this in somewhere. Yeah, uh, and the problem is there's only like 15 buyers out there. Uh so you know, some of these guys were gonna go home empty-handed. Uh, so we you know, we had to have the conversation of of you know who's gonna get what territory. Um the script uh got taken in by those both by those producers in into buyers, and we wound up in a four-way bidding war for it, uh, and ultimately decided to go with uh with Sony with uh Jason Reitman producing.

SPEAKER_05 9:32

That's a pretty rare structure.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

This is the first time in my entire career that anything like this has ever happened to me. I mean, like I've I've been doing this 19 years, and yeah, it's it's rare.

SPEAKER_04 9:46

You know, all that sounds amazing, but like what was the from the time that they started carpet bombing to the time that you got all these producers responding, etc. And and and the time you you signed with or Sony. What was the uh time that you're looking at?

SPEAKER_02 10:00

A week.

SPEAKER_04 10:02

A week?

SPEAKER_02 10:03

Yeah, it it it uh it moved really quickly.

SPEAKER_05 10:06

So like they We're just gonna have exclamation points at the end of every sentence of this story.

SPEAKER_02 10:11

A week what we need is like some on-screen text like in the old Batman show.

SPEAKER_04 10:19

Yeah, the at sign, the hashtag, all that stuff.

SPEAKER_05 10:23

But when there's when there's high demand, things move faster than you could possibly imagine, right? As you've seen in the past, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 10:29

Oh yeah. I've I've I've had you know scripts go out where it took you know a month for people to even read the damn thing. Right.

SPEAKER_04 10:36

Um that's that's normal.

SPEAKER_02 10:39

Yeah, yeah, that's that's more than norm than this. I mean, this this is this was kind of an anomaly. Um but uh yeah, but we we uh I it was it was weird timing because I was uh I was on set for for Shiver for my my my shark movie at the time. We were shooting down in Dominican Republic. We were shooting nights. Um so the way this worked is I would go to work at like 6 p.m. We would shoot all night um uh down in the uh this this water tank uh down on the south coast of of um Dominican Republic. We uh we'd wrap around 4:30, get in the van, come back to the hotel, try to make it to bed by like 5.30, and then wake up at like 11 to start doing the producer meetings because everybody that raised their hand I met with. So uh we we you know we cranked through 26 meetings in in in four days. They were all back to back, stacked like 30 minutes each, uh, you know, like just you know, one zoom after another. Uh that's fine. You know, and and uh I'm pretty sure my my brain was somewhere between putty and soup. Uh like after after you know after doing night shoots, all like that, you know, sleeping for four hours and then getting up and doing these meetings. So uh I don't know if I spoke a single coherent sentence the entire time. Uh I was like, movie good producer, yes, like you. Yes, record. Uh word good, more better. Uh but uh yeah, but like by the but by the end of it, we you know we we figured out you know what uh what the the the the smart moves for it were um and you know as offers started coming in um it uh you know a clear path for it became obvious. Um and um you know it in in in in in a way like with the the the decision to go with with Jason Reitman and Sony was sort of a a homecoming for me because I uh part of the reason I'm I'm a filmmaker is because I saw Ghostbusters when I was five and I storyboarded the whole movie with crayons and printer paper. Like I'm I created this 50-page document like laying out each scene. Now I'm a terrible artist, I can't draw a worse yet. So like like, do you see this big squiggly line here? That's Bill Murray. Right. Uh but I I you know that that was like kind of my first attempt to tell a movie on paper. And uh as I I I told that story to Jason the the day that we met, and he's like, hey, check this out. And he kind of brings me further into his house on the Zoom call, and he shows me he's got an original Ghostbusters Proton pack hanging on his living room wall that still works. Like when he turns it on, all the lights turn on, and wow, that is. My inner five-year-old is so happy right now. Right. So yeah, it uh it it it's uh I'm I'm glad of where we ended up.

SPEAKER_05 13:34

Uh that's a tremendous story about um how you have to pivot too when you're a rep or when you're a writer, you know, and just kind of going with where the where the current flows in order to get a deal done, right? Um was this the first thing? I mean, uh now that you've like established a career, this is the first project you wrote on spec that wasn't yours?

SPEAKER_02 13:53

Uh not ex not completely, no. Um uh my my movie uh infinite, the uh the one with with Antoine Fuca, Mark Wahlberg, uh that was a that was a book that I adapted on spec. So like just I'll give you like the the the quick version of that one.

