At the end of the day, the script is everything. It’s the beating of your heart when the hero perseveres and overcomes his fears. It’s the smirk on your face with the delivery of a perfectly timed witty retort. And it’s the tear in your eye when you realize that behind the tales of triumph and redemption are the subtle reminders of our shared humanity.
Screenwriters are the life force which brings this all to fruition.
Since its inaugural year back in 1994, Austin Film Festival has sought to elevate the recognition and stature of screenwriters through a myriad of initiatives and programs. From its industry-leading Writers Conference, a film festival perennially packed with the visionaries of tomorrow, and the largest screenplay competition in the world, AFF continues to deliver on this promise. Especially in these pressing times, we feel it’s important to champion a multitude of unique perspectives from many walks of life. It is with this all in mind that we proudly present our 5th annual “Screenwriters to Watch” list. Scroll down to explore the stories behind these up-and-coming storytellers. They very well may be responsible for crafting some of your favorite films and shows yet to come.
AFF’s 25th Annual Screenwriters to watch
Indianna Bell
Having worked as a disability-carer for seven years, Indianna is also passionate about Autism awareness and recently combined this with her love of writing to write and publish a children’s book, Quirky Quentin. Indianna’s dream is to be a writer and director in the Australian film industry.
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AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
IB: Get a human being to read your dialogue out loud while you are drafting! I have gotten carried away many times writing lyrical or pretty dialogue only to be crushed after hearing how unnatural it sounds out loud. It’s amazing how vastly dialogue changes from paper to person. It is also amazing how many times I’ll write a word or phrase that I myself have never said in my life! I have learned that if I have the ability to draft a script with my actors, I should. Actors are clever and will trip over bad dialogue!
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AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
IB: Like I said, I am only at the very beginning of my journey as a writer! However winning Best Narrative Short at Austin Film Festival was certainly the most significant thing to happen to me. I have never attended a festival like AFF before, let alone received the kind of recognition that we did! The entire experience gave my confidence such a boost and has really given me some faith in myself as a writer. I think I will look back at that moment frequently over the years to come when I’m struggling with my insecurities as a young creative.
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AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
IB: After we had missed our first screening (due to an unfortunately timed storm and a cancelled flight) we caught an Uber across town for our second screening in a smaller cinema. We were feeling a little bummed and assumed that the second screening would attract a smaller crowd- we feared that we had missed our moment. However when we arrived to the cinema we were shocked to see not only one, but two lines of people spilling out and around the corner. It was completely surreal. Every seat in the cinema was filled. After the screening we were called up for an impromptu Q&A and had multiple people approach us afterwards to chat and ask questions. It was our very first true ‘festival experience’ and I loved every second.
Indianna Bell
writer/co-director The Recordist, Call Connect, co-director/producer Safe Space
Julie Benson & Shawna Benson
The Benson Sisters are currently developing a live-action television show with the Jim Henson Company based on a popular YA series and recently wrote for Nickelodeon’s Untitled Star Trek animated series. Before that, they wrote on Netflix’s Wu Assassins, The CW’s critically acclaimed The 100, and penned episodes of the Emmy award-winning web series Emma Approved. Alongside their TV career, they’ve written for DC Comics on the popular 2016 Rebirth launch writing Batgirl and The Birds of Prey, followed by a run on Green Arrow.
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
Benson Sisters: Over the years, we both worked multiple assistant jobs, everything from pouring coffee and getting lunches to finding our way into the writers’ room as Writers’ Assistants. The prospect to land our first staffing gig was teed up numerous times, but either the pilot wouldn’t go to series or the show was cancelled after the first season. But we kept pushing and finally staffed on the third season of CW’s The 100 after Shawna was the writers’ assistant for season two. This is a war of attrition—a marathon, not a sprint.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
Benson Sisters: This is an industry built on twists and turns and our journey is full of winding roads. We never intended to write together as a team. Shawna was focused on writing, while Julie was interested in producing. But we decided to write a sci-fi drama show together and were floored when an A-list actor optioned it to not only produce but direct. Unfortunately, the WGA strike of 2007 led to the project dying on the vine. But that was the turning point for us; if we had that much success right out of the gate… what could we accomplish if we became a writing team?
AFF: Who are some of your favorite screenwriters?
Benson Sisters: So many, but in television, we are huge fans of Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Damon Lindelof, Vince Gilligan, Noah Hawley, Sally Wainwright, Peter Morgan, David Milch, JJ Abrams, Jane Espenson, and D.C. Fontana.
In film: Emma Thompson, Lawrence Kasdan, Billy Wilder, Greta Gerwig, Rian Johnson, Jordan Peele, Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, The Coen Brothers, and Christina Hodson.
Julie Benson & Shawna Benson
co-writers Wu Assassins, The 100, DC Comics Batgirl, Birds of Prey comic, Green Arrow comic; co-producers Untitled Star Trek Animated Series for Nickelodeon
Zoe Cheng
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
ZC: It’s often said in the industry that luck always has a lot to do with success. I think that’s true to some extent, because sometimes you do just end up at the right place at the right time. But I believe it’s also possible to place yourself in positions where you are most likely to be lucky—to go out and meet people as often as possible, network, and don’t be shy about showing people your writing. You need to put yourself out there to see results—even if those results are never guaranteed.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
ZC: A major turning point in my career happened recently—I was accepted into the 2020 Walt Disney Television Writing Program! These sorts of programs often put aspiring writers one step closer to becoming a staff writer, and I am so grateful to have been given this chance.
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
ZC: I just loved being in Austin. When you spend so much time in LA, because that’s where the industry is, it becomes your whole world. I loved stepping out of my city and seeing the culture of somewhere else. I loved eating the BBQ, but most importantly, realizing that the love of stories and writing spans everywhere. It was nice to find a community of writers somewhere I hadn’t been before.
Zoe Cheng
writer When a Flower Falls
Jon Comulada
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
JC: One of the first and best lessons I learned working in late night TV is that a lot of comedy writing is just chipping away at something until you find the little gems. It seems obvious now, but watching a group of pro comedy writers come up with dozens and dozens of jokes just to land on that one special one was a complete revelation. It’s kind of like a magic trick. You practice and refine it behind closed doors, and then when it’s as perfect as it can be, you pull it out for an audience who gets to experience it for the first time in its best state without ever knowing how much crap had to be sifted through to get there.
