This is a transcript of SYS Podcast Episode 537 – Gigi Levangie on working with the producers of SAW (2004).
Welcome to episode 537 of the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I’m AshleyScott Meyers, screenwriter and blogger at sellingyourscreenplay.com. Today I am interviewing writer Gigi Levangi. Her writing credits include the Julia Roberts film Step Mom, which we talk about briefly. But today she’s on the show to talk about her latest film, a thriller feature called Trust, which we talk about in some depth. So, stay tuned for that interview.
If you find this episode valuable, please help me out by giving me a review in iTunes or leaving 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 in 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/podcast and then just look for episode 537. If you want my free guide – How to sell a screenplay in five weeks, you can pick that up by going to sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide. It’s completely free. You 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 sellingyourscreenplay.com/guide.
Quick few words about what I’ve been working on. I am deep into pre-production with my rom-com, which we are shooting in November. Just to recap, I have a small crew assembled. I’ve just about got all my locations figured out. I’ve got the schedule pretty well locked and all of our dates are locked. We’re shooting from October 27th through November 14th. So, the big thing I’m working on now is casting. There’s always lots of actors to choose from here in LA. So that’s really the issue. We have an avalanche of people and we’ve got to pair that number down just by going through them. And you start with just head shots and you look at some of their reel, some of the media that they send in and then you choose the ones that you like. You send them a little notice. They send in a taped audition. So, we’ve now got actors submitting their taped auditions. And then this weekend I’ve been going through them trying to figure out who are the people that we want to bring in for our in-person audition which will be next weekend. So, getting the two leads right, obviously there’s a bunch of smaller roles as well but really focused on the two leads right now. I mean, we’re casting the smaller roles as well but the leads are really taking up a lot of time and rightfully so. I think getting the two leads right is probably the most impactful decision that we’ll make. I mean, this is a rom-com so we’ve got to find two beautiful actors who are great and just have great on-screen chemistry together. So, we’re spending some time with this and going to try and take our time but hopefully in the next week or two we’ll have that all ironed out.
And then once the casting is done we really are on the home stretch. One thing I’m still looking for is a band. We have a bar scene where there’s two scenes but we all be shot in one morning. It’s actually Tuesday, November 11th for about five hours in the morning up in Ventura at the bar that we’re renting. And the band is just going to be playing in the background. There’s a scene where the two leads, the couple, they go up and they dance and the first scene is like one day they go and he’s not very good. And then the second scene he goes up there and he’s improved his dancing skills so it’s kind of a little bit of a revelation that he’s gotten better at dancing. And we just need a band that can play some fast-paced danceable tunes and they have a nice stage. It’s a really cool bar that I’ve found and they have a nice stage, plenty of area. So we’ll try and get some extras and get the band up there. So, if you’re in a band or you know someone who is in a band and you perhaps might want to be featured as the band in the feature film, just reach out to me. As always, I mean, if you’re interested in helping in the film in any capacity, really just let me know. I’m easy to get ahold of. You can always reach me at info@sellingyourscreenplay.com. Anyways, lots more work to do. So stay tuned for those updates. Let’s get into the main segment today. I am interviewing writer Gigi Levangie. Here is the interview.
Ashley
Welcome Gigi to the Selling Your Screenplay podcast. I really appreciate you coming on the show with me today.
Gigi Levangie
Thank you, Ashley. I’m delighted to be here.
Ashley
Perfect. So, to start out, maybe you can tell us a little bit about your background. Where did you grow up and how do you get interested in the entertainment business? Just a quick overview so we can kind of get to know you a little bit.
Gigi Levangie
Of course. Okay. I grew up in East Hollywood. I went to Hollywood High. I did not have any connection to the idea of Hollywood, to the land of Hollywood. But I was a cheerleader of Hollywood High, and then I went on to go to UCLA, taking two buses to school. And still no interest, really, in Hollywood. But at some point in time, I became an intern on Thick of the Night, which was Alan Thicke’s talk show. And I don’t know if you remember Alan Thicke, he’s Robin Thicke’s father. And he was very talented. And I started writing sketches for the show as an intern. And he actually used them. So having been, I was a kid who loved, I loved reading, I loved writing, I skipped a couple grades, and, and those were the things I was, I was too, I was chubby and allergic to smog, so I couldn’t play outside. So, everything was centered around books and my imagination. So smash cut, I start working in Hollywood, I work as an assistant to Fred Silverman, I’m reading scripts. And I’m not thinking I can write just as good as these guys, I’m thinking, I can write just as good as these guys and get paid how much because I didn’t have any money, you know, no one in my mind. And so that was the start of my illustrious career was sort of practical.
