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Melissa Lee Speyer: writing takeaways for screen and stage
0 Playsin 8 hours
We’re joined on Breaking Screen by writer Melissa Lee Speyer, who talks about what her time as both a lawyer and development executive taught her about writing, how to interpret notes, her writing process, why her career path hasn’t been a linear one, and much more.
Melissa's credits include episodes of television series The Heights for Matchbox Pictures and season two of Random and Whacky and forREAL! for Ambience Entertainment. Her theatre credits include 2018's Ticktickboomwhich won the 2015 Silver Gull Play Award, as well as plays A Christmas Carol and Trade. As well as being a writer, Mel spent four years as a development executive, working at Screen Australia and within a production company. She is a graduate of both NIDA's Playwriting course, and AFTRS Master of Arts in Screenwriting and was the 2017 recipient of the Foxtel Diversity Scholarship.
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Transcript
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Breaking Screen, a podcast about the Australian screen industry and the creative people within it. I'm your host, Caris Bizzaca I'm recording this podcast from the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, where I'm very grateful to be a visitor and be able to work on these lands.
00:00:20
Speaker
Always was, always will be.
Guest Introduction: Melissa Lee Spire
00:00:23
Speaker
Today's episode will feature screenwriter Melissa Lee Speyer But before we get to that chat, here's some news from the Australian screen industry.
Industry News Highlights
00:00:31
Speaker
In festival news, the official program for the 73rd Melbourne International Film Festival has dropped. The event runs from August 7th to 24th and has more than 275 screenworks on offer, kicking off with the opening night gala film, the Australian premiere, If I Had Legs, I'd Kick You, starring Rose Byrne.
00:00:52
Speaker
While we're talking film festivals, Cinefest Oz has released the Australian features vying for the country's richest film award. The four features are in the running for the $100,000 Cinefest Oz film prize and include thriller We Bury the Dead, family comedy Birthright, documentary Songs Inside and romantic comedy One More Shot.
00:01:14
Speaker
The winners will be announced at the end of the Western Australian Festival, which runs August 30th to September 7th. And in other news, the Screen Diversity and Inclusion Network, or S-D-I-N, has launched Everyone Counts 2.0, their second report on diversity in Australian screen productions.
00:01:34
Speaker
It uses data collected through the Everyone Project, an initiative that has been running for three years to document the diversity of TV and film roles, both on screen and off. Some top-line takeaways include that First Nations people continue to be well-represented on-screen, but under-represented in off-screen roles compared to the population benchmark.
00:01:55
Speaker
For people with disability, representation has improved in both on- and off-screen roles since 2021-22, but they also continue to be vastly under-represented compared to the population.
00:02:08
Speaker
And LGBTQA plus people have continued to have strong representation both on screen and off. Obviously, that's a very top line snippet. It's worth reading the full report for more detail, which you can find on SDIN's website.
00:02:24
Speaker
And that's your news wrap up for now. Remember to head over to any of the Australian trade publications for more. Now to the chat with today's guest.
Melissa's Career Journey and Insights
00:02:33
Speaker
We're joined on Breaking Screen by Melissa Lee Speyer a writer for Stage and Screen, whose credits include episodes of television series The Heights for Matchbox Pictures and Season 2 of Random and Wacky and For Real for Ambience Entertainment.
00:02:48
Speaker
Her theatre credits include 2018's Tick Tick Boom, which won the 2015 Silver Girl Play Award, as well as plays a Christmas Carol and Trade.
00:02:59
Speaker
As well as being a writer, Mel spent four years as a development executive working at Screen Australia, where we first met, and within a production company. She is a graduate of both NIDA's Playwriting course and AFTER's Master of Arts in Screenwriting, which and was a 2017 recipient of the Foxtel Diversity Scholarship.
00:03:20
Speaker
Throughout the episode, Mel talks about what her time as both a lawyer and development executive taught her about writing, how to take notes, her writing process, why her career path hasn't been a straightforward linear one, and much more.
00:03:34
Speaker
Here's that chat. Music
00:03:39
Speaker
In the screenwriting world, we talk a lot about inciting incidents. And so I'm wondering if you're looking at your career or your work in the screen industry, what is your inciting incident?
00:03:54
Speaker
I'm going to look like a really bad screenwriter and developer by saying thought about this question and it was hard for me to pick just one. And it's because ah think just want to backtrack a second and talk about careers holistically.
