Afleveringen
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How will romance adapt to the age of A.I that lies ahead? What bleak (and beautiful) impulses might the technology bring out in us? And have you ever seen a Black Mirror episode inside a Coens Brothers thriller, inside a Barbarian-esque horror? These are the questions posed by Companion, the new movie by writer-director Drew Hancock. Today on the show, we talk devotion, dating and androids with Drew, whose directorial debut kept its cards close when it came to its marketing â and understandably so, because there are some really fun twists and turns in this script that are best experienced fresh. (Stop reading if you havenât yet seen Companion and want to experience fresh, as recommended).
Companion is about a young woman named Iris, played by Sophie Thatcher. Iris arrives at a weekend away with her boyfriend Josh (Jack Quaid) to glares of suspicion from his friends, who sheâs meeting for the first time. As an audience, we experience her hurt at these friendsâ strange microaggressions â and at Joshâs dismissive behaviour, callously, abruptly commanding her to âgo to sleepâ immediately after sex. Then â a murder. A murder and a reveal. Arguably the most humane character amongst this assortment of friends, is not human at all, but a machine. From there, a crime thriller unfolds with a large stash of cash at its blackly comic centre. Itâs bold, original and manages to find new things to say about the intersection between technology and relationships. I had a blast watching it â and Drew from the sounds of things, had a blast writing it.
On this episode of Script Apart, youâll hear about the current real-world advances in technology like Iris that informed his vision of where we might be fifteen years or so into the future. We get into the hints at how A.I companions like Iris have altered the world beyond what we see in the film â and some early ideas for the movie that were completely different to what ended up on screen. And we break down every detail of the filmâs emotionally satisfying ending.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
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The climate crisis is here and over the last few years, a question has loomed: how will Hollywood respond? Can blockbuster movies be a tool for mobilising audiences into action as global temperatures rise, fires rage and climate denialism continues to spread? Maybe in decades to come, The Wild Robot â a film by my guest today, Chris Sanders â will be looked back upon alongside Pixar's Wall-E as one of the first indicators of mainstream moviemakingâs processing of and pushback against the weather emergencies coming our way. The film â a stunning, Miyazaki-inspired animation about a robot washed ashore on a nature-abundant island, in an America devastated by unspecified ecological disasters â acknowledges what awaits if carbon emissions arenât curbed head on, instead of alluding to it, like in other blockbusters.
Itâs a deeply moving tale that features the voice talents of Lupita Nyong'o as Roz â an android who learns to love through foster care. After an accident, she becomes the guardian of an infant goose named Brightbill, voiced by Kit Connor. Brightbill has to learn how to fly in time to migrate to warmer climes, before the brutal winter turns the island into a scarcely survivable tundra of sorts. In the spoiler conversation youâre about to hear, Chris reveals what the phrases âkindness is a survival skillâ and âexceed your programmingâ â two mantras that informed the filmâs creation â mean to him. We get into the truth behind Universal Dynamics, the shadowy company that created Roz. And youâll also hear a deeply moving story about Chrisâs mother and the regret heâs carried with him about their relationship, that influenced one of the key lines in the movie.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
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Zijn er afleveringen die ontbreken?
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Jesse Eisenberg owes it all to an internet pop-up ad. A few years ago, while at an impasse with a screenplay about two friends on a trip to Mongolia, the writer-director and star of movies like The Social Network read an ad for âAuschwitz tours - with lunch.â And that jarring phrase unleashed an avalanche of ideas about, as he puts it, âthe irony of wanting to connect to your ancestorsâ pain but at the same time not being willing to experience any pain yourself: stay at the Radisson, eat your continental breakfast, have your croissant in the morning and your coffee in the van going to a concentration camp.â
Skip forward to 2025, and the film unlocked in his imagination by that ad â A Real Pain â is an awards season frontrunner, nominated for Best Original Screenplay and Best Supporting Actor at this yearâs Oscars. Its story of two cousins â David, played by Jesse, and Kieran Culkin as Benji â on a Holocaust âtrauma tripâ through Poland is a moving meditation on the shame itâs easy to feel in todayâs world for feeling unsatisfied with life, when we think about the greater hardships our ancestors may have suffered. itâs devastating and deliriously funny in equal measure, not to mention bold in how it refuses an Eat Pray Love narrative of having international travel solve these charactersâ problems back home. In A Real Pain, Culkinâs erratic livewire Benji ends up exactly back where he started â but we as an audience are changed.