The biggest lesson I learned when I started writing pilots and features and stuff is that you really need come up with a solid story and not worry about “jokes” until later. Late night talk shows are really joke heavy, but for a sitcom or a comedy feature to work, the story has to function as well it does in any form of dramatic writing. Characters need to be characters, scenes need to be scenes, acts need to be acts. The instinct when writing a comedy is to come up with a bunch of fun and silly ideas, but if you don’t have a story that elevates and suits those ideas, you’re not going to get very far. I think the best jokes in a comedy screenplay come from character, situation, and point of view. That’s a lesson I find myself learning over and over again. Sometimes you have to throw out a joke or a comedic concept that you really love because the story no longer serves that idea.
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AFF: Who are some of your favorite screenwriters?
JC: Aaron Sorkin feels like a cheap answer but it’s true. He’s one of the first screenwriters I ever really loved and he taught me that dialogue can always be fun, engaging, and sparkly even if it’s about something relatively boring. I don’t think he gets enough credit for how funny some of his stuff is, too. I think Wes Anderson is one of the best character writers ever. I also love what Adam McKay has been doing recently with his political dramedies. Sometimes he uses straight-up sketch comedy to dump exposition which is such a brilliant device that I think only he could get away with. Jordan Peele has also written two of the tightest and most well-conceived screenplays in recent memory and he was one of my favorite sketch writers long before that. Additional shoutouts to the Coen brothers and Mel Brooks!
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AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
JC: So many memorable experiences at Austin! Winning an award and then having to run around town with a 10 pound trophy in my backpack to make it to the rest of my panels and meetings was quite something. Another one of my favorite memories was having a (semi inebriated) conversation with some guys from London about my love of British comedy and how there’s a big subculture of Americans who are obsessed with it.
Jon Comulada
writer The Daily Dowager
Christopher N. Corte
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
CC: I did the whole sketch and improv route. I just wanted to be creating things and putting them out onto cramped, smelly stages as fast as possible—and I was awful. Then I figured out you can take time and write things down. It got better from there, but slowly. Like these questions… they took me two weeks and five revisions to get ’em decent.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
CC: In a previous feature, The Death of a Superman, there’s a scene where the lead unloads on the individual who done them wrong. It’s an entire lifetime’s worth of pent-up and suppressed emotions centered around feeling let down and lied to. It was the quickest anything ever came out of me and when I was done I had a 10+ page scene which, when re-reading, morphed into a conversation I wish I had with someone in my own life, but knew I couldn’t anymore. I always thought the whole “possessed” writer thing was a bit hokey, but not going to lie, I was a bit shook. In the end, I had to tell myself not to be embarrassed with bleeding onto the page. A little of us should be in the words. There needs to be an attachment or it’ll read false. It was the first time I felt like a writer.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
CC: The Austin Film Festival. No doubt. My feature, Service Animals, had received attention in a few other festivals, but it was AFF that brought it to a much larger platform. It’s where I got my reps, took meetings, and began the current journey of making Service Animals.
Christopher N. Corte
writer Service Animals
Micah Cyrus
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
MC: I took a bit of an unorthodox approach and cold emailed over sixty showrunners, producers, and anyone I could find a direct email via imdb pro. I kept my email short and to the point by letting them know that I was interested in getting into a writers’ room as a support staff so I could learn as much as I could and be on path to becoming a tv writer. Of those sixty, I received three responses, and of those three, one landed me an interview-turned-job as a Writers Assistant.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
MC: I have a pilot sample set in the Rodney King era about a cop who returns back home to LA after a harrowing event took place. There’s a scene where the protagonist confronts an old friend about some old wounds which I found challenging because it tapped into a core piece of pain that’s really personal. Sometimes our best writing comes straight from the heart while at the same time can produce the biggest headache.
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
MC: There are so many! I’d honestly say that one deserving of being highlighted was being a participant on a roundtable my first year at the film festival. I was among five or six other eager writers seeking advice from the handful of people that we got to chat with for the short time allotment. One of those people was Tracy Oliver. She was full of energy and open to share everything she could. It was clearly fortuitous that nearly two years later, she hired me as a Research Assistant for a feature she had in development.
Micah Cyrus
staff writer All American
Jonathan Flicker
His pilot Ghostrunner won the 2019 Austin Film Festival AMC Drama Teleplay Award and was a top-ten finalist in the Screencraft Pilot Launch Competition.
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
JF: After college, I wrote a financial thriller based on an experience I had working on Wall Street for an executive who later went to prison for insider trading. That script placed in the top thirty of the Nicholl Fellowship, was optioned, and found financing. That all fell apart, but the script later sold to a Chinese Company.
In order for that sale to happen, I had to rewrite the script to take place in Hong Kong, a city I had never visited, and follow a detailed set of instructions so it passed the Chinese censors. It was a wild experience!
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
JF: Never stop writing, and if writing is truly in your blood, never even think of quitting. After the original deal on my script fell apart, I threw in the towel figuring I could never have a career as a writer. Years later, when I came back to it, I sold that script as well as a pilot.
If I could go back and have a conversation with my younger self, I would say to push forward, but harder. Write more. Read more. Watch more, but most importantly, never give up!
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
JF: The most memorable experience at the Austin Film Festival, was the moment they called my name as the winner of the AMC Drama Pilot Award. Being able to walk onto that stage, in front of all those people, and have the opportunity to thank my late uncle (and mentor) was a dream come true.
Jonathan Flicker
writer Ghostrunner
Greg Fortier & Zarna Garg
The city where he grew up informed his early work, evident in the mismatched roommates found in Apartment Story (“Best Short Script,” Table Read My Screenplay 2018), the schizophrenic street artist in Tandem (ISA Fast Track Top 50 Scripts of 2020), and the rudderless table-waiting lib-arts majors in Today’s Special (“Best Pilot,” Hoboken International 2014, “Official Selection,” NYTV Festival, SeriesFest 2014).
His recent work taps into the existential dread specific to our modern-day, as seen in his apocalyptic workplace comedy, The End Times (Cinestory TV Fellowship Finalist, 2020, ISA Fast Track Top 50 Scripts of 2020) and Ghost Riot (Screencraft quarterfinalist, 2020), an animated comedy centered around themes of xenophobia and corruption. In his Superstore spec, the staff is made to undergo an active shooter drill.
