Justin Lader is the writer on the twisty-turny breakout Sundance hit, “The One I Love.” This is his first produced credit. The film stars Mark Duplass (Zero Dark Thirty, Safety Not Guaranteed) and Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men). The film hits VOD and Itunes on Friday August 1st and theaters on August 22nd! Make sure to see it!
SS: First off, Justin. Congratulations! How did this journey begin for you? When did you start writing?
JL: Once it became apparent that anything involving athleticism wasn’t a viable option, I took an interest in the arts. Growing up I would manipulate the kids in my neighborhood into thinking we were playing cops but I’d really be placing them in certain roles, constructing a story and we’d be improvising. I was also a big GI JOE and wrestler action figure guy. I’d lock myself in my room and use them not as GI JOES or wrestlers, but as characters in stories I was making up while playing with them. That’s all well and fine until you reach the fork in the road called middle school and you had to choose between GI JOES and girls.
At the time, I didn’t realize I was telling stories, I didn’t think of it like that. Writing wasn’t something I ever considered. It was just a thing you had to do for school and you’d put it off until the very last minute (something which unfortunately still hasn’t changed much). In high school I did theater and that was fun but acting never really came natural. Basically I’d be on stage just trying to remember what my next line is and hoping to deliver it in a way that didn’t humiliate myself. It wasn’t until we were given the option of doing a monologue or writing our own for a class midterm that I realized writing was a viable option for me.
The thought of memorizing a monologue was unbearable so I leaped at the opportunity to write my own. I was obsessed with Andy Kaufman at the time so my idea was I’d write what would seem to be an intense personal monologue about loss. That way people would be sympathetic to me and there would already be a built in bit of awkwardness and discomfort in the air. Then I had a friend of mine who was also in the class begin to heckle me halfway through. There was a nice slow build to it; other students began to get upset and annoyed. I began to stammer on stage like it was affecting me. It all culminated with me confronting him. The teacher didn’t even know about it. People in the class were really freaked and confused when they realized it was all a put-on. I got an A and said no more acting. It’s all about story telling. From there I went to undergraduate film school at the University of Central Florida and majored in Film. After that I applied to AFI and was accepted in the screenwriting discipline.
SS: At least you didn’t sit next to people on airplanes and show them gruesome photographs of plane crash sites, as Kaufman was known to do. So how did you get into screenwriting specifically?
JJ: I always loved movies and TV shows. It was my life. I’d watch everything. The undergrad/grad school experience was really eye opening for me. My college film program at UCF was very independent minded. At the time its claim to fame was the Blair Witch guys came out of there. Basically you wrote, directed, produced, edited, and sometimes acted in your own shorts. Permits didn’t matter. It was gorilla filmmaking and it was a lot of fun. At the time, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to dive in as a writer/director or just a writer. I knew anything technical wasn’t possible for me. It still takes me about 35 minutes to set up a C-Stand.
SS: Me too!
JL: Those things are impossible. But I did notice something important fairly early on. Most of the other film students had exceptional knowledge and skill on a technical level. Leaps and bounds above me. But they didn’t seem to get excited by story. It was almost as if the story was an afterthought to all the cool technical things they wanted to do. So after undergrad when AFI was an option and I had to actually pick a discipline and stick to it, I thought about that. I thought about all the headaches of going through pre production on a short film – raising money, securing locations and vendors, casting actors that most of the time just want something to add to their reel, and I realized that I didn’t want to go through all that again.
I also thought that after two years at AFI, leaving with a couple of polished feature length screenplays and a TV pilot might position me better to hit the ground running as opposed to a short film, which usually leads to somebody, at best, watching it and liking it and then asking what’s next. So I decided to apply to the screenwriting discipline. And the AFI film experience was the polar opposite of the UCF film experience. At AFI, everything was about permits and narrative and the Hollywood way of telling stories and turning those stories into movies. I used to joke that AFI required a permit just to use their bathroom. So in a lot of ways I felt like I got the best of both worlds as far as the film school experience goes. However, I also got the best of both worlds as far as film school debt goes, so there’s that too.
