This is a transcript of SYS 467 – From Horror Anthology To Features With Roxanne Benjamin .
Welcome to Episode 467 of Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing producer and director Roxanne Benjamin, she just directed a horror film called There’s Something Wrong with the Children. She got her start really just as a film fan going to film festivals and networking, learning about the business and eventually using those connections to help produce the horror film VHS, which was a successful found footage film that combined a number of low budget stories into one film. She’s very transparent and really gives us some great detail into how she’s been able to produce and direct so many films, so stay tuned for that interview. If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leave me a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or sharing or liking 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 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 467.
If you want my free guide How to Sell screenplay in five weeks can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. 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. Once again just go to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. So, now let’s get into the main segment. Today I’m interviewing producer and director Roxanne Benjamin, here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Roxanne to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Roxanne
Hello, 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?
Roxanne
I grew up in the Backwoods of Pennsylvania, rural Pennsylvania. Like three and a half hours from Pittsburgh and I started in gosh, I started in documentary film, actually. And then also writing for horror websites doing like horror movie reviews. You know, having grown up in Romero country, I feel like I saw a night of living dead like quite a few times as a very young child and very impressionable at that point, so I was always interested in horror movies. And yeah, kind of just segued from there into producing. And then from producing to writing and then from writing to directing.
Ashley
Gotcha. So just taking a step back a little bit, talking about some of these horror blogs and magazines that you wrote for how did you get those jobs? I know a number of writers that are you know, coming up, and that’s sort of a first stepping stone. I’ve heard of this before, but maybe you can talk about that. How did you get in with those folks? Do these people you knew, did you just approach them with a cold email? What was your method to getting these horror movie jobs?
Roxanne
Yeah, I was very big on like, cold reaching out to people. That was like, that was my MO. I was when I worked for the documentary channel in Nashville, which doesn’t exist anymore. But it was on Dish Network 24/7. And I worked in programming there. So, I wrote a lot of like, blogs for the documentary channel, website and reviews of the movies that we were acquiring. So that gave me kind of like a at least, like, here’s my portfolio of movie reviews and that kind of thing. And then when I was in school, still I would go to film festivals. And then I would reach out to all the horror publications and say I am here on the ground. Here’s my stuff, if you don’t have someone here needs someone to cover anything. So really, it was just like putting myself in the position where I would be an asset to them if they didn’t have anyone there and kind of threw a wide net for that. And the person who responded to me the most was Brad Miska, bloody disgusting. So, I started writing for him back in like 2008, maybe, covering like midnight movies for like Sundance and other festivals that I was at, that I had just like driven to and was like sleeping on couches. And then I started working just coincidentally like I applied for a job at this production and management company that owned 50% of that website. So, the fact that I did that, just you know, at the time was like unpaid, I was just doing it to get into movies at film festivals. So, because I was doing that they were like oh we see that you write for this website that we have half ownership and then from that, like we decided to start like a label at the time called Bloody disgusting slacks that was acquiring movies like 12 or 14 movies a year that were these kind of smaller independent foreign horror films to put out with Venda universal, also, which doesn’t exist anymore. So, I kind of segued into doing that with Bloody Disgusting and going around and acquiring these titles and then from there, ended up making VHS for meeting all these filmmakers kind of on the festival circuit. Just went from that to like making horror movies for this company. So that’s kind of like my main transition from like writing to producing and then directing and writing myself.
Ashley
Did you always know from the start of all this when you started going to these film festivals trying to network that you want to be a writer, director, producer? What was sort of your ambition at this point?
Roxanne
Honestly, I was like, just a horror movie fan and like wasn’t even thinking of it in terms of like go getter like career stuff at the time, I just wanted to get into movies. That’s really what it came from was like a love of horror films. And from that, it was like, oh, this is something that actually you can make a career from because even when I was first getting a job out here like in the industry, I was still writing for Bloody Disgusting here and there. I was also doing like horror movie coverage for like the Slam Dance for film festival or not their horror film festival at Slam Dance had like a horror movie writing competition. So, I was doing like the coverage and like notes on those, you know, for like a certain amount per script. And from that probably read like hundreds of horror movie scripts. And that I think kind of like built into me like how to write horror movies in a way, or also just like having to pull them apart and analyze them because I didn’t go to film school, I did have like a creative writing degree and like a theatre degree, jazz hands. So, there was that to pull from, which has definitely helped me on the directing side. But I feel like it’s the 1000 hours thing, or 10,000, or whatever that 10,000 hours thing is of like reading all of these horror movie scripts and having to analyze them. I was doing that while I was just working in an art department on house for Fox, you know, so all of this was still kind of like a secondary thing to me of just doing something that I loved, which was like reading horror stories and watching horror movies. And it wasn’t until I started working for that production and management company that owned Bloody Disgusting that I was like this horror expert at this company. And I realized like, oh, that’s like an asset, this thing that I love, like, how can I turn that into just like what I do?