In 2018, he teamed up with then-stranger, now friend-for-life Zarna Garg to adapt her personal experiences into a screenplay. That script, Rearranged, went on to win “Best Comedy Feature Screenplay” at the 2019 Austin Film Festival and has since been optioned by Marginal Mediaworks.
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Zarna Garg is an award-winning screenwriter and stand-up comedian. Her romantic comedy screenplay Rearranged won the Best Comedy Screenplay Award at the Austin Film Festival and was also a 2019 Academy Nicholl Fellowships Semi-Finalist. She headlines a monthly show at Caroline’s on Broadway called “My American Dream.” Zarna has produced and performed in multiple sold-out comedy shows in top comedy clubs across NYC including the groundbreaking HinJews shows. She has received numerous community accolades for pioneering one-of-a-kind works as an Indian mom of three and former lawyer-turned-comedian. Her comedy uniquely combines the immigrant and American experience. She is one of a handful of female Indian comedians world-wide, and possibly the only one who publicly takes on her mother-in-law.
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AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
GF: I began screenwriting in my meandering years after college, armed with a psych degree, some experience in education and plenty in waiting tables. I knew enough to write what I knew, though, and so my pilot about aimless millennials working in a restaurant was born.
I wrote for an audience of one, managed to entertain myself, and plowed ahead with blind optimism, authoring six additional episodes. I then teamed up with a director and editor and, together, we produced the pilot. It was a charmed, almost supernatural beginning to my career, but eventually, the magic wore off and reality set in—if I was to break into this industry, I’d have to endure my fair share of setbacks along the way.
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AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
ZG: I’ve learned that writing truly is re-writing. Every time I thought I was done, I wasn’t, and there were new sets of notes and revisions waiting to happen. In the end, your belief in your story is tested and the biggest artistic challenge is which notes to accept and which ones to push back on. There were certain notes that kept recurring from different readers and I accepted those; and there were a few that I just wasn’t willing to be flexible on because only I knew the big picture of the story and how to protect my voice.
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AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
GF: No one project or scene stands out as being the most difficult. Instead, it’s consistently the second draft of any project I find to be the toughest to navigate. This is where the thrill of finishing the first draft collides with the realization that I am not, in fact, an infallible genius spinning nothing but gold from thin air. It’s a crushing let-down every single time. At this juncture, inspiration has to take a backseat to the real work of writing, and simply recognizing this necessary shift is what helps me push through.
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AFF: What are you working on right now?
ZG: I am determined to put my voice out in the public consciousness in as many ways as possible. I am a professional stand-up comedian in NYC and that is currently a priority. There are very few Indian, women, immigrant stand-up comedians in the world. I would like to be a voice for my people, who are still new to performing stand-up. I want the world to know that a woman of my profile can take a mic on a major stage and make her feelings known and that this is ok for everyone except her mother-in-law :)). You can see my stand-up clips on my Instagram, @zarnagarg.
I just wrote, produced, and performed a headlining act to a sold-out audience at the world-renowned Caroline’s on Broadway. During this current shutdown in New York City, I am working on more material, writing more comedy, and maybe even a little surprise entry for AFF ‘20 ;).
GF: I’m working on a historical-fiction comedy feature centered on The Walking Purchase of 1737, one of the most egregious swindles of the native people perpetrated by the colonizers. Themes include “white guilt” and “what we’ve lost.” I swear this is a comedy.
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AFF: What are some of your favorite movies?
ZG: I love Bollywood movies and really fast-moving, entertaining Hollywood movies. I’m not a deep thinker and prefer my movies to be light and fun. Overall, I have a real love for rapid speed dialogue—I really enjoyed The Social Network. Of all the movies in the Indian/Western space, Bend it like Beckham was fun. In Bollywood, Sholay, Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge, and Deewar.
Greg Fortier & Zarna Garg
co-writers Rearranged
Giorgos Giorgopoulos - writer/director/editor Not to be unpleasant but we need to have a serious talk
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AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
GG: I believe there are a quite a few. One of them is of course the strict time management. Writing needs a schedule. Especially when writing at home. It is also fundamental not to push myself to download ideas for script solutions, in certain points during the writing process. I will continue with the next scenes and when the breakthrough comes, it’s most likely that I’ll go back and rewrite. Another important element is the feedback management. I need to be sure of the people I give the first drafts of a story. Plus, the feedback, more often than not, needs to be decoded. It’s not always easy to understand their issue and many times it’s not what they describe. However, my milestone is not approach my heroes psychoanalytically. Not to put myself into questions like “Are they capable of an action based on what we know about them?”. Sometimes it’s crucial for a character to act unexpectedly and then go back to find the reason. Interesting stories derive from exceptions, I believe.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
GG: Mainly, the scenes that give me a hard time are the ones where the characters must speak openly about their feelings (I wonder why!). They contain the risk of becoming cheesy. To become a bit cheap in the sense of extorting the audience’s empathy. I usually avoid this danger by making the heroes say something different than what they actually mean.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
GG: It would be logical and expected of me to say that it’s my first feature film, since it put me on the map. However, I’d like to think that it hasn’t come yet. And if I were to bet, my money goes on my next film. I truly believe in its story.
Giorgos Giorgopoulos
writer/director/editor Not to be unpleasant but we need to have a serious talk
Rupinder Gill
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
RG: I came to writing very late. I was a TV publicist looking for a creative outlet, so I started blogging for my friends, which turned into a book. Buoyed by this, and after working for a TV network for five years, I finally had to admit to myself that I wanted to be on the other side of the industry. I started submitting to online humor sites (McSweeneys, etc) who accept entries from everyone, and submitted to shows taking open packages before finally landing a two-week trial on one and starting from there.
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AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
RG: All of them! Every new show I start, I think “this is very hard. I will be fired from this one!” Writers aren’t known for their self esteem. Just know that feeling like a fraud and being concerned about your lack of talent is a major mental hurdle a lot of writers face. But writing is about pushing past that doubt, and just committing something to the page, for better or for worse. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.
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AFF: What are you working on right now?
RP: I’m working on Ed Helms’ new project, Rutherford Falls, for Peacock, and finishing up a new original script .
