“From the very first moment I saw Annie, I knew I wanted to do that.” Kourtney Kang got her start acting and singing before moving into screenwriting and playwriting. Today, she’s best known for creating the Disney Plus reboot ‘Doogie Kamealoha M.D.,’ and writing for major shows like ‘Fresh Off the Boat,’ and ‘How I Met Your Mother.’ In Doogie Kamealoha M.D., the story follows Lahela "Doogie" Kamealoha, “a teenaged wunderkind juggling her high school life with an early medical career.” In this i...
Dec 07, 2021•32 min
On her first day on set, Danis Goulet knew she wanted to be a filmmaker. As she transitioned from casting to head a film festival in Toronto, she saw a potential path to making her own shorts, like Spin, Divided by Zero, Wapawekka, and Barefoot. Her first full feature as the writer-director, Night Raiders, the story focuses on a mother who joins an underground band of vigilantes to try to rescue her daughter from a state-run institution. In this interview, Danis talks about approaching films as ...
Dec 06, 2021•26 min
“It stretches back at least 10 years,” said Edgar Wright about the story idea for Last Night in Soho. Edgar, who is well known for his musical taste, in movies like Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim, and Baby Driver, seems to write, direct, and edit with the score or soundtrack in mind. With this setting in mind, Edgar eventually crafted the character of Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), an aspiring fashion designer who discovers she can enter the 1960s, essentially through the life of a dazzling wanna...
Dec 03, 2021•37 min
“I had a story I wanted to tell,” said Eleanor Coppola, filmmaker and wife of Francis Ford Coppola. “Some of it was a little bit personal and I didn’t want to make a documentary out of it, so I made a fiction piece.” Prior to her fiction features Paris Can Wait and Love Is Love Is Love, Eleanor made documentaries such as Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, A Visit to China’s Miao Country, and Making of ‘The Virgin Suicides’ about her daughter Sofia’s film. In this interview, Eleanor ta...
Nov 30, 2021•14 min
Cousins Ryan Firpo and Kaz Firpo both felt a deep connection to storytelling, but it wasn’t until they formed a partnership that they were able to break into the industry. Their script Ruin, about a nameless ex-Nazi captain after WWII who hunts down the surviving members of the SS Death Squad, actually won the 2017 Black List (and is now listed as pre-production with Margot Robbie attached and Justin Kurzel set to direct). Originally, Eternals was going to be the first film of Marvel’s Phase Fou...
Nov 09, 2021•34 min
As an actress, Justine Bateman is best known for her early television role as Mallory Keaton on Family Ties, but she also starred on Lois & Clark, Men Behaving Badly, Still Standing, Desperate Housewives, and Arrested Development, alongside her brother Jason Bateman. But, since the age of 19, she’s wanted to be a director. After graduating from UCLA a few years ago, she made two shorts - Five Minutes and PUSH - before raising the money to make Violet. Bateman’s debut film stars Olivia Munn a...
Nov 02, 2021•30 min
Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is best known for his role as Tommy on 3rd Rock from the Sun and for movies like 500 Days of Summer, Inception, 50/50, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Lincoln, and Snowden. In this interview, we discuss Joseph’s work as a writer-director, for the film Don Jon and the new series Mr. Corman. In the 2013 film that co-stars Scarlett Johansson, “A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to fi...
Sep 23, 2021•34 min
In ‘Mayday,’ Ana is transported to a dreamlike and dangerous land where she joins an army of girls engaged in a never-ending war. Though she finds strength in this exhilarating world, she realizes that she's not the killer they want her to be. The films stars Grace Van Patten, Mia Goth, Yoko, and Juliette Lewis. In this interview, Karen talks about untraditional filmmaking styles, how to protect your voice and natural instincts, the secret to being diligent with your time as a filmmaker, how she...
Sep 21, 2021•28 min
"We were thinking about a comedic version of Psycho,” said Justin Long (Live Free or Die Hard, Dodgeball), about his latest project, Lady of the Manor, which he co-wrote and co-directed with his brother, Christian Long (Hop, Accepted). This idea morphed into more of a buddy comedy, involving a ne’er-do-well played by Melanie Lynskey and the ghost of a mansion, played by Judy Greer. The two meet when Lynskey’s character ends up working as a tour guide in the historic estate Greer’s character haun...
Sep 16, 2021•22 min
For twenty years, Marina Zenovich has been making documentaries about subjects that interest her. Past subjects include Lance Armstrong, Robin Williams, Roman Polanski, and Richard Pryor. For her latest project, What Happens in Hollywood, the series takes a candid look at Hollywood’s role in framing society’s overall view of sex and sexuality. Subjects include Robin Wright, Minnie Driver, and Bobbi Banks. In this interview, Marina talks about trusting gut instincts, why she avoids pre-interviews...