Ashley
And so, talk about those steps. So, now you’re in production at this production company. At what point do you start saying; Hey, by the way, I’ve written a horror script, you guys want to take a look at it? And how do you approach people that you’re now getting to know and not be annoying? Not be, yeah, yeah, they roll their eyes. But talk about that, that transition. Now you’re in production, how did you make it to, to actually getting some of these scripts options and sold and produced?
Roxanne
That’s kind of like, it’s such a, there’s no kind of like, here’s the clear path, and it went from like A to B to C, it’s like, there’s always like, Oh, well, then there’s 10 months of doing nothing, where I got nothing accomplished, you know what I mean? And I was working in for this company. You know, at first it was for acquisitions and distribution for these horror films, and like working on their campaigns and stuff like that. And then developing this horror movie for the VHS series. Like that’s, you know, we made that and then we made the second one and the third one. And so that was just developing all of these stories with all of these writer directors, and then putting those movies together. So, it really came from being in development. And then from there, I moved to another company that also made horror movies with Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard, who we made your next in the guest and a couple other films while I was there, and really, like, there was not during those years, a time where I was putting forth my own scripts or my own work, I was always making somebody else’s work. And honestly, it wasn’t until like, I had paid off all of my, like, egregious student loans that I was like, oh, I want to do this, because before then I felt you know, I kind of handcuffed to having to have a paycheck every week. Because otherwise, like I have a lot of strong feelings about student loans, because, you know, I put myself in that position but at the same time, like an 18-year-old kid, you don’t know any better and it got me the access to a lot of people and internships and stuff like that, that I still use today. So, I don’t regret doing it. But I do feel like I have a lot of friends who started writing and directing at a much younger age that that just went directly into that. And I do have an envy for that, because I didn’t start really writing and directing until I was in my mid-30s. And I feel like a lot of my friends have been doing everything kind of for like a decade or more longer than I hadn’t had a lot more kind of under their belt at that point. So, it’s once I had that kind of out of the way that I was like, this is what I really want to do. And I feel like I can do it now. Because I don’t feel like you know, I have to make like an exorbitant amount of money just to like have like a minimum amount of comfort in Los Angeles, at the end of the day, just pay off all of these loans and stuff. So, I left that company. As soon as like the month my student loans were paid off, I left that company and went with Brad to MPI, and pitch them the idea of doing this other anthology film called Southbound that was with a bunch of our director and writers from VHS. And one of the things that I had said to Brad is like, I will produce this, that I will put this together with you only if I can write it and direct on it. And he was like, great. So, I think starting in anthologies, and starting with like, here’s a bunch of like, these were successful writer directors on this project. And now I’m just like the new kid in the group, I was the only one who hadn’t written and directed anything that had been like produced, that was part of the movie, but I had all of these other elements, I guess it would be the same way as if like, you know, one way to get your script made as to attach a big actor to it or attach like known elements to it, like a number of them. And that, like, contributes to your probably success rate of getting it made. And so, I kind of like snuck in with all of these other, you know, writer directors who were already known in genre. And also for a very low price point. So, that was also part of it. Like it was easy for them to say yes to because we had had so much success on VHS. And it was also like, there’s no guarantee of return. But like it was a less risk, I think, for this production company to give us this money to make that film, because we’ve had success already making a similar style film.
Ashley
I’m curious. I had maybe a couple months ago, I had two filmmakers on and they had just done a horror anthology. VHS is obviously one that comes up. There are definitely people out there trying to do it. How do you find now with like Southbound and later, is there sort of an over because just from a financial standpoint, it’s easy to produce these kinds of, you know, very contained or things, then wrapping them together into a 90-minute thing. And I’ve always wondered how to distributors take it. Is there ever sort of a glut of the market with these anthologies? But just in general, how is this received by distributors? I mean, you’re a little bit different case, because you have this real good success under your belt. But just in general, in general, what do you think of the market with these anthologies?
