Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Writing genre with screenwriter, author and film curator Maria Lewis
42 Plays1 month ago
This episode of Breaking Screen features Maria Lewis, a best-selling author, screenwriter, and film curator who has an Encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture and genre specifically. After starting out as a journalist, Maria has gone on to write eleven books (including novels for Marvel and Assassin’s Creed), win an AWGIE for her podcast The Phantom Never Dies which was produced by Nova Entertainment, write and direct the short film The House That Hungers and is now in development writing her feature The Black Talons.
Maria talks to everything from making the shift into screenwriting, submitting 101 applications, writing genre films, being strategic about social media, and much more.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:03
Speaker
Welcome to Breaking Screen, a podcast about the Australian screen industry and the creative people within it. I'm your host, Karis Buzaka, and 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.
00:00:19
Speaker
Always was, always will be.
Guest Introduction: Maria Lewis
00:00:22
Speaker
Today's episode will feature best-selling author and screenwriter Maria Lewis, but before we get to that, some news from the Australian screen industry.
Opportunities for Screen Creatives
00:00:30
Speaker
Applications have opened for the next round of Digital Originals, the talent development program from Screen Australia, SBS and NITV, that supports screen creatives from historically underrepresented backgrounds.
00:00:43
Speaker
Applications close on the 17th of July, 2025, And there is also a webinar about what they're looking for this round, and that video should be up on Screen Australia's website.
00:00:54
Speaker
Meanwhile, six teams from the 2024 cohort have been selected to receive development funding for their projects, and of the 2023 cohort, three projects, Moonbird, Warm Props, and Monee, will premiere weekly on SBS On Demand and n NITV from the nineteenth of June.
Industry News: Sony and AI Concerns
00:01:13
Speaker
Sony Pictures Television has extended its content agreements with two of the local streamers, Stan and Binge. This means that those streamers have got Australian rights to certain series, along with an extension of classic TV shows and feature films like the Spider-Man and Ghostbusters franchise.
00:01:31
Speaker
And lastly, a group of eight screen industry guilds have made a joint submission to the Federal Government Productivity Commission around the use of stolen or uncompensated work in the development of ai The group included guilds representing Australian directors, writers, cinematographers, screen composers, production designers, screen editors, and more.
00:01:51
Speaker
Their main concern was around creative workers' copyright, with the guilds asking the government to make sure the work of creatives is only used to train AI data sets when given permission and with compensation.
00:02:03
Speaker
And for infringements that have already taken place, they've called for compensation and removal of those works from AI training models. And that's your news wrap up
Maria Lewis' Career Journey
00:02:12
Speaker
for now. Head over to any of the trade publications for more.
00:02:15
Speaker
Now to chat with today's guest. We're joined on breaking screen by Maria Lewis, a bestselling author, screenwriter, and film curator who has an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture and genre specifically.
00:02:29
Speaker
We first met 11 years ago as film journalists, and since then, Maria has written 11 books, including novels for Marvel and Assassin's Creed. She won an orgy for her podcast, The Phantom Never Dies, which was produced by Nova Entertainment.
00:02:44
Speaker
She wrote and directed the short film, The House That Hungers, and is now in development writing her feature, The Black Talons. Maria talks to everything from making the shift into screenwriting, submitting 101 applications, writing genre films, being strategic about social media and much more.
00:03:03
Speaker
Here's that chat.
00:03:07
Speaker
The first question that I ask everyone is, um because we always talk about inciting incidents in film and TV. So what was the inciting incident for you and your career?
00:03:21
Speaker
In film and TV specifically? Yeah. so I know you were a journalist before and things like that. So maybe in terms of becoming a storyteller more generally? i guess the inciting incident for me becoming a screenwriter and being interested in a film and filmmaking was I was working as a journalist. Like my journalism career weirdly became the inciting incident because I grew up quite in a family that was a bit, what's the right word?
00:03:50
Speaker
I don't want to say pop culturally illiterate, but they were just like, yeah, they like movies and stuff and they like songs and stuff, but they, it was never communicated to me. And this is going to sound so stupid that people actually make films. Like people, like the movies that I loved and I'd always loved film. My, my mom, we grew up really poor. And so my mom used to bring home security tapes from work that had the CCTV recorded on them, which is technically illegal, but whatever, live, love, love.
00:04:19
Speaker
And she'd bring home those tapes from work because we couldn't afford to buy blank ones. And I would record movies off TV. And I would basically like try and get better and better versions of those movies with our ads. I had them all like my little library, alphabetized
Transition to Filmmaking
00:04:34
Speaker
and everything. So I'd always loved film, but I just, I didn't know anybody who worked in it. I didn't know that it required people to make movies.
00:04:43
Speaker
And it wasn't until I was a journalist that had been covering general rounds and crime for a few years on the Gold Coast. that I got sent to, I can't even even remember what it was. Like I got sent to cover some film story and I was like, oh, oh, it's someone's job to make this.
00:05:02
Speaker
What the fuck? Like I had no idea. And I remember like going back and like, I was just chatting. I got really interested in all the HODs. And so, you know, it was, um it was like, you know, they always so pull out your actors and actresses and maybe the director, if they're feeling nice for it, it was just a color story for the Gold Coast Bulletin.
00:05:20
Speaker
But I was like, and so what do you do? And they're like, oh, I'm a production designer. And i was like, oh, and I'm like, what do you do? Oh, I'm ah yeah like, I was so interested. Like, what's that? ah Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
I was genuinely fascinated in all of those sort of like auxiliary jobs, because that is the thing I love about filmmaking. And this type of storytelling is that it is a team sport and that your weakness is somebody else's strength and vice versa.
00:05:43
Speaker
And so my inciting incident, weirdly, was being a journalist and getting sent to cover film stuff and then took me a few months. I started a blog, a film blog called Movie Mass.