Rupinder Gill
writer/producer Schitt’s Creek, I Feel Bad, Indebted
Cris Graves
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
CG: The term “breaking in” as a screenwriter is an interesting one. Does it mean writing a script that gets you noticed, gets you representation? Is it writing a script that starts a bidding war and gets your name in the trades? Or is it writing a script that gets you a coveted seat in a writers room? I think if you’ve achieved any of these milestones, it’s because you have broken in long before these moments. Writing is a solitary art form. All you need is an idea and a way to write it down, whether that be a pen, a typewriter, or a computer. And to write a full script, to bleed the story out onto the page to its completion, for me, is “breaking in”. I wrote my first full script in undergrad. It was a spec episode of Northern Exposure, I date myself, I know. But, the act of finishing that script was a monumental moment for me. It proved that I had it in me to not only start a script, but actually finish it. Ask any writer, and they’ll tell you, finishing the script can at times be the hardest part. From the moment I finished my first script, I’ve been on a journey, honing my craft, fostering my love affair with telling stories, and continually “breaking in” to the screenwriter club with each competed screenplay. I write because it is as necessary as breathing to me.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
CG: About five years ago, I woke up and realized I was not taking charge of my dream. I sat and had a conversation with eight-year-old me, the kid who knew in her bones she was put on this earth to tell visual stories. She turned to me and said, “quit waiting for permission.” As writers, we work in our own silos and are taught that agents, managers, and studios own the keys to our scripts getting made. But, as I took an honest look at the ever-changing landscape of the entertainment business, a switch flipped. I realized I could write, direct, and edit a short film and start my own journey towards becoming the writer/director eight-year-old me dreamed of being… no permission necessary. It was so freeing, and since that revelation, I’ve made several short films. Now I’ve begun the journey to get my first feature film, Alone Girl, made. Eight-year-old me would be proud.
AFF: What are you working on right now?
CG: I have a few irons in the fire currently. I’m scheming ways to get funding for Alone Girl, my current feature film script, that I plan to direct. I’m also developing a podcast I plan to launch in the next couple of months called Blissful Spinster. It will take a look at being a single woman as a personal choice, rather than a waiting room for marriage. I’m also starting work on a new feature film, a dark comedy pulled from my own life again.
Cris Graves
writer/director Alone Girl
Josh Hallman & Kai Hasson
Kai Hasson: Kai Hasson is the Co-Founder of Portal A, a production house that makes original and branded entertainment for digital audiences. Kai’s directorial work has been viewed over 1 billion times, and he was named to Adweek’s Creative 100 for his creative leadership. Kai is the Executive Producer of State of Pride, a documentary directed by Academy Award winners Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman. He has a dog named Indiana Jones and lives in Los Angeles, CA.
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
JH: When you’re starting a new spec, have a beginning, middle, and end. When it comes to your spec, treat your first draft as a glorified outline. Know that it’s going to change. Speaking of outlining… Do it as much as possible, but if you’re spending too much time on the outline, start writing, many times you’ll figure out why you were struggling in the outline phase. Writing is sweat equity. If you are in a good writers group, never take it for granted. Just keep writing.
KH: The first draft is supposed to be terrible. Whenever I see writers who can just rip on a first draft (looking at you Josh), I feel like they have a super power. It wasn’t till recently that I realized that the first (and even second, third, fourth…) draft isn’t supposed to be good. That’s for later.
AFF: What are you working on right now?
JH: A contained action film and another script that’s a brand new genre and tone for me… which has been exciting and fun.
KH: Currently I’m playing lots of Gloomhaven and trying to distance myself from all human beings. But when I get back to writing it will be a feature based on my short Robu.
AFF: Share a memorable experience at Austin Film Festival.
JH: I’ve been to the festival twice, this past year I attended with a short film I had co-written, Robu. The other writer of the film, Kai (who is also the director) is a very good friend of mine. He and I would attend panels and events and just discuss film. We ended up linking with another friend, and we continued to talk film. The atmosphere of the festival is so fun, inviting, and filled with like-minded people. It’s hard to nail one memorable experience, but these conversations gave me a burst of energy and I just wanted to write during/after the festival.
KH: After hours at the Driskill, hanging with old friends (I don’t have many) and new ones (I made a couple). It’s kind of an amazing thing to be surrounded by so many people you find remarkable. It’s like what I wish LA was like all the time.
Josh Hallman & Kai Hasson
JH: writer Father-Daughter Day, Engaged, Robu, I F***ked James Bond; KH: writer/director Robu
Hannah Leder & Alexandra Kotcheff
Hannah Leder and Alexandra Kotcheff met at the tender age of 8 and made their first film at 12 years old. They have since collaborated on many projects together, including a documentary about an indigenous family fighting a Chevron pipeline, a dramatic short (Fearless) starring Fionnula Flanagan that premiered at Galway Film Fleadh, and a comedic short (Auto-Cowrecked) which ran in 28 film festivals nationwide. They wrote, directed, starred in, and single-handedly crewed The Planters.
Their next feature film venture is Peachville, another dark comedy which was a Sundance Institute finalist for the 2016 Screenwriters Lab.
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
HL/AK: We got our start together. Alexandra had an idea and had the vision to join forces with Hannah, who’d majored in writing in college, though it was prose-based. We’d never written a screenplay before. So we really learned how to write one by just doing it, and studying screenplays we loved for reference along the way.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
HL/AK: There was a scene in THE PLANTERS that required a huge “whodunnit” reveal, and an ensuing physical altercation. It was the hardest scene to shape and the hardest to get right. Eventually, we realized we were trying so hard to make the reveal seem effortless, that the reveal wasn’t happening at all. We decided to embrace the kitschy “whodunnit” nature of the scene that it needed to be, and after many re-writes and a couple reshoots, the scene is alive and well.
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
HL/AK: Hearing “The Planters” get called during the Awards Ceremony for the Comedy Vanguard Jury Award, then blacking out on the way to the stage.
Hannah Leder & Alexandra Kotcheff
writer / director The Planters
Jeremy Laval
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
JL: I always wanted to make movies. I considered myself first as a movie director, but as everyone knows, you can’t make a good film without a good story. I had some ideas of stories, a lot of beginnings… but no one to write it. I knew nothing about screenwriting and even more, I didn’t know any screenwriters. So I started to write my first screenplay by my own. A few months later, I gave my first screenplay to my elder brother who knew a lot about literature. I wanted to have his opinion. He said it was a real piece of shit! I started to read some screenplays and books about the art of storytelling… and maybe after ten scripts written, I began to know more the mechanic of a good structure and characters. I could say that my 11th script was better than the others.