In the spoiler conversation youâre about to hear, Jesse tells me about how the film worsened rather than resolved his complicated feelings around what pain heâs entitled to feel. We get into that devastating final shot at the end of the film and why it is we feel the urge to connect to our pasts, with services like Ancestry and 23andMe. Listen out also for the parts of Jesseâs life he folded into the script â such as his use of medication and medication to tackle OCD and depression â and how Jesse reflects on the unanswerable question of, how much grief to allocate to the terrible situation in the world right now, before we cease functioning. Itâs a fascinating chat about a fascinating film.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
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Thirty years ago, a film hit multiplexes that helped redefine love onscreen for moviegoers. So much so, in fact, that the history of the modern romantic drama might arguably be best separated into two distinct eras: before Before Sunrise, Richard Linklaterâs enchanting cult smash stroll through moonlit Vienna, and after. Today on Script Apart, Richardâs co-writer Kim Krazin reflects on three decades of hearing from strangers about how this simple tale â in which two strangers on a train make a spontaneous decision to get off and wander the streets till dawn together â touched them deeply.
The film starred Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy as Jesse and Celine â one an American tourist, recovering from a botched trip to Madrid to see his now-ex girlfriend, the other a French student, heading back to Paris to continue her studies after visiting her grandmother. Kim and Richard had worked together before prior to Before Sunrise. Kim appeared as an actor in 1990âs Slacker and 1993âs Dazed and Confused. This time, however, they were co-writers, sequestered together for an intense eleven-day writing sprint, hard at work on a boy-meets-girl story with a difference.
Before Sunrise was to be naturalistic. There would be no melodrama â no conflict for the sake of it. Just conversation, as two people brought together by chance, who live a world apart, forge a connection against the ultimate ticking clock: at sunrise, Jesse has a plane to catch. As their attraction deepens, weâre left to wonder: will they see each other again after their expires, when dawn arrives? As it happens, they would; two sequels, Before Sunset and Before Midnight, later followed, the first of which Kim has a âstory byâ credit on. But in 1995, as the credits rolled, audiences were famously left in the dark. The filmâs brilliant cliffhanger ending â in which the couple decide not to exchange any contact information and instead meet at the same Vienna train station in six monthsâ time â was being written and rewritten right up until 3am on the last night of filming.
You may have heard about how Linklater was inspired by a woman who he met in a Philadelphia toy shop and ended up wandering around the city with, talking deep into the night (this woman, tragically, died in a motorcycle accident before the filmâs release). What you might not be aware of is Kimâs chance encounter at a Bob Dylan concert in London, one day on a train trip through England, that gave her some of the emotional kindling for Jesse and Celineâs tale. In the spoiler conversation youâre about to hear, youâll discover what parts of the movie wouldnât fly today because of the modern technology that connects us brilliantly, but also robs us of the âromance of chance,â pervading every frame in Before Sunrise. We get into early plans to set the film not in Vienna but in Texas, and everything unlocked by the decision to set the movie abroad. And finally we get into whether or not Jesse in the film invents the concept of social media a good decade or so ahead of time. Hear us out on that one.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Join Kimâs The Magic Hour community by clicking here.
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Today on Script Apart, a sneak peek at something new. Weâre going to be running exclusive episodes this year for our Patreon supporters, in which â breaking away from the usual Script Apart format â Al Horner and a guest focus in on the screenwriting tips and tricks to be learned from a film that both adore.
