(intense upbeat music)
- My movie touches on that a tiny bit too,
in that it's about a contemporary couple
who are on a course of trying to have a baby,
and the odds are against them
because they're in early middle age,
and they've waited too long, and they're sort of
reproductively challenged in each of them,
and there's a line in the film
where she says, you know our friends said you know,
that having a baby is a selfish act,
and that it's immoral to have a baby,
but in the case of the film,
there's an irrational desire to procreate
that has nothing to do with thinking or making
the right choice, at least in terms of this couple.
Their humanness is kind of propelling them,
and there's nothing logical about it.
- That's probably writing as well,
I think the creation of writing is the same way.
I think you do it because it's just in you
and it needs to be done, and that's how
we process the current moment - Yeah
not 'cause it's necessarily `productive,
not 'cause it's necessarily going to solve anything.
- And not that it's necessarily about exactly
what's happening in that moment,
but the stillness that is necessary to write,
the act of silencing yourself,
silencing your cellphone, silencing everything,
and to bring yourself to a table
to actually stop to think, to bring words,
it's just, there's something holy about it.
(intense upbeat music)
- Why has romance vanished from society?
- You're asking me? I don't know.
- C'mon Tamara
- [John] Only you.
(laughing)
- I feel like my movie is about a marriage
and there's something, you know,
it's not a traditional romance and it's not romantic,
but it's about a kind-of a love story,
and you know, the intrepidness
of this couple surviving through
this obstacle course of what they're doing.
So, I don't know, I feel like love stories
come in lots of different packages.
- What's the best note you've been given
and what's the worst note?
- I was at the Sundance Lab when
I wrote my first movie and I had-
- [Stephen] Was that the "Slums of Beverly Hills"?
- It was the "Slums of Beverly Hills"
and it was a work-in-progress script, and you know,
the way it works is that Hollywood screenwriters come,
and they read the script, and then you do
a kind of, like, mentor session
where they tell you what they think.
And, this man, he was a male screenwriter,
incredibly successful financially,
sat me down and he said "Well, you can't start a movie
with a girl getting fitted for a bra.
You can't waste five pages (men laughing)
with a girl getting her first bra." And I was like-
- [Guest] Yeah you can
- [Stephen] Yeah, I love that opening.
- I'm going to keep that. - Yeah, yeah.
(upbeat music)
- I like to read really nerdy things about writers,
like where they write, what their room looks like.
(men laughing)
- Like just their sort of dorky, daily thing.
What time. I guess I'm always trying
to steal ideas that other people have about.
Like, Twyla Tharp, I read a book
about her and her creativity process,
and she does this thing where she writes ideas down
on index cards and just throws them in a box.
(laughing)
- And it became this thing, that when
I was writing this screenplay, because I feel like sometimes
I'm writing something, and then I get an idea
for something else, because I'm actually doing the writing
and I don't know where to put it
and I used to put it in the margins of things,
but then I would never know where they were, so I took this
technique of just writing (men laughing)
things and sticking it in the box,
and eventually I dig through it
and I was like "Oh yeah, that was a funny idea,"
or a piece of dialogue or a detail.
It's a kind of ADHD approach which works for me.
(intense music)