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
JL: The biggest lessons I’ve learned, I’ve learned from Robert McKee and his book Story. When I started to write, I was young and I thought I was a true artist and you know, when you want to make a piece of art you can’t follow the rules. So I wrote a short movie and made the film, following what I thought it was an amazing artistic script… and when it was time to edit it, it was a real nightmare. Everything was wrong! Rhythm, narrative structure, characters… There were some good ideas in it but nothing to link them. After this hard experience, I started to read some books about storytelling and I was mesmerized to discover that there was a path. It was exactly as if I had some good ingredients and suddenly, someone gave me the cooking recipe to make a good meal. I read the book thousands of times and when I watched movies I could see why it worked or not. It was like being in the Matrix, suddenly I could see the real world.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
JL: I have to say the major turning point in my young career is the great selection at the Austin Film Festival, and the award, for my first feature, Noise. After making this movie in a total independent way, without money and help from the industry, it was as if I was suddenly recognized as a legitimate filmmaker. After that I had the opportunity to be represented by a powerful agency in France (UBBA) and it’s thanks to them I can go further now.
Jeremy Laval
writer/director NOISE
David Midell
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
DM: I sort of eased my way into it about 10 years ago when I got my first screenwriting program. I had only directed and produced before that but I was feeling an urge to tell my own stories and explore the content that I really wanted to explore. I started out by writing short scripts that were inspired by my work with the disability community, but as I wrote more and developed a bit more confidence, I was able to branch out into different subjects. After several years, I attempted my first true story, and this was where I really found my groove. It just made sense for me to approach stories this way, and it had the added benefit of developing relationships with real people who were really involved in a given event.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
DM: True stories are very challenging because I’m often dealing with very difficult subjects, and the people I speak to usually have very personal connections to the subject matter. The best way I’ve found to navigate through the process is by treating everyone with respect and understanding that to me these might just be films, but to the real people who were affected, this is their life. They can’t go home after work and disconnect from it, and I always keep that in mind. My hope is that anyone who I portray in a film, or anyone who was affected by a real life event I’m portraying always feels respected, and that I gave the story its necessary weight and importance.
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
DM: The most memorable experience at the Austin Film Festival was having the opportunity to premiere the film there, and experience the very first full audience reaction to the film. The producers and I were excited, but we had no idea what type of emotional response the film would generate. When the screen cuts to black at the end, we were astounded at the open sobs we heard in the audience. We knew the film was powerful, but we had no idea it would elicit such raw, unfiltered emotion. And the experience was made all that more amazing because members of the Chamberlain family were there to experience the film with us, and the film went on to win both the Jury Award and the Audience Award for Narrative Features at AFF.
David Midell
writer/director The Killing of Kenneth Chamberlain
David Pantano
He’s produced and directed hundreds of commercials and “How to cook” videos, and now uses the microwave exclusively.
His screenplay Backfired was a Screencraft and AFF semi-finalist. The comic book is slated to be released by Source Point Press in June of 2020.
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
DP: I had an idea for a story but had no way of expressing it. I bought every screenwriting book I could get my hands on. I signed up for every class, seminar, and workshop within a three-hour radius. I joined a writer’s group, at which point I realized I had forgotten my original idea—how good could it have been? It didn’t matter; I was hooked.
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
DP: Don’t be precious with what you’ve laid out on the page. What you’ve written may be good but be open to other ideas. Any story worth a damn is bigger than the one person writing it. Also, get professional notes. Your mom may be a nice person, but her notes are biased.
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
DP: I attended a Shane Black lecture, and he had a story about comic fans who threatened his life because of the way he treated The Mandarin in Iron Man 3. I felt the need to apologize to him for the lot of us who aren’t psychopaths. He got a good laugh out of the apology.
David Pantano
writer Backfired
Par Parekh
He produced and co-wrote Benh Zeitln’s Glory at Sea and created promotional videos for such musical talents as Beyoncé, Celine Dion, Shuggie Otis, and Willie Nelson. His short film The Happy (thehappy.tv) screened at SeriesFest and Austin Film Festival in 2019, and his feature documentary debut, Sister Una Lived A Good Death (sisteruna.com), is currently in post-production. He is represented by Artists First.
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
PP: I’ve been writing most of my adult life, but honestly never considered that I could be a professional “Writer.” That was something for “Artists”—and being an Artist wasn’t part of my Indian American destiny. Filmmaking was my trade, editing and camerawork my skills. Yeah, I might have been writing voiceover for a documentary, or helping structure someone’s screenplay, or even sitting on set, reworking a scene of a movie that I co-wrote—but it was all “just” storytelling. I still didn’t call myself a writer. Until I finally did.
It took 15 years, and the insistence of friends, but I eventually realized that I had some pretty fun stories to tell and that I was pretty good at it. And my career as an editor, where I had to create an array of stories from different people’s footage, really gave me a leg up on how to craft beats specifically for the screen. With all that, I decided to make a short that opened up many doors for me. So you can say that I broke in based on the success of my short, but the truth is everything happened as soon as I got out of my own way.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
PP: Writing The Happy was a particular challenge because the character that I play is completely silent. I had to figure out a way to not only make his emotional beats read on the page, but also give the reader a sense of the show’s rhythm and pace. And you can’t write “Par looks quizzically at Astrid ” over and over again. So I actually first made a beat sheet to track the narrative and emotional information each of Par’s looks and actions had to convey. With that, I was able to return to the script and really make the reader feel the show without boring redundancies.
The whole process really solidified a basic screenwriting belief: while dialogue takes up 80% of most script pages, it’s actually only 20% of what writing is about. You always have to make the scene work without dialogue—not only the conflict of each scene, but how it’ll be expressed in action, reaction, and movement.
AFF: What are you working on right now?
PP: I need to be working on a few projects simultaneously to stay sane, and I’m so excited by all the things that are close to birth! I’m putting the finishing touches on a really fun script that taps into my Indian American teenage years in New Jersey—but it’s not your typical “trapped-between-two-cultures” coming of age tale. Think madcap action, lots of adventure, a riverboat, and sea shanties.
I’m also in post-production on my first documentary feature called Sister Úna Lived A Good Death. It’s about one of my favorite people of all time—a smoking, cursing, wisecracking Catholic nun who dedicated her life to social justice and inspiring teenagers to do good by embracing their individuality. Given months to live after a terminal cancer diagnosis, she chooses to face death in her own iconoclastic way—by living as she’s dying. I hope it’ll help people start to have honest conversations about death and dying, something we don’t do in our culture.
