All language subtitles for Q & A with directorco-writer John Krokidas and co-writer Austin Bunn

Hi, I'm Austin Bunn,
co-screenwriter of Kill Your Darlings.

And I'm John Krokidas, co-screenwriter
and director of Kill Your Darlings.

And we are sitting here today
in Austin's living room...

...to answer some questions
about the making of Kill Your Darlings,

the writing, the origin story,
and our writing process.

We've just been getting a lot of questions
about the writing process and the screenplay

from a lot of aspiring screenwriters
and people who have seen the movie,

and we thought we would just make this
home video to share some answers with you.

S0, when I was in high school,
my best friend, Max Ross,

gave me a copy of Allen Ginsberg's Journals
from 1950 to 1960.

And I can remember, at the time,
having to look up what peyote was,

because I didn't know what it was.

But the journals were incredibly vivid
and rich and just so honest.

And Allen has written so many things,
so many forms of writing,

that was my first introduction to his work.

And then in college, I can remember
going to the bookstore on campus

and seeking out the poetry shelves,
and specifically, Ginsberg's poetry,

because it was so raw and direct

about all these subjects that you never
read about, or I'd never been exposed to,

about being gay, about sexuality,
about sex with men.

And I would read it like it was
this furtive, shameful thing in the aisles,

but really,
it was this transmission from the future.

Really, the future version of myself,

somebody who was gonna be more open
and more brave.

And I will never forget those experiences
of reading the poetry

because it felt like a secret was being shared
from some other version of a person,

some more open version of myself.

I found the Beats, I think, when
most people found them, in high school.

I remember seeing a couple of the guys
who were considered cool in high school

with a copy of On the Road
in their back pocket.

And whether they actually read it

orjust absorbed it through osmosis
through their butt cheek,

it was obviously the mark of
what cool kids did, and so, I read it.

I think, as I discovered more about the Beats,
what really meant a lot to me

is not only did
they actually start a counterculture...

Excuse me, a countercultural revolution
that went on for decades,

but they stayed friends
throughout the whole time.

And that was always my dream,

was looking for people
who I fit in with and belonged with,

and wanting to create something with them
that would then persist

and help change the way we see the world,
or bring a new light to view,

and these guys did it their entire lives.
And that always meant a whole lot to me.

Add to that, the fact that, similar to you,

I found Allen's work
when I was still closeted.

And this was the '90s, and my high school
was a very homophobic place.

I remember someone writing a letter
to the high school paper, anonymously,

saying that they were gay,
and the reaction was,

"Who is the fucking faggot?
We're going to kill him."

And I shut down, I knew
that I wouldn't be able to express myself

until I left home and went to college.

And then somebody mentioning
that Allen Ginsberg was gay to me,

which, of course, to me, was a signal,
like, "Where do I find this guy?"

And reading his works in a bookstore,
and he was just so brave with himself,

and at a time
when it wasn't just the threat of bullying

or that you get beat up in high school,
but it was illegal.

He went to the Supreme Court
on charges of obscenity,

because his work mostly contained
very explicit sexual material about being gay.

So just as a person and as an artist,
I wished I could be as brave as him.

In my mid-20s,
I can remember reading Vanity of Duluoz,

one of Kerouac's lesser books.

And it's a roman a clé about the murder of
David Kammerer committed by Lucien Carr,

this friend of his at the time
when he was an undergraduate at Columbia,

and I was totally transfixed.

It seemed to me to be, in a large part,

this transformational experience
for all the guys,

Burroughs, Kerouac and Allen,
and yet, I had never read about it.

And so, I remember
going to the New York Public Library

and seeking out the microfiche
for the New York Times, 1944.

I know. Does anyone out there even know
what microfiche is any more?

And seeing it spin in front of me

and finally coming upon the New York Times
front page story with Lucien Carr's picture

that described the fact
that he had dragged this friend of his,

drowned him in the Hudson River,
and I knew it was the seed of something big.

And so, as we've talked about,

the murder is mentioned in a lot of the bios,
but not really in great depth,

and so, I thought that it would make a great,
maybe, true crime novel, or a terrific play.

And at the time, John,
you were in NYU's film school,

and I decided to approach you
about the idea of writing it up,

maybe as a play, maybe as a true crime novel,
and you said to me, "No.

"You are gonna write this as a screenplay,
we're gonna write it together,

"and I'm gonna teach you how."

And that was, from what I remember,
the beginnings of the script.

This was over 10 years ago
that you came to me with the idea to do this.

I was in film school at NYU at the time,
and the cool thing about it

is we were just friends
that shared the ideas of the things

we wanted to work on with each other.

And I would show you the scripts
from my short film

and invite you to the premieres,
and you came to me wanting to do this,

I remember, as a play.

That you were thinking of doing a play
about this called The Night in Question,

and that title actually made it into the movie.

If you look,
it is on the name of the deposition

and in the short story that Allen turns in
at the end of the film.

So, we actually saved
that piece of information, which is cool,

but you wanted to write this as a play.

But to me,
the fact that you found this untold story

that really united
some of our favourite authors

and the authors that meant a lot to both of us
when we were in college together,

and was the genesis
for them becoming artists,

I started seeing the images
in the back of my head of the movie version,

and excuse me
for being slightly manipulative.

Yeah, but I thought this would just not only
make a cool movie in full disclosure,

it would also just give us the chance
to finally work with each other.

I read his first screenplay...

Austin, you were the one
who wanted to be a film writer first.

- That's true.
-I didn't know what I wanted to do.

- You remember Bloodline?
- I remember Bloodline.

- Syringo.
- I remember Syringo.

- Fireland.
-That's the one I remember the most.

I still have a copy at home.

But you had been wanting
to screenwrite for a while

and I was a really bad actor

who then started playing around with
the video camera and directing my friends.

S0, getting into film school was a huge step
of me figuring out who I wanted to be,

and then you come along with a great script.

I thoughL
"Why not put our brains together and..."

- Make some magic together.
-Yeah.

So, we knew we had this untold story
of murder

that brought the young Beats together.

But now, the question was,

"Whose movie was it,
and what story did we wanna tell?"

I remember you told me that
the protagonist needed to be the character

that experienced the most growth.
That had to be the core of the dramatic story.

S0, somebody like Lucien Carr, who
was incredibly captivating and charismatic,

could never be the protagonist,
because he didn't really grow.

- But we tried.
-We did try, we did try.

We did a Talented Mr Ripley,
amoral protagonist version of the script,

in which we tried
to get inside the head of Lucien Carr,

this young man who obviously had

this tempestuous relationship
with David Kammerer,

and trying to figure out what were the forces
that would cause you to kill another man.

But I don't think either of us
are as nefarious as we potentially thought

and I just remember struggling to try to
emotionally connect with that and thinking,

"We don't really wanna tell this story."

