Creativity Is Collaborative At HamptonsFilm’s Screenwriters Lab

When you think of a world-premiere film, what often comes to mind are the red carpet photo ops and star-studded film festivals that garner so much attention. It’s true that opening night galas, gaggles of photographers vying for celebrity shots and a general aura of excitement are all part of the scene.

But it’s worth remembering that for every film making it to the big screen — and, these days, even the small one — there are countless hours and even years of work put in behind the scenes. It’s a process that begins with the most simple of acts: writing, putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, in order to breathe life into a story.

Each fall, HamptonsFilm presents the Hamptons International Film Festival at venues across the East End. And while, since 1992, HIFF has been bringing the hottest filmmakers and their cutting edge movies to audiences, for the last two decades, there has been another, more quiet annual initiative offered by the organization in the early part of the year.

The HamptonsFilm Screenwriters Lab pairs young screenwriters with professional mentors who, over the course of a single weekend, work together to shepherd promising scripts to the next level.

It sounds like a fairly straightforward concept — gathering with other creative minds in the same space in order to share ideas, brainstorm possibilities and offer constructive suggestions. But, in truth, it’s a working model that’s been difficult to pull off since the arrival of COVID-19 in 2020. While Zoom has been a viable alternative for the last two years, it isn’t perfect.

This past spring, a group of young screenwriters and professional filmmakers came to understand just how vital the in-person process is when they met at the Maidstone Inn in East Hampton to take part in the 2022 HamptonsFilm Screenwriters Lab.

Since its inception, the lab has workshopped over 50 screenplays in three-day sessions, where screenwriters and their new scripts are paired with seasoned producers, writers and directors who have a proven track record in the film business.

This year’s lab, the 22nd, was the first to be held in person since 2019, and from April 8 to 10, four screenwriters with three scripts worked one-on-one at the Maidstone with a trio of award-winning filmmaking mentors.

The screenplays were: “Marilou Is Everywhere” by Jimmy Goldblum, “In Search of Time” by Jamil McGinnis and Pat Heywood, and “The Leftover Ladies” by Farida Zahran.

On the mentorship side of the table, the lab featured: Mollye Asher, Academy Award-winning producer of “Nomadland”; Peter Hedges, an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and author of “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape”; and Alice Wu, whose film “The Half Of It” won the Founders Award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

For Hedges, who has a home in Montauk and served as a mentor in a virtual version of the Screenwriters Lab in 2020, finally being able to meet participants and fellow mentors in the same room this year made all the difference.

“The was my second time doing the lab,” Hedges said. “There’s a kind of beautiful thing that happens in the presence of people. For instance, Mollye, Alice and I were able to interface in a way I didn’t get to with the previous mentors.

“We were interested in seeing if we could align our thinking when possible so the writers weren’t getting three disparate points of view,” he added. “In our case, there tended to be an organic consensus in our thinking — a feeling that we were very complementary in what we were talking about. I don’t remember that happening two years ago. I prefer the in-person experience, for sure.”

Hedges comes to his mentorship role with an impressive list of credentials. A novelist and a screenwriter, in addition to penning the novel and screenplay for “What’s Eating Gilbert Grape,” his script for “About A Boy” was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and he also wrote and directed the films “Pieces of April” and “Dan in Real Life.”

In providing mentorship, Hedges notes that his job is not to tell a writer how to fix something — “That would presume I have that ability,” he said. Rather, it’s about trying to understand intention and what the writer is hoping to accomplish with the script.

“I learned early on that when people tried to take my story and tell it their way, it was never pleasant,” Hedges said. “I think the best mentorship is based on me understanding where you want to go and what you’re trying to do.

“I’m trying to do for them what others have tried to do for me,” Hedges said. “Often I say, ‘If this is what you’re trying for, you may think about this or that …’ In all these cases, these writers will be directing their films. As someone who has written and directed, we can also talk about how you direct this.”

While Hedges has some highly lauded films under his belt as a writer and director, when it comes to evaluating scripts, he admits that he doesn’t get it right every time.

“I always tell two stories. I knew M. Night Shyamalan early in his career, before ‘The Sixth Sense,’” Hedges recalled of the director’s breakthrough film. “I got to read it early, I was one of the first — and I didn’t think the ending worked. Of course, it’s one of the great endings in contemporary cinema.

“I also directed Lin-Manuel Miranda,” added Hedges, referring to his 2012 film “The Odd Life of Timothy Green.” “And he told me about this rap musical about Alexander Hamilton. I said it sounded like the worst idea ever.