Ashley
So, give us a little advice. So, you get a job as an intern. You’re clearly not on any kind of writing track. How do you get to the point where you can say without being annoying because everybody has a script, everybody thinks they’re a writer or director. How do you get to a point where you can actually start to say – Hey, you know, I could write some, some of these little bits for you, some of these jokes and get actually offload those. How do you actually start that conversation?
Gigi Levangie
Write them, you write them. So you actually have something you don’t, you don’t say I could do that you do it. And you take a chance. And especially with sort of, that was a freewheeling show where you could pitch ideas and that sort of thing. And I sat in every meeting and I had my little, you know, notebook and I was I would take notes like a good secretary, but I was always thinking of ideas. And you sometimes you have to be a little annoying. You know, I was married to somebody very, very big producer, Brian Grazer, and he for a long time, and he didn’t like saying no to him on, you know, in a business sense, was just a mere obstacle. It was like saying you’re going to get to yes, eventually. Sometimes you have to be that personality. I was told by Phil Stutz, like the you know, Dr. Stutz of the famous documentary, you have to learn how to ask for favors. Because that’s what Hollywood is. And if you have a good script, you’re actually doing the person you’re asking a favor, you know, bring something to the table, not just I have a dream. I have like Oliver Stone, I’m walking around with 12 scripts. You know, it’s you really have to have the goods and work on your craft. As I was obsessed, I’d get up at five o’clock in the morning and work before I went to my, my job with Fred Silverman. But really, in the beginning, it was like, these guys are making how much money?
Ashley
You know, yeah, sound advice. I hope people really heed that. So, just quickly talk about stepmom a little bit. Was that a spec script that you were able to get into the system? Um, what was the inspiration for that? And then ultimately, how did you kind of get that into the system and get that green lit?
Gigi Levangie
Okay, so stepmom, I wrote that very, very, very quickly. And I was, at the time, about to become a stepmom. And it was just this idea I had, like, what if something happened to my step-kid’s mom, and then how would if I were her, how would I train a new woman to raise my kids. And I couldn’t believe that no one had written this story before. So, it was just something that I, I felt very deeply and I wrote it quickly. And I had an agent at the time, but I wasn’t really signed on with him. And he got it to Julia Roberts and Susan Sarandon’s agent. And eventually, eventually, eventually, they said yes. And then it went through all these different directors. And a few years later, Chris Columbus decided to direct it. And at the end, it was I think it works as a movie really well. It didn’t have like my script had a little more humor, you know, in it. But that’s just me. That’s how I do bad news. I wait 20 minutes and make a joke, you know. So that’s my coping mechanism. So, but that’s, I, I don’t want to say I got lucky with that. But that was relatively smooth in terms of getting it to people relative to other-to-other projects. You wait years and years and years. Like this one, I think breathe it was breathe was six years. Trust, trust. Yeah.
Ashley
Now with something like Stepmom, especially the way it’s sort with Julia Roberts who’s surrounded, you know, very esteemed actors with Academy Award nominations. So, you think you’re going down this drama lane, but your script is actually pretty high concept. Exactly what you’re saying, where it’s like, gee, I’m surprised nobody ever came up with this idea before. And like, how do, where do you land on that discussion of, you know, how important is something being high concept like that? Even something that’s going to be sort of a drama, which is what you came up with. It still has a high concept premise.
Gigi Levangie
You know what, I so many things can be high concept without making it obvious. I don’t know, like I don’t necessarily choose something to watch because, because it’s like a great sound bite. You know, and I think most people are the same, like, yes, it’s stepmom is a high, you get it right away. But there are other movies where it’s like a slow burn. Like I like French films or, you know, European films I used to go to all the time. And that’s they’re more like a slow burn, you know, not a lot of high concept there. So. I don’t think it’s always necessarily necessary. I think if you’re writing something, and you feel it, like, this, this screenplay talks to your greatest fear, your greatest joy, if you feel some sort of emotion about what you’re writing, other people will feel the same. That’s what I think. And, and you better get it down on paper because somebody, especially if it’s a little high concept, somebody is also doing the same thing.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. So, so let’s dig into your latest film, Trust, which you wrote, maybe to start out, you can just give us a quick pitch or a logline. What is this film all about?