Today, Lee Unkrich â director of Toy Story 3, Coco and other towering achievements in animation â returns to the show, to talk about what screenwriters might take and apply to their own work from Stanley Kubrickâs The Shining. You know how people are often like, âI wrote the book on X subjectâ as a way of claiming authority over a topic? Well, Lee literally wrote the book on The Shining. As youâll have heard on our Script Club episode of Script Apart in 2022, breaking down everything Lee knows about the first draft of that timeless movie, the last few years have seen Lee take a break from filmmaking to assemble the most exhaustive, definitive take on the iconic horror, full of never-before-seen photos discovered in Kubrick estateâs vaults. Basically, on every page youâre being hit with a flood of amazing information about the film, rushing at you like blood from red elevator doors.
The book â called simply Stanley Kubrickâs The Shining â is soon to be re-released at an affordable new price point after 2022âs limited edition run, which was all the excuse we needed to catch up with Lee about the reaction to it, before getting into five screenwriting takeaways from the film. Lessons like: why itâs important to be patient if you canât find your ending; the ending to your script will eventually find you. We talk about how physical space can be used as a storytelling tool; something Kubrick does brilliantly with the Overlook, which dimensionally makes zero sense, contributing to the viewerâs sense of disorientation as they watch. And why sometimes the scariest thing to do in constructing a horror is to veer away from the hallmarks of the genre entirely (The Shining features barely any gore. And even less shadow and darkness).
Listen to the full episode now, and subscribe to our Patreon for more Writing Tips episodes coming soon.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.Support the show
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Life is full of sweet highs and terrible merlots on todayâs Script Apart as Alexander Payne â director of movies like Election, The Holdovers, Nebraska and About Schmidt â joins us to raise a glass to an indie drama that has aged like a fine wine. The brilliant Sideways was released in 2004 and soon earned four Academy Award nominations, taking home Best Adapted Screenplay. It won six Independent Spirit Awards, was picked up for Japanese remake and instigated a huge tourism boom in the California wine country that forms the filmâs backdrop. Co-written with frequent collaborator Jim Taylor, it told the tale of two friends on a wine tasting expedition, each struggling to break out of a certain middle-aged, middle-class male malaise (one of Alexanderâs screenwriting specialties). The result? A dramedy widely regarded as one of the best of its decade.
The film saw Paul Giamatti play Miles â an aspiring author whose dreams of literary stardom are misfiring, much like his love life. Recently divorced, he and his old college friend Jack, played by Thomas Haden Church, hop in the car to celebrate Jackâs upcoming wedding. But Jack â a washed-up soap opera actor â is intent on hooking up with women as part of one last sexual hurrah before marriage. Caught up in the mix as the pair quarrel and cause trouble is Virginia Madsenâs Maya, a barmaid that Miles strikes up feelings for. Professing those feelings in a serious way, though, is difficult for the wine aficionado and English teacher â a man so mired in regret about what was, heâs unable to grasp the now and what could still be.
Much is often made about the recurring quote-unquote âlosersâ that lead Alexanderâs films, and what they might have to say about modern American man. The filmmaker, though, has always been pretty resolute that his movies centre the downtrodden and dopey simply because, deep down, these films are comedies â a genre the historically sides with the little guy, going all the way back to Charlie Chaplin. But how does he define the mix of pathos and hilarity that fill his characters? Where does Alexanderâs affinity towards road trip stories come from? Whatâs so relatable and real about Milesâ fear that his literary dreams might amount to nothing â and that a life of feeling like a loser awaits? And what was the inspiration behind the filmâs beautiful ending â a knock at the door that we as an audience never see answered? All is revealed across a fascinating thirty-minute sit down with the auteuer.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
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Itâs early January, a new year is here â and so too is a new chapter in American politics. Later this month, Donald Trump will enter the White House for a second term and right at this moment, people across the US and western world are wondering what the next four years may look like. Today on Script Apart, the filmmaker behind one of Hollywoodâs first real attempts to grapple with the enormity of Trump and the implications of his political rise and fall and rise again, joins us to add his two cents and to discuss a film right up there in the mix this awards season.
