[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: You’d said previously that so much of what you write may not even end up either in the final script or being shot. How often do you write just what you consider awful pages on purpose? Embarrassing pages just to get yourself going?
John Schimke, Filmmaker/Screenwriter: How many pages or how much time?
Film Courage: How much time?
John: I think it could be weeks, months.
A good example, Greg [Porper] and I, I think we wrote over 20 drafts of Don’t Tell Larry.
The first few drafts of Don’t Tell Larry, we completely just threw them in the trash and just rewrote because it was like this isn’t working.
We’ve discovered some things about Susan, our main character, and Patrick. I remember we discovered some things about the dynamic of these two co-workers. If we hadn’t written those pages, we wouldn’t have understood the dynamic between the two of how they’re friends. They have to work together, but they don’t see things eye to eye. Now that they have to work really hard to keep this secret from Larry, it just makes it challenging for them to have to work together because the stakes are so high for them.
We needed to write those drafts in order to figure that out because we had no idea. We had no idea. The only way to have an idea is just to take the plunge and write it.
My mother was an oil painter and she would paint stuff. If she didn’t like it, she would paint over it until she liked the painting that she was trying to do.
She would always paint my dad’s cabin that he had. She would just paint over the thing she didn’t like until she found the thing that she was wanting to do in the painting.
Writing is no different. The same thing for editing. I’ll do the same thing. I’ll edit this whole sequence, this whole scene. It could be 15 minutes and then…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
An AFI Directing alum, John Schimke is an accomplished writer/director whose work spans the realms of both film and television. As the lead editor and producer of the Emmy Award-winning TV series Red Table Talk, Schimke has demonstrated a keen ability to shape impactful, emotionally resonant stories for a global audience.
In the world of independent film, Schimke gained critical acclaim with Don’t Tell Larry, which had its world premiere at the Austin Film Festival and went on to win Best Picture and Audience Choice at the Pasadena International Film Festival.
John’s inspiration to develop Where the Wind Blows into a feature film was deeply personal, sparked by a meaningful gift from his mother. She gave him the book and suggested it would make a great movie—a sentiment that continues to drive the project forward. Years later Ashley Elaine read the script and immediately green lit the film with her production company, AE Productions, INC.
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