Gerard Bush & Christopher Renz

AH: As fourth dates go, it was kind of an unusual one. Gerard Bush and Christopher Renz had only known each other a few weeks. Christopher had caught Gerard’s eye while tussling with a security guard who wouldn’t let him enter a party. They struck up a conversation that led to a couple of dates. Dates one, two or three were pretty standard – dinner, drinks, you know the drill. By date four, however, the pair found themselves writing a short story about aliens together. 12 years later, the collaborative short story writing process that began on that fourth date has endured, and helped turn them into an exciting new force in American moviemaking. Last year, they released a timely, twisty sci-fi drama named Antebellum – one of the most incendiary and narratively inventive in recent memory for my money. Like everything they write, it began as a short story.

BR: Our way into the script is always the same in terms of process – go directly into a short story. Because that's our way to organize our thoughts and to clearly understand the story that we're trying to tell. And it serves as a roadmap…. the short story helps us to form sort of a mini movie in our brains about and around what the idea and the characters and the world look like. The short story is its own art obviously, but it feels a little less daunting than a blank page, one of 120 that are blank. There are less rules and you can just kind of, you know, explore the idea.

AH: That first voice you heard is Gerard. The slightly softer one belongs to Christopher. Together, as writer-director duo Bush/Renz, they let screenplays begin life as short stories, before being left to flower and bloom in their imaginations, at which point they’ll build them out into script form.

BR: Generally for us, the short story is our outline. Mmm, hmmm. Yep, that's exactly our way in… You have to build enough of a foundation, enough of a roadmap, in the story and then all of the characters come in and sit next to you and whisper in your ear when you're doing a set at the gym, or when you're looking for your favorite almond milk that they've run out of when suddenly you've moved to oat milk and like, all of these things that happen just in sort of your mundane, everyday existence. These characters start living with you and talking to you and telling you where to go.

AH: I’m Al Horner, and today on How I Write, a podcast about the highs, lows and workflows of screenwriting – Bush/Renz describe how they always aim to catalyse conversations about the world we live in with their work. Discover why they love to burden their characters with both personal and planetary struggles, how they build their trademark mind-bending twists and the balance between entertainment and activism in the politically-charged stories they write.

BR: At the end  of the day, our number one priority is to rivet and entertain the audience. If we're not doing that, then you know, any of the medicine that we tried to bury within the delicious snack doesn't even matter.

AH: That’s all to come today on How I Write, presented by Arc Studio Pro – the screenwriting software that lets writers stay focused on the stories they’re trying to tell on the page. Get your free trial today to check out its intuitive design, seamless real-time collaboration feature, excellent outlining functions and easy-to-use import and export capabilities. More on Arc Studio Pro later – but for now, with no further adieu…

BR: I’m Christopher Renz and I'm Gerard Bush, and this is how we write.

BR: You know, for us, we're really inspired and motivated to tell stories, especially within this particular landscape that we find ourselves in. I think that, just like any other citizen of the world, you know, we have our concerns about the state of things and, and how – I know that statistically. I think Pinker said, we're moving in a much better direction than we've ever been as a civilization. But it doesn't feel that way on the ground. And then at the same time, we're sort of film and television fanatics. And so we don't want to make something that feels finger-wagging. We want to make something that feels really entertaining whilst also having something meaningful to say, or some witness, you know, an observation of the world that we live in and perhaps a cautionary tale at times.

AH: If you saw Antebellum, in which a woman named Veronica played by Janelle Monáe is seemingly transported back in time to the Antebellum South, where she assumes the name of Eden as an enslaved woman, nothing Gerard described there about the types of stories he and Christopher enjoy writing will surprise you. As filmmakers, they’re constantly forging stories “set five minutes into the future” as they put it, that combine their voracious appetites for movies, and elements of their past work as advertising execs working on social justice projects.

