NewEnglandFilm.com

In October 2010 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science rang up screenwriting grad student Andrew Lanham to inform him they had chosen his screenplay, The Jumper of Maine for the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship for unproduced screenwriters. Since then, the script has gone on to win two more awards at the Austin Film Festival and was selected to be performed as a staged reading by the Texas cultural arts center Ballroom Marfa. A producer has even signed on to help turn the script into a film. “Winning the awards has done nothing less than start my career,” Lanham says. Yet while a lot has changed for the writer, he remains focused on his work and on nurturing his love for the craft of screenwriting.

John DeCarli: The Jumper of Maine is only your second script. How has your writing progressed through Jumper?

Andrew Lanham: The Jumper of Maine is the second script I started, you could say. A few years after I graduated, I moved home to Maine where I wrote my first script, which got me into graduate school. During the summer before moving to Texas to start school I thought, I better write another one! So I wrote the first draft of The Jumper of Maine. It wasn’t until the following spring, after writing two more scripts, that I picked up Jumper again and wrote two more full drafts… So in a sense it’s my second, but in a stronger sense, it’s just my best so far, and it’s followed me and been with me since starting all of this.

I’d say I’ve progressed a lot as a writer, since I had less than no idea what I was doing when I began! More importantly, a key component of screenwriting is the ability to redraft, to throw away what’s not working (even if you love it) and start again, to look at things from entirely different angles. I consider myself extremely fortunate to have a script that has progressed with me as I’ve progressed as a writer. I can see the evolution of myself, not only personally, but through my craft, with every new draft I embark on.

JD: How do you ensure that you don’t get tied down to the wrong ideas? How do you decide which route to go down as you’re writing?

Lanham: This is a good question! The honest answer is that at first I had no way to ensure that I wasn’t going down the wrong road. So when I started, I went down the wrong road over and over again. However, the more you do, the more you learn. So as I’ve learned how to write screenplays, how to structure, I’ve gotten better at judging which road I should go down. I still mess up at times! A lot of the time, actually, but I think some of the best things in a script can be found through going down the wrong road. You reach an unexpected place, and even if it isn’t right, there may be something in that space that’s really meant for another section of the screenplay. That being said, as I’ve progressed, I’ve spent a lot of time making myself slow down and play things out, even outlining to an extent. At the end of the day though, I always go with my heart and my gut in terms of ultimately choosing with route to travel.

JD: How do you know when you’re done with a screenplay? Is a screenplay ever really done?

Lanham: I think all screenwriters rewrite many times. It’s the key, the most important part of screenwriting, and the rewriting process is more intense and all-inclusive than in any other form of writing, in my opinion. I think it’s key to spend as many hours as possible writing…

I know when a draft is done because I write FADE TO BLACK — and it feels amazing every time. Then, until people have read it, I always somehow seem to convince myself that it might be done. It never is. You’re never really done. A screenplay is just a blueprint, a guide that you hope many other people will find inspiration in and then help turn it into a fully realized version of the thing you wrote. That fully realized version will never exactly match what I began with; it will continue to change and take shape until it’s an actual film. And even then, if I’m so lucky as to have that happen, I don’t know that it will really feel done to me.

JD: You are currently pursuing a master’s degree in screenwriting at the University of Texas in Austin. What’s been the most useful thing you’ve learned about writing there?

Lanham: I tend to write about personal things, and because of that, especially at the beginning, I wrote a lot of internal stuff about feelings. Stuart Kelban, the head of my department, said that screenwriting is all about ‘externalizing the internal.’ It changed the way I looked at everything, like a light bulb going off in my head. I never looked back.

JD: The Jumper of Maine is about a paramedic, Oliver, who becomes involved with a single mother. Oliver, like yourself, has Tourette’s syndrome. Was it important for you to create a character with Tourette’s, or was it simply a matter of writing what you know?