And while locked in self-isolation, I’ve been working with some very talented people on a couple of fast-turnaround projects that I can’t wait to share!! Stay tuned!
Par Parekh
creator The Happy
Larry Postel
The Main Event, a family comedy co-produced by Netflix and WWE Studios was released on April 10th, 2020. Flip Turn, an indie drama about an autistic boy who becomes a high school swimming champion, is in postproduction. High Holiday, an indie comedy about a coed who brings weed-infused salad dressing to her conservative family’s Christmas dinner, is completed and out to distributors.
Now a proud member of the WGA West, Larry has more screenplays in the pipeline. He also continues his work as a freelance advertising copywriter with global clients ranging from an oral surgeon in New York to a chain of cannabis clubs in Barcelona.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
LP: The most difficult project I’ve written is my most recent screenplay called Sessions. It’s a romantic drama about two chemo patients who fall in love over the course of their six chemo sessions together. Much of the story is inspired by my own ordeal with chemo and other cancer patients and survivors I’ve met and even counseled. The hard part was that it’s primarily set in a single location (the chemo room), so I had to think like a playwright and keep it interesting and engaging almost exclusively through dialogue. I put off writing the screenplay for about two years because I couldn’t figure out the right structure. But then I thought back to the great stage play/film Same Time, Next Year and how its story— although much different than mine—successfully played out over intervals of time. So, after applying that kind of structure to Sessions, I finished the screenplay and am very happy with it. Sometimes, when you’re stuck on a scene or project, the best thing is to search for inspiration until you find it. Never give up on something you’re truly passionate about.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
LP: After writing for many, many years with nothing produced—and coming so close to having at least three screenplays go all the way—I was obviously pretty frustrated. Then, in 2012, after being diagnosed with cancer, I became more motivated than ever. It was like I had nothing to lose, so I dug in, wrote more and became more tenacious than ever in terms of marketing my work. I also became much more honest and empathetic in my stories. So, it was after that battle and change in mindset that things really started to break for me, resulting in the three produced screenplays in 2019. I would suggest to other screenwriters to learn from painful experiences and volunteer to gain a greater sense of understanding and empathy. By becoming a better person, you’ll no doubt become a better writer.
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
LP: It was 1995 and I was a finalist for my screenplay, The Family Tree. They did a live reading of it and it was the first time I ever had that happen. But the most memorable thing that happened at the Conference was the finalist roundtable with William Wittliff. I clearly remember him saying to the eight of us: “Don’t believe any deal until you get a check that clears the bank.” I should add that 2020 was a very special experience for me as I returned to the AFF as a panelist. I was so honored and humbled to be recognized as a working screenwriter after so many years!
Larry Postel
writer Flip Turn, High Holiday, The Main Event
Chris Retts
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
CR: For me the hardest project is always the current one. Fortunately, it’s also typically the most exciting, and (hopefully) feels like the best, most urgent thing I’ve done yet. So how do I navigate the challenge? One of the biggest things I’ve been trying to learn recently is, during times that I’m a bit overwhelmed, when to push through and when it would actually be more productive to take a break. In the former case there’s almost nothing for it but to just bear down and force yourself to put words onto the page, even if you know they’re terrible. If you think you really do need to reset, I always think it’s best to do so with things that will force you to stop ruminating on your project so that your subconscious can go to work. It’s pretty amazing how solutions will just kind of percolate if you leave the problem alone for a moment (obviously, you don’t want to slip into avoidance, here), because your subconscious has been hard at work during the time you were focused on something else. Reading and exercising are two of the main ways I’ve been able to reliably achieve this kind of result.
AFF: What are you working on right now?
So, in keeping with my kind of effort to spend half my time writing under contract and half writing on spec, I’m working on the follow up to Wade, which I’ll again produce and Mark Wilson (the director on Wade) will direct. The working title is currently The Calling, and it’s a home invasion thriller with a pretty giant twist that takes place outside Atlanta, Georgia (where we’re also planning to shoot it). I’m also working on a TV pilot that’s a procedural, but really interesting in that (not to get too specific) it’s kind of a throwback while at the same time updating a lot of the tropes of procedural in some interesting ways. That one’s for a producer who I’ve been working with for a while, now. I’ve also got a few things out there, currently, that I’m hoping will go into pre-production this year, so that’s exciting.
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
CR: Without question, the most memorable moment is the entire day of our first screening of Wade in the Water at AFF, which was about a half-a-decade in the making. We were semifinalists with a different script in 2016 at the Austin Film Festival, and it was in many ways our experience at that festival that motivated us to come home and write a script we knew we’d be able to shoot on our own (that script later becoming Wade in the Water). Aside from meeting all of the festival staff and other truly inspirational, independent filmmakers, one of these inspirations came in the form of getting to meet Jeff Nichols, who was at the festival with Loving. Both Mark (director of Wade) and I love his films, particularly the way he takes genre elements and brings them down to earth, making them feel so grounded and relevant. Take Shelter is an all-timer for me.
At any rate, then being able to come back to Austin with Wade in the Water was a great thrill and honor in its own right. What I didn’t mention, was that AFF also allowed us to announce our first screening to a packed auditorium in front of their panel with Sarah Green, who, in addition to being an Academy-Award-nominated producer for Terrance Mallick, has also produced every Jeff Nichols movie since Take Shelter. On my way back to my seat to enjoy the panel after giving our pitch, AFF co-founder and Executive Director Barbara Morgan (who was moderating), came on the mic and added something like: “everything Chris just said about his movie his true, and you should all go see it.” Of course, Mark and I were surprised and extremely flattered, but we were absolutely floored when, later that night, Sarah Green and her husband ended up being among our sold-out audience. As with everyone else we met at AFF last year, Sarah was incredibly gracious with her time and insight, staying through our Q&A and after to speak with our cast and crew, as well as to congratulate us on the film. It was a night I’ll never forget, and I couldn’t be more grateful to the Austin Film Festival, not only for that amazing moment but for all of the encouragement and support they’ve provided to Mark and I as filmmakers over the years.
