How Great Writers Find Their Stories
2018 Winning Slamdance Screenwriters Share Their Inspirations
This year’s winning screenplays come from a diverse range of voices from all over the world. What these writers share is the ability to turn their keen observations of the present world around them and the histories that compel them, into the vivid experiences of their varied characters — from mountain climbers to haunted nuns to a disabled gambler and badass female Nazi hunters. Meet the winning screenwriters of the 2018 Screenplay competition and learn what drives them to tell these fascinating stories.
Jessica Sinyard
The Peak (Grand Prize Winner and 1st Place TV Pilot) — A psychological survival thriller in which eight overachievers attempt to scale Mount Everest. But when a team member goes missing on the peak, paranoia and altitude sickness corrodes the reliability of survivor accounts. With a dual narrative that interweaves both the team’s ascent and descent, The Peak reveals a complex central mystery exploring the choices we make when we believe no-one is watching.
“I have a lifelong fascination with Mount Everest and with hostile, natural landscapes in general. A lot of my work is inspired by people at the peak of their physical or professional lives but who have some other serious weakness — especially psychologically. I wanted to create characters who embody the dual but competing desires of a strong survival instinct but with some element of self-destruction. I feel this is often embodied by athletes, military personnel, and of course, professional mountaineers. I am fascinated by the ways in which an external landscape can reflect and exacerbate the inner world of a character — and [the characters of The Peak] are truly people navigating a real and emotional wilderness.”
Jessica is a current Masters student at the National Film and Television School, and an official recipient of the CTBF Richard Attenborough Scholarship with a background in sports journalism.
Dominique Genest & Nick Kreiss
The Innocent and the Vicious (1st Place Feature) — Three young women embark on a dangerous mission to exact personal revenge in Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II.
“We read an article about three young woman in Nazi-occupied Holland who were active in the Dutch resistance effort and, among other things, used their sexuality to lure German soldiers and subsequently kill them. We were blown away by their courage and fearlessness, and we immediately knew we had to write this script. There simply isn’t a gritty war movie that features powerful female leads, so we’re convinced this story would make an incredible movie.”
Dominique Genest is the creative director of Valence Films, an LA-based production company that focuses on branded content, independent film and unscripted television. Nick Kreiss, a Los Angeles native, started in the industry working for producers Jerry Bruckheimmer and Brian Grazer and has since had a prolific career producing films (Sin Nombre), TV (Punk’d) and developing shows for networks like NBC and ABC. He wrote and directed the feature film ‘Little Bitches, released by Sony Pictures in early 2018.
Carlos Alejandro Marulanda
Cancuncito (2nd Place Feature) — Using gambling to escape from her social isolation, Valeria, a disabled woman with limited use of her hands, recruits a poor Afro-Mexican worker to help her play the casinos and attempts to seduce him. When her ultra religious mother threatens to destroy their burgeoning love affair Valeria must move beyond the limits of her disabilities.
“My story collaborator and friend Carlos Isael Gutierrez introduced me to Sheila Albuerne, who suffers from Distal Arthrogryposis and who he thought would be an interesting actor in a film. I was absolutely captivated by her energy and the potential of crafting a story with someone with such a unique life experience. Inspired by the films of Italian neo-realism, and more modern filmmakers Carlos Reygadas and Amat Escalante, we knew we wanted to place a non-actor with real life experience into a narrative. We decided to craft a fictional film that would star her as the protagonist, and incorporate her struggles with Arthrogryposis. We had never seen a film that touched on that subject and felt it was time to bring that to the screen.
We knew we wanted to explore Mexican society through her experience on the margins and through issues of discrimination (for both the character of Valeria, as a person with disability, and Teo, as an afro-Mexican man). Also, we wanted to put the city of Veracruz (an industrial port on the Caribbean coast of Mexico, with a colonial center), front and center. We wanted to show it in a raw manner… casinos, the port, the tourist industry, churches. We came up with the premise of Valeria’s gambling addiction as an escape from her social isolation and her failed search for love. The impetus for the entire script was the image of her wanting to gamble but needing the help of another person to actually complete that task.
I interviewed Sheila about her life experiences in several multi-hour sessions, exploring all angles of her life. The character of “Valeria” in the script is very different from the real life Sheila, but I incorporated the general struggles she has experienced and used them as “thematic inspirations” for the struggles Valeria faces in the story. Along the way, I would check in with Sheila to see if the pages felt authentic and even though “Valeria” was completely different from her in real life, that the heart of the scene felt emotionally real. It was a very special experience, I have never written a screenplay in this manner, and Sheila was very brave to let me pick her brain and her heart to make sure we found something that felt true and honest.”