SS: Well, we’ll try to alleviate that a little bit (Scriptshadow readers, go see this movie!). So during those early days, what was the most challenging thing about screenwriting for you?
JL: I’d say finding my voice. That didn’t happen for me until AFI. Mainly because film schools try to force 3 act narrative filmmaking into the paradigm of a short film. And that’s brutal. A short film is its own mountain to climb and very different from features. I think that’s one of the big mistakes most film schools are guilty of and why a lot of short films you see from even prominent film schools tend to feel long and not work. At undergrad I wrote my first two features. They were the standard coming-of-age scripts. I was lucky to get those out of the way early. Then at AFI, I started to really define my voice and the types of stories that excite me. Something as organic as finding your voice, on paper, doesn’t seem like it should be the biggest challenge, but for me it was. It took a while.
SS: Okay so how many scripts had you written before you finally felt like you were “getting” screenwriting?
JL: My first feature at undergrad was coming-of-age. My next script was a pilot, also coming-of-age. Then, through a professor who became a mentor, I was hired by an author to adapt his novel into a script. That, too, was coming-of-age. So like I said, I REALLY got that out of my system. At AFI, things started to click for me once I realized the types of stories I wanted to tell (bigger hooks that led to intimate unpredictable stories). And to this day, Charlie (director of The One I Love and my collaborating partner) and I look for these types of stories whenever we’re about to break a new script.
SS: Can you remember a specific moment when things really started to click?
JL: My thesis feature script at AFI was a screenplay called Fighting Jacob. At the time, I was pretty unhappy for a lot of reasons that don’t really matter for the purposes of this. And I wondered if being unhappy was also a contributing factor in being a writer. Then I was scared that if I ever found happiness, I wouldn’t be a good writer anymore. Now, if I had this idea back when I was in undergrad, I would’ve written a very literal story about an introverted writer who struggled with his art and emotional growth. You know, a coming-of-age-story. Not wanting to do that, an idea occurred to me and it led to what Fighting Jacob eventually became.
It was a story about a neurotic hypochondriac who just happened to be one of the most promising up-and-coming boxers on the amateur circuit – He won’t throw a punch until his opponent hits him ten times first, and after the post-fight physician checks him out he’s more concerned with the mole on his chest being benign than the bruises he got from the fight. Basically you have a protagonist that’s physically Jake Gyllenhaal but mentally Woody Allen. It’s his pent up anxiety and neurosis that makes him a monster in the ring when he lets it out. The Jewish version of Raging Bull. Anyway, he meets a girl, falls in love and begins to feel happiness for the first time. As their relationship grows, his quirks and OCD tendencies begin to go away and he realizes he’s not fighting as well anymore. And the story then becomes about him struggling with whether or not he has to be unhappy to be a good fighter and does he have to choose between boxing or the girl…. So basically, it was taking something that felt real and honest to me, but dramatizing it in a way that narratively (hopefully) had a fun sort of hook to get people interested.
Then, really quickly, the other thing that clicked was the idea of taking something familiar and subverting expectations in a hopefully interesting way. We had to write a couple of spec scripts of existing shows in a TV comedy class at AFI. I have two television idols (more like obsessions really) and they’re David Chase and Larry David. So naturally I wrote a Curb spec. My premise was Larry agrees to write a Seinfeld reunion episode just to impress an attractive studio exec that was at the pitch meeting. (This was in between seasons 6 and 7 so I had no idea they were actually making another season with a Seinfeld arc). So I wrote that spec and then felt wonderfully vindicated when I learned that the actual premise of the next season was the same thing. As someone who is usually very hard on himself, the cross-over moments between my script and David’s made me feel like I was doing something right.
