First Draft Episode #233: Maggie Levin
FEBRUARY 11, 2020
LISTEN TO THE EPISODE
Maggie Levin is a director and screenwriter whose debut feature, My Valentine, is out now on Hulu as part of Blumhouse’s Into the Dark horror anthology series. She worked as a director and staff writer on Season 2 of Miss 2059, and is the director of The Friendless Five and more.
This episode of First Draft is brought to you by Lovely War, the national bestselling historical young adult novel by Julie Berry, now available in paperback.
Sarah Enni: Today's episode of First Draft is brought to you by Lovely War, the national bestselling historical YA by Julie Berry now available in paperback. Berry, author of the 2017 Prince Honor and LA Times Book Prize shortlisted novel The Passion of Dolssa, is back with a sweeping, multilayered romance set in the perilous days of World Wars I and II where god's hold the fates and the hearts of four mortals in their hands.
Berry's critically acclaimed writing has been called haunting and unforgettable by New York Times bestselling author of Salt to the Sea, Ruta Sepetys. And utterly original and instantly engrossing by Publisher's Weekly. Lovely War by Julie Berry is out in paperback from Penguin Random House now.
Sarah Enni: Welcome to First Draft with me, Sarah Enni. This week I'm talking to Maggie Levin, director and screenwriter whose debut feature My Valentine, a part of Blumhouse's Into the Dark horror anthology series, can now be streamed on Hulu. She has also worked as a director and staff writer on Season 2 of Miss 2059, and is the director of The Friendless Five and many more.
I loved what advice Maggie has to give about working your way up behind the scenes, learning by listening to writers talk, and her fascination with the plight of the pop star. So please sit back, relax, and enjoy the conversation.
Sarah Enni: Okay. Hi Maggie, how are you?
Maggie Levin: Hi, I'm really good. How are you?
Sarah Enni: I'm doing well. I'm so excited to meet you.
Maggie Levin: Likewise.
Sarah Enni: Thanks for coming over and chatting. I'm super excited to talk to you because I haven't gotten to talk to very many screenwriters yet, and not only are you a screenwriter, but you're also someone who takes the next step to write it and then put it on screen, which I have one zillion questions about. But before we get to that, I'd like to start with a little bit about you. So if you don't mind telling me where you were born and raised.
Maggie Levin: I was born in New York, New York, and I was raised mostly in Woodstock, New York, which is where the festival was supposed to be, but wasn't. But we still carry all the merch there like it was there. You know, a little hippy Hamlet, a lot of musicians and artists. And I also spent a lot of time in my childhood, back and forth between there and the city. And then on tour with my father who's a rock musician.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. This is so interesting to me. Can you talk a little bit about what kind of tours are you talking about? What was that like?
Maggie Levin: So my dad's a bassist (Tony Levin) and he most notably plays for Peter Gabriel and the band King Crimson. So he did traditional pop tours, but also he's really a notable figure in the progressive rock community. The Crimson tours are very masculine, I want to use the word 'music nerdy'. Some of the Crimson music, it's listening to math.
Sarah Enni: Yes. Prog rock can get very... yeah.
Maggie Levin: I think the formative summer vacation tour experiences that I had were on the Peter Gabriel tours in the 90's, and the early two thousands.
Sarah Enni: Unfortunately, I haven't seen Peter Gabriel live. I should.
Maggie Levin: I highly recommend. Tours don't happen very often anymore. So opportunities are few and far between.
Sarah Enni: But Peter Gabriel seems like the kind of person that also has a very, I would think, it would be a big production, very visual.
Maggie Levin: Yes. Absolutely. And I mention the rock tour pedigree in an interview context because the person who designed Peter's tours and directed them in that era, is a renowned Quebecois director named Robert Lepage who directed, I think in the States he's most famous for the Cirque du Soleil show Ka,, which is in Vegas. It's the one without a floor. So just really visionary theater, and multimedia, and filmmaker, just an artists of all kinds creator.
And because I met him when I was a very little girl, I also had the opportunity to go to his workshop in Quebec city when I was a teenager. And observe him putting together a show and an opera later. And I feel Robert's influence, and Robert's disregard for physics and the normal human dimensional reality, his ability to just make stuff that has nothing to do with how gravity works etc, had just a really profound influence on me as an artist. Especially my directing style.
Sarah Enni: A lot of creative people grow up consuming movies,TV, books, art, but also being able to see how it's made. And see that one person can just create something and then it becomes real. That's very cool.
Maggie Levin: It was a cool way to grow up. And then my mom is a dancer and a choreographer. She was in the New York City Ballet and was directing and choreographing shows when I was a kid. So there was the stuff that I was personally interested in, but there was my parents' work that I was around as a child, just packed me full of who I am, I guess. I guess that's how it works for everybody [laughs].
Sarah Enni: I'd like to know how reading and writing was part of growing up for you.
Maggie Levin: Huge part of being the child of busy artist parents, and pre being able to be sat in front of an iPad. Books were vital. Also, my grandmother was the children's librarian at the Boston Public Library for many years.
Sarah Enni: Oh my gosh, amazing!
Maggie Levin: I miss her. And she was very, I don't want to say pushy because that sounds negative, but she was a pretty heavy influence. Stacks and stacks of stuff that I needed to read as a child.
Sarah Enni: Book people are enthusiastic.
Maggie Levin: Yeah. But she gave me a British copy of Harry Potter before it was here. Like a year before, or six months, I dunno what the timing was on that. But I went like, "What's this?" And, you know, the librarians they know things.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, they really do. Yeah. She had her ear to the ground obviously.
