This is a transcript of the Final Draft Insider View, a podcast that takes you inside the screenwriting industry to talk with screenwriters, television writers, executives, and industry influencers. To listen to the podcast click here. To listen to other podcasts visit podcasts.finaldraft.com. 

Pete D’Alessandro: Hello, I'm Pete D’Alessandro. This is the Final Draft Insider View, a podcast that takes you inside the screenwriting industry to talk with screenwriters, television writers, executives, and industry influencers. Today we're talking with writer Brian Duffield. His credits include a lot of spec sales you might not have read yet. If you haven't, it's a great thing to go out and do. The latest one was Babysitter. He has also written Worst Honeymoon Ever and Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch, both really great, very popular Black List scripts, and he also wrote the upcoming Insurgent, which is the sequel to Divergent. Brian, thank you so much for being here. 

Brian Duffield: Oh yeah, thanks for having me, dude.

Pete D’Alessandro: Sure. So the first thing I wanted to start with was your background because you grew up way outside the industry like a lot of us.

Brian Duffield: Yes.

Pete D’Alessandro: You started I guess in Pennsylvania and then overseas in Europe, am I right?

Brian Duffield: Yes sir, yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro: So how did all this…I mean, you were way outside the industry, how did all this formulate who you are as a writer?

Brian Duffield: Yeah, I think for a few ways, you know, when I was growing up in Pennsylvania I was a real nerd and I would go see movies semi-frequently and watch TV and go over to friends and watch TV and everything, and when my family moved overseas we moved to basically farmland, Ireland, where we didn't have movie theatres and our TV consisted of two channels which were occasionally in Gaelic and, yeah, and so it became like a huge…and part of it was just like a huge lonely void. And so kind of to fill the hours and to kind of make up for not really having that entertainment feed, I just started writing my own little Jurassic Park sequels or…we had like a local library, a local school library, and they had those junior novelizations of movies and I would get those, and for a lot of movies I had either read the junior novelizations or had read about them in like the Ebert greatest movies books at least 10 years…at least until college before I actually saw the movies, which was really weird because it's like having a bunch of favorite movies that you were pretty sure would be your favorite movie if you got to see them but that was cool.

And so I think it's not that dissimilar to when you're learning an instrument and you start off and you're doing a lot of other people’s…you know, you're doing Bob Dylan three-chord songs and eventually you start to put your own chords together and realize that you don’t need to be beholden to anything else. And so it kind of started there and I think I started writing like… And I mean, I always really wanted to direct as well but it was so far beyond the realm of what I was capable of doing, you know, not really knowing anybody else and not having any kind of camera that if screenwriting just became something that I was like, “This is as close I can get to making movies.” And so I got really into that in my teens and then, yeah, went to college for it, and now that's what I do with my life. For better or worse.

Pete D’Alessandro: So when you were in college, was it film school, straight film school, for you?

Brian Duffield: No, I went to two schools. I went to Messiah College in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and their sister school was the much bigger Temple University in Philadelphia, and so it's like technically a communications major but with a pretty heavy concentration in film and screenwriting and all that jazz. So yeah, I mean, I always went for that, that purpose, and I think my family and even myself were nervous to do like a full…just film school thing because if you don’t there's really no fallback from that, so I really liked the idea of having a bachelor’s degree although I still don't know what the hell a bachelor’s degree in communications would actually ever get me. But I minored in English, which I'd never finished. So I kind of went about it all stupidly but, I mean, the day I graduated I drove out to LA like it was always, you know, like LA and taking the shot here was always part of the plan as it were, so college was just something I needed to get through so I could leave and…the next thing.

Pete D’Alessandro: Sure. So what was that like to move out here? Had you developed any sort of contacts or relationships out here before you moved out?

Brian Duffield: No, I had nothing and it was 2008, so it was like, you know, summer 2008, it was either the end of the writers’ strike or it was like ongoing but almost over. And then towards the end of the year like before the election, you know, the recession hit, and so we were living on Laurel Canyon and Vanowen, and it was amazing because the recession hit and within like a month in just kind of like this nuclear wasteland and where once were stores were now empty. I lost two part-time jobs in a week. And I had an internship and…I had a couple of internships and was doing that whole thing, but in terms of contacts I really had nothing. But Temple University has a program in LA for like the summer, like your final credits as it were, and so I had everyone there. And so a lot of my friends to this day are my college friends from Philadelphia.

Pete D’Alessandro: Wow.

Brian Duffield: Yeah, it's cool. It's really neat. My groomsmen were all people I went to college with that moved out here the same…you know, one guy I drove out here with and one guy I just went to school with, and even the person who kind of got my script into the right hands was just someone I went to college with.

