This is a transcript of SYS 507 – Talking Amber Heard and In The Fire with Conor Allyn .
Welcome to Episode 507 of the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. I’m Ashley Scott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger with www.sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I’m interviewing Conor Allyn, who just did a period feature called In the Fire, starring Amber Heard. He’s another very interesting indie filmmaker like Joe, who I talked with last week, who’s not doing the typical low budget horror thriller Indies. He’s doing historical period pieces like In the Fire, and has done some indie war films as well. Again, war films are not typically the low budget indie fair that we see. So, we’ll talk about his new film In the Fire as well as some of his early films and how he was able to get those produced. So, stay tuned for that interview.
If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leave me a comment on YouTube or retweeting the podcast on Twitter or liking or sharing it on Facebook. These social media shares really do help spread word about the podcast, so they’re very much appreciated. Any websites or links that I mentioned the podcast can be found on my blog in the show notes. I also publish a transcript with every episode in case you’d rather read the show or look at something later on. You can find all the podcast show notes at www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/podcasts and then just look for episode 507. If you want my free guide How to Sell a Screenplay in Five Weeks, you can pick that up by going to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. Just put in your email address and I’ll send you a new lesson once per week for five weeks along with a bunch of bonus lessons. I teach the whole process of how to sell your screenplay in that guide. I’ll teach you how to write a professional logline and query letter, and how to find agents, managers and producers who are looking for material. Really is everything you need to know to sell your screenplay, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.
So, a quick few words about what I’m working on. So, I’m actually recording this podcast episode just a week after the SYS Film Festival, had a lot of fun running, it seemed to go really well. And a big thanks to all the SYS listeners who showed up. Thank you, it was good to meet some folks who listened to the podcast. I’m hoping to do it again next year. So, if you have a short script, or even a low-budget feature script that you think you can shoot yourself, really consider going out and shooting it so you can enter the festival, and join us next year with your film. We’re in a great location, this year the look dine-in cinema in Glendale, but they want to raise our rates quite a bit. So, I’m not sure if we’ll be able to go back there or not. But I’ll find another good location one way or another. And if you do live in the Los Angeles area and you have an in with a local theater, please let me know. And perhaps I can negotiate a better rate with another theater, I’m easy to get a hold of just info@sellingyourscreenplay.com. And again, if you’re in the LA area and have some sort of knowledge or you know someone who owns a theater or runs a theater, or works at a theater, just hit me up, I’d love to hear your thoughts on just renting a theater for a weekend. Anyway, so all that seemed to go well. And now I’m back rewriting my indie rom-com, which I’m hoping to get into production next year. We’ll see if I’m able to do that. Anyway, thanks again to all the SYS listeners who came out to the festival, it really is appreciated, it really was nice meeting all of you. So those are some of the things I’ve been working on. Now, let’s get into the main segment today. I’m interviewing writer-director Conor Allyn, here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Conor to the Selling Your Screenplay Podcast. Really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Conor Allyn
Thank you for having me, Ashley, I really appreciate being here.
Ashley
So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where do you grow up? And how did you get interested in the entertainment business?
Conor Allyn
Yeah, I grew up in Dallas, Texas, went to school in Washington, DC. And you know it, I don’t know what it’s like to come from New York or Los Angeles. But when you grew up where I did, or anywhere in the middle of the country, probably being a writer, or being a screen writer is not a real job. I remember my father-in-law at our wedding, put his hands on my shoulders and said… Yeah, we love Conor. He’s great, and, you know, doing this writing thing and we love Conor, and we wish him the best of luck with that… He was a established plastic surgeon. And I’d already had stuff, you know, made at that point. I was like, thanks.
Ashley
So just talk us through that, I actually grew up in the DC area. So, I’m well versed in sort of the DC area film community, which is to say there’s really not a lot going on. But maybe you can talk us through that because obviously I was an accounting major in college. So, I got out of college, didn’t want to do accounting, and I got a lot of those same looks like gee, you’re going to do accounting, okay, good luck with that. How do you get over that? How do you just handle those situations where people are skeptical, but if you believe that it’s something that you have to do just emotionally how do you get through those times?