00:05:55
Speaker
And that was basically, I really wanted to try and make a business case to for myself to pitch my editor to become the film reporter for the paper, because we didn't have one. And I just thought that was so bananas because so much stuff filmed on the Gold Coast and has historically filmed on the Gold Coast. The very first Australian blockbusters all filmed there. So it just seemed quite like Delulu that we didn't have a sole reporter dedicated to covering film specifically on the Gold Coast but broadly Queensland in general so I started a film blog covering new releases and reviews and things like that and it's how I started to cultivate a little friendship group of like yourself of critics and film nerds in Australia and people in the
00:06:38
Speaker
blogosphere because this was on Blogspot back in the day. And that was that was it for me. Yeah. And then I got to start covering it film and entertainment full time as a reporter. And I was like, this is the shit. This is my vibe. This is what I love. Never really liked criticism so much and writing film reviews, but the commentary and the analysis and the making of was always really fascinating to me. And I'd always had books and stories in the background, but sort of tried to merge and began merging all those different little tendrils of my career, which was like the journalism side, the novelist side, the screenwriting side, the nonfiction side, the narrative side, all of it.
00:07:18
Speaker
And like, as you said, we know each other from those film journalism days and then you becoming a novelist and then you moving into screenwriting.
00:07:32
Speaker
And you were saying like the thing that you like about film is that it's a team sport, whereas I feel like journalism, but definitely being a novelist is so...
00:07:42
Speaker
you're so on your own there. So what then prompted the move into screenwriting from those more writing roles where you're on your own?
00:07:53
Speaker
I've never really had a traditional route into any career that I've worked in. Like With journalism, have a journalism degree, but really I learned in the field. I was working full-time as a journalist, as a cadet, and you were kind of doing uni like on the weekends and at night and shit, because journalism is particularly one of those jobs that it is not theoretical. You need to, it's all well and good to have like this rule and that rule and this rule, but then when you're actually in the field and in those situations, it's adapt or die. So novelist, I just like figured it out by, you know, reading lots of books and like writing a bad book and then trying to fix that draft and make it better and like fucking up and making
Filmmaking Experiences and Challenges
00:08:33
Speaker
mistakes. And kind of the same with film as I never went to film school, but I was hired to work on the feed at SBS back when that existed. And the feed was my film school, like it was for so many people. I think there's a very clear correlation between a lot of people who worked on the feed who've gone on to have
00:08:51
Speaker
really fascinating, interesting careers, you know, whether it's your, your Jan Franz and your Mark Humphries or your Laura Murphy Oates and your Freudian Nips. But that was where I learned how to write a script and yes, okay. Like a lot of them were sketches and a lot of them were essentially mini docos, but I also learned how to line produce and how to edit and learn how to location scan and learn all the tangible, practical realities of physically making film and TV.
00:09:21
Speaker
And also the high pressure environment of we were live four nights a week and had like a best of show on the Friday. So if you fucked up, we were going live to air at 7.30, whether the job was done or not. So a mistake would air and it really like put you under a very specific type of pressurized environment that is actually quite handy when it translates to a film set because, you Making those decisions. Yeah.
00:09:49
Speaker
Oh, like, and just not making your days or like something doesn't work and you have to pivot in the moment. And it's about, yeah do you have a little mentee bee or do you like figure a workaround? And that's also when making sure that your HOD is like you have the best possible people and all of those roles. So that inevitably when something does go wrong, you're leaning on those people to not just fix it, but like all of you brainstorm and theorize with an option or a fix or a solution that is going to get you over that hump, whatever it is.
00:10:21
Speaker
And so you've directed a short film as well based on your short story. Yeah. And basically Steven Spielberg, you know, one short film under my belt. Like, yeah and she's legit. She's a director, bitch. Yeah.
00:10:34
Speaker
But was the plan always to direct? no it was that House at Hungers specifically was an accident in the sense that I had never directed anything before.
00:10:46
Speaker
It seemed really hard, which was the correct take. It's fucking hard and stressful and just didn't seem for me. um I'd done obviously like a lot of writing and that's my strength is as a screenwriter for sure.
00:11:00
Speaker
i producing, I'd done a lot of because it's just I'm organized and like producing is essentially just like organizing and trying to sweet talk people into doing what you need when you need it to be done.
00:11:12
Speaker
So I never had any intentions to direct and it was just a production company down in Adelaide that I had worked with on a short film called The Normals and they have an amazing scheme down there which is basically they work with the at University of Adelaide Film Department to develop short films from concept to production and I'd written that short film and it had played at a bunch of festivals and stuff and they'd been like oh I have you got anything else like in the pipeline? Is there anything else that you think that you're cooking up that you could direct?
00:11:43
Speaker
And I had had the house that hungers as a short story for a while. Short stories always kind of being one of my weaknesses as a writer. So I'd spent in the past sort of three to four years just on the side trying to hone and finesse my short story writing capabilities, which were quite bad and then were not so bad. And then were like, you know, passable, I guess.
00:12:03
Speaker
Winning awards. it's a I mean, like this shit's all subjective, isn't it? But um we're better than they were because that was always the problem is my short stories were never short. They were all like,
00:12:14
Speaker
14,000 words, 18,000 words. I was like, bitch, just write a novella. Like short story means short This shit is long. My God. It's like a straight white man directing a movie. Everything's fucking three and a half hours.
00:12:28
Speaker
Anyway, shout out Brutalist, Scorsese, complete unknown. What else have I seen that's really long this year? Anyway, no important. But yeah, they asked if I wanted to direct and I was like, well, I'm never going to know whether I can do it unless I give it a try. And I really loved it. Like I really loved the actual experience of doing the thing.
00:12:48
Speaker
The aftermath of doing the thing is like ah completely different ball game. And it really like the idea of sort of strengthening, like who are the people you want to work with and values and trying to link up with people that are going to be your little collective of collaborators.
00:13:06
Speaker
There have been so many brilliant pieces and quotes, especially from female filmmakers and diverse filmmakers. where they talk about how important it is to really cultivate and develop your little posses of people.