Pete D’Alessandro: Wow.

Brian Duffield: So yeah, it turned out to be a very beneficial use of my time that in hindsight it was worth the insane amount of money that college costs.

Pete D’Alessandro: Worth every penny.

Brian Duffield: Yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro: Alright. So at that time you're driving out here, you're finishing up college, what had you been writing up to that point?

Brian Duffield: I'm trying to remember. It was right before…I think I had started to write Your Bridesmaid is a Bitch at the time and I hadn't finished it yet and I was still kind of figuring out things on it. And then before that I had written some really strange like fantasy movies, I had like a man in suit monster movie that I still really want to do sometime, and like really weird things, and then I think Bridesmaid was the first time I kind of harnessed my writing for something that it wasn’t just me that wanted to see. But, I mean, it took a while and I think the recession and like how difficult that was was really helpful in that way because it just got scary to the point of like I don’t even have like a backup plan in terms of where I can leave LA,  and also just being in LA and like being in offices and kind of seeing how the town works, it really kind of helps hone what you think people expect out of a screenplay. And you know, I've read…I was a reader for a while, and so I was reading hundreds of screenplays, and so I think that really helped. And so I think Bridesmaid kind of benefitted a lot from really bad life situations and just kind of being aware of what was happening in LA as opposed to being off in the middle of Harrisburg and pretending like you know what a studio wants to read, which I mean has worked out for some people…

Pete D’Alessandro: Sure.

Brian Duffield: …wonderfully, but for me it was just…it was such a vacuum that I was just like writing movies and hoping someone would read it someday. But like having no perspective of like what was, you know, like what I was writing, who I was writing for beyond just myself…

Pete D’Alessandro: So you got some practice writing for yourself at least and then you could expand on that…

Brian Duffield: Yeah, yeah, and I think it's like, you know, I definitely think it's the kind of thing where, you know, I know some people, they sell their first script for a million dollars and all that, the Diablo Cody wonderment, and it's amazing for Diablo Cody, but I think for me definitely I needed those like 10 scripts where I'm really happy no one’s ever read them. I'm embarrassed when people have read the stuff I've set up, so it's like an ongoing anxiety. But yeah, no, I think it was really beneficial to kind of write a lot of scripts that no one ever wound up seeing but…you know, and I was writing them al throughout college and just kind of moving one from the next to the next…

Pete D’Alessandro: Yeah. This was probably a period of time that you were not doing a lot of rewriting and the same stuff.

Brian Duffield: Yeah, I mean, for myself I was rewriting but, I mean, no one was telling…like, and I would get notes from friends or something, but it was never the kind of thing where that I was like, “You know, I'm going to just rewrite this until it's perfect because…” You know, and I remember in college they were definitely like, “You know, you shouldn't have this one thing, you should have multiple things,” so like in terms of getting representation, and so I really took that to heart. And then my managers read nothing and my agents read nothing but Bridesmaid, and so I never needed any of those for anything practical other than just the experience of writing things and learning how to write and, you know, in class being told what I was really crappy at and really fighting to get better at it.

Pete D’Alessandro: So then what happened…I mean, you were working at odd jobs and internships here, what kind of places were you working in? You said you had a job as a reader. I'm curious, how did you wind up landing that?

Brian Duffield: It was like an intern, and then I moved over to like assistance for like small boutique manager companies and agencies and I did not enjoy those very much at all. But I mean it was terrible in terms of a lot of ways, but the benefit of it was you're reading a lot and you're reading a lot of really terrible scripts, and on top of that then you're reading a lot of very terrible scripts that have sold or been set up and that I think was the most encouraging thing.

And I don’t say that to belittle other writers and throw anyone under the bus, but if it comes from…you know, I remember when I joined the Writers Guild, like they have a little like shindig where they invited everyone over to the Guild and then they talked about how the odds of becoming a professional writer were like smaller than the odds of becoming a professional baseball player, and I think that always stuck with me because it was reading terrible scripts that had sold, it took it away from being like a profession that you kind of dream about to a profession that, you know, not through arrogance in your own work but that is somehow much more attainable because you're meeting these people day in and day out. And you know, it's not like I was meeting Aaron Sorkin or these writers that I was just like flabbergasted by their talent and that I could never measure up to, but I was reading fairly average guys who were just living their lives and their careers just happened to be screenwriting. And so it kind of demystified that aspect for me…

Pete D’Alessandro: Sure.

