Write On: 'Running Point' Showrunner David Stassen
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
Release Date: 05/23/2025
Write On: 'Hedda' Writer/Director Nia DaCosta
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“I love adaptations. The beauty of adaptation, especially a classic, like Shakespeare and Chekhov or Ibsen, they’re such a gift because they give you this beautiful framework, and it’s almost like they’re begging you to take it and make it your own,” says writer/director Nia DaCosta about adapting Henrik Ibsen’s 1891 play Hedda Gabler into her new film Hedda. Set in the 1950s, the movie stars Tessa Thompson in the lead role, Imogen Poots as Thea, and reimagines the character Eilert Lovborg as a queer woman (now Eileen), played by Nina Hoss. We chat with Nia...
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Write On: 'Splinter Cell: Deathwatch' Creator/Writer Derek Kolstad
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“As you do draft after draft, it becomes shorter and rendered down. And [Keanu Reeves and I] would go through scenes going, ‘Can people say less? Can the action be tighter? Can the action sequence be shorter?’ The action is an extension of the hero’s journey and if you don’t give a sh*t about the character, it doesn’t matter how great your action is,” says Derek Kolstad about his writing process with actor Keanu Reeves when they worked on the script that would become John Wick and spark an entire franchise. On today’s episode, we speak with screenwriter Kolstad about his...
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Write On: 'After the Hunt' Writer Nora Garrett
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.” –Otto Von Bismarck “It's funny, because when I was writing After the Hunt, I definitely wasn't like, ‘Oh, I want to write about this current socio-political moment.’ I was really just invested in the characters and the story,” says screenwriter Nora Garrett about writing a screenplay that probes the dynamics of power, privilege and social accountability. She adds, “What I didn't even realize was something that was drilled into me because of my acting training – that the work, the scripts,...
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Write On: 'Anemone' Co-Writer/Director Ronan Day-Lewis
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“[My dad] really started to inhabit the characters, especially Ray, speaking as him during the writing process. That was when I realized this was going to be its own kind of special beast. Working with him taught me so much as a writer and storyteller; by the time we got to set, we had a shorthand for everything,” says director and co-writer Ronan Day-Lewis about writing the script Anemone with his father, Daniel Day-Lewis. The film Anemone, starring Daniel Day-Lewis, Sean Bean and Samantha Morton, paints a portrait of a family torn apart as they struggle to come to terms with...
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Write On: 'All Of You' Writer/Director Will Bridges & Writer/Actor Brett Goldstein
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“You have to love all your characters. Even if you're writing a bad guy. You, the writer, have to write them with love and empathy, and treat each character, give each character, a full life and a full arc in your story, even if their screen time is small. Essentially, if you were following that character, they also have a full story, a full life,” says actor/writer Brett Goldstein about how he approaches writing characters in film and TV. On today’s episode, we chat with writer/director Will Bridges and writer/actor Brett Goldstein about their new film All of You, starring Imogen...
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Write On: 'Mussolini: Son of the Century' Director Joe Wright
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
On today’s episode, we speak with director Joe Wright whose new limited TV series Mussolini: Son of the Century, explores fascism through the early political career of Italy’s Prime Minister Mussolini in the 1920s. The show is incredible storytelling from beginning to end, mixing opera and techno rave music while drawing chilling comparisons to the current rise of fascism around the world. “We all have a dark side. We all have the choice to be the best of ourselves, or the worst of ourselves and we usually land somewhere in the middle. Working on Mussolini allowed me the...
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Write On: 'The Toxic Avenger' Writer/Director Macon Blair
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“The thing that started it all off was me saying [the character Toxie] should be a guy in a suit. In other words, let’s not do a computer-generated creature, let’s have a person in a suit and have that handmade, hand-stitched kind of quality to it where you can sort of see the seams a little bit and have that be part of the fun. I also said let’s have it be rated R. Hopefully y’all are not interested in a family-friendly PG-13 version of this movie, because that’s not what the fans of the original are going to want, so let’s keep it in the R-zone. And let’s make sure it stays...