Sep 15, 2021•32 min
While in college, Tracy Oliver was interested in the performing arts, but she eventually realized she was often the “sassy, funny sidekick and not the lead.” This realization - and her mother - actually inspired her to start writing rather than wait for someone to cast her. Oliver was tired of being the “cigarette-smoking friend” or in the “slavery movie,” so she started to write about herself. “That, weirdly, was revolutionary to write about the normalcy of black life.” As a writer, she’s now k...
Sep 15, 2021•32 min
Husband-and-wife writing and directing team Aron Gaudet and Gita Pullapill met while working in local television news. Despite being at competitive stations, they both despised local television news and wanted to find a more creative path to “visual storytelling” where they weren’t “forced to tell a story in 30 seconds.” Together, the couple has credits for documentaries like The Elephant Bath, The Gambling Man, Lifecasters, and features such as Beneath the Harvest Sky, Queenpins, and an upcomin...
Sep 08, 2021•36 min
Michele Civetta got his start making commercials and shorts. This taught him the balance of creativity and commerce, while also teaching him a technical background to eventually move into features. In his first project, Agony, the movie focused on psychological uncertainty within past traumas. In his latest film, The Gateway, a social worker assigned to care for the daughter of a single mother intervenes when the dad returns from prison and involves the family in his life of crime. In this inter...
Sep 02, 2021•26 min
After working as a writer-director on her first film, Timer, Jac Schaeffer discovered she could land more jobs as a screenwriter. The description of Timer reads, “If a clock could count down to the moment you meet your soul mate, would you want to know?” After Timer, she worked on a handful of screenplays, created a short called Mr. Stache, and even worked on the short Olaf’s Frozen Adventure for Disney. This relationship - along with a Blacklist spec script - eventually led her to working on Th...
Aug 31, 2021•29 min
Growing up on comedies like Monty Python, Trent O'Donnell has always been fascinated with “dumb comedies.” He got his start making shorts, commercials, and eventually landed some work in television. As a writer-director, he’s known for The Moodys, No Activity, and most recently, the movie Ride the Eagle. Trent O'Donnell met Jake Johnson while directing episodes of New Girl for Fox. In their latest collaboration, Jake Johnson stars as Leif. The description reads, “Leif is left with a conditional ...
Aug 28, 2021•22 min
Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky met doing comedy in New York, where they eventually landed jobs together on Broad City. Today, they’re the Creators of the new comedy series, Hacks, for HBO. For the series, Jean Smart stars as Deborah Vance, a legendary Las Vegas comedian who begrudgingly takes an outcast 25-year-old named Ava (Hannah Einbinder) under her wing. In this interview, the trio talks about writing sketch comedy, how opposing characters can attract one another, cultural fo...
Aug 25, 2021•34 min
Neill Blomkamp grew up in South Africa before he moved to Canada to work in VFX, and found his natural path into filmmaking. Known for the science fiction fable, he’s created iconic movies like District 9, Elysium, Chappie, and most recently, Demonic. In District 9, an extraterrestrial race is forced to live in slum-like conditions on earth. In Elysium, the wealthy live in a man-made space station while the poor live on a ruined earth in 2154. In Chappie, crime is controlled by a mechanized poli...
Aug 17, 2021•30 min
Tim Long got his start writing for magazines where he eventually landed a job writing for Bill Maher on ‘Politically Incorrect,’ and then ‘Late Night with David Letterman,’ where he eventually became the head writer. Today, Long is best known for writing for ‘The Simpsons’ and he’s just created a movie about his life as a teenager. In ‘The Exchange,’ the fictionalized Tim Long is played by Ed Oxenbould and the movie directed by Dan Mazer (Da Ali G Show). The plot is described as, “Hoping to find...
Jul 30, 2021•29 min
Bruce Miller spent the first part of his career penning movies that rarely got made, until he started writing television movies. All of a sudden, his stories were coming to the silver screen and then he moved to television. Today, Miller is best known for writing on ‘ER,’ ‘Everwood,’ ‘Medium,’ ‘The 4400,’ ‘In Plain Sight,’ Alphas,’ ‘The 100,’ and now, he’s the creator of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.’ On Hulu’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ the story opens in a dystopian future, where a woman (played by Elisab...
Jul 27, 2021•33 min
Alena Smith got her start as a playwright, which she believes “uniquely prepares you for what it takes to be a creator and show runner of a television show.” This background, of being a collaborator and visionary, helped Smith and many of her Yale peers transition to television work. She’s known for working on Aaron Sorkin’s ‘The Newsroom’ and fellow alum Sarah Treem’s ‘The Affair.’ In her most recent project, she’s the creator of Apple TV’s ‘Dickinson.’ In the Hailee Steinfeld-led series, Smith...