00:13:18
Speaker
Issa
Creative Collaboration and Networking
00:13:19
Speaker
Rae always talks about it. She constantly talks about how important it is to not necessarily network with people one or two stations above you, but start building those connections and genuine friendships and relationships with people in the same industry you want to work in that are at the same level as you, because then you're all motivated and you're all ambitious and you're all striving to work towards a shared goal with shared values together.
00:13:44
Speaker
And um that's probably like one of the biggest weirdly unintentional sort of directing lessons I learned is like developing those little creative posses, which I think we had really like together. I should just say, I don't want to say we had like a little film writer posse because it was literally me, you and Ange Bishop as soul women working in that field in Sydney. And Ange Bishop would go to screenings and be like, oh my gosh.
00:14:12
Speaker
Another woman. Hi. That's literally how we became friends, listeners, is Karis and I was like, a woman. Wahoo. Oh, my gosh. And Bishop, the sweetheart that she is, would always check in and be like, you guys okay?
00:14:25
Speaker
You guys are okay? Cool. have to do a nightly broadcast. Live, love, love. Like, it's just – Yeah, our posse developed out of necessity, I think, more than anything, but also how wonderful that it did. Fast forward, you know, 10 plus years later and we've moved on and we're different points of our careers, but our ambitions and our motivations and the things we're striving for are quite aligned as well as the ethics and values. And so those little networks and connections that you put together, I think are like, that's one of the biggest and most critical sort of filmmaking lessons.
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah. And like on that point, I wanted to ask you about when you directed the kind of set that you wanted to create, because I remember you talking to me about this.
00:15:13
Speaker
Yeah. So the House at Hungers is essentially a one- woman story, Kimi Tsugoshi, who's an amazing actress. People know her from Great White and Bureau of Magical Things.
00:15:25
Speaker
She was my lead and she is incredible. And it's a very hard role because basically the whole events of the film have to kind of play out on her face and she has very minimal dialogue, but you know, in a nutshell, it's about a house that eats boys and she gets stuck in that house. And so she essentially has to come up with a way to survive in a house that consumes all life. And you know, the big inspirations for me were like a lot of, I want to say hammer horror and stuff from the eighties and things like The Thing. I think that's an inspiration for everyone. I hear myself say it. I'm like, oh God, another person who finds The Thing is such an inspiration. Fucking kill me.
00:16:01
Speaker
But the way that The Thing effects were so tactile and practical, I think is the reason in part that film endures so much. And that was the priority for me is the production company I was working with in Adelaide. We made a thing, have a lot of,
00:16:16
Speaker
capabilities that are really great at like digital and VFX. And that was awesome to know that like, okay, I'm going to need to tap into those skills when we get to the post part, but whatever we can capture in camera, that was something that I was really focused on was trying to have practical, tactile, tangible solutions.
00:16:35
Speaker
that we could film in Canberra. And if it looks a bit shit or it looks a bit dodgy or rickety or whatever, and you know, that's kind of the purpose too. Like, I i love that.
Short Films: A Career Stepping Stone
00:16:44
Speaker
Trying to be really inventive with some of those old school filmmaking techniques and punch it up and clean it up in post. And so for instance, there's a scene where a rug consumes a man.
00:16:55
Speaker
And that was something that I was like, ah I really want to try and physically shoot this. Fuck knows how we do it, but like thoughts on the board and had this amazing production designer and art director, Pop Allen, who's just like one of those guys who is so good at anything physical and practical, but is also like, a has a really great mind for thinking outside of the box and So he basically came up with this idea of like we would build like a false floor and the actor would be almost like sitting at an angle into the floor and it would look like they were being swallowed. And we would use a specific type of fabric and we had threads that were tied on the other end of like little magnetic cords and whatnot. And everybody was like just out of frame pulling all the different cords and stuff.
00:17:43
Speaker
And it was just like such an inventive idea and it was really stressful on the day and really challenging to shoot. But I think the end result looks really cool. And one of the, it's just, you know, the thing with filmmaking, you never know what's going to work. And that was kind of like the money shot of the short that I was so focused on and It's all prep though. Like I was there a month before the actual shoot itself and was living in like a haunted pub upstairs, just trying to um essentially figure out the logistics. And I just, I was the writer, director and producer on this. So if it went bad, there's nobody to blame him but myself. So really, I felt a lot of pressure in terms of making it work and trying to make it the best that I possibly could. Because the thing with shorts is like,
00:18:31
Speaker
nobody wants to make short films because you don't make money off a short film. A short film is for all intents and purposes, basically just a calling card. So you can get other they directing gigs, the more short films, the better, but who wants to fund that?
00:18:44
Speaker
You know, who wants to sink money into something that almost has a guaranteed no return on investment and is essentially something that will just go into a show reel. And I'm really blessed that the house at hungers has had the creepy little leaks that it has. And Has played all, like I just, you know, it would be nice to get into one festival, let alone all the festivals that it's gotten into. And it played in particular at Final Girls Berlin, which is a horror film festival I've always been obsessed with and loved.
00:19:13
Speaker
Got to play at Monster Fest, which is sick because I love their work. I've got a Monster Fest every year as a viewer. And so to have your short film play and they program them, all the films that have made the festival of that year program back to back at Final Girls, they play before each of the horror features It's just like when it's really intentional and curated like that. and I think horror fans are so committed to their genre and of supporting their genre and,
00:19:37
Speaker
supporting people within it that, you know, hopefully I get to make more, but who the fuck want to fund a short film? I haven't got the spare money. Like, even if you do it, like you see these budgets for short films and you're like hundred grand, Jesus Christ.
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah. But they also seem so important as career escalators for emerging filmmakers. I mean, especially directors. Like, I'm not sure someone said to me that they're more of a director's career escalator rather than a writer.
00:20:06
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely.