Maggie Levin: Yeah. And I really did think that I was actually going to go, when I was in middle school, I was on a path of thinking that I was gonna wind up being a novelist and a performance poet.
Sarah Enni: Oh, interesting.
Maggie Levin: Yup [laughing]. And then I veered off into like, "No, I want to make visual things as well." But I went to, do you know Simon's Rock College of Bard? So it's an early college thing and they have a young writer's workshop. I don't know if they still have it, but in the summertime, so I went to that when I was fourteen. A lot of writing, a lot of nose-in-a-book until I was fifteen, sixteen.
Sarah Enni: Well, and that's to me, that's what's so interesting. I'm interested in how you went into performing and obviously performance is a big thing for you. And an important part of the work you still do. But it's so interesting to me when people are still like, it's you in the page for a lot of your life.
Maggie Levin: You know, I sometimes wish that I wasn't as prolific as a child because I don't know if [pauses] were you an early writer as well?
Sarah Enni: No, I was late to it. Well, I mean, I was scribbling fan fiction about me and my friends being on a spaceship.
Maggie Levin: That counts! I was writing about fairies. Very long fairy novel series that I was trying to write for four or five years. It was terrible. I look back on it and it's awful. So embarrassing. But I have the collected volumes of me as a child, it's takes up so much space. And my parents, god bless them, held onto it for a really long time and then we're like, "Can you get this out?" The amount of journals.
So schlepping all of the childhood journals around from home to home has been like, "Ah, oh my god! I wish that I could part with this." I did the full Marie Kondo (author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up) and I was like, "I should get rid of one of the hundreds of journals that I did when I was eleven." But I just can't.
Sarah Enni: Don't do it! I know. But part of me is like, "Oh!" This is so insane. But in my head I'm always like, "No, they'll need it one day for the library."
Maggie Levin: [Laughing] For your presidential library!
Sarah Enni: The historians need this [laughing]!
Maggie Levin: Definitely. I dunno. I think when I hit my mid-teens, I remember having a conversation with one of my parents' friends and they were like, "You're always writing. You have your pencil down on that book all the time." And I was like, "Yeah, I think at a certain point I'm gonna have to look up from this and try living." And then I did [laughing]. And now I wish that I wrote more.
Sarah Enni: That's a very knowing sentiment from a kid. You're like [tsks], "One of these days."
Maggie Levin: Yeah, obnoxious, precocious little shit. Sorry! Can we curse?
Sarah Enni: Yes, you are welcome to curse. Well, talk to me about about that, about lifting your head up and looking at performance and diving into that. How did you decide to move that way for college and beyond?
Maggie Levin: That's an interesting question cause I don't really know. I think part of it was a control freak impulse. I loved doing youth theater when I was a kid. And I was in a lot of musicals and there was a local group that put on these amazing shows that my mom was really involved in and I was really involved in. And then in my mid-teens, a lot of the writing that I was doing was playwriting.
I also went to, there's a program in New York called Young Playwrights Inc and they ran a competition every year. They also had a summer camp that I participated in. And I never really wanted to, even though I did a lot of performance, I knew that I didn't want to be an actor. Which I know sounds odd because I went to the directing program at Fordham Lincoln Center and then left there and went to a performance conservatory called the Neighborhood Playhouse.
And even though I knew it was an acting program, I was like, "I'm here to get artist training because I want to run a theater company." So I always wanted to be behind the scenes and I don't know if that has to do with personal insecurities of not thinking that I was a good performer, or just kinda knowing where home was.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I relate to that. I think I get more satisfaction of thinking of people engaging with the work. Like having an actor interpret your work is more exciting than thinking about interpreting other people's work.
Maggie Levin: Yeah, totally.
Sarah Enni: So, yeah, maybe we're coming back to the control freakness.
Maggie Levin: Some of my conscious reasoning, I think that there was a lot of unconscious reasoning going on at the time, but I really thought, "Well, if I become the best actor that I can become, then I'm going to innately be a better director." And there are not that many directing programs for very young people anywhere. I think it's logical. It's just something that you find your way to. And also, who's gonna put little kids in charge of stuff?
Sarah Enni: True. Very, very expensive equipment.
Maggie Levin: Yeah. You could break something.
Sarah Enni: What's interesting too is now you have phones. So it's like the one kid in the group will be like, "Oh, I'll film it." And he is the director.
Maggie Levin: And there are so many directors who come at it from a technical standpoint who went like, "Oh, I'm gonna pick up my phone." And it never, well not never, but rarely occurred to me to do that. I was really like, "I want to put on shows. And I want to put on big-scale shows."
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I'm so interested in that too, that you obviously ended up in film. But at this point we're talking about, I mean, coming from a background of musical performance, and ballet is live theater, and that was what you were pursuing. I mean, starting your own theater as well is very impressive.
Maggie Levin: Thank you. I founded a not-for-profit right out of theater conservatory and I was really gonna go for it. But I had this funny, self-defeating idea. And I don't want to get mired too deeply in the weeds of the chicken and the egg conversation about discrimination. But I really had a perception, even though I was interested in film and I can find in that collection of childhood writings, references to wanting to be a film director. But they're buried into the narrative.
And I really, looking back, had this idea of like, "If you're going to be a film director, you are a boy. And you started when you were thirteen with a super eight camera." So I was like, "Well, I don't have a camera and I'm not a boy." So... [laughs].