SPEAKER_03 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

The guy that wrote the book uh self-published a novel, uh, you know, sold it through Amazon, sold a few copies, and you know, went back to his day job. Somehow one of those copies wound up in a tea house in Kathmandu, uh, where a movie producer found it while he was on vacation and found a bounty on the first page saying, like, whoever finds this book will get 10% of my my earnings if we sell it to a publisher or a movie student.

unknown 14:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 14:36

The producer reads it, he's like, Oh yeah, there's a movie in here. So he comes back, he options the book, uh, they send it out to writers, I read it, I love it, I pitch on it, I don't get the job. Turns out nobody gets the job. But the producer that found it really liked my pitch and he came back saying, like, hey, if you still want to do it, I don't have any money, but if you're willing to do it for free, uh, you know, we can let's make this happen. So I I had my manager, John Zazirni, option the book. Uh so we got to keep it for another couple years while I was working on adaptation. And in the case of both Infinite and 71 Minutes, I realized that the idea was so strong that it was worth risking my my time.

SPEAKER_05 15:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 15:19

It was worth risking, you know, a a year writing for free, or in the case of infinite, it took it took three years to it to to finish that adaptation. That was uh that was a crazy one.

SPEAKER_04 15:28

Um but it uh And why why was that? Why why did it take three years?

SPEAKER_02 15:33

Uh because I'm not very good at my job.

SPEAKER_04 15:35

Um, I mean, like were there a lot of revisions? Did people come back with the notes, things like that?

SPEAKER_02 15:41

Uh well it was my first time adapting a book. Uh the book was very different from the film. The book is more like an HBO series. It's it's uh it's it's very cerebral, it's very internal, uh, it's it's not like a summer popcorn movie. And the vision the vision I had for it was the summer popcorn version. So a lot of it I was having to to create on my own. And it would it presented unique problems like how do you how do you create stakes in a world where death isn't real? Like for for anybody that doesn't know this the story, it's it's a movie about people that can reincarnate upon death and retain all their previous skill sets and memories from their past lives. Uh so you know, in in that scenario, it's like, okay, well, if you if you die, you just come back in the next life. So how how is anything at stake if if everyone can just come back?

SPEAKER_03 16:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

So I had to figure out ways to to make you know their version of death real. And you know, on top of that, I was also working on assignments to to keep the lights on. But really, the thing that it took three years was that I couldn't figure out where to go from the midpoint. I wrote I rewrote the first 50 pages over and over again for a year. And then I couldn't I couldn't figure out uh why I was losing interest at the midpoint. The thing that cracked it for me was that I I realized that the most emotional thing that could have happened to the main character had already happened by page 25. I I kind of blown it too early. Um I I restructured it, you know, moved some stuff around, and then it came together fairly quickly after after that.

SPEAKER_05 17:14

Interesting. I rarely I rarely read that in a script where the emotional peak happens too early. You know, usually the emotional peak never happens at all because reading that meeting scratch.

SPEAKER_00 17:24

But I see you read my early work. All right. Yes, I have.

SPEAKER_05 17:27

Um, but uh we interviewed you for Pipeline Artists many years ago, uh not many years ago, but a few years ago, um, where we went into depth with the uh with infinite and with the um reincarnationist papers was the book.

SPEAKER_01 17:40

Yeah, those yeah, that was the book. So yeah, that that's uh interesting.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

All right, well, story's so nice you've heard it twice.

SPEAKER_05 17:46

Uh great story, like a guy is in a hostel in like Kathmandu and finds a book. It's just a great like origin story.

SPEAKER_02 17:54

Oh yeah, that uh the the the writer that that that wrote the book uh probably came out the best out of anybody involved with that movie because it it's uh you know, 10 years after writing it, he he got a publishing deal for two more books out of it. Like he's he's he's still writing now. He was on uh you know, he he was on every every talk show you can think of, uh, you know, taught talking about his journey and into becoming a novelist. And uh yeah, like like if there's if there's an inspirational story in that, it's it's with him.

SPEAKER_04 18:24

Was he pleased with your adaptation or did he like not like it the fact that it was so different?

