[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Christian Elder, Screenwriter: Being a writer of putting in those hours of spending that time of building your voice as a writer and to have conviction as a writer.
Film Courage: I believe you’ve referenced Dorothy Parker many times where you say the famous remark of her’s “I hate to write, I love having written.” How do you relate to this quote?
Christian: Absolutely, I relate to that quote. Writing is hard. It’s tough for a couple of reasons. There’s two sides of that coin that the actual activity itself is taxing and it requires a lot of patience and also it is one of those chosen vocations where one is likely to suffer a great deal of critique, scrutiny and attack. All of that together makes it tough so you have to build a thick skin. With that comes the great myths of the writers and all the writers that I can think of (this is across all genres of writing) most of them have this aura of strength and promotion of that strength as a writer and in their writing. The finest examples of it is Dorothy Parker, probably one of the pinnacles of that idea of strength, as well as someone of course like Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, James Baldwin, all of these characters convey strength. That is a quality that comes from having to deal with the rigors of being a writer, of putting in those hours, of spending that time, of building your voice as a writer and to have conviction as a writer.
Film Courage: It also speaks to something a little bit that we talked about just a few minutes ago which was that the character that you were referring to in Michael Clayton and that is they don’t really fit in this box, they don’t fit in that box, there’s not really a place for them but they can’t just fade away.
Christian: This is true, this is absolutely true. I think that’s an interesting analogy and an interesting point that you’re bringing up. I think that once you go down the road as…(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.
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