Sarah Enni: You know, that's so interesting. And I agree with you, we could spend another hour talking about the gendered soup that we're all swimming in. But the other thing that I don't think we talk about as much is, I remember very vividly being thirteen, and being aware of all the things I was already too late for.
Maggie Levin: Totally. Yes.
Sarah Enni: Wild!
Maggie Levin: I know, "Look at me, I'm 13 and I'm already expired."
Sarah Enni: "I'm 13. There's no way I can be a dancer. There's no way I can be a professional musician." I mean literally, you have to be six to start, you know what I mean? Or before to start these things. It's not an irrational thought to have, which is even more shocking. So there is something about youth too, and even still being young, you're like, "No, my time has passed."
Maggie Levin: Totally, no. You suddenly become your own gatekeeper. It's really weird.
Sarah Enni: It's alarming how often, that's a great way to phrase it, we become our own gatekeepers. Or as RuPaul says, "Your inner saboteur." Having a name for it is helpful cause then when you hear that voice, you're like, "Ah! Nope, Nope. No way."
Maggie Levin: "Eh, Eh! Go Away!"
Sarah Enni: So I know you have an interesting story about how you decided to not only move into film but move to Los Angeles.
Maggie Levin: Oh, tying back to the Peter Gabriel thing,.
Sarah Enni: Mm-hm.
Maggie Levin: There was an instructor we had at the Neighborhood Playhouse who was supposed to be our stage combat instructor. I think we did a little bit of stage combat with him, but mostly we did business of the business lessons where he would give these scared-straight talks to the class. And most of the class, because the Playhouse is very, I think our graduating class was twenty-eight people, something like that. And very small.
And you're very in your artsy-fartsy everything. You're really staring up your own belly button and everything is very affirming and you're looking at your pain and whatever. So when somebody comes in with practical hard realities about the world and the business, the general response from the class was like, "Hey, fuck you. Don't want to hear about that right now. Really into my art and all the possibilities of my art."
Sorry, I'm telling the extremely long-walk version of this.
Sarah Enni: No, no. This is very interesting to me, and this is what we love to get into. So go for it.
Maggie Levin: Okay, good. I am so grateful to Rick Sordelet for those stern talking-to's that he did. And I think they were fun for him. He was riffing on like, "Get your head together now cause the world is going to be unkind." There were two little sayings that he had that really stuck with me from the moment they came out of his mouth, which were, "Once, you know, you know. And you have no excuse not to know." And, "Get up every day and take a step." Which I think is [takes an indrawn breath], the best advice for anyone trying to make a career happen out of their art.
Which is like, "If you can just get up every day and move the needle a little bit, at the end of the year you'll have..." You know, "Get up and write a page." With the notion of get up everyday and take a step. I think you see that particular kind of advice reflected in a lot of the great writing advice. Highly recommend following my producer, C. Robert Cargill, who is a screenwriter and gives a lot of like, "Just keep writing." Just, "If you get up today and you do this many words, then at the end of the year you'll have done a whole book." You know, that kind of thing.
But something I gleaned from those Sordelet talks was to make a comprehensive list of like, "Who do you know already. When you get out of school, who can you call that's gonna help you move the needle?" And again, everyone's response to this was like, "That's gross. Networking is disgusting! Dah-dah-dah." And I was like, "No, I think that that's how this has to work", right? Cause otherwise you're just nobody. And nobody is taking chances on your raw talent alone when you're no one.
Sarah Enni: I have to just tell you, that is very refreshing to hear you say it that way. And tell me how you feel about this. Cause this is a conversation I've been having with my friends recently, and with my therapist. I moved around a bunch as a kid, and I was the oldest kid. So I was thrust into new environments often. So what that entrenched in me, and what I continue use as an MO for my whole life is, nobody owes you their attention.
And it is on you. When you enter a new space, or a new realm where you want to do work, fit in, find friends, do anything! You have to observe, figure out what is going on, and figure out what you can do for people. Or what your role is, or how you can contribute, or what's being served and what's not, and how can you jump in.
Maggie Levin: What do you have to offer?
Sarah Enni: What can you bring to the game? Because you're not owed anything. This is not a nice thing to tell people.
Maggie Levin: No. Generally not well received.
Sarah Enni: Generally not well received, but I continue to be gobsmacked when I meet people who are like, "I wrote a screenplay and I don't know why no one's paying me for it yet." It's like, "You wrote it in your house bro and you haven't left. So why would anyone just magically know you exist." These are generalizations, but truly that's why when people are frustrated with network, I'm like you're scared of networking. Don't misinterpret your fear of talking to strangers with...."
Maggie Levin: "It's gross." And I understand there is a version of networking and a version of self-promotion that is gross, and over the top. And we are all very sensitive to it. I think we are subjected to a lot of different kinds of it on the internet. But I feel like for the majority, people have a really good instinct of what's coming from a genuine place, and what's coming from a gross place.
Sarah Enni: Yep. Couldn't agree more.
Maggie Levin: But yeah, we live in an age where there's a lot of noise. There's a lot of stuff to look at. And if you are afraid or otherwise hamstringing yourself from doing that part of it, the only person you're hurting with your nobility is yourself.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And not to sidetrack your whole story.
Maggie Levin: No. It's a worth while conversation.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. I think it's just like you're talking about your teacher coming in just being like, "In addition to talking about your art, we do need to have some practical conversations." It's very useful.
Maggie Levin: He was aware once the little red doors open and you walk out of here, no one's gonna be that interested in you. And it's crushing when you're the center of your own universe for two years in conservatory. And then you're like, "What? What do you mean no one's gonna care about me? I care about me." We could do a long side conversation about ego stories right now.