Chris Retts
writer Wade in the Water (2020), Deceit (pre-production), The Calling (in development)
Caitlin Scherer
Caitlin’s screenplays have placed in numerous contests, including: 2019 CineStory TV Fellowship (Semifinalist, Corrections), 2019 ScreenCraft Sci-Fi & Fantasy Contest (Finalist, The Boxcar Girls), 2019 ScreenCraft Drama Contest (Finalist, Bette), 2019 ScreenCraft Comedy Contest (Finalist, Fitter Families), and the 2019 Austin Film Festival (Top 5 Finalist, Fitter Families). She was also the recipient of the inaugural Rooster Teeth Development Fellowship.
Her directorial debut—the dark comedy short film, Wicked Image—premiered at the 2020 Garden State Film Festival. She currently works at HBO in NYC.
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
CS: Get feedback early. When you treat a script like a precious, needs-to-be perfect masterpiece before sharing, you’ll be more demoralized and exhausted when you ultimately open yourself up to notes. (Because also, you will always get notes.) Lastly, writing is the “easy” part; editing is where the real work is done.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
CS: Probably my first script, a fantasy drama about fairies, stolen magic, and a devious uncle. It was an ambitious project with lofty world-building and I stumbled through draft after draft trying to get it to all make sense. But the process definitely taught me a lot! At the top of that list is the value of creating a detailed outline before going to script. It’s so much easier to rearrange emerging ideas when they’re only bullet points than it is to cut fully-fledged scenes and characters. (*Cue violin for my killed DOC’S APOTHECARY darlings.*)
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
CS: Late night screenwriter chats at The Driskill.
Caitlin Scherer
writer Fritter Families; writer/director/producer Wicked Image
Kelly Strathmore
Kelly Strathmore is the daughter of a Korean factory worker turned housekeeper and former drill sergeant turned maintenance worker. Her blue-collar, multi-cultural roots as an Indiana farm girl turned Silicon Valley tech nerd inspire her to draw from a deep personal well of intersectional axes for her storytelling. Having experienced first-hand the extreme disparity in wealth and education in the Bay Area, it fuels her passion for creating stories of social justice, highlighting the inequality of haves and have-nots in American culture. Kelly is an expert puzzle-solver and her stories often center around heists and murder mysteries with scrappy schemers from humble beginnings who put broken pieces of family relationships back together. Kelly is also an academic scholar, graduating with an MFA in Film & Television from UCLA. Her research mirrors her screenwriting quest to give a voice to marginalized groups while exploring the perceptions of race and class in a way that celebrates diversity of cultures, personalities, and beliefs. (Ask her about this and she’s likely to whip out a 3-minute Powerpoint presentation that delightfully reveals how the 1970s series “Columbo” continues to have a positive impact 49 years later). For her work, Kelly’s been awarded scholarships and has placed highly in competitions including the Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition, CineStory Foundation TV Fellowship (2020 winner), UCLA Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Screenwriting Grant, Stephen N. Gershenson Memorial Scholarship, and the Writers Guild Foundation Pitch Competition. Kelly’s love of screenwriting also connects with her love of community service work, which includes the Young Storytellers Foundation and guest lectures at colleges and universities.
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AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
KS: In my late teens I was watching the TV series, “Sabrina the Teenage Witch,” and I noticed a pattern: week after week, the big story moments would come at specific intervals. A bit of research at the library (pre-Google!) revealed that screenwriting was a real job (the actors weren’t making those lines up? Gasp!). A few years later, I’m knee-deep in user manuals while in my day job as a technical writer (convincing myself that it was still writing, technically), and I understood the only thing stopping me from being a screenwriter was—me. At the time I was also working on my undergraduate degree and I discovered that my school offered ONE screenwriting course, and you had to be a Radio-Film-TV major to take it. So, I did the illogical thing and changed my major. After finishing a feature screenplay (which felt like a monumental achievement at the time) it fueled the dream for my career. Wanting to write for television, I tried writing a Modern Family spec on my own—it was okay but I’m not one to settle for “okay.” I knew I could grow stronger as a writer. I found a summer writing workshop at USC, and it gave me the confidence to go all-in with pursuing screenwriting. That led to the UCLA Professional Program in Writing for Television, and the UCLA MFA in Film & Television. It’s been 10 years since that first screenwriting class, and I wouldn’t trade any day (or any draft) on this exciting adventure. I feel like my break-in story is beginning now, and I’m thankful for Austin Film Festival and the way the competition led to doors opening in 2020.
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AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
KS: One of the biggest lessons along the way was to be okay with feelings, as silly as it sounds. Accepting your own (e.g. when you hit that point 6 weeks into a new script and think a better idea would be to return to your hometown and start an alfalfa farm); also being okay with hurting the feelings of your characters. To be okay with the fact that as in life, on the page we also have to confront, not avoid when it comes to dealing with difficult feelings.
AFF: What are you working on right now?
KS: One-hour action comedy/dramedy. One of my friends recently retired from an incredibly interesting job, and she’s still very young compared to what we often think of as a “retiree.” I can’t say much more about the details other than it’s about perception and roles in society—but the pilot is similar to my other TV samples and has a lighter tone with an emotional core, full of heart.
Kelly Strathmore
writer East Palo Alto
Yi Tang
Prior to filmmaking, Tang Yi was an award-winning singer songwriter. Her debut EP “Seriously”, distributed by Universal Hong Kong, peaked No. 1 on Hong Kong iTunes Store during the release week in April, 2015. She was particularly known for her music videos, all of which feature a comedic narrative style that questions and challenges gender norms.
In 2016, She decided to be a real filmmaker and she moved to New York as a Graduate Film MFA candidate at Tisch School of the Arts. Her latest work, Black Goat, won the Jury Award for Student Narrative Short at Austin Film Festival and is now in competition at other upcoming film festivals.
She currently resides between China and New York, working on her thesis short and developing her first feature. Her thesis short, Blooming Flowers and Full Moon, is a film about a widowed elderly man’s journey of looking for love again. It is a reflection of China’s aging society and it calls for a different interpretation of an elderly life.
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
YT: I actually started with songwriting. For a while in my life I was obsessed with all Lonely Island songs. They were all very catchy and had a narrative story line in the songs. So I did the same. I wrote a lot of weird stories in my life and turned them into comedic songs and I called them “comedy pop.” I did release an album in Hong Kong a while ago. My own favorite track is called “ Why on My Bed”. It was about one time I caught my college roommate having sex with her boyfriend on my bed. And then I just kept going from there, when songwriting could not satisfy my needs for storytelling anymore, I turned to screenwriting and filmmaking.