BR: For Christopher and I, it never even occurs to us that we would write something for the screen that does not have some kind of political message – that doesn't have something to say about where we might be going if we're not careful. As we sit here today, we're in the middle of a climate catastrophe that is completely out of control. We have, oh my God, a disinformation channel that is metastasizing across the world at a breakneck pace and people are becoming really resistant or unable to perceive reality. We all just have our own warped sense of reality. And I think that that spells disaster if we don’t do something about it sooner rather than later. And so for us, you know, I think there are a lot of filmmakers. There are a lot of writers that are making really entertaining content. We don't make content. We make film and television. That's what we're committed to.

AH: The first step in their process, coming up with a story, requires listening to the world around them. Because you never know where an idea may come from.

BR: Everything is an opportunity. Even speaking to you, even looking at the prints that are, that are framed behind you and the microphone and, and just you and, and what that might mean later, you know, in terms of having another idea and a conversation that we're having about what we're writing. So it's, it's really just recognizing that everything around you and everything that you're experiencing is an opportunity for the page. You know, it doesn't mean that it has to have anything specifically to do with what you're writing. It's that you understand that the world around you is filled with inspiration and information that's trying to reveal itself – if you can just pay attention and be vigilant about everything that you're experiencing as a human, having a human experience and putting that on the page for the characters in the story.

AH: When they’re armed with a story idea, before it becomes a short story to then become a screenplay, Christopher and Gerard spend hours talking and exploring their own emotions around a subject.  leaning into their most vulnerable parts of themselves to tap into  

BR: It's giving one another permission to speak about something. To have an idea and to not be judged, whatever the idea may be. It's it's look, I think that that, that for us, or for many writers, it's the vulnerability that gives you the, the way in it's it's the. It's being able to sort of confront those parts of yourself that are really afraid of the variety of directions that you can go. And so for us, living in the same house in the same space, being partners for 14 years, we  are able to have some, some really meaningful discussions about and around, you know,   what we are thinking or feeling at any particular moment. It may not necessarily have anything to do with what we're writing.

AH: Once they have an exciting premise and a rough sense of what bigger questions the story might ask of themselves and their audience, Gerard and Christopher start figuring out: who’s the perfect character to be plunged into this situation? And what inner struggle could this character be facing, that would compliment the outer threat they have to contend with?  

BR: We're always just trying to lean into the thing that feels really authentic to the story and what feels like an interesting perspective, you know? In the middle of a bunch of UFOs visiting – some uber-intelligent alien visitor – [the idea] that there could be a mixed-race couple that's dealing with their own sense of loss while in the backdrop, we are dealing with, as a civilization, the most consequential event that's ever happened in the world… that becomes much more interesting to us than just a UFO visitation, if that makes sense.

AH: One thing is always for certain. Whichever character they craft as our lens into the story, they have to go through some kind of metamorphosis. That’s what story is all about, says Gerard – a character beginning the story in one place, and ending it transformed by the experience they undergo. Because without that transformation, what you just watched is kinda meaningless, right? What was the purpose of that story?

I think that that's probably the primary motivation in everything that we're writing is to demonstrate the transformation of a person through experience in order to pluck that empathetic cord, where you can actually imagine yourself, you know, it from a universal perspective that, that, you know, whether that person is black or Asian or gay or straight, when you're looking at the character, you can imagine that there's a universal message of transformation and what that means for you and your own life. And so, you know, that's an on-ramp for everything that we do.

AH: After blasting their thoughts and ideas into a short story, containing all the raw ingredients of the tale they want to tell on screen, they take a step back, assess how they feel about the story. If they feel excited and energised by it, with a vision beginning to form about how it’d make a movie, the ways they could direct it, they begin a more intensive research process, to find the depth and detail that is going to enrich their feature-length screenplay.

BR: The research comes after the story. Yeah, the research comes after – the short story is just: write it, get it out, no rules, to get the idea on paper. And then lots of research comes in between short story and script, and even, you know, after script to pre-production. Like with Antebellum, there was tremendous rigor in the research. We really needed to get it right. There are some, you know, members of the audience that might not even recognize what they're looking at. They would have to go back on a second or third watch to pick up all of the little details of the research and the authenticity as it relates to those characters… We are committed to tremendous rigor in the research that we're doing, because that's the entire point is to say that this is not so far fetched.

