Christian Elder, Screenwriter: That isn’t uncommon, that isn’t a fantasy because it happens, it happens pretty much every day…
Film Courage: Do you think when a writer reaches a certain level they no longer need to work on craft?
Christian: No. You’ve got to remain teachable as a writer. I think it’s extraordinarily important. You always have to be willing to learn and I think that writers tend to give off this air that they’re like poor man intellectuals. I don’t think they really are. I think that they have to continually be in a process in which they are allowing themselves to be vulnerable and open to new things. I think they do a good act at at seeming to be having a wide array of knowledge. There’s the writers actually do talk about this. There’s a lecture that incidentally Tony Gilroy gives where he basically talks about how writers have this amazing capacity to know a little bit about so many various subject matters but never an extensive amount about one thing. We are I think in a sense dilettantes by nature. In other words yes we have to be open. You’ve always got be practicing. You always have to be honing your work. You’re always willing to learn from somebody else. I’ve learned so much from other writers. I love to listen to other writers talk about how they do things and certain techniques and ideas that they apply. I think any true writer is a curiosity junkie that you just need to keep getting more information about whatever. How this works or how does…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
BIO:
Christian Elder is a screenwriter, playwright and filmmaker based in Los Angeles, California. He has been a finalist for Tribeca All Access, a semi-finalist for the International Thomas Wolfe Playwriting Award, a quarterfinalist for the ScreenCraft Play contest and a quarterfinalist for the Academy Awards Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting. His work written for the stage has been recently developed at the Billie Holiday Theatre through the Frank Silvera Writers’ Workshop and Urban Stages, both in New York. He has written and directed two short films and is the creator and executive producer of the new crime fiction anthology podcast Hell, California. Elder’s Hell, California, is a hardboiled crime fiction podcast anthology series (co-produced by Jeremy Foley). It takes place in a mysterious, mythical California border town called Hell. Each episode is an original standalone noir story, often about greed, lust and murder. In March 2020, Elder, Foley and a team of six writers formed an online TV writers’ room during the pandemic, resulting in this series.
CONNECT WITH CHRISTIAN ELDER
CONNECT WITH ‘HELL, CALIFORNIA – An Anthology Crime Show’
Advertisement – contains affiliate links
(As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases)
Camera we use for interviews – https://buff.ly/3rWqrra
Editing system – https://goo.gl/56LnpM
Sound we use for interviews – https://amzn.to/2tbFlM9
Writers, try Final Draft free for 30-days – https://ow.ly/Gz4w30rDSKt