But, back on the, "How did I get to LA? And how did I start making films?" In that list, and in my history was, "Okay, I have this relationship to Peter Gabriel and Peter Gabriel's music. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna write a Peter Gabriel jukebox musical and I'm gonna see if he'll let me do something about that."
The long story short of that is it took me a couple of years to put together a workshop version, which was ultimately a pitch presentation to my Uncle Peter. I use that term really loosely. We're not that close, but he knows who I am and he's a lovely man. And he was very kind and generous to be like, "Yes, you can do this workshop."
And then after he, I assume, saw the tape of that workshop in New York, there were other producers sniffing around. There was a producer in LA who said, "Hey, we can do a workshop of it at UCLA." I was dating somebody at the time who lived in Los Angeles and I was looking for an excuse to live full-time with the person that I was dating. And I was like, "What a convenient career opportunity for me to leave New York."
So it was a combination of coming here to pursue that, and then to be with the person that I was in love with. As soon as I landed here I realized very quickly like, "Oh, there is no theater scene." I mean, sorry. There is a theater scene, but there is no theater scene that is going to be possible for me to make a living-wage participating in. Unless I'm already famous. So I better find a way to, you know?
Sarah Enni: What was it like to realize that?
Maggie Levin: I think I was already in such a time of big, personal change, and re-examining everything. Having left my entire friend group, my whole family. I was a very New York-y person and then I was here and I liked it. And couldn't believe that I liked it. And so was really like, "Okay, I'm gonna actively try to seek a way to stay here and to make this work."
And I got into classes at UCB. I went to classes at UCLA Extension for screenwriting and I listened to and went to a lot of live tapings of what was then the Nerdist Writers' Panel, and is now just called the Writer's Panel. Which I think I'm gonna be on in a couple of weeks, which is mind boggling.
Sarah Enni: That's exciting! Yeah, Ben Blacker's podcast about writing. I always tell people to listen to Scriptnotes too because advice about writing is advice about writing (Scriptnotes with Craig Mazin and John August listen to his First Draft podcast here!) So whatever play, novel, screenplay, otherwise, we're pretty much talking about the same stuff.
Maggie Levin: Totally. Yeah. It's all part of the same soup.
Sarah Enni: I love that you went to two programs. Was the first Fordham an undergrad?
Maggie Levin: Yes.
Sarah Enni: Okay. You went to undergrad and conservatory and then you moved to LA and did your own...
Maggie Levin: Study. Continued to study. I was also homeschooled in high school, and for somebody who seems, I'm usually very Punk Rocky about things, cause I'm like, "I didn't go to film school, dah, dah, dah, dah." I've actually gotten a lot of education.
Sarah Enni: I love that though. And self-directed is in some ways, I hope certainly for creative people, self-directed continuing education is where it's at.
Maggie Levin: Oh totally. You can always learn new stuff. And you can always learn extra tools from other places. That's the most exciting, beautiful aspect of the internet. Which is occasionally, maybe more often than not, a toxic wasteland. The ability to educate yourself about anything, and add more tools to your toolbox, it's amazing.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. That's very well said. I agree. So I want to obviously get to My Valentine, which the podcast is gonna come out in coordination with that, so people can go watch it. But to build up to that, I want to talk about how you did the stepping stone of some shorts, and music videos. How did things get rolling? And, well, then I'll ask about voice. But yeah, how did things start building?
Maggie Levin: I did a couple, as you said, did a couple of music videos, and videos for people's Kickstarter campaigns. I had a friend Patrick Victor Alvarez, who was like, "I'll film whatever you want." Cause I didn't know how to be my own cinematographer. So I was very, initially very reliant on, "I need a camera person and I need an editor." And yeah, I wound up falling in with a group of run-and-gun filmmaker guys who were also New York transplants.
And we formed a fun little team of like; I had a lot of ideas, script writing, and connections to performers. And they had a lot of equipment and sound and edit. They had the technical aspect of it covered. So I was like, "Hey, I have this short film idea that I've been carting around for a little while. I'd to make it." Those guys Braedan Herrera, Alex Choonoo, helped me put it together from the technical side.
And making Lovesick, which was the first short film that I ever wrote, I did not direct. Braedan directed it and I starred in it. Yikes [laughs]. I don't know. I still don't know like, "Why did I do that?" It was fun, but. And then there are a few projects that I wound up getting attached to and making that were beyond [pauses], like if you're looking at an incremental progress. I did lily pad a few times.
So one was this woman, Melanie Recker, came to me and was like, "I have the funding and the script for an entire digital series." That she wanted to make at a pretty high level. And I had no film, nothing relevant in my catalog or my filmography so far, for her to point to and go, "Yeah, she's the right person for that." She and I met at a women's event and she just liked me.:
Thank God. Cause directing that series was also super formative, it was called The Friendless Five. And then through a friend of mine that I had been, wow, I'm skipping around a bit. I also started doing script coverage.
Sarah Enni: Oh yeah. Okay. Can you...?
Maggie Levin: That's a kind of vital aspect of this story that I jumped over.
Sarah Enni: That's okay. Can you also describe what that is exactly?
Maggie Levin: Yes. So all of the agencies, studios, production companies, anybody that makes a movie or has a hand in the process of making a movie, they get piles and piles of scripts. Really, the volume when you are doing reading, either as a reader or when you're in the position that I started being in this year, of being sent material to look at to consider to direct yourself. It's a discouraging level of stuff that's out there.