Roxanne
I think it’s tough. I think they’re a tough sell. And I’ve heard that a lot from distributors. And I heard it on both like the TV side and the film side, they’re a tough sell. Unless you have like known directors and known writers involved, or known actors or some known element there, they’re a really tough sell. Because at the end of the day, you’re still making kind of like a bunch of short films that you’re putting together. One of the things that I think that was different about Southbound was the fact that it was kind of one continuous story that was a handoff between like the writers and directors of each section. So that it felt like one movie and at the end of the movie, it came back to the first section. So, it really felt like it was just one thing. Versus you know, a lot of these other ones, even XX, which I did after that, which was still just like, here’s a story, here’s a story, here’s a story. They’re all under this one umbrella. But then again, you have like cabinet of curiosities that Guillermo is doing. And it’s like a huge success for Netflix with all of these, like, big directors, but it’s also got a big producer behind it. So, I think there was a time when making those was like a good way to break in. I don’t know if it still is necessarily, I think it was just like at the time, there wasn’t really much like that. And also, that it was, in particular with VHS, it was found footage so it was like trying to do something new with a device that already existed. So, I think that was very interesting to the core community at the time.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So, let’s dig into your latest film – There’s Something Wrong with The Children. Maybe to start out you can just give us a quick logline or pitch of this. What is this movie all about?
Roxanne
I’m terrible, I’m like the worst elevator pitch on the planet. It’s my Achilles heel. Two couples go on a weekend fun trip. One of them has kids one of those one of them doesn’t. The couple with kids is having some marital problems so they have the other couple watch their kids and then those irresponsible childless couple manages to lose the kids. And when they come back, one of them thinks something has changed. And these might not be their kids anymore. And then you know, I would say, hilarity ensues. But really just horror ensues from there.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. So how did you become involved with this project as a director? Was this something that was written? Did you help develop this? Maybe you can talk about that. What is your relationship with these writers and how did you get brought on as the director?
Roxanne
I had been talking to Blumhouse about another movie. And then I had sent them a script, we’d been trying to find something to work together on the TV side, because it was all through like the Blumhouse television division. And they had the series that they were already doing with epics MGM plus, so it was trying to find something within that series that would fit kind of both their style and their production model. And my like, sensibilities, I guess, because I do a lot of the things that are outdoors. And I told them, I’m interested in like, female protagonist, and so they sent me this script, and we’re like, oh, this might be the one and I read it. And I was like, oh, man, this is great. There’s so many fun character and relationship things in this movie that I don’t see in a lot of horror movies. So, I was really like, drawn to the script, and how it like subverts the genre with you know, kind of a male protagonists that’s being gaslit, versus it being like, the usual female protagonist being gaslit that nobody believes when they say something is happening, and something’s wrong here. And everyone’s like, it’s fine. You’re overreacting. How have you been lately? You sure you’re okay? You know, so that was like a really fun thing for me to see that subverted. And, you know, the writers had worked on VHS three, which I kind of left the franchise halfway through that movie to go work with these other producers. And so, I had not worked with them directly. So, it just happened to be a coincidence that they had also worked on a VHS series, actually, you know, it’s kind of interesting, I feel like if it was on the feature side, there might have been more interaction with them. But since it was on the TV side, you know, these guys turned in their script. And then once it was, like, turned in, that was it, you know, the Blumhouse turned it over to me, and then we went into prep. And so, I had to do a lot of kind of like, adjustments on the script for production, that I think I really would have loved to have, like the input of the writers in working on that, because, you know, it was kind of in a vacuum working on my own for production, which is not, I think, a normal part of the process. Like I feel like I usually have you know, I write a lot of my own stuff. But when I have worked with other writers, like they’re involved through the process. So, you’re kind of getting to bounce some ideas off of people and everything. And, you know, that kind of thing, which was something I got really used to doing making all these anthologies just working with, like a lot of other writer directors and like, hashing through stuff is like a big part of my process. So, I wrote a number of drafts that were kind of in a vacuum to change for like production reasons and locations and things that you can do, because it was originally titled The Ravine. And there’s no ravines in New Orleans, or anywhere around New Orleans, because it’s a delta. And that’s where they have to shoot because it’s part of their production model. So how do we change the script to accommodate that? What can be changed to? Well, that means we have to change the mythology. Well shit, how are we going to change the mythology? So, there was a lot of changes, I had to make kind of on the fly in prep. So, I just hope that they feel that it still kind of serves what their intentions were with the script to begin with, because it’s kind of like completely off the rails from where it started. But so much of the DNA of it is in there of like, those relationships and these big, the big themes, and all of that is all theirs and all the stuff that was there to begin with. So, I feel like I moved a lot of the drapes around, if that makes sense.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. So, just to wrap things up quickly, I just like to ask the guests. If there’s anything you’ve been watching recently, Netflix, Hulu, you can recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience, is there anything that you’ve seen that you really like?