Ali Abassi is the Iranian-Danish director of The Apprentice, starring Sebastian Stan as the businessman turned President. Written by Gabe Sherman, who we hope to have on the show another time, itâs an origin story of sorts, charting a relationship that the movie alleges equipped Trump with the ruthless mode of attack that would become his ticket first to real estate dominance, then to tabloid media ubiquity and finally, decades later, to the Oval Office.
Jeremy Strong plays Roy Cohn in the film â a lawyer who takes Trump under his wing at the onset of his career and moulds him in his image. But as one soars, the other begins a brutal decline. Itâs a engrossing, humanistic watch that, as Ali explains, isnât a story exclusively about Trump himself â itâs about a system that he is a product of.
In the spoiler conversation youâre about to hear, we ask Ali about the Mary Shelley literary classic that helped shape his and Gabeâs take on Trumpâs tale. We ask about the filmâs most controversial moment â a scene based on divorce records, in which former wife Ivana Trump accused Donald of raping her and pulling out handfuls of her hair (Ivana later issued a statement insisting that the term "rape" was ânot meant in a literal or criminal senseâ). And we get into the scene from the film that had to be cut â a moment involving Trump kicking a dog, because of a lack of evidence that the real Donald Trump ever kicked a dog.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
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Studiocanalâs The Apprentice is available to rent or buy now.Support the show
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Pour yourself a tall glass of milk (or better yet, have an admirer send you one) and prepare for a conversation about an erotic thriller blowing up the internet right now. Halina Reijn is the Dutch writer-director responsible for 2022âs Bodies Bodies Bodies, whoâs followed up that razor-sharp murder-mystery pastiche with another film that infuses an old genre with modern politics.
In Babygirl, Nicole Kidmanâs tech CEO Romy begins an affair with an intern â Samuel, played by Harris Dickinson. The potential consequences of their relationship are catastrophic: Romy, married with kids, could lose her family and her rarified position as one of the few female leaders in a male-dominated tech world. But, as Halina explains in our spoiler conversation, Samuel is unlocking in Romy desires that she didnât know she had â longings till now, clouded in shame.
Listen in to hear about the personal parts of Halinaâs own journey with her sexuality that informed Babygirl, why she chose a dog attack as the thematically-important âmeet cuteâ for Romy and Samuel â and what she hopes is the knock-on effect of this morally complex tale on the discourse around the pleasures women permit themselves to seek.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft, Creative Command and WeScreenplay.
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Talk about setting a high bar. Nickel Boys â the new film from RaMell Ross â is a drama that may be one of the first releases of the 2025, but will almost certainly still be reverberating come the end of it. Adapted from a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by The Underground Railroad author Colson Whitehead, it tells the story of a reform school for primarily Black young offenders, where violence and cruelty are carried out and covered up in a rapidly changing America. The Nickel Academy as itâs known in the film is fictional, but the Dozier School in Florida, on which Whitehead based his tale, was all too real. In 2010, an investigation into the site uncovered an 111-year history of beatings, rapes, torture and murder of students by staff. Fifty five unidentified bodies in unmarked graves were discovered. More than one hundred children in total were killed, often in the most unthinkably inhumane ways, with much of the worst abuse carried out in a building known only as the White House.
In Nickel Boys, a beautiful friendship begins amid that horror and injustice. The film adopts a unique first-person perspective to show a deep bond bloom, between Ethan Herisseâs Elwood and Brandon Wilsonâs Turner. Jumping between then and now, with Daveed Diggs playing a haunted older version of one of these characters, itâs one of the boldest films in this yearâs Oscar conversation, narratively, aesthetically and otherwise. In the spoiler conversation youâre about to hear, RaMell and Al discuss the filmâs approach to memory, the meaning of the crocodile that stalks the backdrop of scenes in this film â and why the film juxtaposes the terror of earth with the beauty of the cosmos, through shots of the atmosphere as America wins the space race.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft, Creative Command and WeScreenplay.