Sarah Enni: Every time I leave the house and go to a coffee shop to write, I look around and I'm like, "Oh my god. Everyone here is writing a script."
Maggie Levin: "Everyone is writing a script." Yeah. I think that if you are at all put off by the notion of competition, screenwriting will really test that for you. But on the upside of that is a lot of scripts, and having done what I did, a lot of scripts out there, most of them are not very producible.
So script coverage is a thing that all of these companies need. Basically, they are book reports. So depending on the place or the person, there's a team or several people assembled to read all the scripts. And then depending on the place, you either write a synopsis of what it's about, and then a review of it. And then usually there's a cover page where, "This is the log line, and these are the characters that are in it."
So I did read for UTA Paradigm, Amazon, Miramax and I think a couple of other places along the way. Did personal coverage for a few producers, did specialty coverage for some higher up agents on particular projects. One of my favorite bits of coverage I ever did was I read all eight drafts of The Queen movie four years, I think, before it was made. And they were wildly different. And I did comparison coverage on all of them.
And in a fascinating way, not only to learn the form and flow of a screenplay; what works, what doesn't, where you need to be engaging in particular. And then I eventually only stopped doing coverage because my body literally couldn't do it anymore. In the last six months of me doing reading, I would fall asleep in the first five pages. And I was like, "I can't. I actually have to quit because my brain won't read scripts anymore. And that's very bad for my life."
Sarah Enni: Your reached capacity. Oh, that's so interesting. But obviously you found it fun.
Maggie Levin: Yeah. Oh yeah. And it was really an interesting way to understand the marketplace. Especially when it's coming in for agencies. You understand what's being tossed around for who, what everybody thinks is the hot, cool thing. And how much of the, "What's the hot, cool thing?" Is based on quality. Which varies. it really varies. People will get as excited about a cool idea as they will about a great script. But a great script that is a cool idea? It is gold.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Yeah. That's so interesting. Oh, I love that. And again, that is another way of you just putting yourself through a writing program. And also, that format you've been reading forever, cause it's like plays. But then the ways that it's different must've been fascinating.
Maggie Levin: It was a great education. So doing that coupled with the making of things at an ultra low budget, you know, take- money-out-of-my-savings-account-and-make-a-thing film school that I was doing. It provided the foundation to be able to do what I do now.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. And to rise to the challenge when someone says, "Make my web series for me."
Maggie Levin: Yeah, and being able to do both of those things at the same time, taught me the really important lesson of what the... cause there's the movie you write, the movie you shoot, and the movie you edit. And they're all a bit different. They can be vastly different sometimes.:
But for something to be consistent from script to final product is pretty unusual. And that step between what's written and what's made, because I did so much independent producing, I'm equipped now to go like, "Well here's what's possible and here's what isn't." Depending on how much money we have. And that's a thing that I think a lot of screenwriters don't get to do, if they're not participating in the production process at all.
Sarah Enni: Right. Absolutely. I have a friend who is on the production side and he'll look at things and be like, "Let me tell you on this page where the money is." And it's such a cool lesson to just sit there and talk him through his brain and how he's like, "No, I'll tell you what we can't do and why."
Maggie Levin: I even had a friend, before I had made a lot of stuff, come to a live reading of one of my screenplays. And when we were at drinks afterwards he turned to me, he's like, "You know, that script is super producible up until the middle of act two, and then it's too much money." And I was like, "Oh." And it suddenly became aware of like, "Oh, if I'm gonna have a feature length screenplay that is makeable, I have to start adjusting my mindset about what I want to see happen."
Sarah Enni: Right, right. And then, I mean, people talk about this all the time, but it doesn't mean that you're less creative.
Maggie Levin: Not at all.
Sarah Enni: Putting constraints on creativity can be the most energizing thing.
Maggie Levin: And if you're able to pull off something, if you can build those parameters for yourself of like I wanna do something that people are going to read and go, "I could make this. I could make this tomorrow with 1 million, 2 million, $5 million dollars." Which I know sounds like a lot of money to some people, but that's not any money in film terms. The one to five producible great thing is a golden ticket. So if you could make something very contained and very cheap that people get stoked about the quality of, then that is a thing that can be your ticket to ride for sure.
Sarah Enni: Okay, so you've gotten the chance to do a lot of music videos. You did Diva (a short directed by Maggie and starred Helen Highfield), which was so fun. And I feel like people were excited about that. And you have, like you're saying, building this body of work. How did you get involved in Blumhouse and how did My Valentine come about?
Maggie Levin: So along the way of all of these things, writing, writing, writing. I'm sure any listener of this podcast, you all know we should constantly be writing. And I was just trying to build that bench of scripts. I had a scifi two-hander drama called Retrograde, that I hope to make some day soon. That a friend of mine - who is a director and a producer who mostly has worked in the horror space, but also worked in the big Marvel comic book space - took an interest in after we had been pals for a long time.
I think he was kind of like, ""What's going on with you and your career? And I'm like, "I don't know. I'm making all of this..." You know, I made this series for Go 90 and Verizon called Miss 2059, the Second Season of that. I think I also jumped over Miss 2059 included all of the work that I did with Anna Akana, a vital person in my journey upward. And she actually is in My Valentine. I want to work with that woman forever. She's incredible. So Scott and Cargill, Scott Derrickson (writer and director of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and writer, director, and producer on the new Snowpiercer TV show) ,and C. Robert Cargill (author of books like Dreams and Shadows, and screenwriter of Sinister, Sinister 2, and Doctor Strange) took a look at Retrograde, which at the point I was at with it then, it was small. It was really like a play.