Carlos Alejandro Marulanda is an award-winning writer-director born in Bogota, Colombia. He spent his youth surrounded by the folklore and magical realism of Colombia and the severe contrasts of a growing up in a developing nation.
Brenna Perez
Girls In Trouble (3rd Place Feature) — 1964. Based on historic events. A young, unmarried woman’s pregnancy derails her college and career-track life when she gets sent to St. Mary’s House for Unwed Mothers, where she is forced to secretly give birth and put her child up for adoption.
GIRLS IN TROUBLE is based on the experiences of millions of women during the “Baby Scoop Era.” During this time, between the 1940’s and Roe v. Wade in 1973, over 1.5 million women in the US alone, who were unable to obtain abortions, were forced to carry their pregnancies to term while living in secrecy at “Mother and Baby Homes” and pressured to give the babies up for adoption. These were also known as “Houses of Shame.”
These women were lied to about their rights and often brainwashed into believing they were “sick” and “unfit” to care for a child because they had gotten pregnant out of wedlock. This period shows so clearly how shame is used as a tool to limit the options of the underprivileged.
The subject matter spoke to me, not only because of the heartbreaking accounts I found, but because before stumbling onto it, I had never heard of it at all. Not a single person I’ve spoken to about this had. Millions of women have gone through similar, horrific experiences, and while many are still alive today — they were so shamed into silence, first hand accounts are incredibly difficult to track down. History has not considered these stories “worthy” of larger public discussion. There are a handful of articles and just two books on the subject that I was able to find. Two. While we’ve made strides, the root dynamics of societal “morality,” expectations, and shame surrounding women’s sexuality and autonomy are still prevalent. Even now, women in the US are fighting for the opportunity to exercise control over their own bodies, and by extension, their options in life.
I spent over a year researching these women’s experiences- combing through articles, books on reproductive rights, even online forums where women have come forward with their stories in small, safe, unexposed corners of the web. After my year of living in these stories, I sat down to write this script. It took me less than a week.
This story is incredibly important to me, but I believe it should be important to everyone. We are not yet safe. If I could tell every single woman’s story, I would. GIRLS IN TROUBLE is a fictionalized version of the most typical of these experiences. I figure we can start there.”
Born and raised in Madrid, Spain, Brenna moved to the US at 18 for NYU’s Tisch Film & TV Production program. She has since been based out of NYC, working all over the country and Europe as a director and producer for mostly short (commercial & music) content, while developing and writing narrative feature scripts.
Jonathan Redding
Candle (1st place Horror) — When a demon stalks Manhattan, an ex-nun with a gift for the occult must return to protect the Sisterhood she left behind.
“I suppose if I’m honest Candle has everything to do with my childhood. In part it has to do with the gigantic, outsized genre influences of HP Lovecraft and Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King, these writers I’ve always loved, who left their cosmologies — freighted with realism, burdened with tragedy and pathos — seared into my imagination. In part it has to do with the myth of Orpheus, with the lone figure descending, carrying only their delicate Art, to rescue the beloved, to stand against the Gods of Death. Those things are present, shaping it. But much more so I think it has to do with my mother, and my aunts, and my five sisters, this enclave of powerful and gifted and silly and brave and (sometimes) mysterious women, these women who shaped me. It has to do with the mysticism and iconography of the Church, and the faith I inherited but could not keep. It has to do with the angels I wish to glimpse, moving behind the apparatus of our lives, but never yet have. It has to do with my personal understanding of grief, and the prism of story through which I am forced to refract it…Candle is a recurring dream.”
Jonathan Redding is a Los Angeles-based screenwriter, playwright and dramaturg; he is currently the Writers’ Assistant on Showtime’s HOMELAND, and previously served as the Resident Dramaturg for The Broad Stage in Santa Monica, as well as the Director of the Los Angeles Theatre Ensemble’s Shakespeare Project.
Mike Langer
Wendigo (2nd Place Horror) — In the near future, a young Native American mother and her twins, in the final stages of a terrifying genetic mutation, must survive the brutal American West while being hunted by a Man hell-bent on killing them.
“My sister and I were raised by a single mom. She’s a fighter. I always knew that if anything were to ever come after us, my mother would tear it to pieces and feast on the remains. Intense, I know. As I grew up, I really came to understand and appreciate it. I wanted to write something that captured who my mother is; a woman who would stop at nothing to protect her kids. She was our own personal Ripley (we watched Aliens a lot growing up).”