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Weâre starting 2025 way down in the hole, with a look back on one of the undisputed great TV series of our time. Our guest today is a storyteller responsible for shows like Treme, Generation Kill, The Deuce, The Plot Against America and We Own This City, but best known of course for The Wire â a show that began at a crime scene, with blood splattered across granite, police lights painting the pavement red, white and blue. It was here that audiences first met Detective McNulty, played by Dominic West, chatting with a murder witness. A kid had been killed for trying to rob a dice game â a stunt he tried to pull often. Usually, the kid in question, named Snot Boogie, got away with just a beating. This time, not so lucky. âI gotta ask you,â McNulty asks the witness. âIf Snot always stole the money, whyâd you always let him play?â The witness sighs, and the camera cuts to Snotâs motionless body, gazing towards us from the floor. âGot to,â replies the witness. âThis is America.â
That line was the first clue that The Wire wasnât going to be like other television series. David wanted this police procedural, informed by his own experiences reporting on crime in the area as a journalist for the Baltimore Sun, to be more than another show about cops and criminals; it was to offer a microcosm of America itself. The Wire won no awards. Just 70,000 people tuned into the showâs final episode, capping five critically and commercially overlooked seasons in 2008. Its creator didnât watch TV â David, in fact, pretty much hated the medium. And yet, The Wire has become recognised as one of the most important pieces of American pop culture of the millennium so far: a novelistic cross section of the Land of the Free, that bloomed from a tale about a phone-tapping team of lawmakers into an interrogation of media, education and everything in between.
The spoiler conversation youâre about to hear is a window into everything that is possible in the medium of television â and everything thatâs perhaps wrong with it right now, too. David was really candid about his struggles to get new work off the ground and onto screens in 2025 despite the enormous influence of The Wire. Youâll hear how McNulty came to be, the real-life inspirations behind the showâs most iconic character Omar, how far western society has come in addressing the systemic problems exposed in The Wire (spoiler alert: not very) and much, much more. And youâll also discover the lost season of The Wire that David devised, but that never made it to air.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft, Creative Command and WeScreenplay.
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Justin Kuritzkes is the very talented writer behind Challengers, the Luca Guadagnino love triangle topping all sorts of end-of-year lists right now. The film is a tennis drama that declared game-set-and-match with critics and audiences alike on release in April, becoming a pop culture sensation in ways usually reserved for franchise films. Steeped in the messy wants and desires of three complicated characters, it's the sort of film that doesn't often dominate discourse. But that didn't stop Challengers becoming a phenomenon whose influence altered fashion, music, memes and more in 2024.
Which for most writers would be enough achievement for one year thank you very much. But Justinâs 2024 didnât end there. Queer â also directed by Guadagnino â is a William Burroughs adaptation that hit cinemas this month. The film stars Daniel Craig as William Lee â an American expatriate living in 1950s Mexico City who becomes obsessed with a younger man and goes on a quest into the jungle in search of unlocking drug-induced telepathic communication. Both films bear the hallmarks of a storyteller insistent upon bringing deeply nuanced explorations of flawed people searching for connection into multiplexes.
In the double-bill episode youâre about to hear, breaking down in spoiler-filled detail both acclaimed films, we discuss the overlaps between Challengersâ carnal chaos and Charli XCXâs Brat Summer, and what both say about this moment in the culture. We get into the tragic real-life death of Burroughsâ partner, killed by the famed author in an supposed accidental shooting, that lends uncomfortable context to the story of Queer (and that Justin threaded into the movie). And youâll also hear his thoughts on whether both of these films could be a bellwether moment for movies. In a year that saw franchise after franchise struggle for critical applause and box office might, does the success of a movie like Challengers suggest that an appetite might be growing again for original stories? Now thereâs an exciting thought to carry into 2025.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
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Today, weâre heading in our proverbial Popemobile to Rome, with the BAFTA Award-winning writer of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Men Who Stare At Goats and more. Peter Straughan's latest film, Conclave, directed by Edward Berger, is essentially Succession at the Vatican â a masterful, muted thriller about the election of a new head of the Roman Catholic Church. It tells the story of Cardinal Lawrence, played by Ralph Fiennes, who's been tasked by the late Pope with overseeing the selection of his replacement. Surrounded by powerful religious leaders in the halls of the Vatican, he soon uncovers a trail of deep secrets that could shake the very foundation of the Roman Catholic Church.
