Who: Jon Jones is a writer and director working primarily in the UK. Recently he completed Last Summer, his first feature film, which is due for release in North America and the UK in May 2019.
Hardest Scene to Write: “The end scene. I’ve heard writers talk about scripts dropping – when finally they can see clearly what the story is about, allowing them to know precisely how each beat should play out. For me that starts with the ending. I find it hard to write anything unless I have a really good sense of the end scene.”
Jon Jones
Who: Jean Lee is a writer-director who loves world cinema and has worked on films in eleven countries spanning five continents.
How She Got Her Start: “In college, I read a bunch of amazing scripts like Casablanca and Chinatown but never saw myself or the people closest to me represented on the page. So I decided to write my own.”
Jean Lee
Who: Simon’s debut feature Jellyfish had its World Premiere at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival, and was released theatrically in the UK and is available on Amazon Prime in the U.S.
Hardest Scene to Write: “Some of the scenes on Jellyfish were very challenging in terms of their content, and the film as a whole was made for very little money so it was all hands on deck. There was a scene where the protagonist performs stand-up comedy, which we were up rewriting until midnight the night before. It was difficult because it couldn’t be good standup, it had to feel like a first gig, and it had to be in the character’s voice and drawn from her life, so it was a real balancing act, and we were exhausted, unpaid and up against it.”
Simon Lord
Who: An award-winning writer, director, producer, and actor. Her debut feature, In Reality, has screened at 13 film festivals domestically and internationally in 2018, winning nine awards.
How She Got Her Start: “I grew up writing scripts in high school and through college. Most of them were cringe-worthy and one-dimensional, but they were necessary experiments in the themes and sense of humor I’m now predisposed to. I kept writing because I figured at some point, one of my ideas would be good enough to invest time and hard work into making good.”
Ann Lupo
Who: Before Malhotra left it all to pursue her dream of screenwriting, she was an investment banker at Goldman Sachs, a venture capitalist, and a hedge fund investor. Her script Worth won the 2018 Austin Film Festival best Drama Teleplay Pilot Award and was a finalist in the 2018 Page Awards.
How She Got Her Start: “I wrote two YA novels and got them in front of publishers in New York, who thought their plotting needed to be tightened. They suggested I take some TV writing classes to help with that. I took those classes and everything seemed to click.”
Biggest Lesson Learned: “That experience is the backbone of writing. Before I became a screenwriter, I spent a decade in a totally different industry and thought I was at a disadvantage for it. What I’ve realized is that those years were not wasted – they are, in fact, the reason I have something to say now. I sometimes feel like it took me forever to find my way to screenwriting, but everything that came before is in fact what helped get me here.”
Stuti Malhotra
Continue for more of MovieMaker‘s 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2019
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