[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Can you give us an overview of your writing process?
R.J. Daniel Hanna, Writer/Director: For me the writing process always comes down to first it’s excitement about the potential for something even if I don’t know what the ending is or the beginning is, just like Oh that’s an interesting world or characters within that world and a conflict there. I’ll usually know if it sparks something and I think okay there’s something there a lot of opportunity there not just one story or one scene but opportunity all the time in this concept to have conflict or humor or whatever it is.
What I like to do is write whatever scene seems fun to me starting out. It’s really hard to start out on something new, there’s a long road ahead. Start with something fun, what scene excites me? Early in my writing career after school I had a feeling I’m not a writer. That was just the feeling I had. Maybe I could co-write but I didn’t. I had lost the confidence that I was a writer.
How I got back into it was there was one scene. I didn’t know what the rest of the movie would be but I wanted to write this scene. I think that’s a great way to approach it. It lets you explore the characters. I want to see How do they talk? How do they talk to each other? Just let it happen. You’ll start to think this character is fun. I thought this character only existed in this one scene, maybe this character should exist in the whole movie because they bring something different that keeps it going. Just being open and exploring.
Then I might have 50-60 pages after a few weeks of that. They’re not all usable but there’s a sense of what the story is and what’s exciting there.
I don’t already know exactly where it’s going to go in the end, it’s figuring that out from there. Generally I write by myself. I’ve co-written a few things. Hard Miles I co-wrote with my producer [Christian Sander]. Before we’d co-written one other script…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
Maybe it was growing up in Arkansas as a Canadian, or the summers in rural Ireland with his grandparents, but Daniel has always been drawn to out-of-place characters, strange environments, and the unique rhythms of how people talk. He just completed post on his horror film “Succubus,” starring Ron Perlman and Rosanna Arquette, to be released in 2024. Crossing over 500 screens in the U.S. and beginning its run in the U.K. is his feature “Hard Miles,” starring Golden Globe-winner Matthew Modine and Oscar-Nominee Sean Astin, which has won multiple awards and screened at prestigious festivals including Chicago International, Heartland Film Festival, and Cinequest. Prior to that, Daniel directed the true-story feature “Miss Virginia,” starring three-time Emmy-winner Uzo Aduba, Oscar-Nominee Aunjanue Ellis, and Vanessa Williams. The film was listed as a New York Times and USA Today Must-See Fall Movie, won the Audience Award at The Naples Film Festival, and received a limited theatrical release, cable premiere on BET, and streaming deal with Netflix. As a writer, Daniel is a winner of The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting, as well as the Slamdance, ScriptPipeline, and Screencraft writing awards. He also explores storytelling as an editor, with ten features under his belt, including horror film “What Lies Below,” starring Mena Suvari, which hit #1 on Netflix, and “Supercell” starring Alec Baldwin, Anne Heche, and Skeet Ulrich, which hit #1 on Hulu. Daniel hopes to continue telling cinematic, character-driven stories long past the time any sane person would have retired. He lives on the east-side of L.A. with his excessively-vocal cat “Dottie.”
MORE INFO ON HARD MILES MOVIE:
https://linktr.ee/hardmiles_movie
MORE VIDEOS WITH R.J. DANIEL HANNA
CONNECT WITH R.J. DANIEL HANNA
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