Credits/Important Assignments:
Formative Creative Experiences: I loved acting at my High program and in UCLA Theater productions, and I wrote and directed video projects since I was little. It was always something I did for fun, though, and didn’t seem like a real job. Then I worked in development for a year and a half, and that experience convinced me that writing was something I might actually be able to do for a living.
Influential Movies or TV Shows: All the Coen Brothers movies, Terry Gilliam’s films. GET SHORTY, FIGHT CLUB, LA CONFIDENTIAL, THE GODFATHER, STRICTLY BALLROOM… there are a lot of others, I guess. On TV, I don’t know. I used to watch a lot of Star Trek and M*A*S*H, and I really like The Simpsons, but cable TV tends to cut into my writing time, so I cut it off.
Comment on Your WBC Experience: It was really useful in helping me attack a script and get my head around an idea. I used to just hack at stories, writing tons of stuff and then cutting. WBC allowed me to do a lot of that structural work earlier in the process.