Conor Allyn
That’s so tough. Yeah, you just, you know, ultimately you have to believe that you have something to say that needs to be said. That you can tell a story and that people will listen. And you got to have those convictions and just stick with it. Because, you know, people are going to even the people you love and interest and who want you to succeed your own parents or whatever, they want you to succeed so badly, but they can’t do it for you. You got to go. And then ultimately, you got to go do it, you got to prove it. I didn’t go to film school, went to Georgetown, and you know, thought I was going to get a real job. And when I decided I wanted to just okay, I’m going to make movies. That’s what I’m going to do. I just started, I just bought a bunch of books on screenwriting and started reading them. And one of them Robert Coleman or something, he had a book that was like, until the amount of unmade screenplays that you’ve written back when people printed stuff, you know, reaches your knees. You’re not a real writer. And at the time, I was like, oh, that’s not going to be I’m going to get all my stuff made. And now I’m like, okay, I got a lot of stuff that hasn’t been made but doesn’t slow me down from what.
Ashley
Okay, so pick us back up. For you get out of college, you want to make movies. I noticed on IMDb, you have your first writing and producing credit is Red and White. Maybe you could just talk about briefly how did you get that project written and then ultimately produced?
Conor Allyn
Totally, yeah, I backdoored my way into Hollywood big time. My dad was a political consultant, that’s what I thought I wanted to do. He was making commercials in Indonesia for a political party there. And I was working for a partner of his who lived there full-time. We were making commercials and documentaries and PSAs and stuff like that. And this wealthy family that was starting this party, they had had two uncles die in the Indonesian war of independence. And I loved movies. And I had been my dad had taught me a great love of films, didn’t think I was going to do it. And I said, oh, we should make a movie about that. There hadn’t been an Indonesian movie made about their war of independence since like, the early 80s. And we pitched it and the guy was like, yeah, that’s a great idea. And then we had to go make it.
Ashley
So now, did you want to be a director at that point, as well?
Conor Allyn
No, not at all. I mean, I didn’t know. I love storytelling, for sure. I was definitely the kid on the block, who was like… Alright, today, this is what we’re going to play, you’re going to be the Nazis, and we’re going to be the allies. And we’re going to go over here. And like, I wasn’t directing that we made home videos and stuff, and, you know, strapping fireworks to ourselves and doing all that kind of fun stuff. But I never saw it as a job. And so doing those movies in Indonesia is Indonesian war films. For the first time, like, I got paid to do it. And was able to say to myself, like, oh, I love this, this is a real job, I should just, I can do this, I can pursue this.
Ashley
So, then you did three of these movies? And then what was that step then actually trying to get back to Hollywood, back to the United States and build a career from there? How did you use that to leverage into other jobs and other movies?
Conor Allyn
So, I did. So was second backdooring. Moving to Hollywood, you know, by the time those three movies were over, and the first movie was directed by a first-time director to real, huge challenge. I had written the movies and was producing on them. And so, when we did the movies were successful, even if they were, you know, difficult. And so, I ended up co-directing on the sequels. And so, by the time I moved to Los Angeles, you know, I did have a great advantage, which was, instead of going to film school and making a short, I had three movies that I can point to, and I had a real you know, it was an Indonesian, no one had ever heard of these movies before. But, you know, I could point and say; hey, I blew up this tank, and I, you know, I like I know how to do stuff. And so that gave me you know, some leverage to think breaking into the industry is so hard when you when you go in the front door, just alright, I’m here in Los Angeles and Warner Brothers open the door I want to show you how good I am. Because you got to prove it. And there’s no way to prove it without making a movie. And the barrier to entry for production is very high because it’s expensive, even a low budget movie, couple million dollars, probably. So, it’s difficult to get someone to trust you until you’ve already done it.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So, let’s dig into your latest film In the Fire starring Amber Heard. Maybe to start out, give us a quick pitch your logline, what does this film all about?
Conor Allyn
Yeah. It is about a psychologist, female doctor from New York who travels to a remote plantation in South America to help this disturbed young boy who has been ostracized from his community, you know, everything in this remote valley that goes wrong. Sickness, you know, crops failing, you know, his mom accidental death kind of gets blamed on this kid and the local zealot priest in a desire to cure his community of this evil thinks that the kid is the root of it and wants to perform an exorcism on this kid and this doctor shows up. And she obviously has a different viewpoint she wants to treat him, she sees it through the lens of medicine and science. And she helps this boy, but her rival also escalates the tension and the conflict between the boy and his father and their family and the rest of the community.
Ashley
So, on this podcast, I really try and highlight independent films like In the Fire, that come across my desk. But one of the things that I looked at your IMDb resume, and it’s very different than sort of, I would say, the typical person that comes to my podcast, you have a lot of period pieces. Even this current film In the Fire is maybe not necessarily a pure piece, but it’s definitely not your typical….
Conor Allyn
Yeah, this is…[Inaudible]
Ashley
Yeah, so but there’s generally I get a lot of horror, thrillers action, sort of these genre films, and your films are not quite like that. But they’re still independent. So maybe you can speak to that a little bit. Is this is where your interests lies? Do you have an in with a distributor that likes these types of films? Like why do these types of films on an independent film budget it?
