This is a transcript of SYS 460 – Working With Rian Johnson on Knives Out With Noah Segan .
Welcome to Episode 460 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing actor turn Writer Director, Noah Segan. He just completed a vampire road movie called Blood Relatives. So, we talked about that how it all came together for him. And he’s been working consistently as an actor for many years now. So, we talked about that transition as well going from actor to writer director, so stay tuned for that interview. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast, so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned in the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcast and then just look for episode number 460. If you want my free guide How to Sell a Screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. You just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter, and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay, just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So now let’s get into the main segment. Today, I’m interviewing writer, director and actor Noah Segan. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Noah to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Noah
Thank you happy to be here.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up, and how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Noah
Well, I grew up in New York City, fifth generation, New Yorker, very artistic family, but working artists. My grandfather was a photographer, my mother’s a painter and a cartoonist, and I have an honor to work in the fashion business. But everybody, just as I said sort of working class really had to kind of go every day into the office, even if that office was a fun studio or fun assignment. And so, you know, I always knew that I loved movies and sets. As a kid, I did some commercials and things like that. But it was really sort of an after-school kind of hobby. It wasn’t taken seriously. And it wasn’t until I was about 19-20 that I decided I really wanted to work full time as a career in the movie business. And at the time, I wanted to be a cameraman. So, I started working for a friend of the family who was a cinematographer. And I did that for a few years until I very circuitously met Ryan Johnson, who had been working for a few years to get brick made. And we became buddies and discussed, you know, what it would look like if I acted in brick. I gave him an audition. We talked and he hired me. And ever since then my day job has been an actor.
Ashley
Huh, that’s fascinating. Yes. So, it’s that joke from my Dinner with Andre Oh, I couldn’t sell my script, so I became an actor. And that’s a great story. Because I would have thought, intuitively, you would have thought it was the opposite. You get into acting, but it sounds like you were pursuing to be behind the camera from the start.
Noah
I just wanted to be on sets, you know, I just wanted to work on movies and shows. And I sort of, I don’t know that, that as a kid, or at least even as a teenager, somebody in my early 20s, I really saw a big difference between what people were doing in front of the camera and what people were doing behind the camera and all just sort of seemed like the environment I wanted to be in.
Ashley
Now I know just, talk a little bit about that transition. So, you’ve got a good resume now as an actor. So how did you start to sort of cross those bridges? Do you have some producer friends? You say, hey, you know, I got this script. Have you been writing scripts? Tell us talk about that transition a little bit. I know there’s a lot of people that are listening to this. They want to be screenwriters, they’re working in a different field. Obviously, being an actor, you got a lot of good contacts in the industry, but just talk about that transition. How as an actor, do you get producers and just to take you seriously as a writer director?
Noah
Well, yeah, I think the first thing that I did was write a lot of bad material that I did not feel comfortable sharing with anyone. I did the thing that everybody should do, which is that I failed and I kind of knew that I was failing as I was doing it. And I would go off and I would act and I would take my take my gigs, and then I would work on stories and I would work on scripts. And you know, very few things ever came to the fruition of actually being a screenplay, let alone anything being something that I felt comfortable showing even to the people who I worked with who I also counted as close friends. Until very recently, and when I finally felt like I had cracked the code and had something that I was excited about, that felt like it was representative of the story that was in my heart and did sort of check the boxes. And I could also compare it to the great scripts that I had read, whether they were just scripts that I had read, for movies that I loved, or scripts that I had read for movies that I had worked on, when I kind of put all those things into the columns, and they lined up, then I felt comfortable sharing them, with my colleagues and my friends. And of course, you know, a lot of great notes came out of that I was very lucky that, you know, my partner, my wife is one of the best writers in the world, I was able to get some great notes from her and my close friend Ryan, of course, who is a great writer. But, you know, that’s very different from the process of actually going out and trying to make it. And that process was very circuitous. You know, it absolutely started with having a friendship and a relationship with Sam Zimmerman at shutter, which is part of AMC is a studio that made the film but even that, you know, wasn’t a slam dunk. Let’s go make the movie. You know, I had met Leon Naeem through other colleagues, he produced the endless for Aaron Moorhead, Dustin Benson, and he had been out there trying to, you know, secure financing and find partners. And then I met Josh Rubin, who had sort of made a movie called Scare Me, that was a bit of a proof of concept for a movie like mine, he acted in it, wrote it directed it, made it on a low-budget, it also premiered on scatter. And it was really sort of combining all of those relationships, the relationship between Josh who had sort of done the thing that was similar to what I was trying to do, Liao who had produced movies, at this budget level. Sam, who is an executive at a studio that could finance it, who I had a personal relationship with, we could speak like friends. Combining all of those things is what eventually led to financing the film.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So, and usually, we talk about that sort of at the end. But that’s interesting to hear at the beginning of the interview. So just let’s take a step back. And just give us sort of a pitch or log line what is Blood Relatives all about just so people have some sort of context as we talk through this.