I remember that we had the idea
for the opening of the film really early

and we kept going back there,
circling back to this idea

of the core experience
of Lucien releasing David to the Hudson,

and imagining that
running backwards in time.

But we weren't sure
whose perspective was telling it.

We thought that maybe it would be Lucien

and then, we came upon the idea that maybe
it was Allen's version of the events.

And so,
that helped us land into Allen's point of view.

And that gave us, in a way,
permission to write the story as we saw fit

because we weren't assuming it was fact.

You were seeing the version of an artist
tell the story as a creative act.

And that that was gonna be the big decision,
the climatic choice of the film.

Spoiler alert, by the way.

For me, I think it was... The reason...

I think, part of our process

is the way that I was always taught to work
is very old-school,

is working from a place of theme

and identifying your protagonist and
looking at why you're trying to tell that story

like, what's their arc going to be.

And when you and I sat down
and went through all of the characters,

I think we picked Allen because
he starts off the movie as a dutiful son

taking care of his emotionally ill mother,
taking care of everyone else, but himself.

And at the end of the movie,

his greatest journey is to finally
release himself from caretaking of Lucien

and really pronounce himself as an artist.

And the birth of an artist story
really appealed to me,

I think, partially,
'cause here I am, writing with you,

and we're struggling,
trying to figure out our own voices.

And let's face it,

out of all the people in this movie,
who are the young, gay,

former New Jersey- and Connecticut-Hes,
going to relate to?

I think we would both be lying
if we didn't say

that we felt a deep, personal connection

after researching Allen Ginsberg's
high school journals and his early poems.

We felt somewhat akin to him
and we felt like we could relate to him

in this year of 1943 to 1944,

in which the murder took place,
in which he wrote his first piece of fiction.

ljust wanna hear from you personally, why
this story, besides the fact that it's cool?

What emotional stuff of your own...
Where did you connect to the story?

I remember
us circling around the idea of theme

'cause he's serious, by the way.

He's not lying.
He starts from this place of theme.

We gotta keep going back there,
you've gotta articulate it.

And I remember coming to you one day
and saying,

"I think I know what the theme is,
and it has to do with...

"We live in a time
when most stories about young artists

"have to do with liberation stories,
about overcoming obstacles

"and flowering into some amazing,
actualised version of yourself.

"But there is this shadow experience
that's really violent about becoming yourself,

"and it can be very damaging,
and it's intense and scarring."

And then our film was going to be about
the emotional violence of becoming yourself,

of choosing to become yourself.

And when you heard that,
I remember you saying,

"Okay, cool. Let's write that down,
so that we have evidence of that,

"and then let's send it in to the WGA
and get it registered..."

- If I say, "Write that down..."
-John says, "Write it down," a lot.

Yeah, I'm sort of,
the secretary in our relationship.

John says, "Write that down,"
that means it's a good idea.

Shall I show you the pad?
Do you guys wanna see the pad?

I'll show you the pad.

- You can't move when you're doing that!
-l'm just gonna get the pad.

This is the pad.

If you want to know our writing process,
here are some notes.

This is how it works.

When we think
about our own personal connection to the...

Yes, I like to start with theme.

ljust wanted to know in our own lives

who was that figure for both of us
who was like Lucien?

And when we talked about it, from
what I remember, correct me if I'm wrong,

we realised that it's not always
like we've seen in the movies so many times.

That magical summer where you meet
somebody who takes you under their wing

and transforms you
into the more confident version of yourself,

who will go out and rebel
and tackle the world.

Dirty Dancing, kind of.

Dirty Dancing 2, or Havana Nights?

Dirty Dancing 1,
Patrick Swayze is Lucien Carr.

In my life, it wasn't Dirty Dancing.
Baby was left in the corner.

And there's a dynamic in these relationships,
these mentor figures.

These people who are more popular
or more beautiful

that you meet
when you first leave high school

and you go to college,
or whatever it is you may go.

And you meet this person
who's more worldly

or more beautiful or more popular than you,
who takes you under their wing

and starts showing you
that there's more possibilities to who you are

than you ever knew existed.

And as they start introducing you
to this new world,

all of a sudden, you start to grow,

and you start feeling more confident
under their wing.

But to me, when I thought
about the figure it was in my life,

that person, they want you to grow,
but never as high as themselves.

And to me, the biggest irony
is that these people who nurtured you,

these transformational friendships
or first loves,

in order for really, you to become yourself
and to find your own voice,

you have to somehow surpass them
or cut them out of your lives.

And "Kill the king" is a very common theme
in Western literature.

"If you see Buddha
in the middle of the road, kill him."

It's this idea that...

When you start writing classes,

they often tell you
you have to "kill" your parents.

So you don't feel these mentor figures

watching over you
and dictating who you can be.

In order to really free yourself,
I think you said it once,

there is almost an act of violence,
an emotional act of violence of rebirth

in order to fully own up
to your inner confidence

and really become your own self.

I wonder if the title is relevant here, too.
"Kill Your Darlings, " I mean...

The film doesn't actually
articulate the definition,

but to anybody in a writing class who might
have heard

the term before, "Kill your darlings."

The spirit of that
is that we all begin with first drafts

full of energy and tons of endearment
toward our own prose

and indulge in it, maybe, you might say.

And so, "Kill Your Darlings,"
the spirit of that,

is that you identify in your own prose
the part of it that you love the most,

which is the part that needs to be excised.

And it's really painful and hard to do,

'cause you feel like
it might be the core of your own voice,

but honestly, as a mature artist,

you need to be able
to identify that stuff and let it go.

Did you have to kill any darlings
with the screenplay?

Yes, we killed some darlings.
Let's see, some of the darlings that we killed.

Underwater reverse photography.
Who knew how difficult that was gonna be?

But there's a beautiful version there.

There were some action sequences
that had to go

because we knew
that it was just too difficult to shoot,

and given our budget
and the constraints of time,

there was no way we were gonna do that.

But not even in the production process,
ljust mean in the writing.

Remember how
we used to start the film in the library

with Allen reading
Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis?

- Don't you remember these drafts?
-Yeah.

S0, there used to be
all this stuff at the beginning

where we kept showing
Allen as a young man,

long before he becomes the person
we come to know him as,

and it was good material,
but it was too much exposition.

There was this stuff about him...

That seems pretty common
in at least our process,

is that a lot of the things that get excised
as you move forward towards production

is the introduction of the character
and a lot of the set-up in Act 1.

Because especially when you're dealing
with real-life characters like we were,

there's so much great stuff that you can find,
that you can research, that you wanna put in,

and then, ultimately, you realise
there's not much time in a two-hour movie.

Remember we had Kerouac playing football,

which we thought was really important
'cause it established his sportsmanship.