It has this cool time-looping concept in it, which they both told me they had never seen time-travel used in that way. So it was exciting. And then with the two of them helping me develop it, I really honed that script in a way that I never had anything else before.
Having people with really high level creative insight come in and really get their hands in the clay with you, the experience of that was both really gratifying and really scary. When you've been off on your own, doing whatever you want to do, suddenly - I don't know what your relationship is to notes - but I found I had to work through like, "Oh, I have a lot of resistance here." I always thought that when qualified people came along and gave me feedback, I'd be like, "Yeah man." But it turns out... [laughs].
Sarah Enni: I had a few of those moments like, "Oh no, I'm an artist. I'm a difficult artist."
Maggie Levin: "I don't it when you don't say that I'm a genius." [Both laughing].
Maggie Levin: And yeah, I think collectively, I probably rewrote Retrograde eleven or twelve times. And with time travel, it's a real, you know, how's the toothpicks?
Sarah Enni: Oh yes. That's the biggest challenge I think you can set yourself.
Maggie Levin: Oh, my brain was so broken by the end of that rewriting process. And knowing where it's at in its life of working towards being produced, I think I'm about to do another pass on it. I'm already like, "Whew, I have to do brain pushups to make sure that I can operate there."
Sarah Enni: To make sure you're up to it. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Maggie Levin: So Scott and Cargill having made Sinister with Blumhouse a number of years ago, when the script was in a really solid place, and I had brand new representation at Brillstein and WME, everything was coming together in a way to really take this places. And the fellows wanted to take it to Blumhouse first because that's where they have this strong relationship.
Maggie Levin: And Blumhouse is a place that takes big risks on young filmmakers. And their model is incredible. They make a lot of stuff. And I was told from the get go, Blumhouse is a really filmmaker-driven place, and I have found that to be extremely true. It's wonderful.
So I went in and met with the Blumhouse team about Retrograde and it was something that might have worked for a couple of their TV models. They have this program called Into the Dark, which is a horror anthology series. Retrograde, not horror. They also have an ongoing Amazon series, I think it's a film every two months. I'm not really sure. But yeah, we were looking around of like, "Can Retrograde fit into either of these models?" Because they liked it.
And when it seemed they were leaning towards slotting it into, Into the Dark, I went like, "You know, Retrograde has only two characters, but there are at times sixteen versions of those same two characters." And the number sixteen is gonna come up again. Into the Dark's films are sixteen day shoots. Which is very short. So I started to look at the situation and go like, "Well I have the opportunity right now laid out in front of me, almost a done deal, to make a movie."
My first feature. Huge opportunity. Got to take it. However, I don't want to just make a movie because I can. I want to make something really well. I think that, particularly for women, people of color, any under traditionally or historically underrepresented group, there is a pressure to be beyond excellent in everything that we do. For me, I was like, "If the choice is between making a bad movie and no movie, I'm gonna pick no movie."
Which was a terrifying thing to say out loud, first to myself, and then to other people. Cause everybody was like, "What? Why don't you want to make the movie?" And I was like, "Well hang on. Let me look at what this model is. What is Into the Dark really like?" Understanding what their schedule is like. Watching all the episodes.
And I saw one episode called, I'm Just Fucking With You." Which is the April Fool's episode from 2019. And looking at I'm Just Fucking With You, it's sort of like brash, neon, really heightened world. That one's based on internet trolling and the psychology of a troll, and then this game of practical joking that goes awry. And it's shot and edited in this way that's very Edgar Wright-y, really poppy and in your face. And I saw that and I was like, "This is something that I can really do, and really do well." Based on my music video experience.
I didn't even think about how it was gonna tie into Diva yet, but it totally does. It deals in the same area. It deals in the area of pop stars, pop music and the things we go through or the things that female musicians go through, particularly. Female musicians of note. There are, again, the plight of the pop star. Something that's interesting to me.
But it was really about stylistically and time wise, "What can I do and do well." And Retrograde was being considered for the February slot. I think it was gonna be for Groundhog's Day. And I was like, "Let's do Valentine's Day." They had already done a Valentine's Day one, which is really fun, called Down. Where it's two people stuck in an elevator. And I, at the time, was going through some big personal relational transformation, getting to understand myself, breaking out of these really longstanding relational patterns.
Also was coming off of the, how do I put this? During the initial wave of "me too," a lot of the women close to me were, and including myself, were close to some really big monsters, really big ones. And going through that experience of... I feel like I've been using this phrase a lot lately, the lensing out. Getting a wider and wider perspective of the scales falling from your eyes. Realizing what was really going on for both myself and my nearest and dearest friends.
And all that raw stuff was bubbling around in me and I was like, "Okay, I'm gonna combine the pop music video world that I know really well, and I can film without thinking. I can make snap decisions about how this is gonna be visually. I can move in this space and not feel scared or uncertain of my decisions. I know this world like the back of my hand."
I know that can sound egotistical, but it's the world that I have played in both as an artist and as a person a lot. So then I pitched them this overall concept, which is, it's one pop star has her songs and her look stolen by her producer boyfriend. And he basically recreates her on a whole new person. That's the backstory. She spends, again backstory, a couple of years trying to get back on her feet. Figure out what the hell she's gonna do.
The night that she plays her first show in a couple of years, he comes to the show. And through his master manipulator skills kicks everyone out of the venue except for the people that are gonna help him out, and threatens her. For reasons that you should watch the movie to understand. But ultimately the body of the film is about these two people who were locked in this incredibly toxic dynamic, having to confront the wounds of the past. While crazy shit goes on around them.