Brian Duffield: …and it was really helpful in terms of it kind of took it away from like the…you know, “One day I'll be lucky to sell a screenplay,” you know, the magic of it, and kind of made it like, “This is like a career and this is something I have to just keep at it.” And it's like it's obviously a very small kind of window in terms of the people that are trying to do it and make it, but it kind of made it something that was less like the American Idol like dreams are coming true kind of thing and more like a, “This is a career that I just have to work my ass off as hard as I can and as often as I can to do everything I can to get in.” So yeah, it was a lot of kind of beneficial demystification of Hollywood screenwriters.

Pete D’Alessandro: That sounds really great. Okay, I can see the insight there. How long did you wind up reading for and doing the assistance?

Brian Duffield: I think two years. I think it was like 2008 to 2010. Let me think. I think Bridesmaid sold in 2010 in like November, and so, yeah. I had other jobs I worked on. I worked with this great company called Clear-Media, which was doing this Clinton Kelly from ‘What Not To Wear’ like a tour across America where they were doing like fashion makeovers at different Macy’s, and I was on tour with Clinton Kelly for a while. And I had other jobs going on because none of these jobs were particularly long-lasting. But I would say it was like, yeah, it was about two-and-a-half years, I'd say, before I got representation and all… And that all happened kind of like within a matter of days, which was…it was very kind of shocking and crazy. But yeah, I'd say it was like two-and-a-half years of part-time reading and then just part-time jobs and whatever kind of gigs I could find so I could not get so much in debt that I was broke.

Pete D’Alessandro: Okay, okay. And then what wound up happening with Bridesmaid and how you…I mean, it wound up hitting the Black List, which you know, we talked to Franklin Leonard on this podcast before…

Brian Duffield: Yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro: But how did that wind up landing on the Black List and getting the attention that it got?

Brian Duffield: I think it came out in November [chuckles] and…so it's like one of the last things people read. But no, it was like…because I think my first meeting with Skydance about it, so like the script I think went out like the first week of November and it sold like mid-November I want to say, then the Black List was like two weeks later, so I was still working at the temp job I had. And I remember like being on the 101 at a complete standstill and like going through deadline and seeing it on there and not having even thought to like look for it on there because it was so new. And like I had still not gotten to the point where I was like, “Oh, I'm a writer now.” Like it was so…like I think I got representation maybe a week before it sold. Like I literally met one of my managers at Skydance. Like the first chance I could actually have to meet one of the team was like in the room with David Ellison, which was hilarious. So it was a real whirlwind and it took me a few months to kind of just like recover from all of that.

So the Black List was really cool and it kind of helped…I felt it legitimized…well, not actually legitimized, like it was something that I could like point to in terms of like, “Oh look, I have something now.” And it was really cool and encouraging and very daunting but, yeah, it was great. Like that whole time is like this weird blur in my life because I would literally be going to the warehouse where I worked and then I would like not have service there and… So like knowing the script was out there and people were really liking it, I would like obviously be freaking out, [chuckles] but I would have no way of…I didn't have a computer and have no way of knowing, so I'd find like every bathroom break possible that I could find that I would run like a quarter of a mile away from the warehouse until I got service to kind of wait and see if I got any texts or calls from Circle of Confusion. And even like when it sold, I just had to go back into the warehouse and I couldn’t, like, be an asshole and be like, “Hey, everyone else that’s working part-time, I just sold a screenplay to David Ellison, so I'm going to stop seeing you guys soon.” So yeah, I remember getting the call that it was happening and being really excited and having to turn around and continue shipping jeans to Asia, and it was cool. It was like such a whirlwind and it was so crazy and, yeah, it just is like this weird blur.

Pete D’Alessandro: Well, I want to hear about the next phase of this. So you sold the script, the sale goes through, I guess you gently let down the people at the warehouse, but what happens after that? What were the next steps you took? What were the meetings and what was going on then?

Brian Duffield: Yeah, I just was doing all the meetings, which was something that I thought would stop but, I mean, it never stops, and so I mean I've been doing it for four years now and I feel like I have so many meetings every day. It was just great. I like it a lot. So it was like a lot of meetings and a lot of people that read the script, especially after like the Black List and, you know, were sending me things to do, and I was so kind of new to it that it was just very overwhelming and daunting. And I remember specifically just not enjoying it because it was like you go to a meeting, I would go to like three or four meetings a day and people would give you like nine different things and you're just like, “I don’t even know what to do now that I've gotten it.” So I kind of had this crash course in terms of what is happening afterwards, and then at the same time I was rewriting Bridesmaid for Skydance. And then I had almost finished Worst Honeymoon at the time, like before it had sold, and so we were going out with that and going out with other things. And it was really cool but, I mean, I just got so paranoid that it was all going to go away that I just started writing as much as I could.