Lanham: A little bit of both. I enjoy films that seem personal, that come from the heart. I like the idea of using my experience to create a story that others could glean something from. I also feel like I tend to make sense of my life and the world around me through my writing, so creating a character with Tourette’s seemed like a logical thing to do. At the same time, I don’t think there has ever been a really great movie made about Tourette’s, so it was also written with the hope that I could create something to explain and dramatize the syndrome in an illuminating and entertaining way.

JD: How is your portrayal of Tourrette’s different from its portrayal in other films?

Lanham: The main difference with my film is that Oliver has severe Tourette’s, but he doesn’t swear or repeat words in any way. This is actually a very rare symptom of Tourette’s, affecting only around eight percent of people, yet it’s the most widely known. So it was important to me to sidestep that part of the condition.

JD: What is the story about to you? What are you trying to accomplish with this script?

Lanham: I think that everyone on earth struggles. We all have the past to deal with, our own past, and the past that concerns those around us: everything is interconnected. The story, at its core, is about someone who has to come to terms with his condition and his past in order to embrace himself and be able to really love others. It’s also, hopefully, about how everyone has to do this. Oliver’s mother has Alzheimer’s, the daughter of the single mother Oliver falls in love with is diabetic; we all have ‘conditions’ that we allow to define us, but the condition is not who we are. Who we are is what we make of the situation we find ourselves in.

JD: So far, Jumper has been extremely successful, winning the Nicholl Fellowship as well as two awards at the Austin Film Festival. What have these awards meant for you and your career? Do you think that screenwriting awards are a good way for new writers to make a name for themselves?

Lanham: It’s hard to get movies made in today’s climate, and screenwriting awards are the best way for new writers to make a name for themselves. Winning the awards has done nothing less than start my career. Since winning, I have signed with agents at UTA and gotten a manager at Brillstien Entertainment Partners. This never would have happened without winning the awards. I’d still be writing and waiting for the next application date for Nicholl submissions.

JD: Jumper was also selected to be performed as a dramatic reading by Ballroom Marfa. Tell us about that.

Lanham: Ballroom Marfa has been beyond amazing in bringing me into their community. They have been really kind and kept me posted on the progress of everything every step of the way. It’s important to them not just to have the reading, but to have this process help in bringing out a young talent. I couldn’t be more greatly honored.

The production has been going well! The director and seven lead actors are all based out of Dallas. I’m really excited to see what they do with it. I’m just the writer, so I’ll be sitting back and enjoying taking it all in, but I can’t wait to do so!

JD: What’s next for The Jumper of Maine? Are you hopeful that it will reach the screen soon?

Lanham: Donald DeLine with DeLine Pictures is attached to produce The Jumper of Maine, so hopefully the road will continue and one day I’ll be able to see it on screen. The script has just gone out to the first round of directors. Hopefully one of them takes an interest to it, and if so, I’d probably soon move into another draft. Things take a while in Hollywood, and there’s lots of ups and down. I certainly hope it will reach the screen soon, but in the meantime I just keep my head down and write, write, write.

JD: Who would be your ideal director for the film?

Lanham: Mike Mills, because I just saw Beginners at South By Southwest and I thought it was one of the more beautiful films I’ve ever seen. So for now I’m going to throw his name out into the ether.

JD: You’ve written a number of screenplays since Jumper. What do you see yourself doing next and how would you like to see your career progress?

Lanham: I’m such a young screenwriter that with my follow up scripts I’ve been focusing on nailing down my tone and style. I tend to write emotional things that are hopefully powerful. I think I’m lucky in this regard, as the part of what I write that seems to speak to people is something that can move in many different directions. I know I’m not an action or thriller writer, but for now I’m trying to focus on the humor in life, the power in life. The Jumper of Maine is a pretty cathartic drama; you really get wrung through the ringer. I like that in some movies, but at the moment I’m trying to focus more on creating the types of scripts that, if they came on TV late at night, you’d want to watch again, even though you’ve seen it 50 times, just to remember the first glow you felt watching it in the theater.