Noah
Blood Relatives is a story about a loner vampire, criss-crossing the country in his 1969 Barracuda fastback. Thinking that he is a very cool dude, until a teenage kid shows up and says, you’re my dad. And the two of them end up on a journey to figure out how to be a family while also being vampires.
Ashley
So where did this idea come from? And I’m curious, especially someone like yourself, you have so many contacts in the industry, you know, well regarded writers, vampire movies, you know, it’s well-worn territory at this point. How can you make an original movie? And did you get any pushback, as you started to tell people about this idea that, do we need another vampire movie? But how do you do something that’s well tread and make it original?
Noah
I don’t know. I’ll let you be the judge of that. But I will say that, that as much as I love monster movies, and as much as I love vampire movies, and you know, Lord knows, I’ve seen a lot of them. And I’ve stolen from the best as well as, as everyone’s good. I really wanted to make a movie about what it felt like to become a dad. And to sort of talk about the transition that I went through thinking that I was one way and then realizing that my life was a completely different way. And how that felt, it didn’t feel, sometimes it felt scary. Sometimes it felt like a horror movie. Sometimes it felt funny, and it felt like a comedy of errors, you know, and just sort of putting all of those things together and realizing that the vampire was going to be very helpful in telling that story. And that the vampire was something that I understood as a fan as someone who just studies that stuff. It felt like that was the mechanism that I could use. So, I hope that if the film does feel fresh, it only feels fresh because it’s just my experience, and not because it’s another vampire movie.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. And so, you didn’t get any of those sorts of notes from shutter or any of these places. I mean, they must get a million vampire scripts, you know, submitted to them. But there was no pushback from any of the industry contacts.
Noah
Not in my case. No, not in my case. I didn’t feel like there was criticism of the vampire aspect. So, it felt very supportive. It felt like if anything, I got a little bit of confidence from the fact that I had really tried to subvert the vampire stuff.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So, let’s just talk quickly about your writing process. What is your writing process look like? Do you write in the morning? Do you write at night? Do you have a home office? Do you go to Starbucks, just what is your sort of writing process look like?
Noah
It looks like this. It looks like my garage. I write next to my car, it’s the garage. And the home office is generally where I write but, you know, most of my process is devoted to the outline stage, I tend not to go deep into like a treatment. You know, I tend to keep it as an outline a lot of bullet points, to just sort of get me to a place where I feel like I can translate a story a beginning, middle, end, whatever structure I decide on. And in the case of Blood Relatives, it’s actually 5 Acts. It’s not three. But that’s pretentious to say, but really just to get to a point where I have enough bullet points where I can take them and put them into my writing program as scene headings. And to me, that’s sort of the magic moment, the magic moment where I can say, I’ve got scene headings, and I’ve got places and times where things are happening. That’s when I feel like I’m getting enough confidence to actually fill in the blanks and create the story. So, you know, things like dialogue are really, really, really far at the end of the process. For me, it really is about creating what feels like a map from beginning to end. And having that outline, that’s usually the equivalent of two or three pages translate into what I hope are at least 60 or 70, or 80 scene headings that can be expanded on.
Ashley
I’m curious, your process sounds very structured, very organized. And frankly, that’s the way I’ve always written too, just in a very sort of one step at a time inching myself closer to the final line. How did you come up with this process? How did you arrive at this very organized sort of structured process in writing?