And the other spec I did was an East Bound and Down that centered around Danny McBride’s character learning that a Hollywood studio was making a biopic about his life as a troubled train-wreck former ball player and the studio casts Vincent Chase to play him. Wishing it was someone more bad ass like Micky Rourke, McBride’s character tries to get Vinny Chase (and the Entourage) to OD on drugs when Vince comes to “observe him” as preparation for playing him in the movie. So it was merging an East Bound and Down spec with an Entourage spec, but in the tones and universe of East Bound and Down. Writing this spec led me to realize that there’s a level of unpredictability that comes when playing within different tones that don’t normally go together. The tricky part is executing those different tones properly. Because there’s good unpredictability and bad unpredictability. Left of center is great; out of left field is not…. These three scripts were what led to my first opportunity to have representation.
SS: Ooh, I like that line (“Left of center is great; out of left field is not….”). So true. Moving on, can you tell us how you eventually got your agent/manager (or both)?
JL: I got my first manager through a friend who read Fighting Jacob and my Curb spec. He very graciously passed it along to a friend who happened to be a manager. I was in my last year at AFI and having a manager that early was thrilling. Ultimately, we had different philosophies when it came to the types of movies I should write. I’m pretty miserable when I’m struggling to write something I love so I don’t want to even think about the unbearable bastard I’d be if I was writing something I wasn’t passionate about. His mentality was more SELL SELL SELL, which is totally fine but being a twenty-four year old coming out of AFI, I was looking more for a manager who would nurture a new writer and work to build a career of collaboration. Eventually, I met Charlie (the director of The One I Love) and he read Fighting Jacob and we hit if off both personally and creatively. We set out for that to be the first movie we’d make. He’d direct it. During that process I signed with another manager, who I’m still with currently. And Charlie and I eventually signed with an agency because we were close to selling a TV show and it was time for agents. We ended up selling a pitch to CBS that never went anywhere and soon after we sort of parted ways from the agency in a very non-dramatic way. Then about 3 years ago we signed with a new agency (ICM) that’s been wonderful and that’s been our happy home ever since…
SS: Is there anything you learned during that process?
JL: Probably not to stress too much about agents and managers. I remember, especially in film school, the thinking is that agents and managers are the answer. And then the career begins. The reality is that agents and managers can’t do much for a new writer until the new writer does something for himself. Obviously there’s that massive spec sale exception. But by and large, it’s about creating your own opportunities AND THEN you have agents and managers to help facilitate those opportunities once they come. It’s a bit of a catch-22 because you can’t really break in without an agent or manager but agents and managers don’t really want you until you break in. My relationship with my agents and my manager has been invaluable since we’ve made this movie. Once you have opportunities and it becomes about navigating a healthy career path, making the right decisions creatively and career-wise, you count on agents and managers. But nine times out of ten, and this is true for pretty much everybody I know who also has managed to break in, that first opportunity that gets your career going comes from you.
SS: Okay now this is the stuff I’m particularly interested in. Most people go the traditional route of sending specs out and either getting a sale or getting assignments. But for these more independent/Sundance type projects, the process can be a little more homegrown. Can you tell us how The One I Love came about?
JL: Charlie and I spent the better part of 5 years trying to get Fighting Jacob off the ground. We had a lot of close calls. We even had financing and a pretty wonderful cast lined up. The problem was it was one of those projects in budgetary no man’s land. At the time, I actually thought I was being smart or strategic by writing a high concept indie in the 2 and a half to 3 million dollar range. What I didn’t know was that nobody wants to finance that. At the time, the big boys don’t see an upside in investing that small of an amount. It’s not worth it to them, they want to invest in bigger indies, more closer to ten. And for the people who do finance low budget indies 2-3 is way too expensive and risky.
SS: Wait, let me stop you there. So it’s bad to write a 2-3 million dollar indie film? That budget will always be passed up because it’s stuck in no-man’s land?