00:04:09
Speaker
um And that's kind of to say that I think that there's this ongoing myth that working in the screen industry is a career path like in any other industry in that you spend enough time in it, you clock up your hours and eventually you get, you just keep getting promoted higher and higher and higher.
00:04:25
Speaker
And eventually you go from being emerging to like mid-career and into established and it's all very automatic and linear and consistent. And I don't think that is true at all, particularly of the Australian industry, but but of the entertainment industry altogether.
00:04:40
Speaker
I don't think there's enough work often in the Australian industry to ensure consistent work and a stable income for everyone. So I just want to start out by dispelling the myth that there's an inciting incident and then you're off, you know, like or that there are key moments that you have to hit and then you're on your way. Because I feel like that can feel like the story looking at someone's career path from the outside.
00:05:00
Speaker
When you look at their Wikipedia page of entries and all of their different projects, but I think for the vast majority of people, but People have moments. They have moments. They are hot for a while and then they disappear and then they do other things or they leave the industry and they come back to it.
00:05:13
Speaker
They have children. have a tragedy in their lives. They just can't find work for a bit because there's a big crunch in, say, development or production. COVID happens. So many things can cause a career path to be bumpier than expected. It's not just an arc.
00:05:30
Speaker
hundred percent. yeah Yeah. Yeah. And like, I'm going to be a dork now and refer to a lot of screenwriting structural models. I love it. kind of Yeah. yeah I think it's more like the kind of ebbs and flows of a roller coaster look at the three act structure where it does escalate upwards. Like you you hopefully are getting better at your craft the longer you stick with it, but it's up and down.
00:05:52
Speaker
And at various points, people do dip out during the troughs. I do think there are kind of key moments that got me started in the industry, so I can talk about that. And a few of those were things like when I was a baby playwright and I was kind of doing a lot of my own work,
00:06:08
Speaker
In the indie sector, winning the Silver Gull Award was a really crucial moment for me. It was a time when I'd just graduated from NIDA. I was thinking about going back to a career in law, but surprise, I got pregnant and did not go back straight away.
00:06:23
Speaker
And I was so pregnant at my graduation that I didn't know if I was going to make it. Like I was within days of popping. And they were like, ah RSVP, please, for catering. and I was like, I really cannot guarantee I'll be there.
00:06:37
Speaker
But I made it. I waddled on stage. Pamela Rabe gave me my degree, which was amazing. an exciting moment and then in the fire at the drinks afterwards everybody was like hey we should catch up and do this thing like we I'll be a dramaturg on your project or you direct my thing and we'll work together and devise a project together and everyone was talking to everybody else and they would look at me and they would go ah we'll see you in a couple of years and I was like oh wait a minute everyone just kind of assumed I just wouldn't be writing anymore and I guess I hadn't really thought about it at that point but I um
00:07:09
Speaker
I made a commitment to myself, I think coming out of that ceremony to like, go, all right, I'm just going to sit down. going think about what I want to write. And i worked on my first full length play because at night or at that point, you only did a one act and I wrote the play that won the silver gold play award that year. Amazing.
00:07:26
Speaker
And I did it with a baby that was amazingly good at sleeping. So i'm I'm sorry to every young mom out there who who doesn't have a good baby that's good at sleeping. I had other challenges, but I think that the sitting down and really committing to spending pretty much every waking moment that I wasn't taking care of my child to writing this play was one of the things that really put me on my way.
00:07:48
Speaker
And the other thing was probably getting the Foxtel scholarship to study it at AFTRS a couple of years later. so fast forward a couple of years after I won that Silver Gold Play Award, I was an associate artist at Rock Surfers Theatre Company along with a couple of other great artists.
00:08:01
Speaker
And I was pitching to Shane and to Rachel at this point, put Tick, Tick, Boom, which was my first play on at Rock Surfers and develop another play. And the great arts funding massacre of 2015 happened, which is when George Brandis basically scrapped all the funding to the Australia council and a bunch of other agencies and funding bodies.
00:08:19
Speaker
And you could draw a lot. You could list every theater company in Australia by kind of the amount of subsidized funding they got that was guaranteed. And they're kind of like, Like at the top of the chain, you've got your major companies that get a lot of triennial funding that's locked in and it's direct from government or it's heavily supported by philanthropic donations.
00:08:40
Speaker
And at the very, very bottom of the food chain is the people who reply for grants constantly and don't get them or do get them. And sometimes that means they can do programs and sometimes it means they can't. And like if you kind of put Griffin at the middle where they were like really in danger of going under, but they probably have enough philanthropic and and support around them.