And like I had like this fear of letting people down and so it was a long time until I did like an actual assignment because, you know… And I mean, to this day, I absolutely prefer writing things for myself. But yeah, so it was crazy. I would say it took me like at least a year to kind of actually feel comfortable with everything. It definitely took a while. And like Circle of Confusion were great and Gersh were great I don't think I would have done anything necessarily different, but I just remember being very overwhelmed. From being an intern to being a professional writer kind of overnight was very kind of daunting and scary and…

Pete D’Alessandro: Sure.

Brian Duffield: I didn't enjoy it. But it was good. I love it now.

Pete D’Alessandro: Wow, okay.

Brian Duffield: Yeah. I've gotten used to it a little bit more, I think.

Pete D’Alessandro: Okay. So what do your days consist of when you're writing? I mean, obviously there's probably tons of meetings like you said, but when you do have the time to sit down and write, what is your process like?

Brian Duffield: Yeah, I've been watching those like…I know John August just did those like Academy…he kind of makes those videos of like the writer’s process, and they always have like this real process and I don’t have that at all. I feel like the Academy video, if they ever were stupid enough to do it with me, is them coming in and just seeing me like talk to my dog a lot and then I like sit down and write whenever I want because…

And I think it's like I really dislike outlining. For me, that's never been something I've…it's just like pulling teeth for me, and anytime I've done it I've just radically like rebelled against it as soon as I started actually writing the script. And so it was something that I don’t have like that process, but what I find that I do is I'll have ideas and I'll just think about them for sometimes years, and then eventually…I have like a pretty clear idea in my head of what big points of the movie are, and then I kind of just start writing and then it comes out pretty fast. And, I mean, I write…I think I wrote, I don't know, I think I wrote four scripts and a couple of pilots this year, so I don’t feel like I'm lazy, but I definitely don’t have…I don’t have like the office or like the strict writing hours or anything…

Pete D’Alessandro: And despite that, you're still getting a lot done.

Brian Duffield: No, it's…but no, yeah, yeah. And it's like I, especially when it's writing specs, like I love it and I don’t necessarily get writer’s block or anything, like that I think is because I'm not doing it…I feel like it's because I'm not structuring it out or doing anything like that, and so it's really exciting to have like that, you know, the idea of like no one’s really waiting on you and it just feels really, really good and really fun and you get to try new things that you definitely wouldn't do if it was an assignment or, you know, even like a pitch, like I think if I pitched something and I got hired to do it, I would be thinking very specifically about who bought the pitch and like what they needed to be  and… Whereas when it's by myself, I'm thinking about how it can get set up or be a movie or anything, but beyond that you don’t have anything really holding you down. And I think the fact that I am writing a couple of scripts a year, you know, the managers and the agents kind of aren't bugging you to like write something because they just assume that I am writing something.

So yeah, it's…so I feel like my hours are really…I just got married, and so my hours have really changed because I used to especially work like in the dark in my bed with like my computer until I basically was falling asleep and that would kind of be my hours. And then now I think my wife would murder me, [chuckles] so that's not what I have been doing as much. So I'm kind of trying to figure out like what’s the more adult way to be a writer. And so I see like all these Billy Ray and John August videos about how they have like these beautiful office spaces and I'm like, “Oh, I should grow up and then do that and have like a real nine-to-five-type thing.”

But yeah, it's just never been something that I have clung to like a schedule or like a certain way of writing things. It just has been something that I really...I feel really lucky that I get to obviously do something that I really love to do and I haven't yet got to the point where I am like writing a spec and I hate my life. [Laughs] I'm really just usually excited to get in there and see what I can do and how it can be different than what I've done before and, yeah, and just see how that all goes.

Pete D’Alessandro: Sure.

Brian Duffield: That was like a really longwinded answer that's just…idiot…

Pete D’Alessandro: That’s perfect. It's perfect.

Brian Duffield: Yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro: No, I love hearing about the specs, but I'm curious though, when you started, I mean, you obviously have gotten hired on writing assignments, what was the first assignment and what was that like?

Brian Duffield: It was actually a pilot. It was for the comic book Chew by John Layman and Rob Guillory at Showtime that Stephen Hopkins was directing and it didn't get…they didn't take it to pilot, but it was a really great… It was a really great experience and I think it really kind of broke down a lot of my fears about what that experience would be like because Showtime were great and they were very… It's a really crazy book in that like the really crude pitch is of a cop, his entire has…whatever he's eaten he'd see the life of it flash before his eyes, and so one day he realizes that he can solve crimes by taking bites out of corpses.