There are more twists and turns in this film than the ruthless Cardinal Tedesco could shake a vape pen at â and in the spoiler conversation, we get to the bottom of each and every one of them, including the shocking revelation at Conclaveâs conclusion â an ending that Peter says is both radical and at its core, deeply Christian.
Get ready to discover how the writer's own background as a lapsed Catholic helped guide his writing process. Discover whether or not Donald Trump and Joe Biden served as inspirations for certain members of this warring clergy. And find out whatâs really happening as bombs explode outside the Vaticanâs walls â a plot thread that we as an audience, sequestered with these cardinals, never quite see the full truth of.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
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Richard Linklater is a hit man, but not in the assassin sense of the word. No, the hits he trades in are of the movie variety â stylish cult classics that vary in genre and form, but always manage to ignite something powerful in viewers. Itâs been that way for three and a half decades now: among his hits, dating back to 1990, are Dazed and Confused, Before Sunrise, Before Sunset, Before Midnight, Boyhood, School of Rock, A Scanner Darkly, Slacker, Waking Life, Everybody Wants Some, Fast Food Nation⊠the list goes on. No wonder the Texan is one of the most respected names in modern American cinema â a force both prolific and patient, as his multiple movies shot across numerous decades prove. 2014 coming-of-age drama Boyhood was filmed across twelve years, with Merrily We Roll Along â a Paul Mescal-starring Sondheim adaptation, to be shot across twenty years â among his current projects.
Earlier this year, he released Hit Man â a romantic comedy of sorts, with a hint of thriller thrown in for good measure, about a bashful college professor with a unique side hustle. Gary, played by the filmâs co-writer Glen Powell, has a recurring gig with the New Orleans police force, pretending to be an contract killer. He wears a wire to meet with people seeking to order a hit on their spouses, their work colleagues, their parents and so on. Itâs a gig thatâs going smoothly for Gary, until he meets Madison, played by Adria Arjona â a woman trying to escape an abusive husband, who Gary begins to fall for. What follows is Linklater in full-blown crowd-pleasing mode.
In the conversation youâre about to hear, we discuss what it was about this true-ish story, adapted from a newspaper article by journalist Skip Hollandsworth, that spoke to Richard. We talk about the baseball injury that put him on a path to filmmaking (and how it might have led to the unstoppable pace with which he makes movies). And we break down every detail of Hit Man, one of the movies of 2024, in spoiler-filled detail.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
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Seasonâs greetings, Script Apart listeners. As you may have noticed, itâs the last week before Christmas â the yearâs coming to an end, and so, we figured, letâs end 2024 strong. So all this week, on this podcast about the first draft secrets of great movies and TV shows â interviews with the writers behind some of the best movies of the last twelve months that we didnât manage to cover upon release. And holy prince of House Atreides, what a way to begin today.
Our guest today made one of the most pulse-racing crime thrillers of the century so far, in the form of 2015âs Sicario. Heâs made one of the greatest movies about the power of language of all-time, in 2016âs Arrival. And in 2017 and 2021, he took on the impossible twice â crafting first a sequel to one of the greatest blockbusters ever, in the shape of Blade Runner 2049, and then a movie adaptation of a novel previously thought unfilmable: Frank Herbertâs Dune.
Yes, the great Denis Villneueve is with us today, stopping by for a chat about how his gargantuan Dune: Part Two â starring Timothee Chalamet and Zendeya â helped define 2024. Not just in the way it dominated the box office, earning almost three quarters of a billion dollars (which by the way, is not bad for a hallucinatory epic full of spice-induced visual experimentation). No, itâs reflective of the year just passed because notions of fascism, faith, false messiahs⊠these have all been uncomfortable parts of the backdrop of 2024.
