Film Courage: What's your first week working on a new idea? What are you, if you've gotten
this idea while you're in traffic or wherever it is standing line at the supermarket but
then you're actually "Okay i'm gonna invest time in this." What's it like?
Long Beach City College Film Professor/Filmmaker, Elias Daughdrill: It's just notes. I'm very
disorganized. It's a notebook where I am just I'm writing either lines of dialogue, ideas
for a scene, something about a character character breakdown, any number of things that think
are a theme. Something that I want somebody to say. I don't even know what character would
say it but this is a line that I want something where it's happening. It's that, it's a bunch
of I don't do the note card thing. I will write a series of notes. I might even from
those notes like I'll fill up one of those like those black I don't know if I have any
of those black notebooks you know the things that in Seven where the guy used to make all
his notes right (one of those). I'll fill one of those up and I might write a draft
out of that. That draft will be bad but I have something and then I might then make
an outline from the draft so I've got notes that I turn into a draft that i will then
turn into an outline defined structure. I don't like to structure first because i'm
not as interested in plot. I'm really not that interested in plot at all. I'm much more
interested in character and theme and so it's about ideas and how I'm trying to express
those ideas whether it's through characters actions or their context or whatever and so
I found that if I tried to impose structure first which is what I think of as as being
is a structural thing that then I get too focused on the mechanics of plot which I don't
care about at all. I want it to be about character and characters journey however you want to
describe it so that's why outline actually comes for me after I've written a draft so
that I can then okay here are all these ideas. Are there a way I can structure these ideas?
Okay if that makes sense so it's not an efficient way like if I was like on for hire for a script
I probably couldn't do it that way but nobody's knocking on my door to do that paid me a bunch
of money to write a script for them so this way allows me to to hold on to the things
that I think are more important because if I'm worried about these kind of story beats
and steps and because American movies are all about causality (this causes this causes,
this causes this), then I might lose the character because if the character is doing things that
are contradictory, there's not a clear causality between them that might be way more interesting
than if there is. So that's kind of the way whether that happens over a week. I don't
know. I've got two kids now, who the hell knows how long it'll take me to get to those
places. It might get me I might get to a draft in a week but i kind of doubt it. That first
week is probably just going to be notes notes. Notes and trying to figure out who it is and
then when you actually get a first draft down are you doing the sort of putting it away
and then looking at it again. That's generally what i found is the best thing it's. I want
to look at it with fresh eyes. I'm not sending it to anybody yet because it's not good enough
yet. You don't want to waste people's time and I don't want to get a bunch of notes from,
I don't want to waste their time and I also don't want to get a bunch of notes for stuff
that I'll of course I know what's wrong with it right after I look at it a second time
so it's don't look at it for whatever a couple weeks, a month, something like that and then
go back in and look at it and hopefully do a pretty significant teardown of it. Pieces
of it will survive but it should be a pretty significant teardown because the first thing
shouldn't be very good. It should...you're trying to get some ideas out. You're trying
to work around those ideas but it's not going to be anywhere near what the finished product.
I mean that first draft of Faith from 10 years ago was vastly different than the thing the
movie that we shot.
Film Courage: You still have it?
Elias: Yeah somewhere it's on a thumb drive somewhere yeah.
Film Courage: Where did you write it?
Elias: I did the very cliched thing (this is before I had kids) so I could do this as
I went up the coast and and just rented a hotel for like two or three days and banged
out the first draft. I had a whole bunch of it sort of worked out so it wasn't like a
what's my idea and three days later i had a finished draft of the script i had a whole
bunch of notes and stuff that i was working from but yeah.
Film Courage: Did you stay at like an ocean view hotel?
Elias: No, I don't have the money to afford that but it was by the ocean here.
Film Courage: Oh it sounds so romantic.
Elias: Yeah I know, I did that but yeah good luck to me convincing my wife to let me do
that again now leave her with two kids. So I don't think that's going to happen.
Film Courage: Did you do it with a laptop or did you write into?
Elias: No yeah I'm too lazy I'm too lazy to do long form. That was one thing that I had
Final Draft very early on when I was still an undergrad and I've just gotten used to
writing that way.
Film Courage: Going back to that 10-year hotel stay was that ticking clock worth it in terms
of it actually got you to finish it because you're like "I'm here, I paid for this.