Genre's Significance and Contributions
00:20:07
Speaker
But then this is also the problem is it's just impossible. Like where does that money come from? i don't know. And one thing you were talking about there in terms of like genre, writing for genre.
00:20:21
Speaker
So a couple of years ago, you won an Augie, no big deal. I won Augie on crutches with you right there. And I had my dress shoes and then I had my practical shoes and a little handbag you had on your back.
00:20:35
Speaker
And so I limped onto the stage with my crutch and then I had my practical shoes. waiting You'd be like, can I have the the nice heel? And I'd like pull it out of backpack.
00:20:48
Speaker
But it was a very passionate speech about the importance of genre writing and especially what it means for marginalized people. Do you feel like historically genre has been relegated to a stereotypical hero and a stereotypical audience?
00:21:06
Speaker
I think that it has taken Australia specifically a really long time to sort of shift away from this idea of cultural cringe and to accept that genre has just as much merit and worth as a crime drama in the outback or whatever the fuck, like whatever the genre is.
00:21:23
Speaker
And I also think a big part of that and where that has helped is seeing how successful New Zealand has been at investing in not just genre, but genre of filmmakers. Like you invest in the weird guy who makes fuck puppet movies and suddenly that's Peter Jackson.
00:21:38
Speaker
And you're making Lord of the Rings and now you have an entire industry and economy built on that. And he's reinvested back into the community and built studios and post facilities. And so I think seeing what Otorua has done, but also seeing Aussie genre filmmakers like James Wan and Lee Winnell, like Jennifer Kent, seeing the success that they've had overseas, um I think has also been really important to people and the Australian industry and also crucially, like not just finances, but screen bodies and investors are really interested in horror.
00:22:15
Speaker
But that excites me as somebody who loves just on a consumer level. I love to consume horror because now we're starting to get to see horror from all different types of filmmakers, women, like particularly look at the legs that the substance has had, you know, revenge,
00:22:30
Speaker
Her first movie, which I thought was so incredible and such an amazing subversion of the stereotypical exploitation genre of rape revenge movies, that's an incredible film. But without the success of that and without her visual style and the breadth that she had in Revenge, you don't get to the substance. The substance goes on to do what it does and you get to embrace these ideas of not just a ah horror film because that's what it is,
00:22:57
Speaker
you get to be gross and disgusting and be gory and be like body horror and all these things, which is so not historically a space that female filmmakers have got to play within. You see the work of Alice Maomaki and, you know, she's six films in there and it plays in Australia and it has an audience here, but it really plays internationally and that stuff is hugely in demand. So It's exciting, I think, an exciting time to love horror and make horror and genre period. Like give me your like action movies set in one night. Give me your Aussie diehards. Give me your Aussie speeds.
00:23:31
Speaker
Give me, well, don't want to say Aussie point break because maybe that's a little bit like we're getting there with the surfer and things. But I want to see more of that because you look at that era of Ausploitation and you sit there and literally go through those lists of movies that were made within conservative budgets, right?
00:23:50
Speaker
So they were cheap budget, but they were also really inventive. There's some really cool stories in there. And you do get your Suspiria ripoffs when which shit becomes popular. So your Alison's birthday and things like that, but, and even stage fright, I guess in a way, but then you also get these like really fun and interesting slashes like houseboat horror. You get all the Brian Trenchard Smith movies. You get this interesting sub genre of like Aussie Kung Fu. There's just like,
00:24:19
Speaker
Creature features. It's just cool shit in there. And I know there's a lot of creature features in development and in production and in post at the moment. And I just think that's sick. Like give us more of that because it also means it's great to have your Ackermans and your Thor Vagnarok and those big movies that are shooting here and employ a lot of people.
00:24:40
Speaker
but it's And it's awesome to have your TV dramas that are all like dusty in some various capacity or certain outback whatever. but having that stuff in between those like middle tier, those smaller budget things as well as don't you want to see people working? Like I want to see people booked and busy.
00:24:58
Speaker
I want to see people like working on movies about crocodiles or killer whales sharks and shit. You know, I want to say like territory season eight, like, hello, that's a neo-Western. That's fun. Like, give me more of that.
Funding and Development Challenges
00:25:12
Speaker
That's, that's really compelling stuff.
00:25:14
Speaker
Well, speaking of crocodiles, no nice nice segue to the Black Talons. Game recognized game. Would you call the Black Talons a creature feature?
00:25:26
Speaker
Yeah, because there's creatures and it's a feature. So, and you know, like I just, as I'm saying that, I'm literally looking at like a crocodile tooth at my flatmates for me. Yeah, it's creature feature.
00:25:38
Speaker
So for anyone that doesn't know, the Black Talons is um the feature that Maria is in development with. But something I wanted to ask you about was that I remember years ago you saying, I'm never going to get a grant.
00:25:54
Speaker
Like I'm never going to get any kind of funding from any of these bodies. So how did it feel when then when you got development funding from Screen Australia for the Black Talons?
00:26:08
Speaker
Thank you so much for bringing up my days of woe. and I will just say the development funding for Black Talents that I got from Screen Australia was my 101st application.
00:26:19
Speaker
So I'm talking like this well, hello, depression. um So I'm talking like this isn't just film. This isn't just Screen Australia. This was like I had applied to state bodies. I had gone on for director's attachments. I'd gone on for grants to write books. I had gone on for writer's retreat. Like I had applied for everything forever, literally going back to when I was 19 years old and I got my first successful grant application through at the age of 36.
00:26:55
Speaker
So I don't know, take it with a grain of salt, really like it ain't over until it's over, but also that only gets you so far. You know what i mean? Like it makes it sound like such a big deal. And it,
00:27:05
Speaker
It was massive for me again, 101 applications. So you're like, fuck. But at the same time, it's like monetarily what you can do with that is quite limited and ah depending on how much you've applied for.
00:27:18
Speaker
but what that meant was without that development funding, we weren't able to get to the next stage, which was developing the story and the characters and the ideas enough and the concept, because it's all about colonization.