00:08:57
Speaker
um and they kind of main stage enough that to just sort of keep their heads above water. Everybody below them just got decimated and that included Rock Service Theatre Company. And so I, with my like 90 degree and no stable source of income and a child, went, what can I do with my writing?
00:09:13
Speaker
Oh, look, there seems to be more work in the TV industry. That seems like an easy way to make money and have a stable income. So she thought. Yeah.
00:09:25
Speaker
And then, um so I thought education for me is often the way that I have changed my life. Like I come from a profoundly working class family. Like my um I was the first in my father's family to go to university. And I thought NIDA worked for me in terms of giving me the education I felt I needed to be a playwright.
00:09:41
Speaker
One of the film schools that does television writing feels to me like the place that could get a start in this industry, at least learn what a production company is, what a producer does, what is the difference between playwriting and screenwriting.
00:09:54
Speaker
So I applied to AFTRS. I didn't apply directly into the Masters. I did and advanced diploma first, which is a degree that no longer exists. But it was like, for me with now two children under four and two cats.
00:10:05
Speaker
Love mentioning them. Can't forget the cats. It was easy to do because it was self-directed study and it was like five weekends a year. So I could do that from home.
00:10:17
Speaker
ah showed up for two weekends a year, just got my partner to look after his own children a weekend and did this course. And I really took it very, very seriously. Like it wasn't a situation where I was like, Oh, those exercises don't matter. I did every exercise.
00:10:33
Speaker
You know, like the course culminates in you developing your own project, writing the first act and then pitching it to an industry advisor. and it's meant to be just for feedback.
00:10:44
Speaker
It's meant to be like, this is a great learning experience. But I was the dork who like looked at the list of people and I was like, okay, these production companies do these things, I guess, looked looked at their Wikipedia pages, watched a bit of their work.
00:10:56
Speaker
And I went, okay, the place that I think is most likely to pick up my project is Matchbox because of the things that they do and the way that I work. And so i asked my teacher, Holly Lyons, who's amazing, can I be in the slot with this production company, please?
00:11:09
Speaker
And she was like, you're the only person that's asked that. You're the only person who's really thought about um the best place for your project. or the marketplace. Sure. So she put me in that slot and I borrowed the main theater afters because that's where the pitch happened.
00:11:24
Speaker
The night before I just, with a friend, got a Bluetooth clicker and rehearsed my slides. Like you can tell I'm an anxious person and just went through it.
00:11:34
Speaker
And on the day ah practiced and practiced and practiced. And, um and yeah, the person who happened to be, hearing my pitch was Warren Clark, who, as we all know, ended up creating The Heights along with Hugh Min Liu.
00:11:47
Speaker
And that was how I got on his radar. Was it that that got me the gig on The Heights? No. As I said before, there's no like straight and linear path to success. It's been a real kind of rollercoaster.
00:12:00
Speaker
When Hugh and Warren said they were interested in meeting me, I thought, oh, my thing's going to get made. Everyone in my class was like, your thing's going to get made. It did not get made. I ended up kind of working in the Matchbox offices for a while doing real menial, lay like grant work, which was an absolute privilege because I had never been on the inside of a production company before.
00:12:18
Speaker
But I wasn't even a note taker. I was covering for the person who was taking the notes in a room because they were they wanted to get ah job as a writer as well. So I was not the note taker. i was covering for the note taker. was answering the phones and i was filing paperwork.
00:12:31
Speaker
But Q and Warren knew that you know those jobs are taken by writers who really want to understand how things work and they want to flex their story muscles. And so my first kind of training in the world of development was actually Q and Warren sliding a kind of proposal across the desk and going, we've got a development meeting. You can't come, I'm afraid, but I've got five minutes. what do you think of this?
00:12:50
Speaker
And I had to get really good, really quickly at reading like say a five page pitch document and going, okay, great characters, or I need to know more about this. This is the arc.
00:13:01
Speaker
This is a great jumping off point, but where does the story go? Can see the themes are clear, but there's something else out in the world already that covers the issues. This character too similar to say Nina on offspring, like that storyline has been done.
00:13:13
Speaker
So yeah, that was my grounding, I guess, in, in very, very early development before I kind of really knew what development was. Yeah.
Lessons from Development Roles
00:13:20
Speaker
And so you ended up working then in development. How did you make that leap into it?
