Joe Russo is a three-time BloodList screenwriter whose recent feature film credits include the Mickey Rourke-starring horror anthology Nightmare Cinema, the Lifetime thriller The Au Pair Nightmare, the Bruce Willis-starring Hard Kill, the Ryan Phillippe, Ving Rhames and Kate Bosworth-starring The Locksmith, the Neal McDonough-starring Soul Mates and the Zac Efron and Russell Crowe-starring The Greatest Beer Run Ever. He’s also the producer of the critically acclaimed horror podcast, Post Mortem with Mick Garris.
What are the personal qualities of a successful storyteller?
Clarity.
The best storytellers can clearly and simply deliver the information you need to connect with emotionally. How they convey that information is kinda like Goldilocks — it’s not too little, it’s not too much. It’s just right.
That’s really where the craft comes in. It takes time and skill to know when you’re overwriting or underwriting. To know if the sentence you’re crafting is really going to land with the reader. It also requires intuition. Some people, no matter how much time they put in, won’t ever be able to strike that right balance of clarity, because they just don’t have “it”.
But, if you can convey the information clearly and effectively, there’s no limit to how many people you can connect with emotionally. And that’s where great storytelling begins.
Describe how you broke into the business and how you stay in.
It was a long and winding path.
I started working in production as a local hire in Arizona. There was a tax incentive at the time and work was plentiful… until the state brilliantly did away with the tax credit in 2010 (it only recently was revived). When the work dried up, I made my way to Los Angeles not realizing everything I’d done to that point out-of-state would count for diddly-squat. I started over as an intern and, luckily, I had two short films playing the festival circuit at the time. The CEO of the production company I was at. took a liking to the shorts and me (or at least the way I wrote coverage) and gave me a job as his assistant.
I wound up working in development my first seven years in Los Angeles. I used those jobs to read scripts — and then read some more — all while writing with my partner, Chris LaMont, in my free time. Eventually, the writing became good enough we set a TV pilot script up with Will Smith’s company, Overbrook, and shortly after, we landed our first literary manager and agent, who helped get us on the 2016 BloodList. That screenplay was optioned the very next day.
Breaking-in is hard, staying-in might be even harder — especially with global pandemics and dual-strikes.
So far, the secret has been consistency. While Chris and I explore open writing assignments, we’re always cranking out new spec material. To me, each spec is like buying a lotto ticket. You can’t win, if you don’t play. And even if they don’t sell, they open the doors for meetings, other assignments, and who knows what else! So many opportunities have come to us because someone likes our writing and, if you’re lucky enough to capitalize on those opportunities, that’s how you build a steady career.
Your core brand is horror. Why did you choose this genre? Is there a seminal film/ TV show that informs your work?
The horror genre chose me.
At first, I resisted, and I don’t know why. Like a lot of writers, my first attempts at feature screenplays were comedies, but it wasn’t until I embraced horror that I found my voice as a writer.
In retrospect, it makes sense. My favorite movie is Ghostbusters.. I was obsessed with Halloween (and later John Carpenter’s Halloween). I grew up in Connecticut — right smack in between Salem, Massachusetts and Sleepy Hollow, New York. My favorite ride at Disney is The Haunted Mansion. I relished scaring the shit out of my little sister. I mainlined horror movies as a teen once I discovered Scream. All of that went into the stew that helped me find my voice as a screenwriter.
The fact that horror opened the door for me to have a career in TV and Film now feels very kismet.
Are there any tropes of middling horror films you’ve seen? How can they be improved?
I have one rule, and that’s to never publicly criticize movies. I know how hard they are to make and how little control screenwriters have over the end-product — if their screenplay is even reflected by that point at all. So, to say this movie could have done this better, who knows? Maybe the script did originally.
What I will do is speak to something I think horror movies should strive for — and that’s some kind of underlying socio-political message. If you can use horror as a way to abstractly talk about some sort of societal ill, your horror movie will go beyond something that’s just a vehicle for jump scares. It’ll be something that burrows its way into audiences’ minds and stays there. That’s how you create lasting horror — and that’s what I’d love to see modern horror movies continue to strive for.