JL: It’s fascinating because the paradigm is constantly shifting; even from only a year or two ago. At the time we were gearing up for FJ, we had the script budgeted for about 2.5 I believe. Not sure exactly, that’s ballpark. It was tough because independent financiers tend to either wanna go below a million or over 6 or 7. That was the case a few years ago. It might be a little different currently. If you had a big name actor that would make it easier. But even that was more of a scientific thing as opposed to a prestige thing. You could get a decent name but if there was no foreign value to the actor, the money folks didn’t really care. It was important to sell off foreign territories so investors can get their money back before the director even says action….
Now currently, and I do think this plays a factor for high concept indies, the budgets can fluctuate based on things that have nothing to do with the script. And that’s something the director discusses with the team beforehand. There could be a version of a film that’s made for 7-8 million and a version made for 1-2; and this gap in $ has absolutely nothing to do with the script, I’m talking about not changing a word. There’s obviously a multitude of pros and cons but overwhelmingly most directors go for the 1-2 million version even though that limits them in many ways.
The short reason why — Control. That amount means the director can pretty much cast the movie the way they want and make the movie the way they see it. But most importantly, once you go beyond 1. 5 (I forget what the exact number is, may not be 1.5) you have to go union. I’m talking teamsters and the whole nine yards. If you make a movie for less than (1.5) you can sidestep all the fees and hoops; and the main reason that’s appealing is because every cent of that budget goes on screen. If you make a move for 3, most of that goes to all the union stuff and never makes it to the screen… From my experience, a nice high concept indie with a great role for a name actor, kept to within 1.5 is a great place to be. Studios that acquire movies on the festival circuit are paying less and less these days. I know of some movies that had decent offers from big studios but COULDN’T sell because the financiers would lose money on the sale. So the filmmakers had to pass. Crazy stuff.
SS: Wow, that’s fascinating. Okay, sorry for interrupting. You were talking about trying to get Fighting Jacob off the ground.
JL: Right so Charlie and our manager were persistent, passionate and smart. Like I said, we got casting and financing and were gearing up for pre-pro when financing fell through and we had to “push” the start date. What I very quickly learned was that “push” is actually code for “never gonna fucking happen.” While that was going on, our agent (who happens to be Mark Duplass’ agent also) gave Mark Fighting Jacob to read. He then met with Charlie and the two of them hit it off. Mark and Charlie had similar sensibilities and Mark explained his model and approach to making low budget films. It was a natural fit and Charlie was so hungry to make something. Mark said we’d hear from him. And we did. The three of us hopped on the phone and we all clicked. Then we started talking about concepts and an idea emerged. Mark then let Charlie and I go off to break the story. (That’s how our relationship works. Creatively it’s wonderful. We break the story together so it comes from us both, I go off and write then he makes what I write a million times better as a director)….
So I put together a ten page document that laid out the ground work for the story in the hopes that it would entice Mark to proceed with us. He was pleased and we were off to the races. This happened in October (not of this past year) and we wanted to shoot the movie in April. Now at this point we knew what we were dealing with in terms of budget, location, and if we wrote a good story – our lead actress. So it was about writing very quickly to make an April start date. Since Mark is one of the busiest people on the planet, if we didn’t make that date, the movie would have been “pushed.” So Charlie and I basically said that if this movie doesn’t happen it won’t be because we didn’t deliver on our end. So we delved into the story and broke it very quickly. I wrote what ended up being what I believe was a 55 page document that we called a scriptment.
SS: Okay, so kind of like what James Cameron does.
JL: For me the inspiration was more what Larry David does on Curb, but yeah. And I didn’t include dialogue in it. I would suggest certain lines but it was all in the exposition and scene descriptions. It had every scene, what was happening in the scene, what the characters were going through externally and internally. It built the narrative thread of the movie. That was completed by the end of October. Our producer Mel came on board after reading it. Mark sent the script to Lizzie (Elizabeth Moss) who read it and wanted to do it. Timing-wise she was finishing up Mad Men literally the day before we were to start shooting, so it felt like the stars were aligning.