And so it's an out-there idea and I think it was one of the projects that Nevins, the head of Showtime, inherited when he took over. And Stephen had already been attached, and Nevins and Stephen go way back to the 24 days, and so I got hired on that because I was a super-fan of the book and still am. And it was a really educational experience because, honestly, Showtime had their opinions and Stephen had his opinions, but everyone was so nice about it, and so it was like… I was actually talking about it with a friend last night about how it was like dinner conversation in the terms of like not even arguing but like that's as intense as the disagreements got.

And obviously I was not at a place where I was telling Showtime and Stephen Hopkins what to do, but like they definitely listened to me and I definitely listened to them. And it was a really interesting process because I think it was towards the start of like Nevins regime over there, so I think Homeland had just come out or was about to come out, and so they hadn't quite been like what the new Showtime is. I mean, it's obviously such a weird book that Nevins really, I remember, loved it and was trying to figure out like how it could fit into what his vision for the network would be. And so I did like a half-hour of it, I did an hour-long of it, and everyone was super-great, and eventually I think Penny Dreadful killed us. I think when Penny Dreadful kind of hit the market it was such a Showtime show in a way that our genre show was just not, and through no fault of anybody’s. So just no wants the sexy version of like the guy eating corpses, whereas you can have a very sexy Penny Dreadful. Yeah, and then Showtime were great and we were able to take cracks at it with other networks and, yeah, they’ve just been… That was a really great experience, and so it kind of opened me up a little bit to doing more open writing assignments even though I still haven't done too many, but I'm definitely not as opposed to them as I probably was at the start where I was just terrified of letting people down.

Pete D’Alessandro: So what winds up happening then? I mean, you have a bunch more spec sales. I couldn't actually find, how many specs have you sold on your own?

Brian Duffield: Not…I don't think that… I sold Bridesmaid, I sold Monster Problems, in terms of actual specs, and then Babysitter I think was the last spec.

Pete D’Alessandro: Okay.

Brian Duffield: And then I have other things that I optioned, you know, kind of in there that were much more indie films. But yeah, but I mean I haven't…and so I have a batting average that I'm really happy.

And Circle of Confusion and Gersh have done really well by me that I really can't complain about the work they have done for me, yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro: Now, I'm curious, what is it that…I mean, how are they helping in ways that they are helping…I mean, you've got these great reps, but how do they actually serve you as opposed to what a rep shouldn't be doing for you?

Brian Duffield: In terms of Circle, Zach Cox is my main guy over there and he's like basically another wife where I talk to him several times a day. And he's the only person that I'll actually send pages to about things, and I usually don’t send…it's not like I wrote like five pages and send it to him. Like if there's a scene I'm really jazzed about, I'll send it to him and he's the first one to read it and then everyone else gets it. And so he's…if he quit the business for some reason, I would probably quit because I would just be like, “I don't know what to do.” I'd be so cast adrift.

And then I have, you know, the other guys at Circle are really great in terms of protecting me or like in terms of TV, they're really strong. And in Gersh, over there they're less about the notes, they're more about getting things out there or bringing things in, and it's been…like it's been a rare case where I've been like really frustrated about how some things have gone out to the town or been really frustrated about what’s been coming in. And yeah, and on top of that like the people at Gersh are like the least agenty people ever, which I really like, and they're just very kind, cool people. They treat their assistants well and that's really important to me. [Laughs] So I just like them and I'm definitely not having a bad career because of them. So I think they’ve been doing a really wonderful…they’ve been really great to me.

And especially with Gersh, they've never…and I've written pretty out there things, some of which has been announced and some of which has not been announced, but like some really weird stuff, and I've never gotten the, “Tone this down,” or, “Cut back on this,” or like, “Do another rom-com.” They're just like, “Oh, we really like this. It's going to be tough to sell but we're going to do everything we can. We're going to find cool people about it,” and they’ve just been great. Yeah, I've been very blessed.

Pete D’Alessandro:   Wow, that’s fantastic.

Brian Duffield:          Yeah. Yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro:   Alright, so let's move on to one of the newest pieces. I mean, you've been working on Insurgent…

Brian Duffield: Yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro: …and I'm curious, does it feel like you get stretched between two masters there when you have the source material in the book but you also have a previous movie and you weren't really involved in that first movie?