Conor Allyn
I don’t know, I have glutton for punishment. It does make it harder. There’s no doubt in my mind, I actually wrote this film, I had a manager at the time. And he was like, and he was right about this. He was like, Conor, like, this is really hard to sell, you know, period and female lead cannot quite horror Gothic thriller, you know, if you could write like an action movie with, you know, a male star who’s just sort of like a little different from something we’ve seen before, you know, sell it. And he’s right. But I can’t do that. I want to do and so I like telling I would much rather create a new space in my stories in my worlds than retread something that, you know, may have been done before. So that’s why I often turn to history to kind of in this movie, it’s set in the wild west of South America. So, it’s a gaucho Western, as opposed to a Clint Eastwood Western. And you know, we’re also pulling from like the sub-genre of religious religion versus superstition, you know, demonic possession movies, but again, in a way where, where it’s ambiguous whether or not this little boy is possessed or not.
Ashley
Gotcha. So where did this idea come from for In the Fire? I noticed there are two other writers that share writing credit with you. Were you one of the original writers, did you get a draft and then worked?
Conor Allyn
You know, movies between origination and completion, like, a lot of iterations. Yeah, so I was sort of the originator of the concepts and did the first draft. I’m also a producer, my co writers, Pascal and Silvio are also producers. And so, it was really just at some, Pascal was the first one to read the script, really connected with it. We started working on it, he had an old relationship with this Italian producer named Silvio, he come on board, we all started working on the script together, you know, it takes a village to make a movie. And the less money you have, the more people you need, who are going to be loyal advocate. And so, I think it was just a building a team of people who loved the story, wanted to make it happen and trying to fit those building blocks together.
Ashley
So, maybe you could talk through the actual process of writing with these folks. Were you guys in the same room? So, you wrote the first draft, then was it a bunch of zoom meetings? Would they take the draft and sort of give it their spin and then send it back to you, just what are the logistics of actually working on this look?
Conor Allyn
Both. You know, sometimes it kind of depends on who really… I’ve co-written things with other people as well. And I think whenever you’re working with a co-writer, you need to make sure that one, we all want the same movie, and I would give that same advice not just to co-writers, but if someone’s going to produce your movie, whoever is going to be the director, the actor, right on down to the crew, we all need to make the same movie, the same tone, we’re all on the same mission. Because if you have people on the team that are trying to do something else, it gets messy really fast. And you know, emotional too, you know, because people it’s very, especially with writing, it’s very personal. And there’s a lot of me in any of my movies. So, you want to have people who you get along with who you trust. And so, whether that’s them giving you a note. And you need to be being brave enough to be like, okay, you’re right. This does need work, I’ll fix it. Or them saying… Hey, let me take a scene. I have an idea here. Here it is. Let me run with it. And you say… Yeah, I trust you, go for it.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. Okay. So, once you guys had a draft that you were ready to go with, what were some of those steps to actually raising money? And was bringing on Amber Heard, did that help you secure some of the money, maybe you can talk about that process a little bit, just actually going from script to financing?
Conor Allyn
Yeah, so once we had a script down, Sylvio, who’s one of the other writers and producers, he had made a couple of movies in Italy. And it made a lot of sense even though this film set in South America for us to shoot part of it in Italy, in part in Guatemala, Italy, particularly, because we could rent these old fortified farmhouses that would be appropriate for this movie. And Italy has a really big tax credit. So, we were able to use that as part of our financing. And then, you know, any independent film, an independent film is completely cast driven. Maybe if you’re doing a low budget horror movie, you can get away with something that’s just execution, centric. But basically, if you want to get your movie made, and Netflix isn’t cutting you a check, you’re going to have to have star and even if, in fact, even if you are a studio movie, you’re going to have to restart. So, you got to get one. And I think the hard learning for me over the course of my career, and feel that I nailed it with this movie was, don’t just chase the most famous person you can get who will do your movie, you know, there’s a lot of independent genre films where, you know, nothing wrong with it. But like, older actors who just sign on to a movie for the paycheck, and they come and do their thing. Wave a gun around, put on the poster, the movie gets made, and that’s okay. But that’s not what I wanted to do. You know, it’s not what I want to do with my career. It’s not what I want to do with this movie, for sure. And I met Amber, I had written a TV pilot that she was attached to. And even though that show never got made, we formed a relationship I, you know, learned that she had lived in Mexico City for a while, she spoke fluent Spanish, she was really interested in history. And, you know, I thought… Gosh, I think she’ll connect with In the Fire. And so, I shared this script with her and she loved it right away. But she was like, oh, this is magical. And when the show didn’t go forward, I was like, do you want to know what’s going to make this movie? She fortunately for me said, yes.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. And how can people see In the Fire? Just what’s the release date? And where’s it going to be available?