Jul 25, 2021•33 min
Jeffrey Paul King’s creative pursuits came from an interest in opera at an early age. While in boarding school, he spent time writing and in college, he had a play accepted to the Fringe Festival in Scotland. Then, he moved to LA, worked his way up from being an assistant, and eventually interning at ‘Grey’s Anatomy.’ King’s first gig was on the series ‘Elementary,’ where he worked for seven seasons writing for Johnny Lee Miller (Sherlock Holmes) and Lucy Liu (Dr. Joan Watson). He then wrote a T...
Jul 24, 2021•35 min
Rachel Dickinson writes about travel, history, bits of science, and anything else that interests her from her home in perpetually cloudy Upstate New York. One non-fiction book took her to the wilds of Southern Indiana to research ‘The Notorious Reno Gang,’ an account of the world's first train robbers. In ‘Falconer on the Edge,’ she followed a hardcore falconer through a hunting season in Wyoming. In this interview, Rachel talks about pitching to editors, advice that transformed her writing, res...
Jul 22, 2021•35 min
As a kid, Aaron Rahsaan Thomas could be described as the good kid living vicariously through his bad kid friends. Essentially, he took this perspective with him to the page. Thomas, who has worked on shows like Friday Night Lights, Numb3rs, CSI:NY, Southland, The Get Down, and S.W.A.T., says he has a love/hate relationship with human beings, which comes alive in his silver screen characters. Thomas’ series S.W.A.T comes from intellectual property but has a new spin on it. The description reads, ...
Jul 20, 2021•36 min
At Robin Block’s company Creator VC, the company focuses on “community-powered entertainment.” The independent producers work on crowdfunded content for superfans. ‘In Search of Darkness’ is described as “An exploration of '80s horror movies through the perspective of the actors, directors, producers and SFX craftspeople who made them, and their impact on contemporary cinema.” ‘In Search of Tomorrow’ is described as “A nostalgic journey through '80s Sc-Fi films, exploring their impact and releva...
Jul 13, 2021•29 min
David Weiner originally moved to Los Angeles to get involved with filmmaking, where he mostly worked as Assistant Director. Soon after, he started writing and found journalism, where he worked for Entertainment Tonight, The Hollywood Reporter, and he even ran the Famous Monsters of Filmland Magazine. There, Robin Block recruited him. At Block’s company Creator VC, the company focuses on “community-powered entertainment.” The independent producers work on crowdfunded content for superfans. Weiner...
Jul 08, 2021•31 min
Originally a painter, Daniel Minahan wasn’t a fan of the solitary nature of painting, which led him to documentary filmmaking and then television. He’s best known for working on ‘Six Feet Under,’ ‘Deadwood,’ ‘Game of Thrones,’ ‘House of Cards,’ and most recently, ‘Halston.’ The 5-episode series ‘Halston’ stars Ewan McGregor. The story follows a man who leverages his single, invented name into a worldwide fashion empire synonymous with luxury, sex, and fame, defining an era. In this interview, Mi...
Jul 07, 2021•30 min
Anna Konkle followed a typical pursuit into acting until she and Maya Erskine (Wine Country, Plus One) decided to created their own web series. Now, the series is on Hulu, where the duo plays middle school girls. On Pen15, the description reads, “The comedic story of middle school seen through the eyes of two 7th grade girls dealing with the awkwardness of being a teenager.” In this interview, Anna talks about working on ‘Man Seeking Woman,’ influence from Lena Dunham, writing weird ideas, creat...
Jul 07, 2021•30 min
As a kid, Eytan Rockaway would film toy soldiers in an effort to model his hero, Director Steven Spielberg. By the time he was twelve, he was shooting short films with friends, then after the army, he went to NYU to study film. In his new film ‘Lansky,’ Harvey Keitel stars as Meyer Lansky. The description reads, “When the aging Meyer Lansky is investigated one last time by the Feds who suspect he has stashed away millions of dollars over half a century, the retired gangster spins a dizzying tale...
Jul 06, 2021•29 min
Eugene Ashe first entered the filmmaking business as a recording artist, where he landed on soundtracks for Free Willy and The Bronx Tale. While reading these scripts, and others, he started to see movies and television in a songwriitng sense. As a screenwriter, Ashe has credits for the documentary Home Again and films Homecoming and Sylvie’s Love. In the latest project, the story follows a young woman who meets an aspiring saxophonist in 1950s Harlem. In this interview, Ashe talks about making ...
Jul 06, 2021•30 min
Patrick Hughes said he knew he wanted to become a filmmaker when he saw the Coen Brothers’ film, ‘Raising Arizona.’ The action-comedy led Hughes down a path to make similar films. Hughes is best known for his work on ‘Red Hill,’ ‘The Expendables 3,’ and the ‘The Hitman’s Bodyguard’ films. In the sequel, Michael Bryce (Ryan Reynolds) continues his friendship with Darius Kincaid (Samuel L. Jackson) as they try to save Darius’ wife Sonia (Salma Hayek). In this interview, Hughes talks about making 3...
Jul 05, 2021•41 min