Brian Duffield: No, it was super-weird, dude. It was like, I don't think I would do it again. And saying that, everyone was from Lionsgate and Red Wagon and everyone was very cool to me and very nice to me, but it was…I think I got hired really early on into shooting Divergent, so I mean like before…the first time I saw literally anything from Divergent was when I visited set like a day after I got hired.

Pete D’Alessandro: Wow.

Brian Duffield: And then at the time Neil Burger was going to do all three, and so I was working with Neil, who was also just a gentleman and great. Yeah, but it was definitely weird, dude, because it was like I would get… So at the time the first two books had come out and they were making the first movie, and so I read a script of the first movie that was changing kind of all the time. And so I think they wrapped the movie, I want to say…I got hired in March I think of last year and then I think they wrapped the movie in August, and then I finished the movie in December like in terms of doing like the nine bazillion drafts, not that I spent March to December doing one draft. [Chuckles] And then I saw the movie, and the third book came out I think in like November and like a lot of Insurgent…Insurgent has a lot of cliffhangers, and so it was very strange writing towards these kind of question marks and like that’s how it was just ending.

And I think, rightfully, at the time Lionsgate and Red Wagon were very hesitant about me kind of blowing up the book because we didn't know where anything was going, and I think when you see the movie, you know, the subsequent writers kind of had all the cheat codes that I was not afforded just by the nature of time, like they all saw the movie and they actually did reshoots on the movie after I was done writing the script. And so it was like this crazy thing where I was writing a sequel to a movie that then changed radically after they’ve wrapped shooting because they shot…I don't know how much more they shot, but it was weird and like I would get notes and calls about, “Oh, we're on set and Neil’s going to change this in the first movie, which is going to directly affect you.” And so I would say even like a lot of my notes were about what was going on on set or like in the editing room of the first movie. So it was very…it was the most reactionary job I've had.

Pete D’Alessandro: And so you're shooting at a moving target.

Brian Duffield: Yeah. Oh yeah, it was super-weird, and it was like not like bad but it was definitely…I think it was the first time that like, you know, if you're writing something your notes are typically all about what’s on the page and only that, and then this was the first time where I felt like a lot of my notes, and like definitely notes that were on the page too, but like there's definitely things happening in the first movie or like the third book came out and we were like, oh, we had a course-correct. Or, you know, it's got a huge fan base, and so trying to be really like even just in terms of there's certain lines of dialogue that they were like, “This has to be in the script somewhere,” like these things like kind of wholesale have to be in. So it was like an interesting writing job and I think it was fairly unique in terms of, you know, I kind of had all these kind of…kind of this input from like a movie that was currently shooting and a book that was very under wraps. It was a lot of weird cogs in the machine.

So, I mean, I'm happy with the work I did. I think the movie’s pretty radically different from the work I did if only just because of…I mean, you were just imagining yourself like if you're writing a sequel to a movie that you've never seen versus writing a sequel to a movie that you have seen, it's going to be very different. But it was a cool experience and it was like a time in my life when I got the job that I really connected with Tris, which is Shailene Woodley’s character at the start of the movie and kind of the journey she went on. And so it was like this very weird serendipitous moment where I don’t necessarily know if I was like I really want to do a sequel to the franchise movie, but like I remember reading the book on my couch and being like, “Oh, this is my life and I hate my life,” and like Tris hates her life in the start of the book. And so like I think my pitch to Lionsgate was like, “I know exactly how she feels.”

I think that's a big part of why I got the job, that Lionsgate were just like, “Oh, this poor bastard. Go, go, get better by writing this.” So it was cool and like everyone on…I haven't met a lot of the key people on the sequel because obviously Neil didn't wind up directing the others, but hopefully the movie is super-cool and hopefully all the kids like it. I'm just as curious as everyone else to see what it's like.

Pete D’Alessandro: That’s great, that’s great.

Brian Duffield: Yeah, I hope so. Yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro: So the other unusual experience I wanted to ask you about was I read that you're going to be directing…

Brian Duffield: Yeah.

Pete D’Alessandro: So finally we're getting to that already.

Brian Duffield: Yeah, man.

Pete D’Alessandro: So what’s that like? You're writing that as well, right?

Brian Duffield: Yeah, that's been written for a long time.

Pete D’Alessandro: That’s been written.