00:27:31
Speaker
And making that accessible in a way that includes people into that story rather than excludes people in a way that great horror comedies like Attack the Block, like Slashback, like Boys from County Hell, like Vampires Be the Bronx have done for their various themes, whether it's about gentrification in the case of Attack of the Block, whether it's about real estate, vampires v the Bronx, whether it's about cultural longevity and preservation and slashback.
00:28:02
Speaker
All of those things are really important stories, but they're also encapsulated within a really pacey, compelling, fun, gory horror comedy. And so people get hooked in for those elements and at the same time get to learn some stuff along the way that I think is critically important. And without that development grant, we wouldn't have been able to literally develop a story, develop themes, all that, and have an investor come on who funds us for draft and then you progress to that next stage and to that next stage and to that next stage. And, you know, now we're in pre and it's like a, it's a very tangible reality.
00:28:37
Speaker
And it literally wouldn't be a reality without all of those things going back to being successful with the development application from Screen Australia. and I should say that I ended up getting a different application through successfully with on another project, not with Screen Australia with one of the state funding bodies. It hasn't been a announced yet, so i can't say, but I was two for two. And if you look at the stats and the time that it takes, like, I think it's more detailed than your last gyno exam. Like it's so crazy and as it should be, you know, like it's high stakes and you're asking people for money that eventually you pay back when the thing goes into reduction. But
00:29:22
Speaker
it is so detailed and so hard. And if I hadn't had 101 unsuccessful applications before i got one successful one, I don't think I would have like been able to get another successful one after that. Yeah.
00:29:38
Speaker
Well, there's an art to writing a grant application. I mean, production companies literally have people whose sole job it is to apply for grants.
00:29:48
Speaker
Like they have a full-time person on staff. And so, as an individual, you are at such a disadvantage in terms of like the people you're going up against have done, you think a hundred and one's bad. They've probably done a thousand of these and had successful ones.
00:30:03
Speaker
So they're so fluent in the language you need to use and the terminology, and they understand what elements of the story to push forward and what elements of the story to tape down.
00:30:14
Speaker
And it's just like, you can't compete with that experience and knowledge. So
Diversity in Filmmaking
00:30:18
Speaker
I don't know, you just find time to write grants and apply for grants when you see them and also keep eyes out for friends. The amount of times I had people send things over to me and be like, hey, babe, saw this thought of you. Hey, babe, saw this thought of you.
00:30:32
Speaker
that stuff's really important because you apply and usually aren't successful, but I don't know. There's a, there's a moral in there somewhere. I don't know what it is. And so the Black Talons, can you give a bit of an idea? You said you're in pre, yeah, where you're at with the feature and like, what is it about?
00:30:53
Speaker
So the Black Talons is about a teenage girls netball team who get washed into a public house and tower during a flash flood and are forced to fight for their lives against uh crocodilius monsters shall we say uh that emerge from the sewers beneath them and it's a survivalist horror comedy I guess you could say the sort of core idea is you know a lot of creature features and a lot of horror have a final girl But what if it's a team of final girls?
00:31:22
Speaker
And I guess one of the big like sort of modus operandi for me with black talents was um I think a lot of times in Australia, diversity is considered like black or white, like it's these hard lines.
00:31:37
Speaker
And the reality is Australia is a massively diverse country, except so often diverse stories don't get prioritised as narratives. Like Sione's Wedding, which is one of the most successful comedies out of New Zealand, it's like how do we not have, you know, there's a sequel as well, but like how do we not have 50 versions of Sione's Wedding coming out of Australia with the Samoan and Tongan population here?
00:31:59
Speaker
How do we not have so many Pacifica stories that can be done here by incredibly talented Pacifica directors and art directors and production designers and cinematographers and costume designers, you name it. So anyway, my agenda was really to like put a team together that represents the Australian diaspora, which is Aboriginal women, which is Maori woman, Samoan woman, Tongan women, African women.
00:32:26
Speaker
Vietnamese women, like all of those types of quote unquote minorities where you either get to include one of them in a story as the best friend or like your stories have to be segregated over here. And the reality is like you look at any friendship group in Australia and pretty much everybody in that friendship group is a different sexuality, a different gender, a different ethnicity,
00:32:50
Speaker
is differently abled, you know, like all of those things that are real, um it's not pulling that from fiction. It's not to tick a diversity box. It's actually just to represent Australia as it is and just to represent a certain age group as it is. That's just what I wanted to see.
00:33:07
Speaker
So that was basically the the agenda that I had with Black Talons. But we're also dope. We're funny as fuck. And like, I'm so sick of seeing us like relegated to supporting characters or you get one line in the background or it has to be some kind of like traumatic drama or something. We're all sniffing glue.
00:33:27
Speaker
It's like, I'm excited to start to see us in more genre spaces. And I think Talk To Me was a pretty great example of that. That was one of the first times I had seen a friendship group on screen in Australian pop culture that I thought was a pretty accurate representation of like modern Australian friend groups. You know, it was like really eclectic and diverse. And that is kind of how it is. You feel like it's all these different types of personalities kind of duct tape together.
00:33:54
Speaker
It felt so authentic and organic because of that. And I also think that's part of the reason the film had such legs overseas. So films that do represent that and do have that accurately reflected in the content Coincidentally, they do really well overseas because overseas people get to see themselves represented. It's crazy.
00:34:14
Speaker
Wild how that works. Wild. smile It's so nuts how sometimes if you include people, things do well. I don't know. Yeah. Crazy. Fast and Furious rules. That's what it is. I always think about my second favorite film franchise of all time. I was like, when will Maria work Fast and the Furious into the conversation? Listen, Fast and Furious proved the case to Hollywood that diversity is financially lucrative and long-term pop-culturally beneficial.
00:34:42
Speaker
Because that first film, which is based on a really great article called Racer X, which is essentially about Latino and Asian communities in New York street racing, that first film adds ethnicities to the story, right?