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah, he uh okay. I mean, but behind closed doors, who knows? But but but uh we're we're we're to your face. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

We're we're good buddies in the lead up to the film. He he he joined my Burning Man camp. Uh and he was he he he had an offer for uh a uh publishing deal that was contingent on the movie starting production, and Paramount kept being on the fence about whether or not they were actually going to start shooting the movie. Uh they kept waiting and waiting. And the day they finally pulled the trigger and said, Yes, we are officially uh rolling cameras, uh Eric the writer had already gone off to the desert to help build our our camp. And at that time there was no cell service out there, so I had no way to tell him that his life was about to change. Uh so I actually wound up driving out there myself and getting to tell him in person on top of a giant flame shooting art piece in the middle of the desert.

SPEAKER_05 19:30

Oh, it's like that. Wow.

SPEAKER_02 19:31

It was yeah, it was one of the most emotional moments of my life. We we we hugged it out, and it was uh you know, it was you know a moment we we realized that both of our lives were about to change. Um and yeah, the the like in terms of like how I you know adapted it, the the way he he he put it is that uh you know the book is its own thing, the book series is its own thing, and the reason why there's a series is because somebody figured out the popcorn version of it for the movie.

SPEAKER_05 20:01

Yeah, that's good. I'm just thinking about going to Burning Man and how that is not at all. I see.

SPEAKER_01 20:06

But good for you guys. Not really mine anymore. I I haven't I haven't been in a few years. Yeah, I I did my tour. Is there a Ritz Carlton on the property? Uh I built one once.

SPEAKER_02 20:18

I I I actually built the build your own I built a I built a a four-story hotel with an operational elevator in it out there once. No way.

SPEAKER_04 20:27

Was that during while you were doing the three-year adaptation process because you had to pay the bills?

SPEAKER_01 20:34

No, no, that was no that was back in like 2010.

SPEAKER_04 20:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 20:39

I could we could do a whole other podcast series on um building an elevator desert. But uh, you did kind of answer this question like five percent of the way. Um skip ahead uh on my list here. But when you were growing up, you grew up, right? Uh when you're growing up, I'm assuming in the 80s, you're about my age, I think.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Yeah, I was born in 82, so yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:02

Okay, I was 81. So we we share the same cinema history, I'm sure. Uh, were you really in the movies when you were five, six, seven, eight years old, or did that kind of come later?

SPEAKER_02 21:12

Obsessed, obsessed from day one. Um my dad tried to uh get me into the stuff that he was passionate about, which was uh which was football, and uh I I didn't have the attention span for it. So he would take my my older sister to football games, my mom would take me to the video store, uh, and I would rent Ghostbusters and Beetlejuice every single time. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:36

Was it the warehouse? Was your local video rental store? Was it Blockbuster?

SPEAKER_02 21:41

Blockbuster? Some it was some tiny rental store back in Tucson, Arizona. Uh but uh when we when we were ten years old, we we we moved to uh Park City, Utah, and uh you know that the that was ninety two, so it was the year of Reservoir Dogs and El Mariachi and uh like Do it coming out at Sundance. So like I I started going to Sundance every year from you know age 10 onward and uh becoming obsessed with with independent filmmaking. And uh I you know I wrote my first feature when I was 12 and printed it out, took it around Main Street, you know, like waiting for directors to come out of the Egyptian theater.

SPEAKER_04 22:21

It's like I've got to say for you.

SPEAKER_02 22:24

Yeah, I I uh no one this is this was a weird script. It was it was me trying to write my version of train spotting. Uh because I uh at 12 years old? At 12 years old, yeah. I I I tried to go see train spotting when I was 12. It they wouldn't sell me a ticket because you know, 12. So uh I went so I went next door to Barnes and Noble and I found a copy of the script. And immediately Barnes and Noble? Yeah, Barnes and Noble had uh they had like in the cinema section, they had like copies of screenplays. Wow.

SPEAKER_04 22:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 22:57

Uh and they as far as I know, they still do. Like like uh, you know, if something is getting you know getting a lot of heat, uh they'll just slap a cover on it and s and uh and sell copies of it.

SPEAKER_05 23:07

What's what's the law what's the log line to your train spotting knockoff?

SPEAKER_02 23:11

Uh uh train spotting, but with speed freaks in Chicago instead of heroin addicts in Scotland, written by a 12-year-old from Utah who's never seen drugs. I mean, I guess that's that's the best way to describe it. Incredible winning.