Conor Allyn
Friday, October 13th, we’re in selects movie theaters. If you have an independent cinema near your home, maybe we’re there. But nowadays, more likely watch it at home with a bag of popcorn.
Ashley
Perfect, perfect. And I just like to wrap up the interviews by asking the guests if there’s anything you’ve seen recently that you can recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience, anything on HBO, Hulu, Netflix, that you’ve just been watching to and thought that was actually pretty good and give us a recommendation?
Conor Allyn
It has to be a movie or could it be…?
Ashley
Anything. Yeah, yeah, absolutely anything.
Conor Allyn
I’m usually not a fan of I’m not like a huge lover of comedy, but I’ve been watching Only Murderers in the building. And I’m Steve Barton fan. And I’m just like, really captivated by that show. It’s like so it’s like murder but charming. From a writing, I always respect shows from a writing perspective. I’m watching the shows got it’s got great comedy and sort of nuance and you know, it sticks with its guns and its sort of ridiculous, but it knows it. And I love it.
Ashley
Perfect. Yeah, that’s a great recommendation. I have heard of it but I have not actually checked it out. So, I’ll have to check that out.
Conor Allyn
I was several seasons late myself.
Ashley
Yeah. What’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing? I’ll just round up and put in the show notes.
Conor Allyn
I will tell you I am not on social media by choice. A good friend of mine got trolled on a global scale on social media.
Ashley
Okay, perfect. Well, we’ll put your IMDb link and so people can have a look at that and kind of just keep up with your productions. Conor, I appreciate you coming on and talking today. Good luck with this film and good luck all your feature films as well. Thank you, will talk to you later. Bye.
SYS’s from concept to completion screenwriting course is now available just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse. It will take you through every part of writing a screenplay, coming up with a concept outlining, writing the opening pages, the first act second act, third act and then rewriting and then there’s even a module at the end on marketing your screenplay once it’s polished and ready to be sent out. We’re offering this course in two different versions. The first version you get the course, plus, you get three analyses from an SYS reader, you’ll get one analysis on your outline, and then you’ll get two analyses on your first draft of your screenplay. This is just our introductory price, you’re getting three full analyses, which is actually the same price as our three pack analysis bundles. So, you’re essentially getting the course for free when you buy the three analyses that come with it. And to be clear, you’re getting our full analysis with this package. The other version doesn’t have the analysis. So, you’ll have to find some friends or colleagues who will do the feedback portion of the course with you. I’m letting SYS select members do this version of the course for free. So, if you’re a member of SYS select, you already have access to it. You also might consider that as an option. If you join SYS select you will get the course as part of that membership too. A big piece of this course is accountability. Once you start the course, you’ll get an email every Sunday with that week’s assignment. And if you don’t complete it, we’ll follow up with another reminder the next week. It’s easy to pause the course if you need to take some time off, but as long as you’re enrolled, you’ll continue to get reminders for each section until it’s completed. The objective of the course is to get you through it in six months so that you have a completed power screenplay ready to be sent out. So, if you have an idea for a screenplay, and you’re having a hard time getting it done, this course might be exactly what you need. If this sounds like something you’d like to learn more about, just go to www.sellingyourscreenplay.com/screenwritingcourse, it is all one word, all lowercase. I will of course a link to the course in the show notes and I will put a link to the course on the homepage up in the right-hand sidebar.
On the next episode of the podcast, I’m going to be interviewing filmmaker and also another film festival producer, Lisa Crusada. Her festival City of Angels women’s Film Festival is coming up. It’s November 9th through the 12th. And their awards gala is that Sunday, November 12th, which I actually will be attending. SYS is going to offer an award of some of the SYS services to their screenplay winner. So, if you can come out to that, definitely we’d like to see you out and meet again, some of the SYS listeners. But next week, she’s on to talk about her festival and her career as a writer, producer and actress. You know, like myself, and I think a lot of people in this business she got into producing really to get good projects off the ground for herself as an actress, which is basically what I’ve started to do not as an actor, obviously. But as a writer, I’ve started to try and produce them and just get my projects into production. So, it’s another really inspiring story of just someone going out there making things happen for themselves. And you she has been in the business for a while. So, she’s got a world of knowledge, and just some very practical tips to offer all of us as well. So, keep an eye out for that episode next week. That’s the show. Thank you for listening.