Elias: I know it helped but it helped. I'm sure I can't remember it so long ago but it
was also like it was good to just that was just the thing i was there to do it was just
that you know nothing else.It was a good feeling and also the the idea felt like you have times
when you're reaching for the idea like you're writing and but you're still reaching for
the idea. The idea was like close enough to where I could do it in that three days time
you know get it out. There's other scripts or the idea is not close enough to where I
wouldn't be able to get it all out in three days time if that makes any sense?
Film Courage: It does yeah. That's interesting. How many drafts of Faith did you write before
you sent it to your producer Mike?
Elias: I had probably written three maybe four something like that i want to say i'd
have to go back and look but i want to say it was three or four drafts um and it's a
yeah like i said it's a vastly different script than the one um that we ended up shooting
that thematically it's the same uh structurally and character-wise it's a little bit different
so three or four drafts in you send it to him what's his time frame for getting back
to you what were the notes uh he got back to me probably within three weeks something
like that um again i won't make it sound like i just sent it to him like there was plenty
of people i sent it to who didn't respond but it was kind of in his wheelhouse like
it's he was he told me when he was like 14 he was thinking about being a priest oh wow
um but then girls and so then you know girls happen to be yeah exactly um and um his his
response i mean he responded the script he said i like the way it's dealing with these
kinds of um with issue these kinds of issues but no judgment to the characters um and then
he had a few ideas for the ending as i recall or i don't know so then we we talked on the
phone about it and um he suggested i do another like scene outline so i did a scene outline
and then he came out to la because he was here he's a new york based producer he was
here because one of his films was i was around the independent spirit awards i remember that
and one of his films was nominated for i think was one of the actors or something and so
then we got to meet and talk face-to-face and he suggested a big change i originally
the story was actually divided between two characters whose two different stories going
on and he suggested just to simplify it to just focus on one character for a number of
reasons he said don't change the the again the themes the ideas all that stuff stays
the same you just got to simplify the story so it's just one person's story so i did that
and he was he responded really positively to that rewrite and so then we were kind of
off and running in terms of then trying to generate interest we ended up out i ended
up out in new york through uh with ifp um they had a this kind of screenplay what did
they call it this program that's emergency emerging storytellers where they selected
it was a pretty competitive program they only select x number of scripts and then we got
to meet uh with like sony classics and i don't remember a bunch of different companies you
know trying to generate interest see if you can get any money we didn't get any money
um but uh but it was a really good thing and and um and then it was i rewrote a couple
more drafts and then eventually we got there do you think the themes in faith are ones
that people can relate to even if they're you know non-denominational they're not part
of a church even if they don't consider themselves religious yeah i mean i think i i think the
audience for it will probably be more people who consider themselves agnostic um more so
than well i don't know god sorry um i think the audience four will probably be people
who consider themselves uh agnostic i mean i don't know we there might be some um some
regular church-goers who who are interested in it too um but yeah i mean especially people
who maybe went to church as when they were kids and now aren't as connected to it i think
they probably will respond to it um but we'll see i don't know i mean that's a big thing
now is like you you're supposed to figure out who your audience is beforehand right
i'm not i'm not as comfortable with that just because i feel like you're um i want to make
the thing i want to make the thing that's in my head that i think is interesting without
thinking about who else is going to find it interesting not because i don't think or don't
want anybody else to find it interesting but i'm too i'm worried that if i focus too much
on what other people are thinking about it then i'll lose the thread of what's interesting
about it to me the hope is that if it's interesting to me it's going to be interesting to other
people if we do it well enough and that will hopefully be enough to get in a big enough
audience to make the movie worthwhile but who knows um i i just i like the i know several
people who are sort of involved in this like marketing and distribution before you make
the movie and i understand it because of these things we've been talking about in terms of
the lack of funding and trying to get your money back from a movie i completely understand
it but just as a as the writer director in me is like i i can't think about that stuff
or else all of a sudden you're worried about this choice and how it fits in the film you're
not worried about if it fits in the the the world of the film you're worried about how
other people are going to respond to it and i just i it's anathema to me i just i can't
i don't want to do it so i don't know we'll see you know you you uh you hope you hope
that you've done something that enough people will respond to because there's you know people
have um put their faith in you and and um put some money behind the movie and and so
um you don't want to disappoint him you wanted to you want that faith to be rewarded so here's
hoping.
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