You’ve also written thriller and action films. Was this a natural progression or a strategic career choice?
I think that action and thriller pictures tend to share a lot of DNA with horror movies. That’s why The Terminator or The Predator work structurally like slasher movies. Or Aliens, which is still a terrifying monster movie. It’s also why I think a lot of our best action directors — like Sam Raimi or Peter Jackson — came from the horror genre. Horror movies have all the same elements that make for great tentpole action movies.
I think our expansion into the action and thriller genres was a natural progression, because the stories we’re attracted to overlap so much. Strategically, it helps executives think of us as more than just horror writers too. So, I think the answer to your question is… both. In a perfect world, I’d love to move between horror movies and tentpoles like a Sam Raimi or James Wan do.
Joe Russo
Describe your working relationship with your co-writer Chris LaMont. How do you complement each other? What do you each bring to the writing process?
Chris is an idea machine. When we get on a call to “blue sky” a movie or TV series, we tend to operate under the “no idea is a bad idea” philosophy, and Chris will always give you dozens of ideas to sift through. Whether we stumble on the best one in these discussions, or it comes up as we riff on these ideas, pitching suggestions back and forth, as a director, I think I tend to be much more scrutinizing in helping pick out the diamonds — I know it when I see it.
When we get to draft, I think that directorial vision plays a lot into how the screenplays ultimately look. I tend to have very specific ideas in how I want scenes to be blocked and paced, and that usually dictates how the scripts look on the page. Chris is always the first audience for those ideas and pushes back when needed, or pitches me alternatives that sometimes unlock things that were even better than I’d initially conceived — and that’s really where the magic can happen.
You’ve also produced short films and podcasts. How do they enhance your writing?
Any time you get to see your writing put on its feet and produced, you’re going to get better the next time you write. You get a sense of what works and what doesn’t, what information you need and what you don’t. So, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that as I directed more short films, my writing got better.
Producing Post Mortem with Mick Garris podcast absolutely enhanced my writing. I’ve gotten to meet so many legendary creatives — from John Carpenter to Stephen King to Guillermo del Toro to Mike Flanagan — and getting to hear about their creative habits made me realize some of my own anxieties about my process and the struggles I’ve faced in the entertainment industry were completely normal.
Are there any recurring elements that define your writing voice that appear in your work?
The first screenwriter I read when I was an assistant that made me sit up and say, “Wow. What a voice,” was Brian Duffield. I love how fun his scripts are to read. I love how you get a sense of how the movie will look and feel. As I kept reading more screenplays, I recognized Brian is carrying the long-standing Shane Black-ian torch, and I’m always aiming for that.
First and foremost, I want readers to have an emotional response to what we’re writing, but beyond that, I want them to have FUN reading it. Honestly, I think that’s why we’ve been lucky enough to sell as many specs as we have been. We really take a lot of time to make sure the writing is good and the formatting is easy to read. Our screenplays might not be the right budget level, or too dark, or whatever excuse of the day an exec is using to pass, but ultimately people like the writing because it’s clear and never boring.
Where do you source story ideas? How do you decide if they’re worth pursuing?
Honestly, I think concept ideation is the hardest part. Landing on an idea that you think is worth investing years of your life into — let alone is something you believe is a movie or series — is an incredible difficult decision.
Luckily, over time, we’ve gotten better about identifying which ideas have legs and which don’t. Once we start workshopping an idea — blue-skying it, outlining it — we’ll know if it will translate into a great screenplay, or if we still even have the passion for it over the long haul.
Any screenplay you write is a time risk. I’d rather waste a little bit of time beating up an idea after an initial spark of inspiration than get six months into writing only to realize it doesn’t work.
Do you have any final words of wisdom for writers considering a career in screenwriting?
Your first screenplay won’t get made, and that’s okay.
New writers put way too much pressure on their first script to be a home run. Statistically, it won’t be. In fact, it should probably be put into a drawer and never seen again. You get better each time you write a new story. Your storytelling gets sharper. Clearer. You need that first script to fail so you can improve. And the more you read and write, the better your scripts will get and the more opportunities you’ll create for yourself. That’s how you build a career.