SPEAKER_05 23:27

That should be your next script. You tell John to circulate that one.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

I gotta I gotta I gotta find it. It's in it's you know somewhere in the hardware. At least you still have it.

SPEAKER_04 23:36

That is so cool that you have something like that.

SPEAKER_02 23:39

I mean handwritten? Uh no, I wrote it on a Macintosh classic in Microsoft Word. Okay, well that's that's a step up anyway.

SPEAKER_04 23:47

So cool.

SPEAKER_05 23:48

That's great. I I asked because uh you never know. Sometimes screenwriters find their you know, their love for film or or storytelling and writing later in life, yeah. But I don't I think I'm I'm I'm blinded by nostalgia, like as we all are. Like we all think the era that we grew up in was the best era, but like the 80s and early 90s really was this like little you know golden era for cinema in its own way, right?

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I I I you know is if I if I really want to want to depress myself, I'll look up, you know, what the what the box office was for an average weekend, you know, back in the 90s, and just see like how many original films and how many romantic comedies and courtroom dramas and weird indie stuff and you know straight up action films and slashers and all like all these uh all these things that aren't IP or sequels or or remakes were were culturally dominant, and people were showing up and talking about them. Uh and you compare that to you know at an average weekend of the box office now, and you're seeing you know regurgitated titles from when we were growing up.

SPEAKER_05 24:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 24:58

Which is a testament to how good the era was, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:00

Yeah, yeah, exactly. It was uh it was a beautiful time to be into film. Um yeah, so like I you know, started at 12. I I wrote one script every year per year after that until somebody started paying me for it when I was 25.

SPEAKER_05 25:15

That's crazy, yeah. And that you had to put in the elbow grease to get there, right?

SPEAKER_02 25:19

You know, it's oh yeah. And these scripts sucked. I mean, like like they say like you gotta write like five bad ones before you write a good one. Like I wrote at least 15 bad scripts before I wrote a good one. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 25:29

That's a lot of scripts to write, though.

SPEAKER_02 25:32

I mean, it it it's uh it's like playing scales on a guitar. It's you know, it it's you're just guitar. I I I play Michelle's a musician, so she has to bring in the music. Oh, yeah. What do you play?

SPEAKER_04 25:44

I'm a pianist, and Matt plays piano too.

SPEAKER_05 25:48

Not quite at the at the concierto level of Michelle Daniel, but I'm picturing you guys having like a dueling piano stuff.

SPEAKER_02 25:56

Dueling piano like like um after hours when you once once you're done with the podcast.

SPEAKER_04 26:01

Well, I I did play a lot of lounge piano, a lot of clubs, a lot of hotels, things like that. So no more though. No more.

SPEAKER_05 26:08

Yeah. So did I until they told me to politely leave the lobby of the hilton. Let me let me jump over to a different topic. We get we get a lot of screenwriters listening to us, obviously. They're in in the pipeline orbit. Um, they're very confused right now, the newer ones. I don't know if you've noticed. Screenwriters become very fractured. Like we're old enough to remember when there was uh remember they had the well, the Hollywood Creative Directory, right? Where you would go there and you'd see which managers and agents are looking for material. Um, there were resources online. We actually had one many years ago called the Writers Database where you can actually query certain managers who are open to new material through the site, and that was all very nice. Um the publishing world still has all that, and there's a process and it's clear, um, and there's a roadmap for writers. Screenwriting doesn't have that anymore, and nobody has any idea like what to do, right? I don't know if you've noticed on social, but they're clearly confused. Uh if I'm a screenwriter and I have a legitimately decent script, how am I getting it to a manager now? Is it it's gotta be a combination of things, obviously, but what's kind of the go-to through your POV?

SPEAKER_02 27:20

You know, I would have killed to have the resources that we have now when I was growing up. I mean, I I you know I'm sure I talked about this in the last podcast, but I mean I had to start a fake management company out of out of my bedroom using the Hollywood Creative Directory to get my first scripts read. Um did you really? Yeah, I I didn't talk about this last time. No.

SPEAKER_04 27:40

No, talk about it now. Do tell.

SPEAKER_02 27:43

All right, so listen, we're we're gonna do a sub we're gonna go on a side quest here. Uh we'll do it.

SPEAKER_04 27:47

Yes, we'll come back to this whole thing.