Brian Duffield: That was written…it may have been written before Insurgent, actually, and it was just something I wrote and I had a relationship…I still had a great relationship with director Lynne Ramsay and I would show her and she like, “You have to direct,” and I was like, “Okay.” Yeah, and so I was keeping that kind of close to my chest because it was super-super-weird and dark I didn't want to like sell it and then have it get homogenized into something else. So yeah, and then eventually when the time was right I started taking it out. I reached out to these amazing producers at Before The Door, which is Zachary Quinto’s company that I had been, and still am because his new movie is incredible, a huge fan of J.C. Chandor, and I had noticed that all of their credits were basically repeat customers that usually they produced like their first directing experience and then everyone kind of comes back for more, and I was like, “I want in on that.” And, thankfully, they really did dig it and we have great financiers at Aldamisa. Yeah, and so it's been a challenge because it's really weird. I was just listening to…it's like a horror film-ish thing…

Pete D’Alessandro: Mm-hmm. And it's called Vivian Hasn’t Been Herself Lately, is that right?

Brian Duffield: Yeah, yeah. And I was just listening to Karina Longworth has a great podcast called You Must Remember This, which is about like old Hollywood gossip and stories, and she has an episode on Val Lewton who did Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie. And he has like a quote in there that…in the episode…I was just listening to it moments ago and I laughed because I just disobeyed this, but his quote was like “if you have like nonstop horror like it just becomes really silly.” And I think Vivian is like from page like 10 to 86 it's just like nonstop horror, so it's probably the most silly movie ever. But I'm so excited to get to do it hopefully in the fall of 2015. And it's great.

It's been such a cool experience, like everyone working on it… It's cool. I've worked on stuff where there are jobs I think and everyone on it is like clearly on a job, and this is something where I feel everyone on it like they really like it, which is hopefully they're not just flattering me. [Laughs] But it feels like every time I have a meeting about it, it just feels really good and really fun. And we're in the casting stage right now, and it's been really, really cool. I had the practical effects meetings and it's the most fun I've ever had in my life.

Pete D’Alessandro: Now, as you get back into it now, looking at it from, “We're going to start shooting, I'm going to direct,” what are you seeing that you want to change or is that not happening?

Brian Duffield: In the script?

Pete D’Alessandro: Yeah.

Brian Duffield: It's not actually happening. I mean I think there's a part of it that it's like…and I think it will like as soon as we start really getting into…like we're writing…we're just about getting into like line producer territory where they're telling me about what money I actually have to spend, and then I'm sure things will have to change, but it's like… And it's like it's a pretty laser-focused script and I think my writing, if anything, I've just been becoming more and more lean and kind of focused and even dropping a lot of subplots and just really focusing on one or two very core story points. So yeah, it's been really, really cool.

And it's been like terrifying because I have no idea how I'm going to do half of it, but it's been really cool then as like you go into a room and you're like, “I don't know how to do this crazy scene where we need puppets and people on ceilings and all this stuff. And then, you know, you're with these amazing people who are like, “This is how we can do this part and then we can try to do this,” and then you kind of start piecing together how it would make sense and then you try to get your actor comfortable with the idea that she's doing these insane things, and it's cool. I mean, so far it's been the best experience of my career, which is probably massively jinxing the movie that has not been made yet. [Laughs]

But so far it's been really cool, and I think for me it was always…it was a movie that I think had like a little bit of like everything I wanted to do in a movie in terms of it has like crazy practical effects and it's…there's not that many things just like it, which makes me really excited and that people have like responded to it, and it's definitely not…you know, even for like what I think people think my voice is, it's a much different voice, I think, which is really exciting to me. Yeah, so clearly I'm really excited and I hope to…I mean, hopefully it shoots next fall and if not that hopefully it's something else I'm trying to direct.

But yeah, I mean, that's definitely a next stage for my career that I'm…I feel like every day I'm talking to people about trying to like push it over the hill because the indie space is tough. It's crazy, and you learn about foreign value and the markets and it's wild. So I don't know. Well, like I'll listen to this in like a year and I'll be like, “Oh.”

Pete D’Alessandro: [Laughs] Well, it's your own record now. You can go back to how you felt at this moment…

Brian Duffield: Yeah. [Laughs] I'm just like, “Oh, things were going good. Nothing bad will happen on a movie I'm involved in.” [Laughs] But yeah, yeah, hopefully that goes in the fall, is my hope. So we'll see, yeah. And like in the meantime, you know, doing things like Babysitter and doing things like other movies that I'm trying to set up for other companies and other directors, and being just really excited about original screenplays right now and also just adapting things that are really interesting and cool and, yeah, I feel like for me it was like probably 2014…and I think Babysitter’s like the only thing that anyone knows about…yeah, which is really funny because I think I finished it like two weeks ago. But I feel like everything I wrote in that year was like, in terms of quantifying things by years, like I was like, “This is the year I really kind of hit a good vein.” And so I'm super-jazzed on writing right now, which is really fun because there was definitely like a couple of years there where I was like, “I don’t want to be a writer anymore.” [Laughs] So I'm happy to kind of be back in love with it.