00:13:28
Speaker
oh that was many years later. So, yeah, I ended up kind of Yeah. a it Well, maybe, maybe my whole thing about like success, has not being a straight and linear path is just my career path. It's been slow, bumpy, meandery.
00:13:41
Speaker
Well, after I finished afters, I was doing a lot rooms. I was getting a lot of gigs in other people's projects. Some of them led to scripts. Some of them didn't. I got a lot of credits on kids TV, for example.
00:13:52
Speaker
Yeah. I ended up in development for four years, both at Screen Australia as a development executive and at a production company as their development executive. And, um, How did I get into those roles?
00:14:04
Speaker
You did Developing the Developer? them Ah, yeah. Oh, my God. No, I did make a note to to mention that. Yeah, it was a great course. So Screen Australia ran three rounds of Developing the Developer.
00:14:16
Speaker
and It's a program that they're not offering right now, but um it was ah ah an initiative that was about looking at the landscape of development people and the people who are often the gatekeepers in terms of getting a story made or helping it along its path and improving its chances of getting made.
00:14:34
Speaker
And Screen Australia's um Seeing Ourselves report had identified that the industry at this point was quite overwhelmingly monocultural, that it had severe unseen areas when it came to disability and cultural and linguistically diverse peoples. And so developing the developer was a program specifically targeted not at training writers to be writers, but at training people who are interested in story in helping other people develop their stories.
00:15:00
Speaker
Because when the industry is monocultural and those gatekeepers are coming from a very particular cultural bias, it's hard for them to distinguish between a truly authentic story and one that is kind of, okay, this is what I'm writing about the Chinese community because I've seen some Chinese films but never actually met a Chinese person or don't have any in my life. Or I've got a friend who's Chinese but I don't have any personal lived experience.
00:15:22
Speaker
So yeah, Developing the Developer was the program. I did it. A couple of people from that program and did go on to work. at Screen Australia, like Genevieve Chang, Barley Pata, previous cohorts. And in that third and final cohort, I was one of the ones that was, when a role came up, I applied with everybody else and um I did successfully get a role in development with them.
00:15:41
Speaker
So then how did your work in development for, you were saying, four years, um how did that then help you as a screenwriter? What takeaways did you get from that experience?
00:15:56
Speaker
There's some... but Lots of learnings from the craft side, lots of learnings from the, I guess, production side, as in being in development means that you can be within a government agency or a production company in that capacity, but seeing how the script writing influences the pitching, the production, the financing, all of those sorts of things.
00:16:17
Speaker
And then there's some really dorky things about how to be better in a room, like just etiquette stuff that I, as a very new writer that had only been in the industry for like two years, was like, oh, whenever I went into the room and kind of like ordered a green juice along with my lunch, some poor development exec is probably sitting there going, I did not budget for a green juice along with like lunch.
00:16:38
Speaker
What are you doing? Or whenever I was like, oh, the script's due on Friday, but I still have a scene to the write. So i'm just going to drop them a note and say I'm going to deliver it a couple of days late or just deliver a couple of days late without telling them.
00:16:50
Speaker
Some poor development executive was like, I have painstakingly written out a development schedule. And every draft goes to multiple people for notes. And, you know, like I can give my notes on time, but, you know, maybe the network won't give their notes on time. They may be late too. And that would throw our whole schedule out.
00:17:08
Speaker
Those sorts of things are little learnings that I've picked up along the way. Probably very, very useful. Yeah. how to interpret notes from developers, from networks, from production companies.
00:17:19
Speaker
I used to be really slavish with notes. I used to like, let's send them all out and and like put a little checkbox, make sure I addressed every single one in exactly the way that they told me. And now I take a far more holistic approach to notes.
00:17:31
Speaker
I think I kind of go, right, these are the things that are coming up for a lot of people in different ways. And this is what they're saying is this so could be the solution. And sometimes they're right. And sometimes it's like, that's not quite right for my story or structurally that throws something else out.
00:17:45
Speaker
What I learned being a development executive giving notes was that was the delight that you feel when you give a note and you give a suggestion. And they don't take up the suggestion, but they come back with something even better. Like that that's actually way more useful than someone who's gone like, yeah, I did absolutely everything you said.
00:18:01
Speaker
Is it that idea of what's the note behind the note? So if you have multiple people saying there's something about the midpoint that's not working, what about this? And you try something else.
00:18:16
Speaker
It's because you're taking, yeah, whatever the note behind the note. Is that right? Yeah, yeah. It's like someone might say, oh I'm not connecting with this person. and and Or they're really upset with like a particular moment, something someone says or something someone does. They're very specific about this one thing that but keeps keep bugging them.