SPEAKER_02 27:49

Yeah. Uh when I was uh when I was 18, I'd written, I don't know, six or seven scripts by that point. I'd finally written one that wasn't good, but people could finish in in one sitting. So to me, that meant it was great. Um I was like, I wonder if I can sell this. Uh, you know, I'm still living at home. I'm going to community college. Uh I I don't have an agent, don't have a manager, don't have a lawyer. You know, I've I've got nothing except for the Hollywood Creative Directory, the old phone book of producers' numbers. Um, you know, I'm living in Park City at the time, and I can't hide the fact that I've got a Utah number. So I I create a uh a fake management company called Sundance Literary Management. Uh that I I went I I went uh deep into fraud on this one. I I uh I created this alias named David Lortz who would call up different uh producers and say, like, hey, this is David Lortz. I'm a Sundance literary in Park City. Uh, we're a new branch of the Sundance Institute, uh, taking writers out of our summer lab program. Uh, I've got a client that I think is really up your alley. I'd love to send a sample your way. And I started getting my first meetings through that. Like somebody would call back and be like, hey, we like this. We want to meet with Ian. I'm like, all right, well, Ian will be in LA next week. And I'd go out to the meeting and just pray that they wouldn't recognize my voice. Um, I had to disguise it a little bit. I had to raise the voice of people who locked in.

SPEAKER_04 29:20

Yeah, no, of course. Of course. But uh this is amazing. So wait, I'm I'm just trying to wrap my head around this.

SPEAKER_02 29:27

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:28

Like nobody tried to follow up. I mean, I guess I guess it was at the time where it was like, okay, we're not just gonna Google everything. This was pre-internet.

SPEAKER_02 29:36

Yeah, this was uh in the days of the the internet where not everybody had a website.

SPEAKER_00 29:42

Yeah, if you could pull the shit down, you would have had to actually start your own management company. You would have had it be for real.

SPEAKER_04 29:48

Uh, for real had to register with your secretary of state for your cover. And then, oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 29:56

Yeah, but to be to be fair, the like the the ruse didn't last that long. Like, I I I did this for the better part of a year and you know managed to get a uh a one producer offering a one dollar option on my script, and I was like, that's cash money.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

You actually got a deal?

SPEAKER_02 30:14

Like, so I I I'm like, I wonder if I can use that to get you know to leverage a real um a real agent. So I I had David start cold calling agencies, and through some like phone kung fu, I wound up with like uh like a big agent over William Morris, and he's saying, like, oh, wait a minute, Sundance started uh its own shingle? Great, okay, here. Anybody you have right now that doesn't have an an agent in LA, overnight me their script, send me a stack. Uh, here's my FedEx number, put it on my tab, like send these to me now. So I get off the phone, I'm like, oh no, I gotta get more clients. So I I start calling up my high school friends, being like, You you wrote a script one time, right? Okay, good, give it to me. So, like, I take this horrible stack of screenplays written by teenagers and my you know, slightly less horrible screenplay on top of it, send it off to this guy. That's on a Friday. Monday morning rolls around. I get this call from a Utah number on my phone. So I don't answer it as David, I just say hello. And they say, Is David Lortz there? I'm like, speaking. And they're like, Hi, David, this is the Sundance Institute. Apparently, you've been fraudulently impersonating our company. I'm like, shit. So I just I hang up on those guys and I uh get on my bike, I ride to community college and I just sweat all day long. And when I come out at the end of the day, I I discover there's a cease and desist letter from Sundance's lawyers sitting in David's email box threatening to sue me. Uh so at that point, I'm like, I'm gonna retire from management and just focus on writing. Uh so I I you know went off to film school and and you know got my career going the the the the the normal way. Uh but yeah, that there was a there was a scheme you could pull for a brief shining moment in time before everybody was Googleable.

SPEAKER_01 31:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 31:59

Um but it you know to to answer your your original question, if uh if I had had things like uh like the the blacklist or the resources that you you have on on the internet that uh you know you you can listen to podcasts like yours and see uh what managers and producers have what kind of taste. Uh being able to you know create my own grid of you know who's making the types of movies that I like to write at what price point and being able to write something targeted towards those guys. I I like the the the fact that uh you know there's uh there's fellowships geared toward different types of writers that you that you know are are available now. There's uh good programs, there's good there's good you know incubators and stuff, even uh there's good incubation programs that didn't exist back then, and there's uh you know the the there are you know still some some legitimate contests out there between all all those resources, those those are those are all good ways to break in. And plus you got you know guys like my manager John Zazierni on on Twitter who openly say that they do accept queries, and he's not he's not the only one.