But truthfully,
in a film that's about Allen Ginsberg

and Lucien Carr and this murder,

a football game
just really felt like a digression.

I think the budget for the football game was
as much as like eight of our shooting days.

And both of us Wikipedia-ing football rules
so we could plausibly write that scene.

We owe Wikipedia for that.

S0, certain screenwriters operate
according to this money shot rule,

and, I guess, the idea being
that great films are really composed

of 10 to 12 spectacular shots
that people will remember.

And so, you told me this,

and I can remember thinking in our own film
what were those shots.

So, for me, what is my process?

It was almost finding myself inspired
by those 10 to 15 shots

that we would consistently go back to
as moments that just had to be told.

And that had to do with Allen
sitting on the steps of Low Library,

the Pieta and the Hudson River,

it had to do with visiting pure bohemia
in the '40s and what that was like

and what that might have meant
for somebody who was 19.

- So, I'm theme and you're money shot?
-Yeah.

Yeah, I guess so.

The short way I've learned to answer that,
I think,

and this is your chance
to correct me if I'm wrong,

is I feel like that
my strengths are more in structure

and in this relentless pursuit of theme
or what's the movie about

and being able to articulate that,

and you are so much stronger a writer
with character and with dialogue

and in really pursuing dialogue
that feels real and inherent to a person

and not just expositional dialogue.

You start from specific
and I start from broad.

- Would you say that's...
-I would say that was true.

That was very loving, what you just said.
I felt very loved when you were speaking.

I think you come from a place

where you are relentless
in terms of making every scene matter.

You can't have scenes
that are just purely there

because they're fun
or they are like champagne in the story,

that every scene has to lead to the next.

And for me, I would sit there and
sink into scenes, explore them and have fun,

splashing around
with all the different possible interactions

and conversations
and turns of phrase that were possible.

And I also think you're much more
of a director at some core level.

You think a lot more
about how is this gonna play,

and how will actors bring it to life
and how will it look on screen?

And I've learned a lot from you for that
because this screenplay, the documentation,

the drafts of the documentation
of us learning from each other.

And the version we have now
is so much tighter than the first draft

and the second draft, and, Jesus,
how many drafts do you think we have?

I have over 100 on my hard drive.

That's like we're re-saving every clay.
That sounds really tragic.

You don't need to do 100 drafts
of your screenplay, okay?

Okay, but part of it is...
There were a lot of drafts of the screenplay.

Let's just talk about the process
for a second.

So we decided to work on this together

and I remember first mapping it out
on my dining room table...

On note cards.

And doing each scene per note card.

With your very feminine handwriting.

And really just laying out the movie
so we could see the whole movie, and then...

Which is apparently
a pretty common process.

Did you learn that in grad school,
the note card process?

I learned that in grad school
and through writers that I admired.

That was the structure,
I would watch them do it.

Is it 10, 10, 10, 10 or something?

There's 10 for the first act,

10 for the first half of the second act,
10 for the second half of the second act.

I don't remember
there being a mathematical number.

ljust remember you can see if you're...

We did use the three-act structure
with this movie.

And if you have 82 cards in the first act
and 12 in the second,

you realise some things have to be shifted
and moved around.

No, but after that...

Austin came from a journalism background

and he's one of the most disciplined writers
I've ever met.

And his ability
to just churn out the painful, hard first draft

that we all hate doing so much.

And so, you carry the burden in our process
of writing out,

once we've got everything outlined,
writing into the nether

and taking an empty page and filling it out
and really hammering out that first...

- I think the empty page really scares you.
-It terrifies me.

And it doesn't scare me that much.

To me, it's an empty wheel
that you can throw clay on.

And if there's already clay on it,

it's actually more of a pain in the ass
'cause you have to clean it.

So I'd rather have the empty page than to
have something I need to revise personally.

- S0 that would be our process.
-And I like the revising.

I paved, and then you put up the gas station

and the little coffee shop and the city park,

and then
we drove up and down that road a lot.

And I think
there were a lot of drafts over the years

partially because
we were living in different cities.

And, not too dissimilar
from the band Postal Service,

we would mail or e-mail back the drafts
in whatever cities we were living in.

Because neither of us were
established writers or filmmakers at the time.

We were both working day jobs

teaching and pursuing other
writing endeavours while we were doing this.

And it wasn't until...

How did we know we were done?
When did we know we were done?

We knew we were done
when I signed with Steve Dontanville.

I got a manager and my manager asked me

if I had any scripts that
I was hiding somewhere in the drawer

or that I thought might be of interest.

And I called you up, I remember,

and said, "Do you think
Kill Your Darlings is ready to show?"

'Cause we were insecure about it.

This was like a labour of love that
we would send back and forth to each other

over the course of four, five years.

And you gave me the permission
to share it with them,

and Steve went, "Are you kidding me?"

And immediately, we started putting
a producer list together the next week.

And I get asked a lot, I know you do as well,
like, "Do I need an agent?

"How do I get a manager?
How do I get representation?

"How do I get my film, project, script,
whatever, in the hands of the right people?"

And I think, for Kill Your Darlings,

this is the perfect case of, really,
it's about building your own communities

as you leave school
and start to work professionally

because you got
this movie made inadvertently.

This is true. She told you this at Toronto.

Austin co-wrote
Christine Vac:hon's second book

and in doing so,
formed a relationship with her,

that when it was time
to send the script to producers,

we had someone who knew Austin, and...

Which was total luck, in a way,
because I had written that book

just purely work for hire.

But she's an amazing film producer.
Some of the movies, we've loved.

You had the Velvet Goldmine poster
on your wall in college.

And, yeah. Gosh, lots of films.

And my aunt always gave me the advice,

"Pay your dues
where you intend to spend them."

And in a way, I interned at Miramax
and did script reading for them,

and they were the people
who really gave me my first start in writing

and got me my Writers Guild card.

And it's your work with Christine
that really brought Christine onto this film.

'Cause I lived in New York
and went to film school there

and lived
eight blocks from her office for years

and could not get a meeting with her.

And then the irony is, I move out to LA,
you sent Christine our script,

and she flew out to me
and took me out to the Sunset Tower Hotel

-to convince me to produce this movie.
-Yeah.

I like to get up early in the morning
and not really do anything,

but get right to the computer
and start writing.

And I try to write till about noon.

John, at that point, vampire-style, wakes up
having spent the night feeding and feasting.

And then at that point,
you would read some of those pages.

That's how it worked for us.

You would read pages from the morning
and then we'd work in the afternoon.

You're the morning person,
I'm the night person.

And I think part of our ritual has been

it's been nice that Austin has been teaching
for the last 10 years

as we've been trying to get this movie made,
in smaller towns, away from New York.

Yes, you would escape.

And so, I could escape and we could retreat
in the woods in wherever you were living.

That's right.
You've been to Iowa, you came to Michigan.