As pre-production rolled along it became apparent that the last 30 minutes of the movie required full scripting for practical reasons that would have made improv difficult. So I scripted the last 30 pages, which was an interesting exercise because while the scriptment was very carefully plotted and detailed, I hadn’t heard these characters interact and a lot of that interaction was going to come directly from Lizzie and Mark. It ended up working out and we shot the movie that April.
Like I said, this was a heavily plotted movie with a TON of scenes so we realized on set that we didn’t have the luxury of time to go through long exploratory scenes. It became apparent that I’d be of use scripting the next day’s scenes out the night before. Even if Mark and Lizzie added their own lines, it served as a nice blueprint for pacing. We’d get a sense of how long the scene should feel beat wise – Like, the first few lines there’s room to play, but by line four “this” needs to be said so the scene pivots into this bit of information which carries us into the next scene. I would write those pages, hand them to Mark, Charlie, Lizzie, and Mel while the crew was prepping, and these pages would function as our starting off point and we’d all collaborate and find the scene from there. It was an incredible amount of fun and it kept things fresh and exciting. It was collaboration in the truest sense.
SS: Whoa, that’s a really unique approach. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of someone doing it that way before. All right, so, if you were giving advice to writers out there, would you tell them to go that more traditional route of trying to get a project made at a studio or should they go the indie route?
JL: That’s tricky. It depends on the types of stories you want to tell as a writer. I mentioned earlier that David Chase was another hero of mine and a major influence. I was in high school when the Sopranos started and for some reason what he was attempting to do with that show immediately clicked for me. He took the hook of a mob story and used that as a way into exploring the things he wanted to say about family, work, fatherhood, and being an American male mid-life in the late 90s and early 2000’s. The main character just happened to run a crime family. What that show did is something that I think independent films can do now. I think it’s an exciting and new time in independent filmmaking.
In the mid 90’s you had the boom of indie filmmaking where studios learned that certain movies could be acquired from elite festivals and find mainstream audiences. And that’s sort of been the paradigm ever since; a little bit of survival of the fittest – Some movies would get acquired by a studio, others would only exist in film festivals. Of the films acquired, some would break through and find an audience, and others would struggle. Now, with VOD and iTunes, same day releases, and everything in between a new model to distribute independent films is on the horizon and beginning to emerge. Of course it requires a little trial and error, and there are a bunch of kinks that still need to be worked out, but I’m incredibly excited to be starting my career during this new boom of indie filmmaking.
Look at something like Snowpiercer. It’s a tremendous success, well deserved. But just from a story standpoint, in premise alone, it’s something that could have conceivably been a big studio tent pole. But they made it independently, which allowed them to take a high concept premise and take it in a direction that’s interesting and unpredictable. And that’s what I was talking about when I mentioned the Sopranos earlier. Part of the DNA of that show was the fact that anything could happen at any moment. It used to be that big ideas were meant for big studios. If you made a “genre” indie, it was meant to get the attention of the studios and help you break in. If you were an indie filmmaker by nature, the perception was that you were dabbling in avant-garde filmmaking that didn’t necessarily have a strong emphasis on narrative. But that’s not the case anymore. So if you’re the type of writer who conceptualizes big ideas and is interested in executing those ideas into a subversive story that appeals to audiences while managing to also keep them on their toes, I think it’s a very exciting time to consider the indie route.
SS: This next question is tricky because I keep hearing this film has a big twist that turns it into a different genre. I don’t want to find out what that is because I want to be surprised when I see the film. But I’m curious if making that choice was easy to you or difficult, since aggressive choices in movies are a hard sell. People usually like to know exactly what kind of movie they’re paying for. Did people tell you, “You’re crazy. This is too strange. We need to rewrite it to be more traditional?”
