Writer-Director John Swab on 'Body Brokers'
February 24, 2021
Writer-director John Swab's latest film Body Brokers follows protagonist Utah (played by Jack Kilmer); a drug addict who finds himself at the center of true-to-life rehab schemes, where patients are funneled in and out of facilities, allowing rehabs the opportunity to collect millions of dollars from the federal government.
The film opens deep in action, setting up Kilmer's character as a drug-addled thief. He and his girlfriend Opal (Alice Englert) are robbing a convenience store to score cash for their next high. A stranger named Wood (Michael Kenneth Williams) approaches the couple, offering a golden ticket: an all-expenses-paid trip to a luxurious rehab facility in California. Opal's fight-or-flight instincts take over, and she refuses to follow through on the opportunity. Utah, however, hops a plane to Cali, where he detoxes and gets sober; collecting therapist allies, recovering junkie friends and clinic workers as friends, too. Although Body Brokers is fiction, the story is reflective of the real-world profits questionably earned by rehab owners thanks to the 2012 Affordable Care Act, which required insurance companies to pay for recovery treatment no matter the cost. Thus begins Utah's journey as a real-life body broker, where Wood mentors Utah in recruiting drug addicts in exchange for kickbacks.Swab, who wrote Body Brokers, also directed the film.
"I'm way more precious with performance by a long shot over the words I first write," he said.
"If Michael Kenneth Williams, who plays Wood, is saying my words, I'm going to give him the keys to the car and let him drive because whatever I wrote, he's just going to make it better."
Swab is the kind of director that believes a good story cannot be saved in the editing room.
"I play a huge part in editing, because it's the collection of and the retelling of your story; something you just spent weeks gathering. A movie like Body Brokers, with this narrative structure, you really can't over-edit it; you can't lose very much because of its very linear structure. One event leads to the next event. One character helps evolve another character... it's very necessary to have all the pieces of the script at your disposal in the editing room with something like this," he said.
"I find if you get into the room and you need to find your movie, you're in real trouble. I've learned how to write in a way that mitigates the problem. Discovering style in an editing room is cool, but hoping that the editing room will make your movie work is a huge cause of trouble."
"I wrote the last 67 pages of the script in one afternoon and the entire piece never changed, no matter how many drafts it went through, but words on the page are not precious to me. Everything I write is scalable — I really try not to write myself into a corner so that I can avoid future issues. It's all about staying mindful while you write."
"I've written seven or eight scripts on Final Draft; I used to be a cue card person but now I do it digitally. Once I figured it out, it's so useful," he said.
With a number of very developed characters in Body Brokers, Swab says it's hard to pick a favorite.
"I think Frank [Grillo]'s character Vin was fun to write. But I also enjoyed writing Alice [Englert]'s character, Opal," he said.
"I've personally been in the shoes of most of the other characters in Body Brokers, except for those two. I've had the junkie girlfriend, I've had the rehab relationship — all those events and characters were very personal to me and getting those troubled memories out on the page was cathartic. But the rehab mogul Vin made the story sexy. It's through him that we are really drawn into the film. He's like a car salesman, where capital is king. Creating him was a lot of fun."
Written by: Vanessa King
Vanessa King is an NYC-based producer, screenwriter, and professor who has worked in development with top-level industry talent for nearly two decades. Her work as a writer has received numerous awards, having earned her recognition from industry bodies including AMPAS/Oscar’s Nicholl Screenwriting Fellowship (feature) and Sony Worldwide Entertainment’s Emerging Filmmaker Program (TV Series). In 2005, she co-founded the New York Screenwriters Co-Op, New York’s only free-to-the-public screenwriting workshop with over 2000 active members. Vanessa is faculty at Gotham Writer’s Workshop (NYC) and Staffordshire University (UK), where she teaches both television and screenwriting to students, beginner to post-graduate. She recently was Showrunner of the TV pilot “Two Roads”, a concept she co-created and co-wrote for Sony’s VUE Network. Vanessa is passionate about diversity and inclusion within the industry and was a consultant on Final Draft Screenwriting Software’s Diversity and Inclusion product build. She’s a board member of the Diversity List, amplifying top scripts written by female-identifying and BIPOC writers. She is a judge for the Hip Hop Film Festival, The UCLA Graduate Screenwriter’s Showcase and The 24 Hour Film Festival. She was named one of The Huffington Post’s 13 Women To Watch and for three consecutive years, has been named to Vanity Fair’s “Downtown 100”, a list that recognizing New York’s top networkers in the entertainment industry. Originally from Canada, she lives in New York City.- Topics:
- Screenwriting
- Interviews
- TV/Film