00:18:34
Speaker
And it's not because of the words that they use. It's because they can't connect with their emotional objective in that moment. And so... If you solve that in a different way that makes it better, maybe fits in with your theme better or or fits in with your characterization better, then like the person who is giving the note, they're happy.
00:18:49
Speaker
you know You've resolved their note. Maybe you didn't do it exactly the way they said, but you've addressed the thing that caused the problem for them in the first place. and Another thing I definitely learned is how much faster you have to work when you're working within this industrial model. It's related to that scheduling process kind of question.
00:19:05
Speaker
I used to, as a playwright especially, oh, as a playwright, no one gives you deadlines. You're just like, maybe you are trying to meet a award, a submission deadline or something, or maybe there's a maybe there's a production slot, maybe there isn't.
00:19:17
Speaker
But you can spend like a year on a play and no one will care. In TV, it's like, turn around that draft in four weeks, please. two weeks would be preferable. The earlier you can get it in, the better. And it's a very strict deadline. And you may not hear from us for a while because we're still pitching because we're still trying to raise finance or whatnot.
00:19:34
Speaker
But it is highly appreciated if you can stick to those timelines. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. Yes. um The speed of television people talk about quite a lot. So, and in terms of takeaways, so that's your takeaways from being in development, but you had a career as a lawyer before, even as you were talking earlier on about your theater days, what kind of takeaways did you get from being a lawyer?
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah. I used to kind of hide the fact that I was a lawyer, not because I was like ashamed of it, but because people would always try and get me to look over their conveyancing contracts or their rental agreements and like get them out of jury duty and parking fines. And i'm like, oh It's like when people are a doctor and they just get asked about ailments all the time.
00:20:22
Speaker
Yeah. Got this weird hairy mole. Yeah, that sort of stuff, but I don't mind. Like it's it's fine. And I'm happy to, you know, use that knowledge wherever it helps people. It's increasingly useless because the further I get away from being a lawyer, the older my qualifications are.
00:20:36
Speaker
But I was a commercial contracts lawyer in um and the tech industry, telecommunications and technology. So weird kind of like I wasn't objection your honor or anything like that. That's American anyway. yeah Yeah.
00:20:50
Speaker
Not a litigator, not sexier than tax, but like still quite dorky and very contracts driven. but it was very like in some ways it was similar in that you had to sit down and make sure your contract made sense. This it sounds so dorky.
00:21:04
Speaker
You had to make sure your contract made sense, flowed, was easy to read, easy to understand, plain English, like no legalese, no here to for withs or anything like that. Just like as simple and succinct as you can make it.
00:21:16
Speaker
That's what a CEO has time to read and they need to be crystal clear. But the difference is, i think you're hoping as a playwright or as a screenwriter, your words get spoken to as many people as possible one day. Whereas as a lawyer, you're like, oh, I just really hope this does not end up in court. I don't want people pouring over every word that I've written.
00:21:34
Speaker
However, the thoroughness, I think the thoroughness, the kind of like making sure everything hangs together correctly, there's no
Writing Influences and Legal Background
00:21:40
Speaker
conflicts, contradictions, that it's making the point you need it to make. That was all quite useful to me.
00:21:46
Speaker
The discipline of sitting down and just being like, you've got to get these words out and they've got to be right and they've got to be clear and you've got to be fast this was helpful. Thinking about your time in like six minute increments that cost a client quite a lot of money. Not you, you don't earn all of that, but yeah.
00:22:01
Speaker
that goes towards paying the secretary and the and the keeping the lights on billable hours or whatever it is yeah yeah being accountable for your time very very useful and helpful with time management the pay versus effort for being a lawyer versus being a writer oh my goodness like yeah I joke that I ditched being a corporate lawyer to kind of enter the lucrative world of being a writer you don't get it anywhere near as much per word or page as you would as a as a lawyer. And those those words in some ways have to be just as useful to somebody.
00:22:36
Speaker
They can't just be nothing just you're not getting paid that much. I think being a lawyer also helped me think a bit like a producer. Like I think about things like chain of title and I think about things like confidentiality and privacy in a really different way. So I think a lot of people who not had that background or had that training, I have to think very strategically about the paperwork that I need, how to wrangle it so I can find it, how to manage problems before they become problems and how to solve or how to mitigate risk before things become a problem.
