This week Scriptophobic was lucky enough to talk to Scum of the Earth Films‘s Suri Parmar. Apart from tons of hands on and theoretical training in ScreamWriting, Suri has explored storytelling in prose for New Haven Review, and Stonecoast Review and has written non-fiction articles for publications such as Grim Magazine. Make sure to stick around until the bottom to watch Skin Deep (2018)!
What first got you interested in screenwriting?
It’s a convoluted story. I’ve always been obsessed with movies; as a kid, I’d pore over the entertainment section of the newspaper every morning; my dad would chide me to read the politics section instead. I’d rent movies like True Romance (1993) and The Piano (1993) with my paper route earnings and watch them late at night when my family was sleeping. By high school, I was into auteurs like Neil Jordan and Walerian Borowczyk but I never considered venturing into film. My parents are incredible people – Punjabi Sikh immigrants who made it clear that females of colour like me need to work 150% harder at most things in life; they encouraged me to pursue something less capricious. Medicine, dentistry, etc.
As a compromise, I chose architecture… which led to jobs with insane hours. I figured if I was going to work 60-80 hours a week it would be for my passion, so I enrolled in screenwriting classes at a community college. It felt eerily right – like I’d found my calling. After I wrote a few screenplays and won awards at film festivals and competitions, people began producing my work.
Do you have an example of a lesson you learned from reading a script (rather than watching the movie made from it)?
Definitely. Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky (2008). His screenwriting method is unusual; my understanding is he takes a basic concept and has actors improvise scenes around it for months and months; from there, he develops and finalizes the story. When I read the script for Happy-Go-Lucky, I really got a sense of his process. It’s written in a fluid, freeform style with no slug lines. The characters and dialogue have an organic verisimilitude that’s rare in cinema.
A lot of screenwriters overly adhere to traditional three-act structure: ensuring the “aha” moment and the “point of no return” are at the right place, beginning the third act precisely 75 pages in, etc. The product (e.g. many Hollywood films) might hit the right beats but feels predictable and prescriptive, as though created with a chart or a spreadsheet. You want to build stories and worlds that feel real and captivate your audience. Mike Leigh gets that.
What’s the strongest piece of advice you have for aspiring screenwriters?
Stay informed and engaged with the world. Pursue a life outside of film. Connect with family and friends, cultivate other interests. In short, remember your humanity and be true to yourself, as platitudinous as it sounds. It’s easy to lose yourself in the film scene and fixate on acquiring your skinny slice of the pie. Make your own pie. Your writing will be all the better for it.
Also, to quote a friend in the industry, good writers are gold dust. Take all the time you need to hone your craft. It’s not a race – there’s no need to “make it” by a certain age, nor should your journey necessarily be clear-cut. What is “making it,” anyway? So long as you’re doing your thing? (Bear in mind I’m ferociously stubborn and still figuring things out.)
What is your relationship with genre film (love, hate, indifference)? What led to that?
When I was studying screenwriting at the Canadian Film Centre, my mentors and fellow creatives knew me as the “genre girl.” Horror, sci-fi, etc. They assumed I simply liked pulp and gore – indeed, I was imbued with this angsty compulsion to be subversive and reject pretension.
As time has passed, I’ve realized it’s not so much genre I love but imagination. Since childhood, I’ve built entire universes in my head and lived many alternate existences. Genre is an ideal vehicle for iconoclastic ideas and fantastic worlds, and, moreover, it’s often the product of a wondrous mind.
During graduate school, my creative voice veered towards genre with a lyrical, literary feel. As in well-rounded characters that shed light on the human condition alongside ghosts and unicorns and mermaids. Through allegory, my writing emphasizes that there’s beauty in humankind – even at its most depraved. It’s for people who still believe in fairies … and monsters under their beds.
What was something that surprised you in the process of writing your own screenplay?
I once turned up my nose at “method actors” who go to absurd lengths to get into character. Daniel Day-Lewis learning Czech for The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988, and a favourite, by the way) and roughing it in the woods for The Last of the Mohicans (1992) come to mind (another good one, Michael Mann’s action sequences = best).
As it happened, through screenwriting I’ve become a “method writer.” I originally had a hard time writing male characters so I’ve developed a habit of figuratively slipping into their skin. Thinking as they think, getting a feel for their physicality. It really made me appreciate what actors do, because swapping your identity for someone else’s is daunting and exhausting. It’s no wonder they remain in character for months at a time.
What’s your favorite thing about screenwriting that doesn’t apply to other kinds of writing?
Wow, these are great questions! I also write prose and can attest that screenwriting is an entirely different animal. When you switch mediums, you mentally shift gears. Prose tends to have more interiority – which is likely why Stephen King’s doorstoppers generally don’t translate well to film unless they’re reimagined, like The Shining (1980). His short stories on the other hand… but I’m going off on a tangent.
With screenwriting, you avoid exposition and use different senses to establish worlds. There’s more immediacy; you immerse viewers with visual and aural cues. You also lose your autonomy in an entirely good way. Filmmaking is often the product of a hive mind, so the script should allow for shifting variables. Perhaps the production crew can’t secure a certain location or there are budget constraints. Your screenplay should provide a solid scaffolding but be plastic and open to interpretation. Creating a story that accommodates many moving parts while maintaining artistic merit is a fun challenge.
What are some of the films and stories that inspired you?
Akira (1988), hands down. Watching it for the first time was a revelation. Yes, the hand-painted visuals and percussive score are gorgeous, but I was particularly drawn to the characters.
Upon seeing it, a companion asked what I thought the film was about, and I went on about its dystopian setting – how “Neo-Tokyo” is a knell for humankind that forecasts the development of nuclear technology. To which my companion responded that the heart of Akira is the character Tetsuo: an angry kid who’s sick of being rescued by Kaneda, his best friend. When Tetsuo is suffused with nuclear powers, he’s treated like a supervillain but is still a boy: little and sad and scared. Akira underscores that even the most sumptuous and baroque films and TV shows can be distilled to key themes. (Like how Game of Thrones is about climate change.) And that good stories often have a strong emotional core.
I could go on forever with many other examples, so I’ll leave it at that.
If you could adapt any story in any medium into a screenplay, what is your dream project?
Stephen King’s short story “I Know What You Need” from Night Shift, which is about a college student who meets a misanthropic guy with a preternatural ability to gauge her moods and fulfill her desires – he essentially manipulates her into falling in love with him. It’s more psychological horror than gore: an unnervingly sharp commentary on entitlement and emotional abuse. Stephen King is incredible at writing women. I’d love to adapt the characters of that story and perhaps change the setting to the present day. (It was written in the 70’s.)
Where can people find you online and support your work (present or upcoming)?
You can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at @SOTEfilms, and check out my portfolio at scumoftheearth.ca. No, I’m not being self-deprecating; “scum of the earth” is a tribute to “Hoodlum Rock,” my very, very favourite episode of the TV show WKRP in Cincinnati. Watch it if you haven’t. Seriously.