Sarah Enni: The element then that is so funny to me is then, it's a horror movie.
Maggie Levin: Oh yeah.
Sarah Enni: You're with Blumhouse, I mean, Blumhouse does more than just horror, but you signed on for...
Maggie Levin: But they mainly work in the horror space.
Sarah Enni: They're mostly horror, and this series is explicitly a horror series.
Maggie Levin: Is a horror series, absolutely. Oh, and I know I'm talking about it from this really emotional perspective, but... it's a slasher movie. Like, full on. But I think my proximity and understanding, unfortunate understanding, of the nature of narcissistic sociopaths is the place where this slashing comes out of.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Well I was gonna say, when I saw that it was the Valentine's Day movie and then read more about the concept, I was like, "Oh, this is great!" [Both laugh] This is someone taking Valentine's Day and saying like, "Let's use Valentine's Day as a lens to look at female rage in an interesting way." Which I'm very here for. So that seemed very exciting to me.
Maggie Levin: If you have been in any abusive or gaslighting relationship, it's possible that this will be really triggering or really healing or both. It was certainly both things for me. And I feel immensely grateful for the opportunity to have explored what we explored. And I haven't even begun to talk about the people that made it with me. The cast is unbelievable and the DP, all of it. It really is, again, that thing of a thousand hands in concert, little miracles.
Sarah Enni: Which I want to ask about that because that is a thing that is, as a novelist, someone who is just rigidly in control of the movements of everything in the world, you know? And looking to other art forms where you can take off the mantle of all that comes with that too. I'm just interested in how you think about, or to what extent tension exists between your control and your vision versus delegation, collaboration, interpretation with the people that are helping you bring this to life.
Maggie Levin: Yeah, that's a really excellent question. I think part of the job of the director creator is to make sure that everybody from top to bottom really understands what we're making and how their role in it has value. And so that is something that I work very hard to try to create in my process. Is that everyone who's working on it feels their work is valuable.
Sarah Enni: Well, I think about this a lot because again, especially as a novelist where it's like Hammer is my only employee in that realm.
Maggie Levin: Ah, you're very good at your job.
Sarah Enni: And I'm not sure how great of a manager I am of him. But you are, when you move into the directing space, it's a creative artistic job, but it's also a managerial job.
Maggie Levin: Absolutely.
Sarah Enni: And that's a whole other set of skills, you know? And for people that didn't go to business school, even being a boss to the extent that I am, I just have a few people that help me with the podcast, I'm like, "Oh! I'm taking on a lot of responsibility. I want to make sure that people feel good about the work that I'm asking them to do." It's a big task though.
Maggie Levin: Yeah. Well, and it's important. If you want to keep working with other people, which I certainly do.
Sarah Enni: Yes. And if you want people to bring their best work.
Maggie Levin: Absolutely. Oh, the difference between somebody's work when they care and don't care, is night and day. And I've had certainly the experience of people showing up on a set of mine, where they're subbing in for someone in the camera department, or for whatever reason, they don't care.
And you try not to do any blaming or whatever. But it's crushing. It's definitely hard for me not to take that kind of thing personally. Cause I'm like, "Why don't you care?" And then you have to go like, "Well, because you're here for a day. And I've been on this project since June. And when it comes out, my name's all over it and yours is buried on the third page of the credit."
So that I think is connected to what I'm saying about making sure that everybody understands that their contribution to the piece is absolutely... You know, stuff like the people that run Crafty, that is the beating heart of a set. Keeping everyone fed, well.
Sarah Enni: Yes. A hangry set is not gonna make a good movie either.
Maggie Levin: No, no. And you learn that from doing crappy low-level projects for long enough. If you're feeding everybody after hour twelve with just pizza, people aren't gonna be doing their best work.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Oh my gosh. I can imagine. I really love that. And that's the delegation part of things. I guess the other element of it is not only the people are showing up and doing the best work, but then when you get to people whose interpretation of your work is going to define it, how do you work with accepting other people's interpretations if they're different than what you thought? What's your perspective like on set as far as letting other people have their say in what's ultimately going to be the project?
Maggie Levin: That's an amazing question. I think that if you're in the position to hire people that you really trust, that helps a lot. And you also have all of your main team, your cinematographer, your onset producer, your AD, all of those folks. You have a couple of weeks, at least in the context of this series - particularly in a longer movie, I believe you have much longer - your production designer, all of those department heads, you have a few chances to really get to know each other. And everyone who is a department head worth their salt is ultimately trying to execute the vision of the director.
What I like to do though, I think my method or artistic strategy is, I don't believe that I'm always gonna have the best idea. I'm really not. I'm one person, one perspective. And I very much want all of the things that I make to have a voice, but not to be a vision through a tiny key hole of one person. It's the very reason why diversity matters. It's the necessity of multiple perspectives is what makes, I think, great art.
That can be contradictory of singular voice stuff but, certainly in the context of film, it's everybody working together. It's not one person. I get a little bit grumpy about auteur theory and I'm like, "Yeah, but it's not one person." So in terms of the delegation, I try not to fight too many battles to the mat. I know by instinct, what is important, what is vital, and it's absolutely my job to keep an eye on the biggest bigger picture, which is; final product, who is this movie for? What story are we telling? Those are the essential pieces. Everything else is up for discussion.
Sarah Enni: I can also imagine though, throwing the added wrench in of first feature, just the other pressure element can kind of make you lose your mind a little bit.