00:23:07
Speaker
So yeah, I think it makes you thorough. I think it makes you commercial in a way, nimble, entrepreneurial, definitely. i think it has helped me get some jobs as well, not strictly as a writer, but certainly some of the development roles that I've had.
00:23:20
Speaker
the fact that I have a legal background has been looked upon quite favourably. So, yeah. Oh, great. And so when you, you've obviously made these kind of leaps into writing ah twice.
00:23:34
Speaker
So once from working as a lawyer, going into playwriting, and then from there recently back into writing, what What prompted this most recent leap back into screenwriting?
00:23:54
Speaker
I've always wanted to write. Like, honestly, ah just kind of, to be very, very frank, just did law to kind of make my parents happy. My migrant parents who pinned all their hopes on the first order that went to university and like, you know, dined out on the fact that I was a lawyer for such a long time.
00:24:10
Speaker
But yeah, i um I just have always wanted to write. Am I good at it? Probably not. But it's what I want to do with my life. You know, you have one life to live and that's what I'm passionate about.
00:24:21
Speaker
All those nights that my child was sleeping and I could have been sleeping myself, but I was writing my play. it's what It's just what I want to do And I could not It's been four years in two different roles, but um four years.
00:24:34
Speaker
And that feels like my credits are getting a little bit old. It does feel like people think of me as a developer or as a script editor ahead of being a writer. My agent has been so amazingly patient with me.
00:24:45
Speaker
Like she signed me. I basically worked for a year and then i was a developer for four years and she sees none of that. So, um but she's really backed to me as I've said, look, ah this is what I want to do.
00:24:57
Speaker
This is my plan for my career. So what has driven me to go back into writing? Just the passion for it, I suppose. That's what I want to do. i love story. I also love working as a script editor and a developer. So don't get me wrong. Those things are not not satisfying, but I also do want to write.
00:25:12
Speaker
And I did go through a little phase there where I tried to say, I'm a developer. I don't write anymore. And I couldn't do it without crying. And I think that told me something. Yeah. And so then talking about your writing at the moment, so what are you working on?
00:25:30
Speaker
What are you interested in? And can you tell me a little bit about your actual writing process? ha Are you a morning person? Do you have set hours?
00:25:42
Speaker
let me know. All right. Well, what am I working on? I'm working there's a pilot that I really love that i I've adapted Genevieve Chang's memoir, Good Girl of Chinatown.
00:25:52
Speaker
which is about her real, like, like it's her memoir. and It's her life. Yes, I've read it. It's great. Oh, great. Funny story, we were actually in Shanghai at the same time before we met. And so we were there ah at the same time in 2007, I want to say, when I was studying Chinese laws and legal systems. I did a bit of time in China, in Shanghai.
00:26:12
Speaker
haven't been back since. So I've got this very particular image of Shanghai at that particular moment in time. But she writes about performing in clubs and going to nightclubs and going to restaurants and places and and doing things that I very distinctly remember experiencing myself at that time.
00:26:28
Speaker
We hadn't met at that point. We met when she moved back to Australia. She spent a lot longer than there than I did. But yeah, we met back in Australia and I did not know this about her at all. Like I knew she was dating a friend of mine. we kind of got to know each other through theatre circles. She developed a play that I was working on at the time. And then her book came out and I read it and i was like, what? Yeah.
00:26:49
Speaker
Okay, so you've lived a life. Yeah. um And I was absolutely hooked on that story and I've been so passionate about trying to bring that to the screen ever since with my very feeble amount of power in this industry. But that's something that I'm really passionate about, that story, about bringing her story as as a dancer in China's first burlesque club in Shanghai in 2007 to about 2010 to the screen and about the various fractures in her family relationships and and the dissolution of her marriage and the things that she's been through and what she's had to kind of overcome in order to be ah person today.
00:27:26
Speaker
and And she would be the first to say that that's still an ongoing journey. But um I think that time in Shanghai was so intriguing and so formative and says so much as well about The relationship between the East and the West and China is a burgeoning superpower. Like, I think there are so many parallels there. And so we're both ethnically Chinese.
00:27:45
Speaker
She's Taiwanese, but I'm Chinese Malaysian. but We both live in Australia. We both lived in in the UK. We've both been to Shanghai at various points. And I can see a kind of that time that she spent in China,
00:27:56
Speaker
encapsulating so much about the way that the West views the East, about the way that someone who is from China, but like goes back to China after having been raised and lived a formative period of time in a Western civilization, how they are met, how they meet that culture and how they interact, I think says so much about in a microcosm about the way that the East and the West even interact socioeconomically.