- Did we go hot tubbing?
-No, we never went hot tubbing.

- We had a deadline.
-Okay, yeah, I guess we had a deadline.

But I would say, other rituals that we have,
making playlists.

Yeah, playlist, big part of it.

Music is really important,
I think, to both of us.

And what I like about our collaboration

is our music styles have one or two places
of intersection in the concentric circles.

- But you have your world...
-Jonsi and Sigur Ros are one intersection.

That's in the middle for both of us.

And I have my music,
but then we find the common songs.

Both of us can use our own concentric
circles when we're writing separately,

but when we're writing individually then,
it becomes really like playing in that field

and trying to think of new bands
for each other while we're alone.

We can be like, "Oh, my God. I have a new
band that will work in our concentric circle."

It's funny, John,
was there music that we listened to

while we were writing
that you were so attached to,

you thought it would be in the film,
and is it?

The Sigur Ros and the Jonsi,
stuff that we listened to while writing,

I never thought would be in the movie.

Initially, I had this whole academic proposal

of this swing to bebop
progression of the film

mirroring the Beats journey from a more
place of conformity to anti-conformity.

And this being 1944 and the birth of bebop,
that's in the movie.

And doing a soundtrack very similar

to Miles Davis' soundtrack
for Elevator to the Gallows.

I sat down
with our music supervisor, Randall Poster,

who said that, "Thesis is all great and nice,

"but the truth is,
after you finish shooting the movie,

"you're going to see the child
that is your film

"and it's going to start speaking to you.

"And take that academic proposal,
put it to the side,

"now go make your movie
and then try the music,

"but you should also be open
to different kinds of music."

And so, I put the period jazz music
on top of the film and it didn't work at all

and I put period accurate stuff on the film
and it felt like Woody Allen's Radio Days.

lt just felt more like a document of the era
than being young and spirited and alive.

But then, I went through our playlists,

and took a lot of the tracks
that we wrote the film to,

stuff that was felt contemporary,
but also timeless,

like Sigur Ros and Jonsi

and, like Randall Poster said,
it just meshed with the film,

and matched what we were doing visually.

And then the next thing I know,
I'm stealing from our playlist,

and then, we call up Nico Muhly,

who arranges music for Sigur Ros
and for Jonsi,

and for Grizzly Bear and Bjork
and all these bands that we listen to,

and he wanted to compose the score.

So, that's the progression of how
the music that we used while writing,

actually, a lot of it ended up in the movie.

Now, the other rituals, I would say,
do you have a three pages a day rule,

do you have to get to a certain amount?

I remember hearing the writer
for Brokeback Mountain,

says, "I write three pages a day,
no matter what, no matter how bad,

"and I never want to finish a scene,

"I just wanna leave it
in the middle of a scene,

"so I don't feel like
I have to restart the next day."

You have something to just continue on?

D0 you have anything like that?

The great thing about screenwriting,
having written other things,

like journalism and fiction,

is that, actually, you can
produce volume pretty quickly.

Like, three pages, five pages, seems like
a reasonable amount to expect in a day,

compared to say, writing a short story,
where one page is a lot.

But, you know, I let myself off the hook
all the time.

I feel like, some days, it's just not coming,
and some days...

I don't believe in a muse,

but I do believe that routine
does reinforce good behaviour.

But I also feel like, quality is quality

and when you're connected to the material,
it shows.

I am learning from John just how
tight and compressed you think my prose is.

And that's probably because I feel like
screenplays are...

You have to kind of strip away all the
excess to figure out what the narrative is,

and then you can build it back up.

But until you know that,
I want it to be really spare and really...

And also, I want the director and actors to
find space to discover stuff inside the prose.

Define what I would say...
Like, I'd define as spare.

Like, subject-verb sentences
that just say like...

No, but in terms of like...

Like, your particular writing style,

versus other screenplays
that we read all the time.

You know, when you read other screenplays,
sometimes they seem to be very,

how to put this, high decibel.

They seem like they're really trying
to underscore every emotional beat,

and they're almost... They're closer
to comic books or graphic novels,

I think, in my mind. It's almost like, graphic
novels without the cells, without the panels.

But I prefer something that's
a little bit closer to playwriting,

where you're more suggesting
a situation or an atmosphere,

so that others can get inspired.

I'm learning from you, though,
to write a little bit more, to raise the volume

on the emotional life, so that actors
and other people can understand it.

I wanted to ask about this
more spare style of yours.

You know, Daniel Radcliffe himself

said that one of the reasons
he wanted to do this project,

when asked, not by me and in the press,
was the script.

And he said that he had not read a script
where he felt

that each scene pushed along the story
and the characters so strongly,

without the use of exposition,
is what he really admired in the script.

Because you don't have a very showy
style of writing at all.

If anything, you try to take back my...
When I try to like, show or kind of, like,

give dialogue that causes attention to itself,

your natural tendency, I would say,
and correct me if I'm wrong, is to strip back.

Yeah.

And I feel like, with you,
there's almost a challenge,

like, how little... How many few words...

- Yes.
-With the fewest amount of words

that we can do the scene in.

It's true though, right?

And I think because of that,
I'm curious when people read the script,

-if they have the same reaction.
-Good point.

'Cause I noticed when I read the script,

it definitely feels different
from the other scripts out there,

-and that it is so to the point...
-Economical.

...bare bones, economical.

And without the exposition,
it makes you do more work as a reader,

which I think is ultimately more satisfying

because you do the math in your head
to realise

what the scene is trying to say often,
rather than having it be spelled out for you.

I think we make good collaborators,
'cause you're the child of a therapist,

so, for you, a lot of writing,
I think, is articulating emotions,

people digging deep and deciding to really
open their hearts to each other,

and so, it's kind of gushy.

And that's why people want to go
to the movies,

is have a feeling.
They go to kind of take an emotional ride.

And my tradition is a little bit more spare
and economical and guarded, probably.

And so, together, we know we make
a kind of gumbo.

A kind of interesting mix.

Can we talk about...
What's a good example, do you think,

that Radcliffe might have been
talking about?

Like, a scene that you feel

passionately or feel proud of, that used this
strip down technique, without exposition.

Okay, so, let's take Allen and his mom, right.

S0, this is an incredibly
complicated relationship

between a woman who is very mentally ill
and her son, who is very dutiful and attentive

and would stay home from school to make
sure that she wouldn't leave the house.

And we had decided that we needed
to show a flash point of this,

in an effort to set up his caretaking,
for what would pay off later with Lucien Carr.

S0, there's a moment when Allen
and his dad are sitting in the living room,

and you hear the smash of a window
in a distant room,

and the father says to Allen,
"I told you it wouldn't work."

And then, when Allen rushes to the room,
what you come to understand is that,

he had, in fact, nailed the windows shut

to keep his mother
from trying to flee the house.

