[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: How do you begin writing a screenplay?
Writer/Director/Co-Founder of Scene Study LA Tom O’Brien: Different ways. I think sometimes it comes from one of the scripts I’m working on now that came from an article I read in the New York Times about the first woman to play boys high school hockey in the state of Minnesota. I was fascinated with that story. Then I got in touch with the writer of the article and I ended up interviewing the woman who did it, her name was Maddie Rooney and she went on to be the Olympic gold medalist in women’s ice hockey. I got to talk to her and her high school coach and I just kind of went down this rabbit hole from reading this New York Times article. That was how that one started.
Other times, like we’re talking about New York, it starts with a conversation. I’ll hear two people talking in a diner and I’ll write the dialogue down and then just sort of imagine their lives. I do a lot of daydreaming. I love sitting in coffee shops and I think we were talking earlier about the devices. I think that’s the one thing that is detrimental to writers is we need time to daydream and imagine. I think that too much time on the devices can hurt the imagination.
Film Courage: Going back to the women’s hockey story, what was it about…why did you feel compelled to tell them I have to write a screenplay about this?
Tom: It was just such an interesting article and it was inspiring to me because she left the women’s team in high school and they had almost won the championship the year before so I imagine that all her friends on the women’s team probably were mad at her and disappointed. Then the boys sort of on the outside seemed like they were accepting of her but I’m sure there was some push back with that too. There was also an interesting storyline of the father of the boy goalie that she beat out going to the coach and starting a ruckus in the town. It just felt like as soon as I read the article, it felt like a story to me…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Tom O’Brien is a Los Angeles based writer/director. He teaches acting and writing at Scenestudyla.com. Tom’s first feature film, Fairhaven, Starred Chris Messina and Sarah Paulson and was a critics pick in the New York Times.
Tom’s second feature, Manhattan Romance, starring Katherine Waterston and Gaby Hoffmann was distributed by Netflix worldwide. Tom’s online series, OM City, that he created with his wife, Jessie Barr, was a New York Times Critic’s TV Pick.
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