When I was mentoring a young man about 9 years ago, he told me his dream was to be a feature screenwriter. I earnestly advised him to focus on his computer skills and that screenwriting was a pipe dream. It's ironic that two years later, while riding my bike toward Huntington Beach pier, I decided to write a teleplay.
A friend of mine brought me a jailhouse manuscript from a former New York Hotelier turned mob associate named Edward “Biff” Halloran. He asked me if I’d be interested in writing a book about the guy. Initially, I said no but then came up with the idea of creating a pilot show about Halloran. I quickly wrote a pilot, then a few weeks later, rewrote it after I purchased Final Draft software.
~The Mighty Dragon Blog, October 2019
https://themightydragon.blog/2019/10/25/interview39-phillip-e-hardy-writer/
What inspired you to write your first feature or teleplay?
PS, writing my first script seemed like a good idea at the time; and I suppose the beach landscape at dusk was an inspiring location.
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A bad breakup. I was young. I think it was 1997 : )
Christine: Ooh! That was probably not only cathartic but also allowed you to draw from a range of emotions.
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Definitely! It helped for sure. I started to update it and probably revisit it at some point.
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Christine:
I wrote a romcom that was largely based on people on knew when I was an LA rock musician. That one flowed out of me in a few days.
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As a kid I was always really into making up stories, even creating and xeroxing my own comic books. I just constantly go on mental tangents and I think very visually. After being bedridden for months with a life threatening illness in my 20's I was forced to stop and think about my life at which point it dawned on me that this was something, that while I had never thought about it as a possibility for my life, really just fit.
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Phillip did you do anything with it? An LA rock musician?? Very cool!
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Christine:
Shondaland just read the script last week. And I'm working about 6 other scripts with different production companies.
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I was talking to my brother in-law and he said that he would like to write a version of a movie.
I had always loved film and thought, “I could do that”.
So I did. I am not addicted.
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I had a story to tell so I tired to write a novel. By the time I hit page thirty I realized I really sucked at writing so I gave up. About a year later I came a cross a how to write a screenplay book by accident. So I purchased the book and wrote my first screenplay. It sucked but I did manage to option it. More recently another producer I know wanted to produce it but I decided I didn't want to see it get made into a movie.
Phillip, I hope you don't mind a two-parter.
When I took a screenwriting class in college back in 1979, I thought about a summer job I had the previous year: I worked for a soft-drink bottler in the Des Moines, IA area (where I was actually born) and, instead of working inside the actual plant as I'd done in summers past, I rode in the same truck as a route driver...and I helped him out. (Loved it!)
So, for the script I had to write for that class at Iowa State University, I figured: "Why not do a story about two women trying to become route drivers for a soft-drink bottling company?"
And that's how "Long Way" was born. (I don't have that 30-page script anymore. It's in Recycling Heaven someplace.)
But when it came to writing something good enough to post here at Stage 32...the inspiration for "Really Old School," the first thing I ever posted here, came from all the years (the better part of the 1993-2015 period) I'd competed in the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival. And I wanted to focus on four teenagers who loved to play ragtime. (In Real Life, almost all the Junior Division contestants I'd ever face could outplay me...but I didn't mind!)
Great question, Phillip...and all the VERY BEST to you!
Mine is a little less inspirational as I was just sitting at the computer and had an idea pop in my head. Being an author my first thought was creating it into a book but then it just popped in my head that it might be a good screenplay. Why I come to this conclusion I have no idea as at the time I knew absolutely nothing about writing screenplays. Happy with the results though.
Jim: Excellent. Thanks!
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I had an idea that would change the world for the better if I could find an effective medium to share it broadly. And hands down, the best medium is film.
A lack of recognition and not being taken very seriously, not even by my family (I was 17 and in my first year of college, having dropped out of high school the year prior). My first script (which I later novelised) doesn't exist anymore - it was about a group of Europeans in the US working together to prevent a war between Heaven and Hell. The novelisation no longer exists, either, but it did lay the foundations for what would become my unique trademarks (multilingual and international cast of characters, colour-coded characters to determine their personalities and roles, heavy reliance on knowledge of non-American, particularly European and Japanese, culture and history, characters speaking their native languages at critical moments, etc.). 15 years later, here I am... 10 scripts written, none sold.
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I JUST WANT TO GET THE VOICES OUT OF MY HEAD! :-)
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No inspired, but "volunteered."
When four friends get together and decide to make a movie that's better than "the crap Hollywood puts out," but only one of them has any experience writing (novels), that person get "volunteered" to write the screenplay.
That would be me. The film was a failure, but I fell in love with screenwriting.
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If I recall correctly; it was red wine.