Questions by Idit Dvir, Developing Filmmaker / Fellowship Program Administrator
ID: Do you have any thoughts on the importance of working writers mentoring females aspiring to succeed in their field?
BC: My mom was a great writer, and an amazing storyteller with a wonderful way with words. When she was a kid, she was at the head of all of her classes by leagues. Her writing was so sophisticated at such a young age, her parents sided with a teacher who thought she had copied a poem she wrote from a published poet. My mom never got over that betrayal. And beyond that, she was a member of the ‘lost generation,’ just barely too old to be a Boomer. So, she was always stuck in a previous generation’s role for a woman, looking out at the new possibilities blooming around her. She minimized her own writing and worried that if it were honest and personal, she would anger her family. She never completed anything bigger than a short story. When she died, I found little scraps and fragments of her writing – each phrase or idea like a perfect little jewel. Mentoring women filmmakers in WIM has made me feel like I was being something I never could have been for my mom.
ID: What inspired you to become a writer?
BC: The funny thing is that I never wanted to be a writer! I’m mildly dyslexic and the slowest reader in a family of fast readers. But my mom, who was a voracious reader, encouraged any and all creative endeavors I showed interest in. She was my first audience. I loved to make things that she loved, and she especially loved it when I would write stories for school. I came to enjoy writing short stories as a kid and young man – mainly to share with her – but my real interest was in drawing, animation, and eventually making movies.
My mom was a true cinephile, with an advanced sense of personal cinematic taste. My dad also loved movies, so I had a very good handle on post-war American cinema at a young age. Still, I’m not sure I ever gave movie-writing much thought until I saw Stanley Kubrick’s A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. I watched it every day after school in eighth grade. I was absolutely in love with the movie’s structure – it felt so clear and perfect to me, like a golden Isosceles triangle. It was the first time it occurred to me that the writing of a movie might be important. After that, I started tuning in to the writing in movies.
I was drawn to filmmakers that had unique and stunning approaches to story structure – like Spike Lee, The Coen Brothers, Akira Kurosawa, Wes Anderson, and Quentin Tarantino. I wanted to craft story structures like they did. This led me to want to be proficient at the writing part of the process. Even so, the first time I ever tried to write a screenplay, I felt completely lost at sea. Again, my mom was there to help – she would read my drafts, edit them for me, and give me encouraging feedback. Most importantly, she always instantly got what I was going for, which helped me persevere through a lot of frustration.
ID: How did you break into the industry?
BC: I started as an indie filmmaker and got a paid opportunity to write and direct an adaptation of a short story. This was my dream come true, but what I wrote was not what the producers wanted. The project fell apart, and I realized I needed to learn how to write in this kind of business arrangement. Then, an opportunity came to me. I could write a more established indie filmmaker’s idea – that’s Derek Cianfrance. I would be paid very little – non-guild (I wasn’t yet in the WGA). I figured I could learn better how to write if I wrote for a filmmaker, because there would be a shared language. That project became THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES which went fairly big. So I was hired to write open assignments by studios. I hoped I could somehow turn that into directing. But these jobs were like my first experience writing with producers. I realized that my experience writing PINES never taught me the thing I was trying to teach myself. PINES was just a wonderful artistic collaboration of a kind that is so rare now in the industry.
ID: THE PLACE BEYOND THE PINES is very unique structurally. How did that script happen?
BC: The idea Derek came to me for was the basic generational story in the movie. He wanted this to be non-linear, like the movie he was making at the time – BLUE VALENTINE. He explained this all to me at The Donut Pub, where I had chosen to meet him to make sure he wasn’t a twerp. My first suggestion was my best: make it linear because doing it non-linear would be cheating. He was like, ‘We’d be killing off Ryan Gosling after 30 minutes,’ and I was like, ‘That’d be awesome!’ I understood structure better than Derek; he understood scenes and actors better than I, and we both had our own beautiful understanding of character, which blended. I did the heavy lifting but Derek gave it more heart than I was going for, which is him all over.
ID: How have things changed for writers over the last decade?
BC: I think we are in an interesting political environment. Labor is waking up from its Reagan-induced slumber. At the same time, oligarchs, hyper corporations, and the right are closing ranks to finish off Labor once and for all. To wit: the WGA had to fight a rear-guard action to fend off (for now) the unmitigated bullshit of AI, which just steals from artists legally and spits out horrifying chum.
ID: How do you approach the writing process?
BC: The most important thing for any writer to know is: what story do you want to tell? Personally, I always start with structure. I’ve also accepted that the way I start, the way I write, what I write, and how long it can sometimes take are all fine – regardless of whether or not what I do winds up being profitable to a huge corporation.
ID: Writing on spec: How do you decide an idea/project is worth your time?
BC: I think now there’s no other way to do it. You write what you want, what you love, what story you want to tell, and you try and tell it. If you can get the industry behind what you want to do without any catastrophic consequences to the story, great. If not, do it yourself on a budget. We all have amazing movie cameras in our pockets.
ID: Do you think there’s still a place for scripts with social commentary in the current climate?
BC: You can’t avoid it. All art is always social commentary – even if you don’t want it to be.
ID: Do you have any tips on networking for young writers?
BC: I think doing something like Women In Media is good. Or getting into film festivals. Or just helping out behind the scenes at places like film festivals or Women In Media. Find people who make art and have similar enough tastes that inspire you and teach you and care about your work. Be in a community of committed artists.
ID: How did you get involved with Women In Media?
BC: Tema Staig, the Executive Director and her family became our first LA friends when we moved to Los Angeles.
ID: What do you wish you’d known when you started out?
BC: To just keep making movies my way on my own dime for longer.
ID: Can you talk about your contribution to WIM’s Developing Filmmaker Fellowship?
BC: I loved working with Sayla U’ilani Whalen. I’m not sure how much help I was, but I think it’s important to share the struggle. It might be easier in this kind of formalized relationship, actually. Or it’s a different flavor – especially for the mentee – compared to working for a boss or working with an established friend. I would have loved to have something like it when I was Sayla’s age. I’ve loved working with all the filmmakers WIM has set me up with, for that matter. My mom taught me how to encourage an artist to do their best work, and with WIM, I’m trying to pass what she taught me on to others.