SPEAKER_05 33:11

So he's a he's a di Bellevue's a dying breed of companies that are actually open to queries, though. God bless them. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:18

I mean, yeah, I I I'll give him credit, man. The the the guy is is a is is a mensch for for spending time that could be doing other things, reading queries and in some cases responding and sometimes signing writers off of them.

SPEAKER_05 33:33

I think when I say it's it's chaotic out there is that it's all kind of there's no like set here's what you have to do. Like if I'm an author, I know that I'm gonna go look at the listing on query tracker or something for lid agents, and then I query them through there. It's just the human brain needs that structure sometimes. Um I don't think that I don't think it's asking uh a lot from an emerging screenwriter to like do the research. Like you're gonna have to put some you know extra extra work into it, and that's just how it is.

SPEAKER_02 34:02

Any any dream job is always gonna be surrounded by tall walls.

SPEAKER_05 34:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:06

Um and uh, you know, up like in the in the case of Hollywood, it's it's uh you know the the the process for breaking in, I think, is intentionally Byzantine, like it's you know it's a very closed uh world. Yeah, uh and it's it's an especially hard time to break in right now because the industry is contracting. But there have always been inroads, there's always been paths, and there always will be.

SPEAKER_05 34:30

Yeah. And on the industry side of things, like obviously we work closely with Bellview. They've I think over the last three or four years, they've they've signed the majority of our of all the writers that we've gotten signed over the last four years, right? So they most of them have gone to Bell View. Um some of them are doing very well and number one on the blacklist and so forth, um, which is great. Uh but I don't want to say the onus is on the industry too, but like the industry could do some managers out there could do more to like put feelers out with legitimate platforms and say, hey, send me like your top two scripts every year and just at least take a look. Um, I feel like not a lot are doing that as much as they could. Some of them don't really need to do that because they get plenty of great material, but uh, you know, regardless, or they have you know uh plenty of clients that they're focused on. But uh it's kind of a it's kind of a bit of a give and take a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 35:26

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:26

I think hosting all the writers.

SPEAKER_02 35:28

Yeah, I I I I I think that like, you know, there's uh I I I think that that more can be done on on the industry side to create inroads for uh for talented writers. Uh and I I think that like uh it's it's a self-perpetuating cycle that we're in right now because uh the uh the industry has all these these blocks up uh because so much of what they get submitted isn't ready for submission. Uh so like you know, if if I'm looking at this uh on each end of the spectrum, yeah, like you said, I I I think that like on the industry side, you know, having uh that invitation of, hey, send me the the the best two things that you that you read last year by a by an unrepped writer. And on the the the the writer's side, if uh if there were to be some kind of cultural sea change, which I have no idea how this would happen, where uh where writers uh were willing to vet the hell out of their concepts and uh and send out uh only this the the the stuff that they have sent through multiple layers of quality control. Like if if uh be because so many people send out first drafts, so many people send out uh stuff that hasn't been vetted, somebody you know, or or hasn't been rewritten or you know has not had the tires kicked on it.

SPEAKER_05 36:59

Or let me just add, it's been vetted by your peer group who doesn't really know what they're talking about. Right. Just to add, to put it bluntly.

SPEAKER_02 37:06

Right, right, of course. But you know, you gotta start somewhere. I mean, like a a lot of uh just your mom.

SPEAKER_04 37:12

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

And then you know that that's that's the other the the other beauty of the internet is you you can find uh a better peer group uh if you hunt for it on online. Like, you know, a tactic that I'll sometimes tell young writers is go on Reddit, go into like the uh the the short film subs or you know go go on YouTube and just you know start hunting for like you know best short films 2026, watch a bunch of those, see who directed them, see if any any of those guys are are repped and uh and see if you can establish uh a dialogue with them. Because you know you you've you've got this incredible access to to other filmmakers right now that didn't exist for any other generation, and through social media, you've got ways to to reach out to them. And most, you know, people who are are still in this in the stage of their career where they're making short films would be stoked to hear from a creative fan. Um like there's there's there's ways to to you know to start forging those those peer groups early.

