Kelly Jo Brick returns with the second part of her “Bricks By Brick” interview with writer Lori Rosene-Gambino to discuss the business side of screenwriting.
Screenwriter Spotlight: Anniversary Writer Lori Rosene-Gambino On Writing A Script That Opens Doors
By: Kelly Jo Brick
Some people jump into TV and film straight from college, for others the journey, and the draw, into entertainment can come a little later. There is no one way in. For Lori Rosene-Gambino, writer of the thriller feature Anniversary, film school came a little later, but with persistence and a love for story, she found her path in.
Lori shared her journey into writing and how a script that doesn’t get made or sold can open doors to projects, experiences and career growth you’d never expected.
HOW DID YOU GET YOUR START AS A WRITER?
It’s interesting, I went to film school later in life. So, single young mom, divorced, went to college, took all the general stuff. When I eventually went into film school, I was a bit older, at a time when a single woman could hold down a job and go to school and raise a child.
I had worked a little bit for a Spanish TV station shooting news as a job and I thought I wanted to maybe even be a cinematographer. I knew I loved directing and that kind of thing. The writing came a little later, but I started taking literature classes at UCLA. I started also taking things like oral interpretation, which is a crazy class, but interpreting works and I just love story. I realized this is the foundation. This is the structure. The more I studied it, the more I realized that that’s who I am.
I should have known this because I was directing plays at the school park when I was 15 in the tennis court with all my friends and so I don’t know why it came to me sort of later in life, but it did. So sometimes careers build and happen in those natural ways like when maybe they’re supposed to.
HOW DO YOU CHOOSE THE PROJECTS THAT YOU WRITE?
That’s probably the hardest part for me because I do have kind of a wide area of things that I love and that I want to write. I have to take my time and really think about what I want to do and what I want to say and what’s influencing maybe and going in different directions, but the seed for the idea is the hardest part for me and really knowing that I have a story and that I want to do it.
EVEN THOUGH A SCRIPT YOU WRITE MAY NOT GET SOLD OR PRODUCED, A NO ON A PROJECT DOESN’T MEAN IT’S DEAD, A LOT MORE CAN COME FROM IT. CAN YOU TELL US ABOUT YOUR EXPERIENCE WITH THAT?
I have a script that was on The Black List about Fritz Lang and the making of M. I knew I wanted to do it when there was this information that he may have murdered his wife and that was the impetus for M. I think I wrote it in 2009, but that script, which has not been made, has done more for me than anything.
It continues to open doors. So I would say to writers that that one thing that you’re not sure if you’re going to finish or you put in the drawer, finish it, because even if it doesn’t get made, it really can help you in a variety of ways.
It also helps with getting representation. So yes, it pays off in so many unexpected ways and years and years later. It’s still a script I love and would love to see be made. So it’s still there too. It’s good coming from every angle.
WHEN YOU HAVE AN IDEA AND SIT DOWN TO CREATE, WHAT IS YOUR WRITING PROCESS?
I am not a morning person. Never been a morning person. I’m a late-night film watcher person. I get up in the morning with coffee and I read The New York Times and I return emails, my writing doesn’t really I would say start until 11:00 or so.
When I’m beginning a project, I like to pull from a variety of things and I start a list of things that I know I want to do in the story. You don’t end up using all of them, but things to remind yourself. Pieces of dialogue that come to you. Everything, whether it be an idea for location or a cost or what have you. I start a list and then at some point I try to write a treatment. If it’s a job and it’s a step, certainly you have a deadline so you’re trying to meet that, but otherwise I still have a chronological list at some point where I’m getting the acts formed. I sometimes have an end point, which is helpful when you do. Then you just have to give up to the discovery part and go, I know I’m going to figure out the most sort of poetic out or the most devastating out or something, like where you want to go tonally.
I did know where I wanted to go on Anniversary and that was tremendously helpful to build to that. For me it’s all about the thought bubbles at first and putting it down and then watching things, reading things and then making sort of a chronology of how that story works.