And the mom had punched through the glass
in an effort to try to escape.

And that never really gets that articulated
in the scene.

And I think the mother claims
that the dad did it,

and Allen says that he admits that he did it.

But you have to kind of read backwards
to understand

how far this family's had to go
to keep this mother from hurting herself,

or from wandering off.

And so, that would be one example,
that I'm proud of.

Because, "I told you it wouldn't work,"
I think, to me, implies two things.

One, that they've obviously tried
countless numbers of things,

and it's almost like
a very pedestrian reaction,

to this very extreme emotional
circumstance going on upstairs.

The fact that the mother, in an act of hysteria,

punched her way through the window,
and cut open her hand,

in trying to escape the house,

to them, it's like,
"I told you it wouldn't work."

Yeah.

Like, this is option number 42
that we've tried,

in order to calm her down
and make her life more tolerable.

You know what I wanna say, though?

It was occurring to me while I was
re-reading the script, recently,

what I'm most proud of in the script
is the way that we have seeded the cloud

of what will come in the lives
of these Beat writers.

S0, you're seeing things like,
"First thought, best thought,"

which is a credo that Kerouac,
espoused his entire life,

and you're seeing the origins of that.

You're seeing Burroughs' technique,
the cut-up technique,

begin one night of playful
rummaging through David's library.

You're seeing Allen's technique as a poet,
of listening to the world,

picking up common speech and vernacular,

and transforming it into something beautiful.

Like, if I had to pinpoint
what I'm so proud of, is that.

Is that, for the people who love these writers,

you're getting a chance
to see their first drafts,

the first spark of their creativity,

and what will become their method.

But at the same time, you and I definitely
were very conscious while writing this

that if we ever had a scene
with Jack Kerouac at the end of the movie,

saying, "Good-bye,
I am going on the road," that...

...we would hurt ourselves.

That I would hurt you, for writing it.

We didn't want to write the biopic,
the Miramax 1993 movie, right?

That was like, in our minds,
we kept referring to this Miramax 1993 film,

that there was this very well done,
perfectly executed, but totally airless biopic,

that was supposed to, in a way,
impress and teach people

about people's lives,
but wouldn't make you feel.

And that was...
I mean, there are great films like that.

But that's not the one we wanted to make.
We wanted to make something...

You wanted to make something
closer to Trainspotting,

Sid and Nancy,

movies that were more... Had an aesthetic,

and a lot of voice and style.

But at its core, because it's us,

and because we were the dorks
we were in high school and college,

there's definitely a touch on top of that,
of like, '80s nerd comedy, like, Real Genius,

-one of your favourite movies of all time.
-Yes.

Yes. I was looking at the script today
and we used the word "brassiere,"

and I was happy that we did that.

Also, in doing a period piece,

one thing that I really admired is,
and just talk about it for half a second.

Like, you went and found '40s slang.

Oh, '40s slang.
There are slang dictionaries you can find.

We got them at the New York Public Library.

Yeah, there's a bunch in there.

Catnip for the skirts, ear job.

Yeah, we peppered the whole script
with that stuff.

Sometimes the actors didn't know
what the heck it even meant.

They had to ask you to figure out what...

Yeah, most of the time.

"What's an ear job?" Yeah.

And then, but why...

S0, tell me, like, when did you start
doing this? Why did you think to do this?

'Cause most movies...

There's some great books,
like, Gay New York,

remember that George Chauncey book,

the professor who wrote
about New York at that period.

I think part of it is that, when you do
good research, the story writes itself.

I mean, there were details that
are suffused in the story...

You know, some of them
are not even onscreen any more.

Remember how we had learned that gay bars
at the time, would have signs...

Or not gay bars, excuse me.

Remember how we learned that bars at the
time, would have signs up that would say,

"lf y0u're gay, please stay away,"

to encourage gay people to not stay
there, so they wouldn't get raided.

So, details like that, ljust felt like, were
the sort of things that inspired us as writers,

to go back there. I mean,
you kind of need those bread crumbs.

Especially writing a period movie.

Yeah, because it excites you, and makes you
feel like you're shedding some new light,

-historically looking backwards...
-Things you haven't seen. Yeah.

We had the burden and pleasure
of needing a poem,

for Allen Ginsberg,
at the very, very beginning of his career,

because he was still a Columbia freshman,

and hadn't written yet.

And we have this poem,
in the middle of the movie that he recites,

kind of the first time he steps out of
the cloud of nervousness and anxiety,

and proclaims himself an artist.

And that was an original poem
that you wrote...

I know.

...that you wanted to incorporate
various moments that we had seen,

-of his journey in this specific film.
-Yeah.

So we could see the process.

We had a version of a poem there,
but it wasn't really working,

because, as you know,
if you've seen movies with poems in them,

oftentimes, they're sort of dead,

and they feel like
they're not read very well,

or they don't really excite you, they don't
give you the spirit of the poem or the artist.

But I remember we had the idea that,

"Oh, this is really a way
of him speaking to Lucien,

"speaking very open-heartedly to Lucien,"

which, again, that's Allen Ginsberg
to the core.

So, with that notion in mind, it was a matter
of going, kind of,

looking over Allen's early work,

and finding ways of cobbling like a magpie,

stuff that had already been in the film,

that he could transform into lyric.

And so, that's what the poem is

is kind of a mashup of his honest,
open heart, speaking to Lucien,

seeing what he's seeing,
the sensitivity and the tender heartedness.

And also, feeding back.
"Oh, I've learned this.

"You've taken me on an adventure, here's my
perspective on what you're teaching me."

And so, I'm proud of what's there.
I mean, it's just a first draft.

It's like, hearing his first throat clear,
before he finds his voice.

But what I like about what you just said
was, we weren't just sticking a poem in there,

-because it was a movie about young poets.
-Poems... Poets, yeah.

It was an emotional character choice,

in order to open up to the young man
that he was in love with, and...

That's you though. See, that's your
education. That's what you taught me.

- So, I'm just patting myself on the back now?
-A little bit.

I believe this movie came out
of our obsessions and our curiosity.

Like, we fell in love with these writers,

wanted to know more,
wanted to bring a world alive,

and that those two things, having
obsessions and having curiosities,

are like the core of your artistic life.

And I think screenplays
that come out of those things,

are always interesting,
whether or not they get made.

People want to read them.

And it's the screenplays that are more
machine-made or produced for the industry,

that are not as compelling to read.

So, for me, younger screenwriters
I always say,

"Cultivate your curiosity
and your obsessions."

Like, it's great to be fixated on stuff.

That's where your art comes from.
That's your material.

What's your obsession, Austin Bunn?

These days, my obsession, I was
really into that book, The Secret Historian...

No. I mean, with this movie,
what was your obsession?

What was my obsession?