Mike Langer was born in Utah and spent several years living abroad in Russia and Brazil, including two years as a Mormon missionary in Serbia and Croatia (although he’ll likely never win the best Mormon award). He now makes his career as a producer and writer in LA on shows for networks ranging from CNN to THE SCIENCE CHANNEL. His next feature film BURYING YASMEEN will be released later this year.
Stanley Wong & Patrick T. Dorsey
The Causeway (3rd Place Horror) — When a zombie-like outbreak puts New Orleans under strict quarantine, a closed-off survivalist and a ragtag group of neighbors attempt to escape across the only road to safety — the longest bridge over water in the world.
Stanley grew up in a town called Mandeville, which is separated from New Orleans by a 24-mile-long bridge called the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway — it is the longest continuous bridge over water in the world. He crossed this bridge hundreds of times throughout his life and always felt like it would a great location for a zombie movie. When Stanley pitched the idea to Patrick, who loves horror, Patrick said “whoa, let’s write it.”
It being their first feature together, Stanley and Patrick took their time outlining the story — in part to see if their excitement for the idea ever went away (or if they got tired of each other). Neither happened. Then, after about six months of outlining, they rushed through a draft in a few weeks to enter a contest. It did not fare well. So they took a breath, got feedback, and after about nine more months of on-again, off-again revisiting and revising, they had the version they entered in the Slamdance competition.
Stanley Wong is a writer/director/actor who grew up in Louisiana and got a degree in film from the University of New Orleans. He has since worked on award-winning independent films “Steve Chong Finds Out That Suicide is a Bad Idea,” “Hand Fart” and played the token Asian in the Jump Street series and “The Big Short”. Patrick T. Dorsey is a writer of several feature screenplays, pilots, comedy sketches, articles, and a tweet that got RT’d by Andrew W.K.
Tamara Maloney & Maeve McQuillan
Darkened Room(2nd Place TV Pilot) — Set in 19th century London inside the darkened rooms of séances where everyone is a fraud, only Alma Havenswood, a dissident from the Victorian ruling classes, can truly connect to the beyond. When Alma’s gift leads to the loss of her child, she turns her back on the spirit world only to discover that any hope of reuniting with her son rests in her ability to harness her talents and defeat the powers trying to destroy her both in this world and the other.
Both Maeve and Tamara suffered through high school as Goths and Wiccans. Even though they were a thousand miles away from each other, Maeve (Ireland) and Tamara (America), would one day meet at UCLA and bond over their love of the occult, seances, Victoria Woodhull and all things Victorian. During those school years, the seeds of DARKENED ROOM were sown over glasses of wine and Trader Joe’s chocolate in various cramped apartments across LA. After many more moves, children, mates and a lot of pets, they decided to take the plunge and actually write this pilot.
“Inspired by our mutual love of Gothic Horror and fascinated by the female personalities that we encountered within the pages of our Victorian histories, we decided to write something that would reflect these women’s untold stories. We also wanted to capture this world and its inhabitants in a way that hadn’t been seen before on screen. DARKENED ROOM is a cross genre horror/thriller that follows the main character Alma as she wrestles with her dark talents and attempts to unwrap the mystery behind her son’s disappearance. It also tells a tale of a society in upheaval, the hypocrisy of wealth, and the eternal struggle of underrepresented peoples to be heard and seen in a world that is constantly trying to squash them underfoot, issues which still very much resonate today.”
Tamara works as a producer alongside Academy Award winning Haskell Wexler on his feature documentary WHO NEEDS SLEEP? (sold to Sundance Channel)as well as Mo Perkin’s scripted feature, A QUIET LITTLE MARRIAGE (sold to IFC). As an editor she has cut numerous award winning features, television, and commercials for Marcus Nispel, Trish Sie, Cynthia Mort and many more. Maeve has two feature scripts, SILVIA and JONESTOWN DEFENSE, currently in various stages of production. In recent years Maeve has been commissioned to work on various feature scripts including a biopic for Academy Award winning actress Melissa Leo and the sci-fi comedy ECHO by award winning German director Franz Muller.
John Whitcher
The Red (3rd Place TV Pilot) — A Cree prostitute helps a racist detective hunt a serial killer preying on Native sex workers — only to uncover mounting evidence the killer is her Grandfather.
TV crime heroes are so often clichéd white male cops. I wanted my protagonist to be a heroine — the most disenfranchised, unexpected heroine imaginable, with the greatest struggles to overcome. Leta Abottsnay — Native sex-worker, lapsing alcoholic, battling the darkness of drug addiction. If the real-life tragedy of missing and murdered Native sex-workers is to be told fictionally, the power and journey should go to someone like Leta — not another white male cop. As Alanis Morissette bitterly sang, “If only I could hunt the hunter… if only I could kill the killer.” Why not?