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Write On: 'Sirens' Creator/Showrunner Molly Smith Metzler
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“Our goal in writing [Sirens] was to write something that makes you think, and offers the opportunity to re-examine your own assumptions that you made about these characters. And it's taxing. We ask some difficult questions. It's not The Perfect Couple. It's not a murder show. We're going after something thematically that’s really large and really ambitious, and that's why the Greek mythology came to mind. These are epic stories. These are about blood, and moms, and torture, and trauma, and pain. These themes are not tiny. These are complicated, juicy stews,” says showrunner and creator,...
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Write On: 'The Home' Director/Co-Writer James DeMonaco and Co-Writer Adam Cantor
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“Write your own anxieties. Get into your own psyche. I think if it scares you – like, I'm terrified of guns, and that's where The Purge came from. But here, there were various generational fears and whatnot that led to The Home, Adam's fears and my fears about getting older and our anxiety. So I would say if it's born from your fear, the majority of the audience probably has a similar fear. I think we are communal in that way. Fears are not singular, so I think you should work off your own fears, and on a practical level, if you can keep the budget small, you're in a much better place...
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Write On: 'Abraham's Boys' Writer/Director Natasha Kermani
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast
“Vampires hold incredible destructive power, and so we're very drawn to them, sort of like moths to a candle, right? I think that's sort of eternal, and that's the reason every culture, pretty much around the globe has some version of the vampire because it represents that very human conflict of what we desire which is so in tune with and aligned to things that can also destroy us. That just feels very honest and eternal, so I don't think [vampires] will ever go away. I think they will be an eternal part of our mythologies,” says writer/director Natasha Kermani, about the everlasting...
info_outline“It’s not ripped from the headlines. We’re not using any of [the Buss family’s] real-life stories and putting them into our show. Because Mindy [Kaling], Ike [Barinholtz], and I have so many influences like Arrested Development, 30 Rock, The Office and Succession, we’re coming up with our own fun stories and fun situations to put this dysfunctional, very wealthy, successful family into a blender and then have them going back and forth and arguing and solving problems together and against each other,” says David Stassen, showrunner of Running Point, about taking inspiration from Los Angeles Lakers’ President, Jeannie Buss’s family and turning it into a hit TV show.
In this episode, we chat with David Stassen, showrunner and co-creator of the Netflix show, Running Point, that’s just been given the greenlight for Season 2. The show centers on Isla Gordon (Kate Hudson), the daughter of a powerful basketball magnate. She’s now taken the helm of the legendary team with the help – or hindrance – of her four well-meaning but unpredictable brothers.
While firmly set in the brawny world of basketball, Stassen talks about the true core of Running Point, which revolves around the siblings trying to earn the love of their deceased father. To get this particular narrative right, Stassen says the writers room spent a lot of time focusing on the family dynamics and differentiating each character’s struggles and traits. Much of the comedy in the show comes from the clashes between the siblings and their attempts to live up to their father’s fierce expectations.
Stassen also talks about how the character Isla, a woman at the center of a very male-dominated universe, relies on speeches from gangster films to communicate with her basketball team.
“Movies transcend our society. So, I think it’s a great way to connect and even if you haven’t seen Casino, most people know that Joe Pesci is viewed as a very scary person on film. We were lucky enough to get the rights to show a scene. So even if you didn’t know anything about it, you got to see the moment. It’s just a fun thing to have this beautiful, airy Kate Hudson taking on these roles of the tough Italian mobster or the contract killer getting revenge for his dead dog, like John Wick. And I guess it probably speaks to something bigger about this show – about a woman in a man’s world. But at the same time, Isla is powerful in her own way, right? She’s powerful 95% of the time just being herself and standing up for herself. And then the fun flourishes are maybe using a movie reference to illustrate a point,” says Stassen.
To hear more about Running Point and Stassen’s advice to TV writers, listen to the podcast.