“So I was wrong about ‘The Sixth Sense’ and ‘Hamilton,’” Hedges laughed. “Let’s operate from that idea — sometimes I’m right, but often I’m not. I mentored early in my career and I’d get so attached to the ideas, I’d have an oversized sense of my impact. Now that I have much less belief in my impact, I think I’m more impactful. My hope is I’m listening better.”

The good news is that Hedges’s opinion is just one of three the screenwriters received at the lab. He notes that it reinforces his take on a script when the other mentors offer comparable input.

“I really listen for consensus — if I hear something similar from more than one person, that’s meaningful,” Hedges said. “The HamptonsFilm screenwriter’s lab also does this interesting thing where we have a wrap-up session, where we mentors and mentees get together with the team from the festival. It gives the writers one last chance to ask questions, or us as mentors to maybe contradict ourselves or challenge each other and see if some consensus does emerge. In other places I’ve done this work, I haven’t seen that component. It’s a testament to how HIFF has grown the process.”

The lab is also unique in that it provides screenwriters an option to stick around for a few extra days after the workshop in order to incorporate ideas that grew out of the mentorship sessions — getting concepts down on paper while they are still fresh, before the rigors of daily life set back in.

Two of the screenwriters from this year’s lab, Goldblum and Heywood, took advantage of the opportunity to do just that. A few days after the close of the lab, they were still at the Maidstone Inn working on their scripts. During a break, they settled by the fireplace in the lobby to share some of what they took away from the mentorship process.

“We hit the ground running — it was an incredible and intense two days,” Goldblum said. “We had three-hour sessions with each mentor. It was unbelievable, and they were very different from each other, but incredible filmmakers.”

Goldblum’s script, “Marilou Is Everywhere,” is based on a novel by Sarah Elaine Smith. Set in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, it tells the story of a 14-year-old girl who runs away from her abusive family and slips into another — replacing a teenage girl from a well-off family whose own sudden disappearance still haunts the town.

This is Goldblum’s first narrative film and he found that the mentors were able to give him basic yet crucial answers to key questions he had about his script.

“They each had dug into our scripts. Peter gave me emotional pull — he saw something in it that was in front of my nose, and he named it,” Goldblum said. “And just that five minutes made it all worth it.

“She’s hungry,” added Goldblum, naming a key motivation that he hadn’t recognized in his protagonist before. “It was the simplest framework to understand what I was already doing, and I didn’t see it.

“Peter is so seasoned and talented. Then Alice did the Socratic method with me. She asked me simple but direct questions, and if I gave an answer that was unsatisfying, she’d ask it again,” Goldblum said. “She was trying to say, get at the question this film is answering — and then you have an ending.”

Goldblum, an Emmy Award-winning director and producer based in Altadena, California, comes to this project with a background in documentaries. His 2014 feature, “Tomorrow We Disappear,” is about India’s last colony of magicians, acrobats and puppeteers. Taking on a narrative film represents a whole new skill set for him.

“I learned to do documentaries through trial and error. I’m in the beginning of the process of narrative filmmaking, so I have to teach myself again,” Goldblum said. “In making documentaries, it was about being in a room with friends mining ideas, throwing them at the wall, and if nothing sticks, you’d go back and try again. This lab felt like that, but instead of friends it’s world-class filmmakers.”

“In Search of Time” is an original script by Heywood and his filmmaking partner, Jamil McGinnis, both of whom took part in the lab, though only Heywood stayed for the extra days afterward. The Brooklyn-based team have been making films together since 2016 and are the founders of Seneca Village Pictures.

Their script, which is set in Brooklyn, takes place over a 24-hour period and tells the story of a 9-year-old boy who sets out for a trip across the borough on his own as he seeks to return a friend’s notebook before day’s end. Though a simple and straightforward premise, the filmmakers create a larger metaphor by having the boy encounter various characters that speak to different stages of life as he undertakes his solo mission.

“It’s a coming-of-age story in one day,” Heywood explained. “As his experience expands, his notion of life expands, including the idea he’s going to die.”

Heywood and McGinnis’s short film “Gramercy” was screened as part of the Hamptons International Film Festival when it was offered virtually in 2020, but having an opportunity to take part in the Screenwriters Lab for their first feature project is taking their filmmaking partnership to a whole new level.

“Labs are very interesting spaces, because you’re bringing something deeply personal to them,” Heywood explained. “The artistic process can be so insular; you’re growing inward and trying to find something within yourself. I have this fear someone is going to read it and say, ‘I know how to fix it,’ as if it’s a problem.