Born in Australia to an outback geologist and a mining camp secretary, John Whitcher worked in advertising and as a network Television Director before moving to the U.K. to work for BBC London and Central Television. A dual Canadian-Australian citizen, his subsequent credits as an award-winning editor include features, TV movies, documentary and drama-documentaries.
Matt O’Connor
Ami (1st Place Short) — A young girl must navigate the perils of an isolated existence in a crumbling dystopian future, with the help of her AI assistant cube, AMI.
“Expressing unease for what the future of artificial intelligence holds and the role technology plays in our lives are by no means new concepts. The idea I was most interested in exploring, however, was that there is no inherent malevolence in a new technology; it can can as loyal as a good dog — Any threat that is posed by artificial intelligence lies within its creator. Once the story came to me, I had to tell it. It took me a few late nights to script out the story and get it to feel right.”
Matt O’Connor was born and raised in Australia and moved to the States to chase after an American girl (now his wife of 10 years) whom he had fallen in love with in a pub during college. He began his career in animation and transitioned into film and has always had a passion for visual storytelling.
Nikolas Benn
The Settlement (2nd Place Short) — A silver tongued salesman tries to con a grandmother out of what little time she has left.
“The Settlement came out of the idea of trying to make an audience swallow a very bitter pill. Euthanasia had been in the news at the time, and there was a lot of noise about it. I also used to work in a funeral home back in high school, which is admittedly a weird job for a teenager, but it provided a rough framework for the story.”
Nik Benn is a writer and director for film and television. Having written in a number of genres, Nik feels most at home in dark drama, but enjoys exploring any story so long as it’s immersive and challenging.
Victor Ridaura
Sundown County (3rd Place Short) — When the United States government passes a sunset law that eliminates all the constitutional guarantees and rights of any minority in the country after the sun goes down, a Latino interracial family tries to make it to Atlanta, a haven city, before the sun sets down on them.
“This script was a mix of a lot of things. A lot emotions. A lot of fears. A lot of love. I’ve lived in the US now for many years, and since I’ve been here, I’ve had to adapt to American culture and have had a plethora of experiences in this country. Some have been great (met my wife here, I’ve become way way healthier here, I have made killer friendships here), and some have really not been so great.
One of the biggest things that took the most time for me to understand was racism. This was not something I was familiar with before I came here. But since I’ve been in the US, I’ve had some really scary situations happen to me. In one instance similar to what I describe in Sundown County, I was stopped for no reason by an officer and threatened at gunpoint. I had to talk myself out of a bad situation. Although other awful things did happen in my home country of Venezuela — for example, I was shot at during protests and marches — I was never threatened personally. Looking back on it, I guess I was lucky, but I always found it strange that I’ve only been held at gunpoint in the US, and more than once. In both scenarios, the people threatening me were not Latino.
The best way for me to understand racism is to associate it with the fear of other that I DID see back home: the idea of people in power creating divide amongst the people, maligning people because they’re different, and planting fear for some personal or political gain. This is what led to the moral, financial, and all-around complete collapse of Venezuela. This is how I finally understood racism.
As the years have rolled on, I have seen how the divides in this country have cemented themselves within the psyche of everyone. I see certain things happening that scare me and remind me of when things were starting to fall to disrepair in Venezuelan society. I started to have fears of once again becoming an “other” and what horrible things this could lead to. How these terrible things are normalized slowly. How the water comes to a soft boil. How we all begin to accept things we should have never accepted. Because of politics. Because of anger. Because of fear. Because, because, because.
In true sci-fi fashion, I decided to take a peak at a not-so-distant future. Taking a cue from the American past during the Jim Crow era, I began to think: What if racism is normalized again in society? What if the government continues down the most horrible path I can see? What if minorities lost their constitutional rights once the sun set? I remembered the feeling of being an immigrant in this country and being stopped by the cops. Or being back home and fearing the coming night. And I wondered, what if the US was heading to a place similar, but much worse than where Venezuela was? Would what happened to my country happen again in my new home? What would that look like?”
Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, Victor is a writer, director, and cinematographer based out of Los Angeles, CA. Victor makes a living by doing advertising work all over the world, creating pieces for brands like AT&T, MANGO, Wells Fargo and many more. However, film is where his true passion lies. Victor uses writing as an outlet while also directing his own independent short films.