JL: It was just the opposite actually. We realized that our take, or hook, to hang our story on was exactly what was going to work in our favor. Another reason Charlie and I work so well together is our approach. I tend to think in terms of story. Wouldn’t it be cool if… What if this happens… And then.. etc… Charlie is wonderful when it comes to character. So we complement each other nicely. Once we had the hook of our movie we made it a point not to just rely on it to carry the audience through the rest of the film, but to also build on it. Constantly build and not just tread water. We also reverse engineered the character component and emotional story to compliment what you’re talking about. And what that gave us was taking something that is high concept and making it universal and emotionally true. That was our mandate. As long as the characters were going through the emotional equivalent of the hook or twist or whatever you want to call it, we were confident we were making the right choices.
SS: Can you tell us a little bit about your process? (Do you outline? If so, how extensively? Do you focus mainly on structure? Or character? Or theme? How long does it take you to write a first draft? And then eventually a finished script?)
JL: Clearly The One I Love was not my typical process and was its own thing. Usually it’s a full script from the get-go. The One I Love came together fast. The new one I’m finishing up took a while to find. For me, I think it’s much better to have an idea of what the story is and more importantly where it goes so you have some kind of road map. That’s just me. Some people crank out a first draft very quickly and that turns into their outline. I find I write better and the process is easier when the story is broke before I begin writing. It saves me time and anxiety. And anxiety is something I’m definitely not in short supply of. When dealing with high concept ideas, it’s important for me to tap into that universal theme I really want to explore within the concept. It helps me write because it grounds a big idea into something human. Like Eternal Sunshine. That’s a movie about getting over a break up. So theme is important, especially when the premise isn’t literal.
SS: What are some of the most important things you’ve learned about screenwriting over the years, things that have really helped you as a writer?
JL: I find the best lessons about something specific also apply to life in general. It’s important to be self aware as a writer. And to be reflective and honest enough to not be on either extreme of the spectrum – What you just wrote probably isn’t the best, most original, thing you’ve ever done. And also, what you just wrote probably isn’t the biggest waste of time and load of crap ever typed on a Macbook. It’s important to be dramatic in your writing but not in your analysis. It’s easier said than done, and lord knows I struggle with that. Being able to accurately assess your work in an honest and critical way is something most writers (even great writers) struggle with. The workshop process really helps with that. You’re able to understand notes, navigate how to react to those notes, and most importantly find the note behind the note. Because nobody knows your script as well as you do. So often you’ll hear a note that might not be well articulated but the emotional visceral response BEHIND the note is something that you should consider. That’s why I really like this site. Whether I agree or disagree with a criticism or lesson, ultimately this website is a wonderful tool in learning how to reflect on the writing process as opposed to just fixating on the finished product.
SS: Yeah, go Scriptshadow! ☺ So what was it like seeing your movie for the first time? Did it look and sound like you imagined it in your head? Or was it completely different?
JL: That aspect of this was a fairy tale in every sense. Woody Allen said that an idea is at its best in your head because the imagination has no production limitations. Being on set every day, soaking up and absorbing everything I could from Mark, watching Charlie direct something I wrote with the skill and confidence of a veteran filmmaker, and having Lizzie convey a complex emotion I labored over describing in the script all in just a look was better than anything I was able to conceive of in my neurotic brain. And that was just the experience of making it. Which terrified me. You always hear that the best on set experiences eventually translate into the worst movies. Everyone had a bitch of a time making Titanic, and that turned into a big success. Everyone had a blast making Dunston Checks In, and that turned into Dunston Checks In. So when we premiered at Sundance and it got the reception it did, I was humbled and thrilled. Then I immediately scheduled a physical with my doctor because there’s no way something this wonderful and amazing could happen to me that didn’t result in the karmic balance of some form of cancer. … But I turned out to be clean.
Thanks so much for this. Have a lot of respect and admiration for this website. This was fun.
SS: Thanks Justin. Can’t wait to see what you do next. ☺
note: Justin will occasionally be checking in on the comments. So if you have a question for him, feel free to ask.