AH: But wait. Where is all this happening? The answer is, for the most part, in the pair’s    apartment in California, surrounded by nature and 80-year-old neighbours (shout out to Nedra, who’ll often chat to the guys about what they’re working on when she’s out in her garden, tending to her dandelions). The way they describe their writing environment underlines, how for Gerard and Christopher, writing is a meditative act – each day when it’s time to start writing, they light a candle to signal that work has begun. Sometimes, they’re so consumed by the page, they don’t notice entire days passing by.

BR: You sit and you write for four hours without even getting up. You don't realize – like yesterday, I was at the gym working out and Christopher was here writing by himself. I called him and I said, you know, “C, do you want something to eat?” And he said, “oh my God, I've been sitting here in this chair for like six hours. I haven't eaten.” He just didn't because you're sitting and you just forget. And the entire, you know, you're – you're just engulfed in what you're doing. And before you know it, the day has gone by, so that's kind of just – that's how we work and it works for us. You know, we have this – I wish you could see it – but like, we also have this bonsai tree that's in the center of the table that we, that we, that we write on. Everything is about trying to create a sense of zen and calm in the house and it, and it just works. I need to feel, and Christopher needs to feel, we need to feel calm and settled.

What’s great about us as a duo is, you know, one of us can put down an idea for a scene, write it through, send it to the other person and then they kind of expand and edit and adjust. And I think that's part of the magic in our working together. If you're one person writing something, then you kind of think, “well, that's not that great. And I don't even know why I'm going in this direction. Oh my God, no one's going to like this.” Your brain goes into these sort of circles. Whereas, you know, when it's two of you and you've established what the game rules are, it's a lot more fun, at least for us.

AH: Coming up on How I Write – how Bush and Renz craft twist and why they believe that anyone can learn screenwriting formatting – it’s learning who you are and what your essence is as a storyteller that’s the hard bit. But first, a word about Arc Studio Pro.

Screenwriting to me is all about immersion. I want to stay immersed in that dreamy fantasy-like state while I weave my story and craft my characters. I don’t want to be distracted by anything and I certainly don’t want to be thinking about text formatting. Arc Studio Pro understands that. It’s so intuitive. It has a minimal and dare I say beautiful interface that allows me to stay completely focused on the story I’m trying to tell. If you like to work with a writing partner like Bush and Renz, well, good news – Arc Studio Pro has seamless real-time collaboration kind of similar to Google Docs which allows you and whoever you’re working with to stay and literally and figuratively on the same page. Importing and exporting other formats like PDF and Final Draft files is easy. And best of all, it has an always free plan. Meaning you can sign up today and start writing. To take your screenwriting to the next level, visit ArcStudioPro.com. Click the link in today’s show notes to find out more. Okay, back to the conversation.

BR: I get really bored, you know, with people that reveal too much information about themselves immediately. I like a multi-layered person. I like to find out new things about someone that I've known for years years later, because they're always in a state of bloom and holding just enough back – not in a sort of duplicitous [way, just] being discreet about certain corners of their minds and their is-ness – their souls and themselves. [They’re always asking]: is this the appropriate time or the appropriate person to reveal this particular part of myself? Do they deserve to know at this point? Is this worthy of sharing? And that same process applies for me with the scenes.

AH: One feature of Bush and Renz’ work that you might have noticed if you saw Antebellum is, they love to peel back the layers on the story slowly, refusing to give you all the pieces straight off the bat. The pair say they do this because a) that’s akin to real life, in which we hold parts of ourselves back, forever working out what to share and who to trust, and b) because it’s more entertaining. Great movies are all about that slowburn, that drip-feed of new information, keeping you on your toes from scene to scene.

BR: For me, a script and a story are a series of seductions. You have to know when to reveal a certain piece of information that keeps the audience enticed and engaged without giving so much away that it's a yawn, you know? It's just this delicate balance of peeling back another layer at precisely the right time. It's not that you always get it right. I think that, you know, when you're writing a script and you become so close to it at times, it becomes increasingly difficult to see what may be obvious to someone else. And that's when the producers who are not living that material day in and day out become really, really helpful, because you might think that you've struck that [balance] but you might be overplaying it, or you might be holding too much.