SPEAKER_04 38:13

Yeah, so it's like it's partially a networking thing, it's partially a you gotta be creative in like your strategy and your approach to all this because like yeah, as Matt was saying, with in the publishing world, it is a little bit more cut and dry, but it's still not cut and dry in how you arrive at you know a deal and that at that contract, right? Like everybody's story at the end of the day still ends up being different, you know. And so I mean it's this it's the same way with the publishing world. So just because the roadmap is laid out doesn't mean the roadmap is not just as complicated or just as you know unique to you as an individual.

SPEAKER_05 38:52

It's it's been uh a few weeks ago, I was on a group group text and I asked one of them, um, hey, have you seen a film that has this, this, and this in it? Like, I was just looking for examples for a writer who was working on a similar project. And one of them, well the one of my writer friends was like, Yeah, I saw short, this film festival last year, you should check it out. He sends me the link. I love it. Uh, the other person on the thread is like, Oh, I love it too. Let me send it to my other the other manager at our company. And they ended up meeting with the director. It's like, did that did that filmmaker know that you know, I was gonna be sitting in San Pedro, California, like looking for a certain type of short, and all of a sudden she has a manager meeting from some roundabout, you know, exact way? Like it's uh you you have to put your stuff out there, I think is when it's ready anyway.

SPEAKER_04 39:44

Yeah, when it's ready, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:46

Yeah, if you if you do good work in public, then that's your that's your first step towards the win that you want.

SPEAKER_05 39:53

Yeah, because if that's short film, first of all, it had to be a good short film, but it was a good short film, but it it had to be out there and publicly available because I wasn't really gonna hunt it down, right? So you have to kind of create the path of least resistance for industry too, if you want them to kind of find you somehow, right?

SPEAKER_04 40:08

Yeah, you have to have and yeah, you have to have an online presence. Like, you know, back when we were all growing up, we didn't necessarily have to do that, but now you kind of you you have to have to but some people can shoot themselves in the face and bury their career by saying dumping.

SPEAKER_05 40:22

That is very true.

SPEAKER_04 40:23

Oh, yeah, you have to be professional, you have to think who the hell is gonna look at this, and there's there's always the possibility that someone who's gonna make or break your career is gonna look at it and speak.

SPEAKER_02 40:33

Yeah, I've had to scrub my comment history on my socials several times. Like, oh wait, apparently back in 2009, I thought it was a good idea to take a massive shit on this filmmaker. Okay, let's get rid of that.

SPEAKER_05 40:45

Um remember that time I mentioned on the podcast how I created a fake management company?

SPEAKER_04 40:53

Sundance. That's okay. Sundance is honored now. They're honored.

SPEAKER_01 40:59

They left me, all right. They they they they left Park City. And so at this point, I I somehow think that that ship has sailed. Um 30 years ago, 25 years ago, you're fine.

SPEAKER_02 41:09

Bachelor. To your point, yeah, you you you do need it. It is helpful to have an online presence where you can connect with other creative people because online is a space where the majority of entry-level creativity is is happening. But compare that to previous generations where you needed an in LA presence. Like you had to like you know, move to the city and essentially like you know, play pick up basketball outside the NBA office to use Franklin Leonard's metaphor. You uh like in in instead of being able to log in and broadcast your stuff from wherever you are, you had to move out to this expensive city and get five roommates. Uh so like yeah, way too same job or something. Yeah, so it it is a pain in the ass having to to you know to cultivate an online profile and and use the internet to your advantage, but way easier than loading up a U-Haul and moving out to Chatsworth.

SPEAKER_04 42:03

In other words, you're saying nobody should be complaining today.

SPEAKER_02 42:07

Listen, it it's uh it's not Hollywood if nobody's complaining.

SPEAKER_04 42:12

It's not America. It's not America. It's not America, but nobody's patriotic.

SPEAKER_01 42:16

It's un-American to complain.

SPEAKER_04 42:18

It's un-American to be happy. Yeah, be happy.

SPEAKER_05 42:24

Go to Denmark, happy as God.

SPEAKER_01 42:29

I'm not saying that it's it's not art.

SPEAKER_02 42:31

I'm just saying that there's there's a way to look at it from glass half full because of the incredible access that the internet offers.