00:28:21
Speaker
and And yeah, I find it a fascinating study that's simultaneously personal but also as' global resonance. That sounds so lofty but it's not meant to be. Yeah, no, I know what you're saying and I've read the book and, yeah, I agree, yeah.
00:28:38
Speaker
And so that's what's taking up your kind of day-to-day writing at the moment?
Current Projects and Future Goals
00:28:44
Speaker
um I'm trying to pitch that one out at the moment and um and kind of develop out the series arc a little bit more but probably more I like from a more embryonic project is um a sci-fi romantic comedy that I'm working on, which I think is too embryonic for me to really talk too much about the story. But yeah, like that's probably something that's occupying a lot of my time. There's a feature that's an adaptation of a play that I wrote a couple of years ago.
00:29:09
Speaker
And I'm working on some working my first play for quite some time with two directors, one of whom I've worked with before, Michael Dean. He directed ah an adaptation of A Christmas Carol that I wrote in 2017.
00:29:20
Speaker
And he's now co-directing a piece that was developed and kind of conceptualized by a really exciting young director called Theodore Carroll. And they want to do an immersive kind of and adaptation of The Back Eye.
00:29:33
Speaker
So we're working that together. Yeah. So those are the things that are probably occupying a lot of my writing time. And then I've always got a folder of scraps of other ideas that I should be working on too.
00:29:45
Speaker
And so then what's your process? Oh, it's terrible. For all my talk about like the discipline of writing. You're so organized. so organized. like Billable hours. Yeah, all of that. Look, I schedule in writing time and I spend a lot of it trying really hard not to rehash the same bits that I've already written because I feel like and this is something I've observed in other people's writing as much as I observe it in my own, you know, like it's like trying to paint a wall.
00:30:16
Speaker
People often start at the top of the wall and they work their way down. But for some reason with writing, it's more interesting or more addictive to kind of keep going back over the top bit to go like, oh, this is the bit, I'm just going to do that bit a bit better. Re-edit, re-edit.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah. And then you get like, it's like the top of the wall has the thickest coats of paint. And then as you get to the bottom, as people are rushing to finish, it's just like a real whoosh, whoosh, you know, like I can still see a little bit of the wall peeking through and it gradiates down like that.
00:30:43
Speaker
So I try really hard not to fall into that trap. I try to spend as much time on every bit of the piece as I do the beginning. Do I do it with a lot of success? Not always, but yeah, I try to block out a certain amount of time per day and that's The hours, like the time that I start versus the time that I finish shifts a lot. Like I live in Google calendars. I love Google calendars so much. I have different colored Google calendars for everything. Like where the kids are, what I'm doing, what things I'm doing with the kids, what things I'm doing on my own. What am I doing for exercise? What am I doing for writing?
00:31:15
Speaker
What about meetings? All of those. They're all color coded. It looks like absolute insanity. It's very stress inducing, so I don't recommend it, but it is helpful. So I block out, try to block out at least four hours a day to write.
00:31:27
Speaker
Ideally, it's one big glorious block where I get to do as much writing as I can. The reality is often it's, let's get 90 minutes here. Let's get like an hour here. No, something went wrong. ah ah don't get that time anymore. So sometimes it's unfortunately the first thing to go if there's an emergency, but I try to block out a significant chunk of time in the day to get things done and I don't get enough sleep and that's not good.
00:31:52
Speaker
Yes. But that's, I mean, i also have colour coded, but I use pens in a weekly planner. Ah, hard copy.
00:32:03
Speaker
Yeah, it's great. So my final segment of this podcast is this segment called Pay It Forward.
Pay It Forward Segment
00:32:15
Speaker
So I'm going to ask you a question from a previous guest and then you'll need to come up with a question for the next guest. um So previous guest, ah who I believe you know, Sam Meikle.
00:32:30
Speaker
Oh, Sam. Hey, nice. um ah He'll come up with a complicated question. I'm going have to like really end. Okay. Yeah, cool. I'm ready. It's a very thoughtful question. um So his question was,
00:32:43
Speaker
If you only had 12 months to live and you could only write one project that would say something profound as you see it to the world, what would that project be?
00:32:57
Speaker
Interesting. I like to think that's how I live. but i'm actually One thing I didn't mention is ah ah serial hypochondriac. I'm that person who makes appointments with the doctor in the most chill way possible and go, it's probably nothing.