00:34:55
Speaker
and then what they saw when they had the numbers come back is like, oh shit, the Latino audience showed out African American audience showed out the Asian American audience showed out and the, I don't know, Paul Walker audience showed Caucasians.
00:35:07
Speaker
I was like, what, what is that? I was like, what's that called? What's that? White people. Right. But he had something, right. He had something very unique and special that like shone most bright in those films.
00:35:19
Speaker
Then the second film expands on that and the third, and then you really start to get into it, particularly with the fifth, because you're adding Pacifica communities too. And like, one thing we'll do, it's we'll fucking show out and support.
00:35:30
Speaker
And so those movies become the billion dollar franchise that they are because they keep including people rather than excluding people. And so please, anybody listening to this or watching this, feel free.
00:35:42
Speaker
In case of emergency, break glass and use the Fast and Furious case study. Use it but because it works. Yeah. I mean, you heard it here. um And so I have some questions around
Genre Preference and Creative Process
00:35:58
Speaker
genre. Some things that aren't about Fast and Furious. Yeah.
00:36:01
Speaker
Well, Fast and Furious is a genre. So when you say you like writing genre, is it horror specifically? Yeah, I mean, genre had becomes such a wide, all-encompassing term because rom-com and romance is considered genre fiction.
00:36:19
Speaker
But my first genre love was horror. Like horror was the first movie I ever saw was Jaws. My favorite movie is Alien. The thing that i wore out as a VHS back in the day was this animated film from Rankin and Bass called Man Monster Party, which is essentially a stop motion animation about a guy who gets sent to an island that has all the monsters Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, Invisible Man. It's got like a bone band kind of being the Ramones. It's where the song Man Monster Party comes from. It's the fucking best all time, all time, all time.
00:36:51
Speaker
And so that was a big love for me. So i would always seek out things that gave me that same physical feeling that I would get from horror. But then you get into things like action is a similar sort of vibe, right? Especially when you start getting into specific types of action, what's the rating on that action and thrillers, neo-noir, yen-noir, sort of anything in that space, sci-fi, it's all like, it has my interest. It has my attention.
00:37:20
Speaker
And because you know it so well, you know, all the conventions Yeah. In terms of writing it, what audiences want, but also how you can make it different.
00:37:31
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, like you look at something like the body swap subgenre or like body swapping as a device, which you've seen a thousand times before now, Freaky Friday, obviously, but then you think of something like Freaky, the horror film,
00:37:45
Speaker
which Vince Vaughn swaps bodies with Catherine. And so you get a really fun genre twist on something that is like a conventional device. And so i love anything like that, where you think it's, you know, where it's going and it takes a hard left or right turn. Even the Groundhog Day device, we've seen that done so fascinatingly in horror with Happy Death Day franchise and a bunch of others that it's like, it's really compelling stuff. Slashers had been something that I've obviously always loved, but literary slashes had had these big dips and lulls. And with my book, The Graveyard Shift, that had been a novel I'd written had been trying to get published for years, but everyone was like, stay in your supernatural monsters lane. And i was like, okay, and I'll just wait until the literary slasher is back, baby, because I know it's coming back. You know, that's
00:38:32
Speaker
OG Nancy Drew, and I know what you did last summer, and Psycho, Peeping Tom, all those kinds of things. And it did come back, in part because people were taking the conventional literary slasher and doing unconventional things with it, like There's Someone Inside My House, which got adapted into a really excellent feature that I feel like nobody has watched on Netflix.
00:38:54
Speaker
So it's always, I love playing in worlds that have a quite strict, I guess, set of rules um and figuring out ways you can bend and break them. And I think that's why when it comes to IP, when I've worked with Marvel or the DC Comics or Assassin's Creed, I have really found working in the IP space rewarding, creatively rewarding and quite fun to do when fellow creatives of mine or like peers that we've had these conversations about haven't found it as rewarding because there are too many rules and oh this bit's canon and that bit's canon and this is tough whereas I think if you come from a genre background you essentially have a superpower already because you're used to analyzing the rules it's like you know Randy and scream where he's sitting there explaining all the rules like you can't don't say you'll be back because you won't be back you know don't have sex all those things
00:39:47
Speaker
Yeah. And so another thing I wanted to talk to you about was more kind of like writing process. But first of all, your work ethic is something I've always been so impressed by, like the speed at which you can write, the amount of different things that you're juggling, but you produce them at such a high quality.
00:40:15
Speaker
Like how do you stay on top of multiple deadlines? By having no choice. No, I guess number one, grow up poor. Number two, start a career in journalism, specifically when you and I started out as journalists, we were in the dying days of print journalism, which was it's so sad because it's like community journalism, I think is so vital, but I also think print physical journalism is is so critical and you only really see what you've lost in the absence of the thing and the stories that go unreported.
00:40:50
Speaker
But as a print journalist, it meant that I had multiple deadlines per day, every day. And there was no barometer for failure or mediocrity.
Managing Multiple Projects
00:41:01
Speaker
It's like, this is going to print.
00:41:03
Speaker
You need to give me 25 centimeters. So you'd bust your balls to do that along with six other stories you had. And maybe the other story you had, you know, it's getting placed as the front page story that day, or it's going to be the big page three spread.
00:41:17
Speaker
But that doesn't mean any of the other stories you covered aren't going to go through because they're already placed on pages too. So it just becomes this fucking nightmare where you're like, oh my God, I got to write 45 centimeters on a double murder and then 20 centimeters on page six or seven or whatever on a schnauzer meetup or some shit. And then you've got to cover a car accident, like, you know, all in the one day. And so you became very adept at writing fast and also writing in a way that It's not a few fuck up.
00:41:46
Speaker
Oh no, I did a boo boo. It's facts. It's people's lives. It's people's names. It's people's deaths. And so you became skilled at writing fast, but also skilled at getting it right. And back then there were actually consequences for getting shit wrong.