Gigi Levangie
Well, it’s about a famous woman’s or America’s sweetheart who has to leave town because she’s about to be hit with terrible publicity and she wants to go to a weekend secluded Airbnb and just shut the world off. But the best laid plans, you know, everything goes south for her on this trip. And it was based on one of my greatest fears, which is being locked in a small room closet in the dark and not being able to get out. And so that’s why I wrote it because it was a greatest spirit. It appealed to me on an emotional level and I felt some urgency because I had read a story years ago about a woman who went on vacation, secluded area. In the middle of the night, they surmised that she used, instead of going to the bathroom, she went into the hot water closet and she never made it out. You know, the door closes and that’s it. And she tried to scratch her, like, anyway. And I thought, this is the beginning of a movie. I have to write. I had a sense of urgency about it. You know, there are ideas and we share them all, you know, but that just speak to you and you have to, but you must, it’s imperative that you write it down and you get whatever your first draft done, I think as quickly as possible to have something tangible.
Ashley
So, you mentioned, and I think it’s absolutely correct. I really hope people are listening, just the idea of having your greatest fear or greatest joy. If that emotion is in there for you, it’s likely in there for other people, but I can’t help but notice with this, with Trust. And I totally get what you’re saying. It could be a greatest fear, but there’s also the practical where it’s very contained. So, you come up with an idea that also gives yourself a decent chance of actually getting produced fairly easy because it’s not going to cost a hundred million dollars to shoot this movie. But how much does that come into your thinking when you’re developing these ideas?
Gigi Levangie
funny because that didn’t come into my thinking at all. In fact, I was trying to figure out ways, so I have a crime committed outside the room. I have violence outside the room. I have her story leading up to it and a little bit of backstory. But I didn’t think about that at all when I wrote it because I don’t have the producer’s mind. I am only about the story, and for better or worse. But now, of course, I have another horror script, and of course I’m thinking, well, how do I make this more insular? How do I get rid of all the externals? I mean, look at Oren Kulis and the Saw pictures. Brilliant, right? I am not a horror picture fan per se, but brilliant that you are in one room and you throw everything that you can at the characters.
Ashley
Yeah. So, let’s talk about your writing process. Just quickly. Just maybe you can just kind of give us an overview. Sort of what is your writing process look like? Where do you typically write? Do you need to write at a coffee shop or you have ambient noise? Do you have a home office? Do you write in the morning? Do you write at night? Middle of the night? What is your writing schedule look like?
Gigi Levangie
God, I’ve only been doing this, and I’m 62. I’ve been doing this for almost 40 years. But, okay, so I write, usually what happens, I used to have home office and all that, but now I go to a coffee shop, I put in my head, I have headphones, I put them in, and I put on Simply Noise, the app Simply Noise, I put it to brown noise, it’s pink noise, white noise, brown noise, you know, there’s rain, there’s fire. I like the brown noise, it’s kind of low key, you know. And I time myself the Pomodoro method. So, 25 minutes of writing, five minutes on. 25 minutes of writing, five minutes daily mail. I have to get through, I try to get through five pages of a screenplay at least, if not more, and then a thousand words of a novel, if I’m right, depending on what I’m writing. And usually in the morning I work out, I ran out of kids, my kids are grown now, so I work out and then I make myself breakfast, go to write, have to have a latte, have to have my coffee.
Ashley
Now, how much time do you spend in the outline stage? Like you’re giving, you know, a thousand publishable words, your five pages. If you’re in the outline stage and how much time do you spend in the outline stage and how do you gauge whether a day spent in the outline stage is successful or not, because you don’t have those benchmarks, those clear benchmarks, like you’re talking about.
Gigi Levangie
Right, but you will feel like in terms of your time, your time output that you have done something, you’ll feel it. In terms of outline, when I’m writing a screenplay, I go back to the 10-day screenplay by Travis and Darren Donnelly. And that kind of gets you, the first day is your character sketches and then it goes from there. And then the second day is page one through 15. Like it’s not so much an outline as benchmarks. And if you know your character’s internal and external conflicts, then that’s kind of, I don’t think you need a whole outline, but you do need your ending. I think you need to write to your ending. I just think that that book is so honestly so helpful because it gets you through the first draft.