HOW DO YOU APPROACH BUILDING AND CREATING CHARACTERS?
Some people when they look at things or read things, they go straight into character, deep kind of character study. I’m one of those. That’s why I love a good play and a good movie where I can really sink into understanding motivations and what makes them work and various aspects of a character. So deep character dives are something that are really important to me. I don’t think I can build a story around someone I don’t understand the complexity of and so that’s always where I spend a lot of time in the beginning. Then when you start filling in some of those blanks for characters, it really does dictate other aspects of story, so then that comes together. But that’s tremendously important. It always has been. I gravitate towards material that does that.
I’m trying to think if there’s any really tricks to that and I don’t think there is. I just think there’s lots of layers to it and sometimes you’re just tasked with, I have to figure out these characters, so you just start figuring them out. It comes from the blank page and how do they play off each other? What’s going to be a catalyst? What’s going to give me another angle? How can I beat that out for three-act structure? All that stuff.
For me the secret for my particular brand of writing is to keep on writing characters actors want to play. I don’t know why I’m drawn to that so succinctly, but I do think it’s that.
WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE ON TAKING GENERAL MEETINGS AND BUILDING ON THOSE RELATIONSHIPS?
I think typically every time you do any meeting with an executive, it is about what they’ve read and then it is also about what you want to do. Executives always want to, if
they’re a fan of the writing, they want to do a general with you. They definitely want to know the next thing. So if you have the next thing, then certainly give it your small elevator pitch. If you don’t, you might talk about the area that you’re looking for something in.
I will say what’s been very interesting for me the last couple of years is that most people are not selling things necessarily that are given as IP or even IP in general. A lot of it is really self-generated spec writing. So we’re all kind of writing on spec now. That was important for me to learn because I just thought you open a door and then suddenly the flood of great material comes and it doesn’t quite happen like that.
I had no idea what I wanted to do next when I went out the first time on generals, and then when you do have something and it’s the right match for someone you’ve met with, then you can go back and say, “Hey, take a look at this.” And that’s where it’s really helpful. And by the way, they’ll come back to you to too and say, “Hey, I saw that film. That was great and I loved that script.” And so that’s how you kind of keep a professional relationship going. Just keep that Rolodex of people and it’s funny you’ll come back six months later and so many people are at different places and it just keeps on churning.
LOOKING AT YOUR CAREER NOW, WHAT DO YOU WISH YOU KNEW BACK WHEN YOU WERE STARTING OUT?
I think everyone has a different journey. I would have been a little easier on myself in terms of getting there. It is a process. You learn from it every step of the way. Mine happened to be a longer road. I think that’s very helpful in some ways for me now, but it’s funny because my career’s always been kind of cyclical that way, and my husband’s too. So it’s this kind of interesting wave that happens that you just have to roll with. So for me it’s just always putting the education side of it in front too, like taking that class at UCLA.
My advice to myself would definitely be to just go with that wave and not get so nervous about it, because I was very hard on myself in the times particularly with like, I can write anything, what do I want to write. So it’s like I could have been easier on myself just within the containment of my brain and body. That for me is a big learning curve and something I wish I would have known early on.
WHAT PARTING ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR WRITERS LOOKING TO BREAK IN?
I think there’s a variety of breaking in, but I just think more than ever it’s about doing the work and having the spec, it’s just about that. So do that and then don’t worry if it doesn’t happen right away because it is a process and every little piece you meet brings you to forward.
Kelly Jo Brick is a TV crime, mystery and procedural writer. A Sundance Fellow and alum of the Women In Film’s Writer/Showrunner Mentoring Circle, Kelly Jo is also the Vice Chair of the WGA Genre Committee. She wrote the Telly Award-winning film, PAUSE, and the Frank Lloyd Wright documentary, The Jewel in the Woods. Follow her on Bluesky @kellyjobrick.bsky.social