00:42:02
Speaker
So it was a baptism of fire. Definitely. But then also juggling multiple projects, I've just respectfully never had a choice. i I've just never had the luxury where someone's like, hey, babes, we love your shit. Like take a year, write a novel, but get come back to us in a year. They're like, come back to us in a month or your career's ever.
00:42:22
Speaker
And you're like, fuck. And so you have to make that work. And most of my books were written while also either working full-time journalism jobs or like while working on the feed or whatever, working at ACME.
00:42:35
Speaker
And so that becomes tough and that becomes a juggle. But at the same time. Like switching between the different styles? Nah, more just the time really. yeah The story, I think I've always had stories pouring out of me. I just have never had enough time to be able to get them all down. Like even now, as I'm talking to you, I'm looking at my desk and I've got all these fucking memento-esque post-its and it's like the different projects that I have, the deadlines that they are due by and who the stakeholder is. So, this thing is due for that streamer or this thing is due for that person or this thing is due for that. And they're organized in priority. But then behind that list, I have another list, which is all of the projects that are in various stages of either completion or brainstorming. And the problem, I guess, it takes a really long time to develop a film in a way that like a novel, you can just fucking
00:43:30
Speaker
Like you have a rough plan, but I think so much of writing a novel is discovering it in the process of doing it, at least for your first draft. And then you go back and you figure it out and you fix it and you shape it into something better.
00:43:42
Speaker
But you have a skeleton and the actual writing of the novel is adding the tendons and the ligaments. Whereas for a film, it's almost like you have to have this whole iceberg underneath the surface developed.
00:43:53
Speaker
And then the script is just this tiny little shitty bit that everybody thought, the titanic hit when really it was this massive mound of ice underneath and so the developing of all the characters so when they say one line there's all this like layer and meaning behind it that's the stuff that takes a really long time so you know you have meetings with development people or execs or whatever and they'll be like oh so what if what ideas do you have and you'll pitch them a few random am ideas like that sounds great send us a script just like Do you know how long that takes?
00:44:24
Speaker
Do you know? Like the actual physical writing of a script doesn't in theory take that long, but it's all of the iceberg work. It's all of the development of the character arcs and the stories. What are their wounds? What are their motivations? And if you took them out of the scenario, what would they be doing otherwise? And like making sure that every centimeter on a script page counts and has value. Otherwise it's a waste of time.
00:44:47
Speaker
Otherwise you end up with a three and a half hour movie that, you know, just everybody suffers as they watch. but
00:44:56
Speaker
Well, um we've talked about some long films, but to switch it up, a very random question, but it's about social media.
Social Media Strategy
00:45:06
Speaker
And so you have a big online presence, particularly with your viral Monday meme drops, which...
00:45:14
Speaker
People should check them out. Viral according to who? Me. Maybe like venereal, but. Me, me. ah Okay. I enjoy them very much. Thank you. And I forward them to many people.
00:45:25
Speaker
But how important is social media to writers, to creatives these days? Social media is pretty critically important to a point, I feel.
00:45:38
Speaker
For clarity, my dream is to be a recluse and have no social media. The only social media is I have ah Instagram that I actively use and then I have X because you're just going to have to pry Twitter from my cold, dead hands because people are just too fucking funny.
00:45:52
Speaker
And it's just sometimes the best way to track ah something that's happening in the moment, a specific pop cultural moment or disaster or whatever it is, there is still... nothing quite like the the rapid pace of Twitter. I can't believe I called it X in the previous sentence. How embarrassing.
00:46:11
Speaker
It is its name now. I give a fuck. I don't care, man. Unless you're Mariah Carey, I'm not out here calling you 12 different names, okay? You're just Twitter to me.
00:46:25
Speaker
So social media is important. I think... Especially like I sort of have, you know, set up rules for myself. I find it hard, and not as hard as I used to, to be fair. Like back in the days when we were in the trenches of Twitter, where every review that you would have come out or every article you had come out, you would be inundated with rape threats, death threats, blah, blah, blah.
00:46:49
Speaker
A lot of the people that were on that platform have either left or i don't know what it is like. i Maybe it's just because I'm not that active on there anymore. Whereas Instagram, I have found to be a much safer space, I guess, that I can curate. ah It's a lot of, you know, people that I've worked with, friends that I've had for a long time, but it's also creatives whose work I love engaging with or different types of artists, DOPs, like just you name it. I think it's just, I find so much inspiration on there, but I'm really quite strict about how I use it and when I use it and setting up rules for myself. Like for instance, I never,
00:47:26
Speaker
post from wherever I am specifically in that moment, just due to safety issues I've had in the past. And ah so I'm always like delay posting and I'm pretty careful about like any sort of geographical landmarks and things.
00:47:39
Speaker
But it is something that I have found, particularly post COVID and 2020 onwards, quite integral way to stay connected with people in different time zones and stay connected with people that you've worked with. There have been people I've worked with on projects that we're all forced apart because we're no longer in the US or we're no longer in New Zealand anymore.
00:47:59
Speaker
And the way we've stayed in touch with each other was through voice memos on Instagram. You know, I love a voice memo. Or it's like, you feel like you're up to date with that person's life because you see little pictures or little whatever. And so much of my Instagram and social media usage is those conversations with friends that are sort of happening behind the scenes or whatever. But I have literally gotten jobs from Instagram because whether it's the meme drop or whether it's like,
00:48:25
Speaker
lots of times you'll take generals and oftentimes you'll find the person you had that general with starts following you on social media if they didn't already. And in a way it's them trying to suss you out, trying to get a vibe for you.
00:48:38
Speaker
This is the person you present as in that meeting, but who are you really? And I can figure that out based on the things that you share and the things that you don't share. Are you apolitical? Are you super political? Like all of those things.