In the conversation youâre about to hear, Al had thirty minutes to ask Denis his most probing questions about the script. Questions like: was there ever a moment in the making of Dune: Part Two when he contemplated keeping Feyd-Rautha Harkonnen â played by Austin Butler â alive to explore in further films? What does the ending of the film, which veers away from Frank Herbertâs source material, mean for the future of the franchise? And if Dune: Part Two is a film that warns about colonialism and facism, does he believe that cinema has the power to actually dismantle those structures, or is just about expressing a kinda howl of resistance?
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft, FILMD and WeScreenplay.
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Motherhood is a doggone nightmare in the new film from Marielle Heller. This week, the writer director of movies like The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Can You Ever Forgive Me? and A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood returns to cinemas with one of the more surreal-sounding offerings of the year â Nightbitch, a drama in which Amy Adams plays a parent by day and a dog by night. If you werenât already familiar with the 2021 Rachel Yoder novel on which itâs based, youâd be forgiven for thinking that this film is a frantic comedy, or possibly the mad fever dream of Charlie Kelly from Itâs Always Sunny In Philadelphia â a character with his fair share of hound-based ideas for movies. But no, Nightbitch is something else â an affecting, magical realist tale of a woman pushed over a feral brink by the physical and societal demands placed on women, that needs to be seen to be believed.
On todayâs episode, Marielle joins Al Horner to break down in spoiler-filled detail this remarkable film. We get into why the realities of birth â the body horror of it all â are so under-acknowledged in pop culture. We talk about why, after the gentleness of films like A Beautiful Day In The Neighbourhood, Marielle fled in the opposite direction, towards this anarchic scream of a story. And youâll also discover the truth behind some of the movieâs more ambiguous, unresolved questions: such as, are the women that Adams character befriends also secretly dogs?
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
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Never meet your heroes. At least, not these ones â the dysfunctional megalomaniacs that murder innocents and seed division in Prime Videoâs The Boys, a show as satirically sharp as it is gore-splattered and gross. Created by our guest today, Eric Kripke, the comic book adaptation debuted in 2019 and has since become one of the most captivatingly timely stories in our pop culture landscape, commenting not just on our current era of superhero saturation but on American society at large. Across four seasons, itâs become a funhouse reflection of the way DC and Marvel movies are content machines with often jingoistic messages at their core. Itâs mirrored the nationâs split into two furiously opposed political camps: Homelanders versus Starlighters in the case of the show; MAGA versus liberals in real-life. And along the way, itâs done things never seen on TV before. Octopus beastiality. Super-powered sheep. A guy called "Herogasm" whose name kinda says it all. The list goes on.
All of which begs the question: with The Boysâ final season approaching and America currently reeling from another dramatic election, how will the tale of Billy Butcher, Hughie Campbell and co end? Itâs a question Eric, previously best known for creating the long-running series Supernatural, has been wrestling with himself. In the wide-ranging conversation youâre about to hear, heâs honest about the difficulty of âlanding the planeâ when it comes to beloved TV dramas. And as fans of The Boys know all too well, planes donât often land in this show, so much as they have a habit of exploding in the sky in a fury of laser vision.
We talk about the psychology of superheroes â why they continue to appeal, what fantasy they offer audiences in a post-9/11 world. We talk about the story choices in season four, and how they came to be, such as Homelanderâs rise to near-presidential power. And youâll hear whether season five of this show thatâs dovetailed through the years with real-life events in American politics, will respond to the fact that Donald Trump has just entered the Oval Office again.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft, FILMD and WeScreenplay.
To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show
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The second in our series of ScreenCraft Summit throwback interviews, running on the Script Apart feed in anticipation of December's summit â it's Mike Schur! The lauded creator of The Good Place made his first appearance on Script Apart in 2022 and, a few weeks later, spoke with Al again in front of hundreds of emerging writers to break down his wider writing process on shows like The Office, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Saturday Night Live and Parks & Recreation.