00:33:12
Speaker
But can I ask what this weird lump in my neck is? Oh, it's just a cyst. Okay, cool. Can I get a blood test anyway? Like I'm always like, I think I might only, and I could get hit by a bus at any moment.
00:33:24
Speaker
Um, kind of thinker. So i like to think that i live my life that way. However, I do plan into 2027. So ah probably don't live my life practically that.
00:33:35
Speaker
Both a hypochondriac and the planner. Yes. Yeah. I have recurring reminders to infinity. ah like to think that every project I'm trying to say something that's profound, not maybe to the world, but to me,
00:33:48
Speaker
Like, for example, I can talk about the good girl of Chinatown. Both Jen and i were disowned by our families for periods. Jen's reconciled with her family of origin.
00:33:59
Speaker
I'm in the process of going through a really weird, like the green shoots of hope are there. i don't want to talk about too much because it could, you know, jinx things or whatnot. I'm not superstitious.
00:34:10
Speaker
and But I feel like that project talks about what to do when you feel like unconditional love, like there's no such thing as unconditional love.
00:34:20
Speaker
When unconditional love is absolutely called into question, when the people who should love you unconditionally do abandon you, what do you do? How do you move on? How do you still love yourself and how do you avoid taking that feeling into making mistakes in every other relationship that you have in your life, whether that is with, say, a husband or the people that you work with or the people that you choose to become your found family.
00:34:41
Speaker
So I do try to make everything that I write profoundly personal but still relevant to other people. Like I don't think absolutely everyone's going to get off of my story, but there will be probably other people who are feeling that sense of abandonment by the people who should love them the most that I hope will get a lot out of seeing this represented on screen.
00:35:02
Speaker
Yeah. Oh, that's amazing. um And I look forward to seeing it on screen. It's too expensive. I don't know if it's ever going to happen. It's set in China in 2007.
00:35:14
Speaker
I would not do that again. That's another thing I've learned as a developer, like in working in production and working for a screen agency,
Closing Remarks and Reflections
00:35:20
Speaker
be achievable, like dream big. Absolutely. Find ways to make it achievable. Yeah. You always have the budget kind of taken away the background.
00:35:30
Speaker
Yeah. Well, that brings us to the end of this chat, but I just want to say thank you so much for joining me on this podcast.
00:35:41
Speaker
We've known each other for a few years, ever since Screen Australia days. And yeah, it's just really lovely to chat to you, but in this context.
00:35:51
Speaker
Yeah. Thanks for inviting me. I'm really excited to see what the podcast is going to like. I kind of heard of you before I met you in that, like, can I tell this story?
00:36:01
Speaker
Yeah, okay. All right. I've told you this story, don't want to tell it again. I remember, like, I would listen to the Screen Australia podcast religiously, and then, like, I just thought, like, it was professionally produced in some studio somewhere. Like, it couldn't have been in the Screen Australia offices, like,
00:36:16
Speaker
it sounded like you had like a proper, like full on sound studio, like audible was producing it or something like that. And you were so cool, calm and collected constantly. And then like, I think it was like my first week at Screen Australia, I get into the elevator and you were like there with somebody with a baby. And like, I was like,
00:36:33
Speaker
And you were talking to them and i was like, holy shit, that's, that's Karis Bazaka, Voice of Screen Australia. And I was so like, I couldn't say hello. I just could not. I just, I just didn't know what to do. I was like, what is she doing in the office? Like, isn't she in the studio? Like ah I had just, i had a full fan moment and I thought that that was your baby.
00:36:53
Speaker
So for ages, I thought you were married to Matt because he was, think it was his child. He's the video producer. Yeah. Yeah. For a very long time, I thought you were married to Matt, had his baby.
00:37:05
Speaker
I don't know. Well, ah little did you know that no, not married to Matt, not my baby and also very, um it was just me and a couple of mics in the Screen Australia offices. Yeah.
00:37:23
Speaker
I found it it, I found it astounding and in an open plan office, like amazing. Oh, thank you. And thank you again for joining on the pod. Oh, good. Thank you.
00:37:35
Speaker
That was writer, Melissa Lee Speyer Huge thanks to Mel for joining us on Breaking Screen. This episode was produced and edited by myself with logo design by Shara Parsons and music by Seb Sabotage-Gavrilovic.
00:37:49
Speaker
If you liked this episode, please hit that subscribe button and leave us a review. See you in a fortnight.