SPEAKER_05 42:37

And people want to work with the glass half-full people. No one wants to work with the people who are consistently cynical. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:46

If you look over your own comment history and see if it's if it tend trends positive or negative, and then ask, you know, how would that play out if I was in a writer's room? Like, you know, would I be the the one that people are excited to hear pitch? Would I, you know, would they be excited about hiring somebody that has this worldview?

SPEAKER_03 43:03

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:04

If the answer is if the answer is yes, you can't keep that up. If the answer the answer is no, never too late to change.

SPEAKER_05 43:11

Never too late to change. That's a good ending spot, but I also have one little little tact on tact on question. Can you can you reveal uh or hint at anything else that you are currently um developing next?

SPEAKER_02 43:23

Uh yeah, it's it's been uh it's been a busy uh busy couple of years. Uh so we we've got um we got a couple more weeks of production on uh on uh shiver. Uh that was the the spec I wrote before 71 minutes. Uh that's uh it it's Jaws Meets Edge of Tomorrow. It's uh it's uh Keanu Reeves plays a smuggler who gets trapped in a time loop while stuck out at sea, surrounded by sharks, and has to uh figure out how to master this survival scenario fighting.

SPEAKER_04 43:54

I would totally watch that.

SPEAKER_02 43:55

Yeah, we're dating.

SPEAKER_05 43:58

It's a Tim Tim Miller movie. Right?

SPEAKER_02 44:00

Yeah, it's uh yeah. So Tim Miller directing uh uh from uh from Deadpool in the last Terminator. Uh Warner Brothers is releasing it in August of next year, and that one's that one's gonna look dope. It's uh I uh I've been watching the dailies every day and and Tim Miller has just such an incredible eye. With uh Seventy One Minutes, you know, we'll we'll uh we'll we'll see where that goes. Uh developing something new with uh with Jason Reitman that I think if if we can if we can get it right is is gonna be uh it it's it's it's gonna be a uh more uh four quadrant type of movie than 71 Minutes is. Like, you know, it's 71 minutes is deeply R-rated and this one is a little bit more ambulant in tone. Uh but it's it's a it's uh uh it's it's you know it's a supernatural uh adventure movie.

SPEAKER_04 44:53

So like PG13 Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 45:04

Got that uh I got that going on. Um I'm uh writing a uh a uh creature feature uh over at uh over at Sony that uh is hopefully gonna be getting uh getting going soon. And uh I wrote a um a really fun uh buddy action movie uh for Department M. Uh that's the the best way I can describe it is it's um it's a John Wick movie where everyone is bad at their job. Uh so it sounds fun. It's yeah, that one that one is gonna be that's that's gonna be delightful if we can get it done.

SPEAKER_04 45:43

Cool. Yeah, awesome.

SPEAKER_03 45:45

I love it.

SPEAKER_04 45:45

Sounds like you're extremely busy, and that's great. And every writer probably who's listening will want to be you by the end of the episode.

SPEAKER_05 45:53

So let them be jealous.

SPEAKER_04 45:55

Let them let them they can be jealous, and then that can just motivate them to work harder and network more and stop complaining and be full.

SPEAKER_01 46:08

Yeah, not another role with venting say uh my only advice on that is do it in the group chat and uh and and not in the uh the comment room.

SPEAKER_04 46:16

Yeah, don't don't do it out in the world wide web.

SPEAKER_05 46:18

Do it on your I can tell you too, some things don't even belong in the group chat, some things belong in your own sweet little head.

SPEAKER_04 46:25

In your own head, leave it in the diary on paper. What did you Matt, what did you write?

SPEAKER_05 46:30

Oh, I I say something uh offensive at least three or four times a day. Uh on multiple group chats for that matter. Uh I keep all my offensive receipts. No. Ian Shore. Thank you for your time. Um, thank you for the little nuggets of uh you know development wisdom. Wisdom. Um well development wisdom, but also like the sneak peek at things to come. I always like to sneak peek.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

Yeah, well, thank you so much. This was such a pleasure.

SPEAKER_05 46:57

71 minutes, hopefully coming coming soonish. Um but shiver will be the next one up. Indeed.

SPEAKER_04 47:06

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_05 47:07

Thanks too much.

SPEAKER_04 47:08

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_01 47:08

All right, take care.

SPEAKER_04 47:31

Um, right, right, right. Like, I gotta get back to my weird lights on my face. Yeah, sure. Please do.