This was a wonderful conversation to be a part of â Mike is as hilarious in person as you'd expect of such a magnificent comic resume, and his insights are remarkable. Strap in for some brilliant observations on the elasticity of time in great sitcoms, the importance of punching up rather than down when writing jokes and what it is that keeps him turning up in front of a blank page time and time again â his relationship with the craft of writing itself. Enjoy, and don't forget to sign up for this December's ScreenCraft Summit by visiting ScreenCraft.org today.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show
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Sofia Coppola. Is anymore introduction really necessary? As writer-directors go, her influence (and place in one of American cinema's greatest dynasties) can't be overstated. The filmmaker is one of the best-known and most-loved working today, renowned for the lilting feel and femininity of films like Lost In Translation, The Virgin Suicides, Marie Antoinette, On The Rocks and most recently, Priscilla.
In 2022, Al spoke to Sofia about her writing process, for the ScreenCraft Summit â a weekend of interviews with great storytellers, designed to inspire emerging writers. With the latest Summit just weeks away, featuring a host of amazing guests, we thought it'd be a great time to post Al and Sofia's conversation from that event â a freewheeling chat about hotels, the intimacy with which we get to know her characters, her love of using photo books as mood boards for her movies â and why she still experiences self-doubt, even today.
Sign up for this December's ScreenCraft Summit by clicking here.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft, FILMD and WeScreenplay.
To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show
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Here's a question: is the âspirit of the Blitzâ thatâs become one of the pillars of British self-identity actually a myth? The idea of ordinary people coming together in a moment of collective resilience during WWII is invoked regularly in UK politics and beyond. There might be more to that story than meets the eye, though, according to Blitz â the astonishing new historical drama from revered British artist Steve McQueen. The film forefronts the experiences of people of colour and other marginalised communities during the notorious London bombings â people who were excluded from that togetherness, often with violent force. Instead of the âstiff upper lipâ that Britain has since proudly woven into its self image, Blitz teases a more feral reality, full of community, yes, but also opportunistic criminals robbing the dead and sex on the tube tracks of Stepney Green underground station.
In this spoiler conversation, Steve breaks down whatâs fact and whatâs fiction when it comes to this mythologised part of British history â and how he turned it into a cinematic experience unlike any other in modern memory.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show
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On todayâs episode â a crime thriller? A musical? A coming-out drama? Emilia PĂ©rez, the new film from famed French auteur Jacques Audiard, is all of the above and somehow none of these things at all. It really is hard to understate the disorientating excess and madness of this somewhat opinion-splitting new Netflix awards contender, which is tipped for Oscar glory after picking up the jury prize at Cannes earlier this year. Jacques is, of course, the writer-director of works like A Prophet, Rust and Bone, See How They Fall, The Beat That My Heart Skipped and The Sisters Brothers, a masterful western from 2018. But Emilia PĂ©rez is like none of those films. Itâs a film that sees Jacques â who, at seventy-two years young, could be making victory-lap movies at this stage in his career â swinging for the fences.
The movie follows Rita, a criminal defence lawyer played by Zoe Saldaña, who is kidnapped and brought before someone terrifying â Manitas Del Monte, one of Mexicoâs most feared cartel bosses, played by Karla SofĂa GascĂłn. Manitas has something to ask of Rita. This crime lord â responsible for such brutal bloodshed, in a country blighted by thousands of cartel-related missing persons â wishes to fake their death and transition gender. And to do so, they need Ritaâs help. Reborn as Emilia Perez, this character embarks on a new life that she finds, over the course of the movie, had to untangle from what came before.
Al caught up with Jacques a few days after the filmâs release on Netflix to break down the script, with a little help from his translator, Nicholas Elliott. Get ready to learn about the version of Emilia PĂ©rez in which the character of Rita was a man, and in which a romance blossomed between the lawyer and the eponymous former crime lord. Youâll hear about why Jacques is so drawn to characters attempting to reinvent themselves in his work, and thereâs also a breakdown of the storyâs dramatic climax â an ending that asks complicated questions of the audience, questions with no easy answers.
Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected].
Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Final Draft and WeScreenplay.
To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show
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