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
YT: Lessons that I have learnt in writing and filmmaking? You cannot undo the things that you have done. And you do not have to go too far to make more mistakes to justify them. It’s very important to know when to stop. And, end the scene beautifully!
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
YT: I won my first award at my first film festival! To attend the film festival, I had to take a 26 hour flight from China to Austin. I was tired and jet lagged and had really slow reaction to everything. I was still adjusting myself during the award luncheon. When my name was called out for the jury award, I was too tired to get excited. I did my acceptance speech. I couldn’t remember what I said but I remembered everyone was laughing. And even after the luncheon, people would come up and want to know me. They all said: “You are funny!!” That means a lot to me. I need the validation of being funny so bad and having a room of comedians laughing was definitely the highlight of my 2019.
Yi Tang
writer/director Black Goat
Christina Tucker
Christina Tucker has an affinity for character-driven storytelling, whether in crime dramas or romantic comedies, in period pieces and modern day stories of metropolitan life. Her liberal arts education and personal interests have given her a varied knowledge base of history, art, philosophy, and myth, which often serve as inspiration. She has interest in stories of varied scales and subject matter.
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
CT: I’ve learned how valuable it is for me to be knowledgeable about things outside of film, for both my career and personal life. Keeping myself mentally stimulated—reading about philosophy, religion, and politics to watching documentaries and reading fiction—is a great way for me to both find inspiration for screenwriting and to keep myself a well-rounded person outside of film. It can become easy, at least for me, to become obsessed with working on film sets and on my own writing without taking time to consume great work by others. To keep myself committed to the latter has been very valuable for me, especially since graduating from college.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
CT: Making it to Austin was definitely a turning point for me, as it was the first time I had met, in person, other people with similar career goals. Filming my first short in 2017 was also a turning point for me, as it made me realize that the things I write could come to life in a tangible way. I knew after shooting The Ghost and the Writer that I wanted to chase that creative feeling as a career, and it was one of the first moments where I realized that I would take the risk of truly committing to a career in production.
AFF: What are you working on right now?
CT: A pilot about Raphael, an erotic thriller, a second Western, and an adaptation of Treasure Island.
Christina Tucker
writer From the Wilderness; writer/director Chores, The Ghost and the Writer
Patrick Wimp
Pat’s work has been lauded in prestigious film festivals around the world for over a decade. His films and series have screened at the Chicago International TV Festival, Austin Film Festival, Cannes International Short Film Corner, New York Television Festival, and many more.
Pat wrote and produced two seasons of the hit international docu-series WaMahyaya that airs on Amazon Prime. He also won “Best Writer” at SeriesFest Season 3, and Best of Fest at the HBO sponsored iTVFest in 2017, as the creator of the dramatic TV pilot “Public Housing Unit.”
His work on the digital series Brothers from the Suburbs awarded Patrick both the Jury and Audience awards at the 2019 Austin Film Festival, Best Web Original at Urbanworld Film Festival, and Best Directing at SeriesFest Season 5. The series was recently licensed to the newly launched short-form mobile streaming platform Ficto.
As a filmmaker of African descent, Pat’s work focuses on creating emotionally impactful, accessible human stories, built around authentic and diverse characters.
AFF: What are some of the biggest lessons you’ve learned?
PW: The biggest lesson that I imagine a lot of writers will pass on is to just keep writing. Even when you know the work isn’t where you want it to be you’ve got to keep exercising that muscle. Eventually it will get stronger and stronger and you can create that process that taps into your creativity on command. On a more personal level, a huge part of my journey as a writer has been learning to trust myself. Not just trusting my story instincts, but trusting the fact that I have valid things to say about the world—developed through listening, observation, or just living—and that people will respond to them.
AFF: What are you working on right now?
PW: I’ve kind of got projects in almost every phase of development right now but not a ton that I can get super specific about. I’ve been working on a lot of ‘for hire’ scripts for the past six months or so in the Chicago market. I did a rewrite on a thriller that will hopefully start shooting sometime after all the corona-mess. I’ve got a project I’m developing with an established Chicago filmmaker that’s pretty unique. It’s a political farce with some Mel Brooks DNA set in the 1950’s. As a person who’s primarily working outside any type of major studio or network infrastructure, I try to keep a lot of irons in the fire while still maintaining enough space to give everything the proper attention.
AFF: Share a memorable experience from your time at Austin Film Festival.
PW: I made some amazing friends there that I’m starting to collaborate with so for that I’m really grateful and those experiences were probably the most meaningful. Hitting the Austin mezcal bars until 3AM seems to have done the trick in forming some lasting connections.
Another story I like to tell was at the awards ceremony when I got called up for the Jury Award for Best Digital Series. I was truly not expecting to win anything for my series, so I hadn’t prepared anything, and my award was the second one announced—except the first category recipient wasn’t able to attend so I ended up being the first person to speak.
I was overwhelmed with emotion and just felt like a wreck on the inside. I got up there and felt like I was shaking. I’m standing at the podium staring into the faces of Craig Mazin and the GoT creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss—people whose work I am pretty enamored with—and I felt like I could barely put a sentence together. The speeches that came after mine were all these well thought out, eloquent, and meaningful pieces and all I could really blurt out was something along the lines of “thank you so much, I love writing.”
I don’t think I embarrassed myself externally, but in the inside I felt crazy. Regardless, it was an amazing moment that I couldn’t have possibly dreamed up and I’ll never forget it.
Patrick Wimp
creator Brothers from the Suburbs
Gareth Wronski
AFF: How did you break in or get your start in screenwriting?
GW: I wrote some terrible screenplays as a teenager before giving up. After having my first novel published, I went back and looked at those scripts—finding they were still terrible, but feeling compelled to fix them. I couldn’t, so I wrote a new one.
AFF: What’s the hardest scene or project you’ve ever had to write? How did you navigate the challenge?
GW: I always try to mix humor with real stakes, and sometimes it’s tough to balance that tone, but it’s been especially tough with the current project I’m writing. My solution has been that if I find myself straining to make a scene funny, I just stop and accept it isn’t a funny scene.
AFF: What was a major turning point in your career?
GW: Definitely the first time I made the semifinals at Austin. Not only because it ended up getting my script read by a bunch of people, but because it was the first acclaim I’d ever received for screenwriting, which was a big confidence boost.
Gareth Wronski
writer Roomies, Raw Data, Holly Farb and the Princess of the Galaxy