My obsession was telling the origin story
of an artist who meant a lot to me.

That felt like the art gods... I needed
permission from the art gods to do it.

And so, I got obsessed with his origin story,
and that's what you're seeing onscreen.

Did the art gods grant you permission?

I'm still waiting to hear.

I've left out bananas and cookies outside
and I'm still waiting for them to be eaten.

So for you, this was a chance
to look at the emotional and cultural forces

that shaped an artist who you admire.

I mean, is there any better gig
as a screenwriter than doing that?

It felt like a form of honouring somebody,
and bringing a world alive.

I mean, these are the things
that get me excited,

that make me want to sit in a chair.

What about you?
What's your advice for screenwriters, John?

The first draft is the hardest draft,

and to just get it done with
as quickly as possible.

And whether it means staying up all night
and forcing yourself a deadline upon you,

by joining a writing group or a class,

or somehow convincing your best friend
who writes faster than you, to help,

you write the first draft with them.

Well, no, but you're
onto something, collaboration.

I think a lot of young writers think
they need to work alone and be pilgrims.

It doesn't need to be like that.
They can collaborate.

In fact, it was like one of the best
experiences of our life was working together.

I mean, I don't mean to speak for you,
but that was a great experience.

But just on the flip side,

I think we've both collaborated
with other people before,

and it's very much like a relationship.

What would you say your love language is?

What are my options?

I don't really remember,
but you choose a colour.

- Blue.
-Okay, mine's purple.

Does that mean we're compatible?

And together we make brown.

No, you don't.

What colour do we make?
What colour does blue...

There's a question. Post this on the website.

Okay, collaboration is a good thing,
but it's about finding the right partner.

And, for me, the reason I go to relationships

is we have to be very open and honest
with each other.

- You can't...
-Yeah.

Ultimately, at the end of the day,

it's about not keeping any feelings
of not being heard inside,

or not being paid attention to,

or all the things that come up
in any relationship.

And being able to articulate them honestly,
and being able to complement each other.

Your greatest lesson that you gave me,
by the way, as a screenwriter,

was to write the B+ draft, and just give
yourself permission to write something

that was just okay, and then go back
and make it as good as you could,

but it's really important
to have something there first.

The truth of the matter is,

a manager or an agent,
nobody wants to represent you

until you have a great script
that they think they can put together,

and get sold, and get made.

And that doesn't happen
necessarily with your first one.

Doesn't happen necessarily
with your second or your third.

I mean, for me, this is probably,
Kill Your Darlings,

is about the eighth script,

I think, I wrote, if not the 10th?

It's somewhere in the eight to 10 area.

- Like, for you...
-What was the first one?

- The first script I ever wrote?
-Yeah.

Obviously, my short films,

but the first feature script I ever wrote,
was a collaboration right out of grad school.

It was All About Eve,
set at Yale Drama School.

- Oh, yeah, Drama School.
-Called Drama School.

I saw a reading of it. Okay.

That was the first feature I ever finished.

And mine was Bloodline, about a murderous
secret society at Yale University,

or unnamed Ivy League institution.

S0, about how many scripts, would you say,
did you write before this one?

- Feature-length screenplays, four.
-Yeah.

- So, this is your fifth script.
-Yeah.

And a lot of people also ask me...

You know, they're so anxious
to make it happen, and to start a career,

but the truth of the matter is,
part of this is out of your control.

But, you know, I went to grad school
with 39 other aspiring filmmakers.

And if anything the thing that unites
the ones who have been successful

and gotten their films made

is not necessarily talent,
there's obviously an ounce of it there,

for everyone who has succeeded,
but tenacity.

Yeah, perseverance.

This script, you were there
on the sidelines the whole time.

This movie came together and fell apart,
so many times.

- With different cast incarnations.
-Yeah.

We had to rewrite the script how many times,
for budget?

To bring it down from 15 to 12,
to bring it down from 12 to eight,

to bring it down from eight to six,
to six to four, to three-point-eight.

Like, did we ever stop
writing the script over the last 10 years?

- Not really.
-No.

And then we continued to write it
during production,

because a location would fall through.

Because we didn't have time
to shoot a scene the day before,

because an actor had questions.

Like, we were pretty much... And then,
after in post, to solve some problems of,

you know, scenes that we didn't finish
accomplishing during production,

and needing ADR lines
to solve certain issues.

And let me jump in there to say that

that was actually
one of the most exciting aspects of it,

that it's really dynamic.
It's almost like a living thing

that you're trying to make as alive
and as healthy as you possibly can.

S0, as a writer, used to publication
and freezing a document,

the screenplay changes and evolves
and grows up,

and that experience was indelible.

And it's something you don't experience
until it goes into production, really.

You don't know for sure.

But that's the best advice I can give writers,
is to

be tenacious, to not give up,
but to constantly be writing new material.

Because this one took over 10 years
to get made.

In the meantime, though,
we've written several other projects,

that now are potentially ready
for the world to see.

Some that we may have surpassed,

some still may be things
that we're passionate about.

But it's like the old-fashioned
romantic advice to a young woman

was, "Six on a string, to get a ring."

And one thing that I've learned is...

Wait, can you break that down, John?

What is, "Six on a string..."

To have six men interested in you,
in order to get a wedding proposal.

Like, don't get fixated on just one guy.

- And...
-Sleep around.

Don't get fixated just on one script.

Although, I completely kind of
went against my own advice,

because I was very fixated on this one script
for 10 years

-and trying to get it made.
-You were.

But to have other projects helps,
so when this one falls apart,

as it inevitably will, several times,

that you have something else
to be working on,

and to keep your mind off of the struggle
that it's taking to get the first one made.

Have you had struggles?
How have you been surviving, basically?

Professionally speaking? Like, artistically?

Professionally and artistically,
what was the struggle like?

When we started working on this,

I was still working as a magazine journalist
in New York.

And then I went to graduate school
at the University of Iowa,

Writers' Workshop, for a couple of years.

And then, when I graduated,
I started teaching, actually.

S0, these days, I teach at Cornell University,
and I teach playwriting and screenwriting.

S0, teaching has really been
the support for me, as a creative person.

And helped underwrite a lot of trips,
research experiences and things like that.

What about you? How have you
stayed afloat in 10 and a half years?

- And are you afloat? I mean, can we say...
-No. Not yet.

It's been hard.

I mean, should I talk? I guess I should.

A little over two years ago,
I ran out of money.

I've had to move back into my parents'
apartment at the age of 38.

And the writing jobs weren't coming in,

and this movie was about to be financed,
and then it wasn't.

And I remember, I had conversations
with Daniel, my boyfriend of 10 years,

that if this didn't happen, this was it.

I was gonna give up.
I had gone to grad school,

gotten my degree, had two successful
short films, tried for 10 years,

and, you know, if this didn't work out,

I would go after plan B,
which was to pursue an academic career,

and to stay teaching.
And try to get a full-time job teaching.