Ashley
OK, say that again. I’ve not. It’s not a book that I’ve read.
Gigi Levangie
I know no one, it’s called the 10-day screenplay.
Ashley
Okay. Okay. We’ll have to link to that in the show notes. How do you, um, once you have a draft that you’re ready, what does your development process look like? Do you have an agent and a manager? You send it to them. Do you have actor friends? You have writer friends? What do you do to get notes?
Gigi Levangie
Okay. I do have writer friends. I have agent friends, but I don’t have an agent and I don’t have a manager. I have an attorney. So, if I need to make a deal, I go to my attorney. I found that I wrote something on spec and sometimes whole novels. I have novels in my laptop right now before I talked to an agent or pitched it. So, I’ve kind of, and what I do is I take my script and I give it to a producer friend that I know they don’t have to be the biggest producers, but maybe they know somebody else. It’s sort of a process and you sort of have to stay on top of people and you have to be willing to ask. That’s a big thing. That’s a, you know, you sort of have to be unembarrassable.
Ashley
Mm hmm. In your in your career, what would you say is the distribution in terms of spec scripts you’ve written versus writing assignments? Just how does that sort of …
Gigi Levangie
80-20, 80-20 spec.
Ashley
Gotcha, gotcha. And then what are you, what is this process? Like take us through like with trust. So, you wrote this as a spec and then what did you do? You said you had a lawyer. So you just started sending it out to producers that you thought might be interested. You have a connection, a rolodex.
Gigi Levangie
I had a friend who’s a producer, not one of the great big ones, and she sent it on to Miles Coolis, who is Oren’s son, and this is his first movie. He’s a former professional hockey player. He’s very much on top of these things, on top of production, and he’s good at what he does. And then I knew Oren from, you know, years ago. So, it was sort of like getting to know someone you do in a different lifetime, you know. It just sort of came together that way, but it started out when I had a friend who had one time been a producer on a movie, and I gave it to her to see what she thought about it.
Ashley
Gotcha. Gotcha. Now, I think one thing that I think a lot of people getting into writing, they always, the first thing they want to do is get an agent. And here you are, someone who’s been doing this for a while and it does not. So maybe you can dispel some of the myths there. You know, what is your thoughts on that? Like, why aren’t you spending your time trying to find an agent at this point?
Gigi Levangie
You know, it could be luck, but I’ve had an agent and not had an agent and, um, my book agents were, you know, on top of it. And for a long time, my, uh, other agents were, were great too, but they, I never got, I used to get assignments every once in a while, but I always, I just really wanted to write what I wanted to write.
Ashley
Mm-hmm. Gotcha.
Gigi Levangie
So, you know, I was, and that’s also lucky, but I think you have to have passion and energy and the urgency for this work.
Ashley
Yeah. Yeah. How can people see trust? What is the release schedule going to be like for
Gigi Levangie
August 22nd.
Ashley
Okay. Perfect. And I just like to end the interviews in August 22nd, you say it’s going to get a theatrical release. It’ll be available on demand, all that sort of stuff. Perfect. And I just like to wrap up the interview by giving, by asking the guests, is there anything you’ve been watching recently that you can recommend to our mostly screenwriting audience?
Gigi Levangie
Oh my gosh, I’ve been watching a bunch of Billy Wilder movies. And last night I watched Sunset Boulevard. I don’t think I’d ever seen it. And it was so modern. It was scary. Like it was way too close, you know, about a down and out screenwriter who kind of sort of hooks up with this aging actress. And it could have been made, the dialogue, everything, it could have been made today, except you’d have to put cell phones in there and whatnot. But anyway, his movies are, they’re so varied and double indemnity and so great. And he’s an inspiration to me because I like to write different types of things.
Ashley
Yeah, yeah. And what’s the best way for people to keep up with what you’re doing? Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, anything you’re comfortable sharing?
Gigi Levangie
Instagram is probably the best way. I mean, I’m on Twitter, but Instagram is like fun.
Ashley
Okay. Perfect. And we’ll get that. We’ll put that in the show notes. People can click over to it. Well, Gigi, I really appreciate you coming on and talking with me today. So good luck with this film. Well, thank you. It was fun talking to you as well. So, all right. We’ll talk to you later.
Gigi Levangie
Take care. Bye.
Ashley
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