MovieBytes Interview:
Screenwriter Will Hartman

An interview with screenwriter Will Hartman regarding the Slamdance Writing Competition.

A: Easy Pickins'. It's a short black comedy about two thugs who get more than they bargained for when they try to rob a little old lady. Sorta "Home Alone" with a granny.

A: Slamdance had two prizes this year for their short screenplay competition: the Grand Prize, which was $500 cash and Final Draft software, and also a special "Duke City Shootout" prize, which was 50K to produce the winning screenplay! That's quite a remarkable prize for a short film contest and is made possible by the Digital Filmmaking Institute in New Mexico. They give seven contest-winning screenwriters from around the country a chance to make their film in seven days. It's a veritable "shootout" in the desert, and an incredible opportunity by anybody's standard.

Well, I happened to read about this on the Slamdance website the night before the postmark deadline, and I literally stayed up all that night and into the morning to write a short script that I thought might be a competitive read for selection. Fortunately, it only had to be fifteen pages, so I was able to get the script written, polished, and sent off before the last truck left the post office that afternoon.

A couple months later, I got a call from the Slamdance screenplay director, John Stoddard, informing me that I was a finalist. And then a couple weeks later I was the winner of the Duke City Shootout special prize. And then, just last week, Easy Pickins' was also selected as the short screenplay Grand Prize winner, so in the short script category, it was a two-for-two sweep!

A: Slamdance as everybody knows is a great festival. They have a really talented group of individuals working there and they are very much about finding new voices on the indie scene and giving them a conduit to be heard. They were really supportive and followed-through with updates and information. And yes I got everything they promised: For the Duke City Shootout special prize, I was flown to the desert in the middle of July, given equipment, crew, locations and post facilities and told to make my movie.

And because Easy Pickins' also won the Slamdance Grand Prize, I did get a check for $500 and some great Final Draft software too!

I am going to name my first child Slamdance.

A: Yes, both John Stoddard, the screenplay director at Slamdance, and Dan Mirvish, the founder of the festival, read the script and gave me notes. Mostly, they were looking at it with an eye on the Duke City Shootout, and the pragmatic limitations of shooting a 15 page (which was reduced to 12 for the shootout) script in four days.

Easy Pickins has a fair amount of visual effects and some set-piece moments that were by just about everybody's definition "ambitious," to say the least. So the primary feedback from the festival was about how I might be able to modify certain scenes to have a better chance of making the movie without compromising the story. In the end, I did modify some scenes, reducing locations and some unnecessary sight gags, but am happy to say what was written is pretty much what ended up on the screen.

A: I am repped at Artistry Management by Dan Spilo and Joel Mendoza. They are really great guys and they were behind this script from day one. Joel even came all the way out to New Mexico for the gala screening at the end of the shoot week. They've been great helping me get meetings with people that I usually just read about in the trades. One guy was a development exec at Screen Gems who I'd remembered watching on that Project Greenlight show quite a bit. That was cool.

A: I come from the advertising world. I write and direct TV commercials for a large ad agency in Los Angeles, specializing in kids, comedy and sports mostly. I've been doing that for about ten years. On the side, I've been writing and, occasionally, directing short films too. Easy Pickins is my fifth short film, and third of this year (2007).

Last year, I wrote and directed a short comedy called Moosecock starring Brian Baumgartner (The Office) and Kevin Rahm (Desperate Housewives) that did pretty well at film festivals. It's one of those scripts that people either love or hate, that's for sure.

I think every writer has to go through a process of finding their voice, what they want to say, how they want to say it. It's taken me a long time to get to a place where I sorta have "a perspective" that I can draw from in telling the stories I want to tell.

A: I do live in Los Angeles. I came here via Chicago about ten years ago. It took me about five years just to figure out how everything worked, who was who, and the process of it all, and advertising was an easier way to make a living as a writer.

I think you have to live here in LA to start a writing career. Actually, I'll rephrase that: you don't have to live here to start a writing career--there are plenty of online resources and competitions to get a script noticed--but once you've got a start, you should move here to take meetings and get to know the people who do the hiring. Even more important than you knowing them, is that they know you. Socially, as well as professionally. Everybody wants to work with their friends.

A: I am working on a feature length version of Easy Pickins and I also just optioned a friend's script that I think has a lot of potential as a high concept buddy comedy. We're going to polish that up and hopefully go out with it before the strike.

Posted Thursday, October 18, 2007