But thankfully...

You remember, it was like, that last month,
right before production.

We had all the pieces in play,
we just needed to get enough cast attached,

in order to justify the financing.

It was like a race against time.

And magically, you know, I feel like,
in order to get a movie made,

it's a little like The Dark Crystal,
that the light has to shine,

through a certain angle, into the window
to hit the crystal to fill the room,

that only happens once every 22.4 years.

Like, all these magical forces
of the cast being available,

and the financing being ready,
and the producers on board,

like, all the little puzzle pieces
need to fit into place.

And we had that one stroke of good luck

-that finally got us to get this made.
-What was that?

Our one stroke of good luck is that

independent movies are often made
by pre-selling the foreign rights,

like selling the rights to Germany's
distribution channels and Italy's,

before you even start filming.

And right before we started filming,
Daniel Radcliffe's The Woman in Black,

and Dane DeHaan's Chronicle,
came out at the box office.

And they opened up
number one and number two,

outperforming what anybody thought
they were going to do.

And then, it was a week after that,
at the Berlin Film Festival,

where we started to make our sales.

And for the first time, people saw this movie

as something that was potentially
commercially viable,

-and fundable.
-Fundable.

And it was like
the "dream come true" moment.

S0, Allen Ginsberg had had a couple
of relationships with women

when he was really young.

Both of the women committed suicide
or died,

in really kind of intense ways.

And I remember reading in his journals,

he had this quote, in which he said,
"Three great deaths,"

and he listed their two names,
of the two women,

and at the end he wrote,
"And at last, I have forgotten his name,

"David Kammerer."

And I remember reading that and thinking,
like that death meant something to him,

echoed in his life,
long after the actual murder.

And that was, in a way,
the sort of signal flare of the fact

that this murder had really shook him up.

And the novella that we talk about
in the film, almost got him expelled,

Jack and Bill ended up writing
And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks,

their first collaboration in terms of a novel,
and it had been suppressed for 60 years.

I mean, we haven't...
We never read it while we were writing it,

it came out in 2008 or something.

But just to think that that one experience
had really given them

some core subject matter for their writing,

was the proof, was kind of this transmission,
that it was like,

"We need to follow this trail.
There's something in this story."

Well, I always connected it
through friendship,

and the kind of friendship dynamic.

And I realise there was a pretty core
sexual expeflence in it

I mean, I'm not sure how to answer that.
I think I...

I think I fell in love with people
who weren't necessarily even gay.

And that's probably
a very common experience.

So, feeling unrequited love, and feeling
desire for something you could never have,

and the constant feeling of isolation
and the kind of desperation of thinking

you might never be loved for who you are,
that I felt.

And it took me a long time to meet the people
that I found beautiful

and were willing to reciprocate.

And did that find its way into the script,
do you think?

As you mentioned,
we've written it over so many years

that it traps so many different versions of us,
you know.

The boys who started writing it are different
from the men on this camera right now.

ljust find it interesting, though,
at the heart of it is an unrequited love.

That's what the movie's about.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

Don't you think?

Yeah. I mean, you've always been
more attracted to blondes.

S0, that's what we're seeing onscreen.

No, but I'm just wondering, like,
for me, I was working very specifically

on looking at the facts
of Allen's adolescence,

and years in college,
and then, trying to work with you

to find emotional tissue

in between the facts that we could
understand and know how to write.

- And then I could tell the actors.
-Okay.

I got you, yeah. I mean, I think that

some common experience
that all gay people have

is you have to choose to become yourself.

At some point, you have to choose
to become yourself

and that is a gift, ultimately,
because I think a lot of people in this world

don't ever have to make that choice

and they don't have to learn
from that experience. And it's pretty painful.

And I can remember being young
and having that feeling so intense inside me

of needing to make the decision
about who I was gonna be.

And it's wrapped up with feelings
about becoming an artist,

and self-expressing as a writer as well,

but very much about coming out
and experiencing self-acceptance,

that is at the core of the film.

We've talked about this before.
It's not a film about coming out

as much as it's a story about
coming into being an artist

and owning up to the fact that

you feel like your voice needs to be heard
and self-expression matters.

And to me, also, at its core, gay or straight,

I think we've all had that figure

of the tortured musician/actress/poet,

-whatever it may be...
-Barista.

Part-time barista.

But something that we've never felt
we could attain in high school.

- Yeah.
-And that, kind of, as we know

is much cooler, more attractive,
whatever it may be, than us.

And we tried so hard to be...

We tried, in the past,

to be the person that we thought
they wanted us to be.

We tried to act like the way

the person that we think they would
fall in love with would act like.

But that's never the relationship that
really allows you to be yourself.

And it's not until the ashes
of the end of that relationship,

when I looked at myself
and some of my friends,

that you get the strength to realise,
"Wait a second.

"It's not about trying to be
who they want me to be.

"It's about being myself."
Which is a different journey altogether.

But you have to somehow
get past that relationship

in order to get to a place where
you feel like you deserve to be loved.

See? Child of a therapist.
This is your natural mode.

When people come
and talk to me after the film,

a lot of the time, they're like,
"Oh, my God, that relationship.

"L had that relationship in college."

I think the two things that people at least
have spoken to me about connecting with

are having had that relationship in college

and from the break-up of that,
getting the strength to be who they are.

And also that feeling
of just being 19 and 20 years old

and wanting to change the world.

And wanting to make a mark on the world
that's unique in your own.

And like these guys did, start a revolution.

And the cool thing is,
after this movie obviously,

these guys actually did it and went on.

First thought, best thought.

Hardest scene to direct in the movie?

Library heist.

Favourite moment in the finished film?

So many.

When time stops.

Weirdest part of the script that
you never really felt like you understood.

I think I ask too many questions nonstop
to make sure.

Hold on.

- What do you say?
-That's good. That's good.

One of the weirder parts of the script
has to do with the jazz sequence

when things slow down. Remember
how many versions we had of that?

People falling off the Empire State Building,

people climbing over each other,
a bus exploding.

Yeah, but then it was Jared Goldman,
our line producer going,

"You can't afford that."

What piece of clothing in the film
do you wish you could own and wear?

I like Jack Kerouac's flannel shirts.

If you had been alive in 1944,
what do you think you'd be doing?

- Probably fighting.
-Street fighting.

- No, the war.
-Okay. You in the war?

At what age would I be?

- Would I be the age of the characters?
-Yeah, the age of the characters.

'Cause the only reason they weren't at war
was educational visa.

Right now, if I was in 1944,
what would I be doing?

Yeah.

I don't know... Theatre?

Journalism.

- You're the journalist.
-I know, but I could see you doing that.

Okay. What's your favourite movie
from the noir period?