Maggie Levin: Totally. Well, depending on the day and who's talking, it's like, "Well, it's just an episode of television." Or, "It's the first feature you've ever made and you better get it perfect." And I flipped back and forth between the like, "Just don't worry about it" perspective. And the, "This is the most meaningful thing I've ever done!" All day, every day. Still doing that.
Sarah Enni: Oh my God. That's really actually all it is [laughing].
Maggie Levin: Uh-huh! Like, "This really matters.This doesn't matter. Nothing matters."
Sarah Enni: Or it doesn't matter at all. No. Sometimes I'm sitting at the coffee shop writing the scene and I'm like, "It's the first draft. It doesn't matter if I get it right or not." And then I'm writing it and I'm like, "This is the most pivotal scene in the book!" And it's just like, "Oh." There's no way to level that out. So I like to wrap up with advice. I'd love to hear someone who is interested in writing screenplays, or in getting into that world, what you would advise them.
Maggie Levin: Recommend?
Sarah Enni: Yeah, exactly.
Maggie Levin: Oh, I mean reading scripts, that's the best thing to do.
Sarah Enni: I was gonna say, you went over it a little bit.
Maggie Levin: It's reading scripts and then also there are places that will recommend that you watch things and then actually write a breakdown of what you're seeing on screen. But just reading scripts and watching movies, reading scripts of the movies that you've seen. There will come a point after you've done that enough where you just absorb in your whole person what the flow of a film is.
And then it's that thing of, once you know form, you can riff and do whatever you want. You can blow the form up. You can make a movie like I made, which is absolutely, at its core, spiritually a psychological horror thriller. But it has drama and it has high level over the top comedy in it as well.
I think that you can always mess around with form and structure, but you have to know them first. I don't think you should read, honestly, don't read any screenwriting books. But listening to writers talk about writing and reading and watching movies, those are the best things you can do.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, I don't actually think anybody on the show has said that before. First of all, I appreciate that. This is a podcast about writing. So I also love listening to people talk about the writing process, but I always find I take more away from that than reading books about it.
Maggie Levin: Definitely. No, there's something about it just humanizes a thing in a different way.
Sarah Enni: Yeah. Anecdotes stick with you almost more than broad rules.
Maggie Levin: Definitely. Yeah.
Sarah Enni: I mean, listen, we were talking about telling each other stories, hearing someone tell the story of their artistic path. So much more engaging, less dry.
Maggie Levin: And it sparks ways for, I think particularly if you're trying to make it a career and move off of... you know, there's writing as hobby and then there's writing as trying to make it your job. I mean podcasts are the gift from the gods for that understanding. Everything that I initially learned about the business of the business, I learned from podcasts.
Sarah Enni: Yeah, for real. It's a wonderful time to want to just learn more about something if you then even can tell if it's for you or not based on how people talk about it. So hurray for podcasting. I'll take that.
Maggie Levin: I love podcasts. Thank you so much for having me on yours.
Sarah Enni: This was such a delight. Thank you for giving me so much time. And I'm so excited for the movie. And we do show notes on my show so we'll link to everything on there and it'll be great.
Maggie Levin: Amazing. Thank you so much.
Sarah Enni: Thank you.
Maggie Levin: It was really lovely being here. Thanks.
Sarah Enni: Thank you so much to Maggie. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram @Maggielevin and follow me on both @Sarah Enni (Twitter and Instagram) and the show @FirstDraftPod (Twitter and Instagram). The show was brought to you by Julie Berry's historical YA Lovely War which is out in paperback from Penguin Random House now.
You can find a link to check out that book in the show notes, which are @firstdraftpod.com alongside many, many other links to buy, watch, or go down the internet rabbit hole of any of the things that Maggie and I talked about in this interview.
And bonus, if you purchase anything through the links in the show notes, a portion of the proceeds go back to First Draft and they help keep this podcast free. So I hope if anything sparked your interest that you'll go check out the show notes, click on the links, and buy.
Another easy way to support the show is to subscribe to First Draft where ever you're listening right now. And if you have a couple minutes, leave a rating or review on iTunes. It makes a really big difference. I'm gonna read a recent five-star review that was left on the site.
This review is left by Momo. Momo says, "Thoughtful, intimate, and informative. Five-Stars. This is my favorite podcast about writing and books. Sarah Enni is the best interviewer, hands down. And has an amazingly diverse and comprehensive guest list. All professionals in publishing and or entertainment. It's like listening to two smart, inspiring friends in conversation in your kitchen."
Momo, thank you so much. That's really sweet. I'm so glad that it feels that. Like you're just sitting in on friends talking, that's always been the purpose of the show. And I'm so glad to hear that it's coming across that way. And thank you for taking a few minutes to leave that rating and review. It really does make a big difference. Ratings and review help push the First Draft Podcast up the list of recommended book podcasts so that other people can find and enjoy the show. So thanks Momo.
If you have any writing or creativity questions that you'd me and a guest to answer in an upcoming mailbag episode, you can leave that question at the voicemail box at (818) 533-1998. Those episodes have been so fun to do and I always need new questions. So anything creativity, writing, pets, um, you know, Los Angeles coffee shops, you name it! You got a question about it? Let me know.
Hayley Hershman produced this episode. The theme music is by Dan Bailey and the logo was designed by Collin Keith. Thanks to production assistant Tasneem Daud, and transcriptionist-at-large, Julie Anderson. And, as ever, thanks to you pop stars with problems for listening.
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