00:48:50
Speaker
what are the things that you care about? Is it hashtag just vibes or is it social justice? Is it whatever? So all of that stuff becomes again, like a really useful tool. And you're trying to develop those creative posses that you want to work with producers who might have similar values and ethics and ideologies as you or people who don't and, but really respect your vision or really respect your opinion and want to push you in a certain direction. And that friction can be really creatively rewarding as well. So yeah,
00:49:20
Speaker
Yeah, I do find it pretty essential. my dream and like the way that you'll know i have had gotten enough money to sustain myself is my social media account will just disappear one day. It'll just be fucking gone. And you'll never know where I never had Tik TOK or anything.
00:49:37
Speaker
I had Vine back in the day, used to love Vine, but you know, the areas of Tumblr and all that is just like trying to be economic with time. Like, fuck yeah I still got to create the shit. Like as far as I'm concerned, Instagram is a tool that,
00:49:51
Speaker
for me to sell my wares, which are my novels, my scripts, the things that I'm working on, events that I'm emceeing and hosting. i love doing that shit. So I'm trying to encourage people to go to other friends' events and things like they're hosting festivals that I might be working at any of that kind of stuff.
00:50:08
Speaker
If I'm on a pop culture convention, letting people know that you're going to be there. And yes, I did get social media really and as a journalist and then it became a tool as a novelist. But now as a filmmaker,
00:50:21
Speaker
It's something that is actually pretty vital to my work. And it is about having that mix of, you know, i always post some personal stuff and then a few memes and then something professional, personal memes, professional, trying to keep that balance so that it's not just all work.
Creative Interests and Preferences
00:50:38
Speaker
It's not just all personal. It's not just all memes. And, um yeah, that's my two cents. um Which brings us then to the final question. Oh, dun, dun, dun.
00:50:51
Speaker
ah So this is a segment called Pay It Forward. Hell yeah. Is that because you love the Hayley Joel Osment films so much that you're like. think about it every time I say the name of the segment, which is a bit annoying.
00:51:06
Speaker
because Kevin Spacey. but Well, I didn't think of that, but yeah. Okay. Now that we've ruined the name of the segment, the segment is pay it forward.
00:51:17
Speaker
So I have a question from a previous guest for you. And after you answer it, if you could come up with a question for the next guest.
00:51:28
Speaker
Oh, awesome. Great concept. Full credit to you. Love this idea. i have so many questions all the time about everything. um So can't wait to pay it forward to somebody else, but also I'm very intrigued to find out what this question is, knowing your previous guest.
00:51:42
Speaker
Okay. So the previous guest was Yingna Liu, the producer, and this is her question. So I reckon, like, I could only think of industry questions. Yeah, it's meant to be an industry question. Okay, yeah, yeah. It's not like some fun thing It doesn't need to be like your favorite color.
00:52:03
Speaker
Yeah. yeah Um, maybe I will just in, in reaction to that, it's like, what is your favorite color, but also what is the type of work people know you for and how aligned is that to the type of work you actually enjoy doing? Um, my favorite color is, I was very obviously purple. Anyone who's known me for more than five minutes. In fact, most people have been in my life for more than ah minute, probably first met me when I had purple hair. I had purple hair for, you know, nearly
00:52:35
Speaker
I don't know, over a decade, a long, a long, long time. um So my favorite color is purple, always has been. My second favorite color aqua. I know that wasn't the question, but just like adding some additional context. Keep the ball rolling. Keep the ball rolling.
00:52:47
Speaker
The work that I'm best known for would be as much discussed on the show genre, period. So it would be anything along the lines of like horror, supernatural, thrillery, rom-com. My rom-com One Last Gob Job was featured on the Blacklist number one recommendations list and is like, yes, technically a genre project because it's, but it's like a little unconventional kind of twist. So basically anything with a twist is what I'm known for.
00:53:16
Speaker
how does that align to the work that I'll like working on is like, that's kind of all I, all I made. No one's, nobody's hiring me for like the cold mountain TV series. Do you know what i mean?
00:53:28
Speaker
Like it's um usually when I'm getting phone calls about jobs or people asking me to pitch on stuff or someone's like, will you go meet with this? It's like, hey, we need a monster chick. yeah Has literally been, ah how we need a monster girly.
00:53:42
Speaker
You know, when we Google insert creature name here, yours is the third third name that comes up as a global expander. I'm like, no, no. Thank you. um So niche interests and yeah, that's that's my priority for things that I like working on is essentially anything I would love to watch. And I pretty much love to watch anything except long melodramas really.
00:54:03
Speaker
And three and a half hour movies. So the Black Towns is going to be a tight. Oh, Black Towns, two minutes. It's just a video clip. So someone's going to get out a notebook in the cinema and be like. What's short?
00:54:17
Speaker
Question mark? Amazing. um That was great. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast. Can I just say, and keep this in, don't edit it out. But number one, thanks so much for having me Number two, this shit's so vital.
00:54:32
Speaker
It literally does, nothing like this exists in the specific lens and perspective that you have and the relationships you've built with people to be able to have a podcast like this, which is yes, very inside baseball, but I think helps create a pathway for people who are hoping to get into the industry and like curious about it.
00:54:51
Speaker
It's super specific in detail, but at the same time welcoming. And I'm so glad that, you know, the bitch is back.
00:55:00
Speaker
Well, thank you. I feel very uncomfortable and awkward with that. you remember when we had a podcast together back in the day? do. F yeah, film and feminism. f yeah, film and feminism. And I made a montage of all like clips and songs and shit. money And it went for so long. long.
00:55:21
Speaker
I was the OG brutalist, really. i was like Rady Corbett just putting Powerpuff Girl clips together with Beyonce. ben You were the podcast version of the brutalist. Yeah. Yeah.
00:55:32
Speaker
Yeah, there you go. That's me.
00:55:36
Speaker
That was screenwriter Maria Lewis. Thanks to her for joining us on this episode of Breaking Screen. This episode was produced and edited by myself with logo designed by Shara Parsons and music by Seb Sabotage Gavrilovic. If you liked this episode, please hit that subscribe button and leave us a review.
00:55:54
Speaker
See you in a fortnight.