Noah
You know, mostly it was talking to other writers, and you know, some of whom are my friends, you know, I have friends who spend months writing in notebooks, doing, God knows what in those notebooks, they will never show to anyone. And then they say; Okay, I’m done. And they’ve got a stack of little notebooks that’s a foot high. And then three weeks later, they’ve got the best screenplay you’ve ever read in your life. And you go; Well, I guess all of it. You did all that in those notebooks. And they didn’t know I just sort of doodled for a while. So, I figured it out. And you go, Okay, I guess that’s one way to do it. But what I took from that, which is not my process is that there is this incredibly important outline process there is this simmering of the soup that sort of has to happen. In order to get to a place where you feel confident that you can write a script, at least in my case, I can’t sit down and write, you know, interior Chinese food restaurant, and then keep going. And so, once I sort of discovered that as part of other people’s writing processes, it gave me the confidence to create a structure for myself.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, perfect. What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned from doing this project? The writing, getting it produced, the whole process, just one lesson that you could share with us?
Noah
You know, the biggest lesson especially from writing and sort of gripped the development and writing process is simply that this didn’t mean anything to me until it was personal. And I’m like every writer, I have a toolbox full of ideas that all sound great and they all are really exciting and they sometimes sound like movies I want to see. But not all of them feel personal, not all of them feel like I’m able to, I don’t know, maybe make something that I would want to see myself or see myself in and connect with someone on. So, I think you know, the thing that made this kind of magical, and frankly, the thing that hopefully helped it come to fruition was really never forgetting that there are real people who are going to be reading this, there are real people who are going to be watching this. This isn’t just academic, I can sit and do my math all day long. And that’s very important. But at the end of the day, you know, if you’re not trying to connect with another person over your screenplay, or your movie at the finish line, you know, I don’t know if it’s tenable.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. That’s excellent advice. How can people see Blood Relatives, you know what the release schedule is going to be like?
Noah
Yes. So, we premiere on Shutter on November 22, a couple days before Thanksgiving, as a maybe a little left to centre family film for you guys to enjoy.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. Well, no, I really appreciate you coming on and talking to me today. Good luck with this film and good luck with your future films as well.
Noah
Thank you, Ashley. It’s been a pleasure.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
SYS’s from concept to completion, screenwriting course is now available, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse. It will take you through every part of writing a screenplay, coming up with a concept, outlining, writing the opening pages, the first act, second act, third act and then rewriting and then there’s even a module at the end on marketing your screenplay, once it’s polished and ready to be sent out. We’re offering this course in two different versions, the first version, you get the course, plus, you get three analyses from an SYS reader, you’ll get one analysis on your outline, and then you’ll get two analyses on your first draft of your screenplay. This is just our introductory price, you’re getting three full analyses, which is actually the same price as our three-pack analysis bundle. So, you’re essentially getting the course for free when you buy the three analyses that come with it. And to be clear, you’re getting our full analysis with this package. The other version doesn’t have the analysis. So, you’ll have to find some friends or colleagues who will do the feedback portion of the course with you. I’m letting SYS select members do this version of the course for free. So, if you’re a member of SYS select you already have access to it. You also might consider that as an option. If you join us via slack, you will get the course as part of that membership too. A big piece of this course is accountability. Once you start the course, you’ll get an email every Sunday with that week’s assignment. And if you don’t complete it, we’ll follow up with another reminder the next week, it’s easy to pause the course if you need to take some time off. But as long as you’re enrolled, you’ll continue to get reminders for each section until it’s completed. The objective of the course is to get you through it in six months so that you have a completed power screenplay ready to be sent out. So, if you have an idea for a screenplay, and you’re having a hard time getting it done, this course might be exactly what you need. If this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse. It’s all one word, all lowercase. I will of course a link to the course in the show notes and I will put a link to the course on the homepage up in the right-hand sidebar. On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing director Scooter Corky. He just did a horror film called The Friendship Game starring Peyton List. We talked about this project and how it all came together for him. It’s a teen horror film. So, we talked a little bit about casting and then working with younger actors, which is something screenwriters need to understand. Working with young actors, casting young actors, it does present a number of challenges. So, it’s something that screenwriters should, at least in some part, understand. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.