Pete D’Alessandro: Well, coming from that writer’s high to wrap this up here, what one piece of advice would you have to other writers who are out there in the middle of Pennsylvania or Ireland or anywhere else that…what would you tell them?

Brian Duffield: We were talking about this last night online so this is the first thing that popped in my head, but just be cool to other writers because it's…it's funny, it's like, you know, I was talking with Franklin about how a lot of my friends to this day are people that I've met because I read their scripts off the Black List and then reached out to them and it was like, “Eddie O’Keefe,” or “Emma Forrest,” like, “your scripts are incredible. I want to buy you all the drinks,” [chuckles] and that's been a really wonderful experience for me.

And then the flip of that and like a lot of writers have this experience too where like there's no one more damaging to you than other writers, and so that's been something that I've been thinking a lot about. And, you know, I've had some really terrible experiences with other writers and I think it's the difference between someone wanting to be a great writer and someone wanting to get a lot of money, typically, is kind of like that dividing line. And so yeah, I feel like it's been a really cool few years where like a lot of writers…I think the Internet has kind of helped this where like a lot of writers kind of know each other that they probably wouldn't have known in the past, and so it becomes a much more kind of protective environment for, you know, looking out for other writers, even writers like I don't know, trying to…

And I think there's, especially for people starting out, like there's such a desire, and I mean I definitely had this, to like break in that you kind of can do it destructively and hurting other people along the way. And I would just tell other writers to like go…I know Franklin, Franklin’s doing just the most amazing stuff, so cool. Like I went to one of his mixers a couple of months ago and it was like the most packed event I've ever been to in my life and it was terrifying. And I was only there for 10 minutes but I thought it was really cool, and there were so many writers getting to meet other writers there. And I would say go, if you live in LA, go do things like that and go for no other reason than to get to know people and like not even for like a “read my script and pass it up the ladder.” Because, I mean, I was definitely like that was drilled into my head about like, “Find contacts, give them one of your scripts,” and at the end of the day like the person who handed my script to the right people was like a dude I was just friends with in college.

And so I think for me that's kind of where…that’s where my advice would start, is like, “Don’t go to networking things for the idea of networking, like go for the idea of making friends. And when someone pops before you pop, like be really excited about that person,” because I know how difficult that can be, too. And just be like, you know, we're all hopefully in this crazy industry that doesn’t really respect writers as a whole together, and I think the more united and family-like we are together the better it will be for everyone.

And so I don’t mean to get all “kumbaya, it's all love” at the end, but it's been something that through my experiences and through experiences friends of mine are going through currently, like I feel like that’s like…for me it's like I wish I was like meeting other writers earlier than I was when I was doing it pretty instantaneously from when I sold Bridesmaid. But I think that's the most important thing to me where if you just like quote other writers and just treat writers like you think they're the most important part of the industry and not kind of the like, “How can I screw you over…” I don't know what like the policy for profanity is on this podcast, so I'm trying not to swear. [Laughs]

Pete D’Alessandro: No worries.

Brian Duffield: I should have checked. But like, how do you not screw people over to get ahead? I think that would be really cool. And, you know, just treating it like everyone’s in this kind of family with you as opposed to like everyone’s kind of in this against you, I think that's kind of where I'd like to see the Guild move towards, which I don't think will happen, and just writing and writers in general kind of going towards a real unified like we're all like looking out for each other and each other’s backs as opposed to, “Let's put like 900 writers on this project,” and no writer kind of bats an eye about that because they want the sweet, sweet paycheck. So yeah, that's where I'm at in my life right now. So yeah, I totally just rambled again.

Pete D’Alessandro: No, that’s perfect. It's all we need. That's why you're here.

Brian Duffield: Cool. I can like…because it's Skype I can see like the timer, so I'm like, “Should I like make it up to 55 or should I shut the hell up?” Anyway, sorry, dude. [Laughs]

Pete D’Alessandro: No, no worries. No worries. Well, I just want to say, thank you so much for joining us. This has really been great. It's been great having you on the podcast.

Brian Duffield: Awesome. Great, man. I hope so.

Pete D’Alessandro: Thank you. And if you're listening out there, if you like the podcast, please let us know by leaving a review on iTunes or wherever you're getting podcasts from. It helps other people find this and that’s how you share us. We'd like to hear from you. Please let us know who else you'd like to hear as guests and anything else you'd like us to talk about on the podcast. Brian Duffield, thanks so much for joining us. 

Brian Duffield: Thank you, Pete.