Roxanne
I mean, it’s a couple years old, but Marianne was a series of French series on Netflix. That is a horror series. That is really, really well done. It has like very Stephen King vibes. And I feel like I don’t see a lot of horror series done well that still managed to be like creepy and actually scary throughout the whole series. And it really is, it’s very effective. And so, I found it really fascinating study and how to continue a story over a number of episodes and still keep it scary, throughout like a whole 10-episode arc, so that’s something I’d recommend.
Ashley
Yeah, that’s a great recommendation, as you said, it was called Mariana?
Roxanne
Marianne.
Ashley
And where is that playing?
Roxanne
That’s on Netflix.
Ashley
On Netflix. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah, that’s a great recommendation. So, how can people see There’s Something Wrong with The Children? Do you know what the release schedule for that is going to be like?
Roxanne
Yeah, it’s out January 17th. And it’ll be out everywhere, you can buy a movie or rent a movie, you’ll be able to find it.
Ashley
Perfect. And what’s the best way for people to just keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, a blog, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing, I will put in the show notes so people can click over to it.
Roxanne
Mostly just Twitter, honestly.
Ashley
Okay, perfect. Perfect. And one final question. I always wonder, you’re so passionate about horror. You’ve got into this for the right reasons because you loved it. Do you ever feel like now that is the job some of the enjoyment from watching a horror movie is pulled out of it, now it’s a more analytical process. Are you still love watching horror movies?
Roxanne
No, I still love watching horror movies. I’m the biggest baby like the thing that I got into doing this for is because I’m terrified of everything. So, I’m just working out my own, like fears of everything. I think in all these movies that I’m making, so I am still scared shitless by everything I watch that’s in the horror genre.
Ashley
Well, that’s great. That’s great. Well, good luck with this film and good luck with your future films as well.
Roxanne
Thank you.
Ashley
Thank you. We’ll talk to you later. Bye.
I just want to talk quickly about SYS Select. It’s a service for screenwriters to help them sell their screenplays and get writing assignments. The first part of the service is the SYS Select Screenplay Database. Screenwriters upload their screenplays, along with a logline, synopsis and other pertinent information like budget and genre, and then producers search for and hopefully find screenplays they want to produce. Dozens of producers are in the system looking for screenplays right now. There have been a number of success stories come out of the service. You can find out about all the SYS select successes by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/success. Also, on SYS Podcast episode 222. I talked with Steve Dearing, who was the first official success story to come out of the SYS select database. When you join SYS select you get access to the screenplay database along with all the other services that we’re providing to SYS select members. These services include the newsletter, this monthly newsletter goes out to a list of over 400 producers who are actively seeking writers and screenplays. Each SYS select member can pitch one screenplay in this monthly newsletter. We also provide screenwriting leads, we have partnered with one of the premier paid screenwriting leads services so I can syndicate their leads to SYS select members, there are lots of great paid leads coming in each week from our partner. Recently, we’ve been getting 5 to 10 high quality paid leads per week. These leads run the gamut. There are producers looking for a specific type of spec script to producers looking to hire a screenwriter to write up one of their ideas or properties. They’re looking for shorts, features, TV, and web series, pilots, all types of projects. If you sign up for SYS select, you’ll get these leads emailed directly to you several times per week. Also, you get access to the SYS select forum, where we will help you with your logline and query letter and answer any screenwriting related questions that you might have. We also have a number of screenwriting classes that are recorded and available in the SYS select forum. These are all the classes that I’ve done over the years, so you’ll have access to those whenever you want, once you join. The classes cover every part of writing your screenplay, from concept to outlining to the first act second act third act as well as other topics like writing short films, and pitching your projects in person. Once again, if this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, please go to sellingyourscreenplayselect.com. Again, that is sellingyourscreenplayselect.com.
On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing psychologist – William Indyk, he has written a number of interesting books for screenwriters about how to use psychology in our stories to build fully fleshed out characters. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s our show. Thank you for listening.