I'd be a journalist.

What's your favourite movie
from that period? From the '40s.

Just from early noir?

- Just that period.
-From that high period noir?

Yeah.

Well, Double Indemnity is the go-to.

The secret one?
A lot of them are later, though.

Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm moving the thing.

What posters did you have
on your dorm wall?

What posters did you have
on the wall of your dorm?

You tell them.

- You had the Labyrinth poster.
-No.

- You had the poster for Gremlins 2.
- No.

You did have, like, the Sid and Nancy poster.

- You had some punk poster.
- I probably had Sid and Nancy at some point.

That sounds about right.

What was your favourite book
when you were in college?

In college?

Like, we talked about a vision in the film.

What was your favourite book
when you were in college?

One of them was Milan Kundera's
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Okay.

What one piece of music
do you need to listen to

to be able to experience John Krokidas?

- Orally.
-One?

One piece of music?

If you had to give an album
to a youth right now, to a youngster,

and say, "This is your future.
You need to listen to this."

First thing that comes to mind,
Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville.

Okay.

What's your favourite word right now?

"Crafty."

What is your favourite thing
to do on a Friday night?

Avoid the crowds of New York City
and stay in.

And what else? What other
speed round questions do we have?

Okay, the movie's first draft
was titled Extraordinary

and the second draft was called
The Night in Question.

If you had to choose one of them,
which one would you choose?

I would pay to go see Extraordinary
before a movie called The Night in Question.

Really?

Yeah, The Night in Question
sounds academic to me.

The Night in Question. Okay, I get it.

It's gonna be Rashomon,
there's gonna be four different views.

Okay. All right. But Extraordinary
might yield some surprises?

- Yeah.
-Okay.

- It's big enough.
-What's your guilty pleasure media-wise?

They're all pretty out on the surface,
aren't they?

They're all pretty guilty is what
I was gonna say.

Yeah.

What's your favourite scene in the movie?

The scene between Allen and Lucien
improvising the terms of the New Vision.

That we made up.

- That you improvised.
-That wasn't even in the script.

Yeah, you improvised.
Well, that's maybe why I love it.

What scene did I get right?

Like, did it match the way
you saw the movie?

The scene of them on the porch
sharing the discovery

that Allen has a really messed-up home life

and discovering that they share something.

Shot in 42 minutes.
What scene did I not get right?

Lucien and Allen post-bar,
stumbling down the street in the dawn,

falling on the streets of Brooklyn.

What was wrong about it?

It looked super fake.

It does not look period.

I feel like you can see school girls

watching you shoot that scene
in the reflection of the glass.

And I don't even know that
metal shutters existed in 1943.

The way that they shuttered
the front of the buildings.

It wasn't my dream location,
but we did time check that one.

- Well, I'm sure you guys worked...
-Stephen Carter was the period police.

ljust think we missed it.
Screenplay-wise, we kind of...

We didn't get the perfect location for that.

Yeah.

What character do you relate to the most?

David Kammerer.

Okay, now I got to ask. Why?

Red hair.

Besides the red hair and the beard,
why do you relate to him?

The feeling of being a professor.

And wanting to connect,

this is gonna sound weird,
but I was gonna say,

wanting to host good experiences
for people.

'Cause I feel like that's what David really did.
He was a host for their experiences.

And what music
did I not get right in the film?

Oh, my gosh. I don't know if I can say that
'cause I would say the opposite,

I feel like there's some musical choices
in there that I just totally admire.

They're totally you.

I mean, during the heist sequence,
hearing rock music,

there's some really beautiful contemporary
classical music that Nico composed.

There's some '40s tunes that

I think younger people will have to
kind of discover on their own

'cause they're really period and really dated.

But You Always Hun' the One You Love,
I think, was a radio hit.

Can we imagine the culture where that song
is number one on the charts?

Hard to imagine.

- Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus.
- Exactly.

- I think that we both think we're Allen.
-Okay.

But I have a thought
that you think I'm Lucien.

Is that true?

I would say that if someone's
asking you the question

and we have to answer that question,

I would say you're more Gwendolyn.

And I'm more Allen.

So you're more bare-breasted

and sexual.

And sweet and saucy.

I would say you're more Lucien because

you're kind of the impresario
of a bunch of people's lives.

You brought me along on this adventure
that's been a great experience.

So many actors came along
because of your dynamic

and your communication skills with them.

So I would say, yeah,
you're Lucien for a lot of us.

So you're the protagonist
and I'm the antagonist?

We're each protagonists of our own lives.

And you haven't stabbed anyone yet,
so you're not quite the antagonist.

No. People think it changes
and it really doesn't.

You do have this incredible opportunity

to reach a lot more people
than you do in your regular life

because they're seeing a piece of work
that you've worked on.

And that's really special.
But by and large, no, it's still the same,

I still have to do the dishes.
I still have to clean the cat litter.

Yeah, I really haven't seen much of a change.
Have you?

The only change I've seen is,

it's interesting
and I'm still kind of shocked by it,

to be part of, now, a cultural conversation

-with artists whose work I've admired forever.
-That's true. Yeah.

And to just even be like

the weird artsy nephew,

somehow sitting at the big boy table
with all these people I've admired.

We might get a second chance
to make another movie.

That's the biggest one.

It might be easier to make a second movie
than it was making the first one.

And what a gift that would be, right?

Although, are you prepared
for another 10 years?

No. I'm not.

- No?
-No.

If I can be this tenacious,

to spend the last 10 years,
putting together this movie,

writing it with Austin and seeing it through,

then you all have no excuse
to go start writing your film,

to go get it produced
and invest the time to get it done.

Go turn off the Internet
and get back to your screenplay.

Your turn.
Your turn, that's what I have to say.

If you want to do it over 10 years,

you really need this buffing thing
that John has

that he presses into his face every night.

I don't know. What's it called, John?

That's a trick from...

You only learn after
you get the first film made.

Okay, we won't tell you until...

Once you've made your first film,
come and talk to us

and we'll tell you the name of this product.

No, but honestly, don't give up, guys.

Go out there, get the script done.

And then build the relationships
like Austin did, like I did,

over the course of you writing
in order to get it a home

as soon as you're done with it.

Agents and managers
aren't gonna solve your life.

They're not going to, all of a sudden,
take a magic wand

and create a career from you.

A lot of the groundwork still comes
from doing it yourself.

And in our case, it came from relationships
that we built up after college.

And for me,

I find it incredibly poignant that
I've written a bunch of scripts.

And some of them almost got made,

and obviously none of them did
before this one.

But to me, it's incredibly poignant

that the one that got made
is the one that I worked on so hard.

- It was our baby.
-Yeah.

- Yeah.
-With my roommate from college.

That's true.

Thank you for watching.

- I hope you enjoy the movie.
-Thank you, guys.