“‘In Search of Time’ is the first feature film that we’ve written together and will direct together, and I feel sensitive about it,” he added. “We spent a year and a half letting it marinate and stew before we even wrote it. We were writing our thoughts, walking around Brooklyn, and had all this material. We had been gearing up to write it for so long, but we used the HamptonsFilm Lab to finally rewrite the script. The lab was a self-imposed deadline.”

Though there was nervousness about how their freshly hatched script would be received by the mentors, Heywood reports that it turned out to be a very positive experience for them both.

“There was a non-preciousness to what we wrote, because we know it’s in the formative stages,” he said. “It was stewing so long, I felt open to ideas. It felt like a safe space.”

Though “In Search of Time” is a narrative script, there is also a documentary-like quality to it, and the film treads the line between the two genres — as did the Academy Award-winning 2020 film “Nomadland,” which was produced by Asher, one of the lab’s mentors this year.

“The mentors were a great fit for us. Having Mollye Asher from ‘Nomadland’ was beautiful happenstance,” Heywood said. “I felt, overall, their approach was coming from a place of trying to understand what you’re after as a writer and creator. My experience was they were all very receptive to the structure of the movie as we have written it.”

Farida Zahran’s screenplay, “The Leftover Ladies,” tells of a 60-something woman who tries to leave her polygamous husband after he expresses a renewed commitment to their stale relationship.

Zahran is an Egyptian writer and director based in Brooklyn, and her script was awarded HamptonFilm’s 2022 Melissa Mathison Fund. The story she tells in the script is based in very personal material and inspired by her own grandparents’ relationship, which she describes as something of “an elephant in the room in our family.”

“As you grow older, you’re allowed to have conversations that you’re not allowed to have when you’re younger,” Zahran explained in a phone interview. “A few years ago, I started having that conversation with my mom and aunt.

“This relationship is this very different from most: It’s very taboo but includes universal ideas about commitment and fidelity and betrayal, and what does it mean to come of age even when it feels too late?” Zahran explained. “There are a lot of other relationships that are a part of the script. By the end, there are lots of different types of complicated relationships that come down to universal emotions of fear and ego.”

While Zahran, a graduate of New York University’s graduate film program, has been working on this script with her producer, the lab represented the first time she has been able to workshop it with someone outside her immediate circle.

“It was very encouraging and inspiring,” Zahran said. “I wanted to know where I stood. Sometimes it’s hard to know when you’re so deep in it. I felt confident in the central relationship of the main couple but knew I wanted to push myself to explore the other relationships further. It’s helpful to see how something lands after spending so much time with it. Getting fresh eyes on the project is great, and they were amazing mentors.”

One of the things that Zahran particularly appreciated about the process was the fact that, prior to getting down to the real work in the lab, the mentors and screenwriters had dinner together as an icebreaker.

“We had intense conversations about our personal lives — that gave us an ability to talk about scripts close to our heart,” said Zahran, who intends to stay in touch with the other lab participants as her project progresses. “I would love to use them a sounding board. I fully intend to reach back out. It’s hard to find the relationship where it really clicks and people are invested in your journey.”

Come 2023, Zahran plans to be on location in Egypt shooting her film. And who knows? Before long, it’s possible that “The Leftover Ladies” will be screening at a film festival near you.

“Screenwriting is a craft that has ancient origins. I was told to tell a story like you’re sitting around a campfire,” Goldblum said upon final reflection. “I’ve craved mentorship and community so much in my life. We came together in the process, assimilated skills that will stay with us. I felt connected to this community after just 72 hours, which feels insane. We’ve really exercised our creative muscles. Now we’re letting it marinate.”

“We’re carving out space and staying in touch with the mentors,” Heywood added. “It doesn’t stop with the end of the lab.”

Annabelle Attanasio’s “Mickey and the Bear” (Utopia, SXSW 2019)

Michael Tyburski and Ben Nabors’s “The Sound of Silence” (IFC Films, Sundance 2019)

Cathy Yan’s “Dead Pigs” (Film Movement, Sundance 2018)

Christina Choe’s “Nancy” (Samuel Goldwyn Films, Sundance 2018)

Ísold Uggadóttir’s “And Breathe Normally” (Netflix, Sundance 2018)

Andrew Semans’s “Resurrection” (Sundance 2022, IFC release planned August 5)

Destin Daniel Cretton’s “Short Term 12” (Grand Jury and Audience Award at SXSW in 2013)

Justin Schwartz’s “The Discoverers” (world premiere at HIFF 2012)

Sara Colangelo’s “Little Accidents” (premiered 2014 Sundance Film Festival)

Claudia Myers’s “Fort Bliss” (released in 2014)