AH: Alright, so full disclosure if you’ve made it this far. You know the meme of the guy with the bulging blood vessels, struggling to contain something? That’s been me creating this entire episode, straining not to reveal too much about Antebellum. It’s a movie best experienced without knowing too much about what you’re getting yourself into. What I will say is that it contains one hell of a twist – a “magic trick” as Gerard and Christopher put it. Twists are hard to make feel natural and organic, rather than just a shock tactic designed to yank the rug from out under your audience. The duo say the key is to only add a twist if you can do so elegantly in a way that feels true to the thematic questions your script is posing.

BR: Whenever you try too hard to pull out a sort of magic trick, I think it's reductive to the material. And I also think that it can prove really damaging to the art that you're making or what you're putting on the page. I think if you have a sort of natural rhythm – we were talking earlier about how the story tells you where it wants to go, you know, with Antebellum. The entire point, like when you think about the word “antebellum” – which all of a sudden is just in crazy rotation. It was kind of a word that was out of circulation, and then suddenly, now it's like a word that has garnered a lot of attention. So when you think about that word and how Veronica Henley played by Janell Monae passes the sign, the definition of the word “antebellum” is the period before a civil war and specifically the American civil war. And the question that we were posing to the audience was, “are we talking about the civil war of the past or the civil war that's to come?” I would say as advice to any screenwriter in terms of a big twist, it becomes about a question and the question that you're posing to the audience, and at what point you want to deliver that question without any ambiguity. You want complete clarity around the question that you're posing. And there might be the best, most elegant opportunity for a twist.

AH: When it comes to formatting their screenplays, the pair don’t let themselves get too bogged down in the supposed rules of how your script is supposed to look. Because ultimately, what matters is the story and the part of yourself – your fears, your vulnerabilities – that you’ve let bleed out onto the page.

BR: There are so many different ways to approach the writing process. And I think that it's really important that yes, we respect structure and that we respect that there are set of just sort of, you know, protocols that we've collectively agreed to of what this process can look like for script to screen. But I think that if we, if we don't. play in between those spaces, we can miss a big opportunity on some really extraordinary stories to happen. And I think that there are people out there writers that might be a little intimidated by the process and they should, they should not think so much about that and and try to focus more on, on a feeling that they have for what they're writing and the mechanics of it, you can always get there. It's the feeling and the idea that is unique to you. Everyone can replicate a formula. It's the essence that people cannot replicate. So I would encourage writers that are just getting started in this, I would encourage them to really lean into their essence and the mechanics of it will work out itself. You'll learn that.

AH: At the end of this entire process, if you’re lucky enough to get the movie made, adulation might await. With Antebellum, the pair are the first to admit, the movie kinda polarised audiences. But that was by design, explains Gerard. A huge part of their writing process is wanting to catalyse a conversation. They want to be disruptive. It informs the types of stories they try to tell.

BR: When you're making something to rattle an audience to not create something prosaic, but something that is activating and at some points disturbing, for the entire purpose of catalyzing a conversation, then you have to be prepared for a polarizing response… But now that we've had it, I wouldn't trade it for the world. I think it's exactly the thing that we set out to do is to make disruptive art. And if you make disruptive art, you've gotta be strong enough… you have to be brave enough to take everything that comes along with that. There's a great responsibility that you have in putting this kind of thing out into the world. And we're just really proud of it and really. I think we're better for the experience, which is why we just continue to do it. And feel incredibly fortunate and, and blessed that anyone is paying attention to anything that we have to say. The most cathartic process for my own self-healing that is available to me is to write, is to sit there with these characters and to write. And so there's respect. I don't want to call it a worship, but the desk, the table that you write at – it's an altar. It's a ceremony and it should be respected because your imagination, it's just such a beautiful thing. It takes you places that are well beyond the physical construct. And that's extraordinary to me. I'll never understand for the rest of my days where it comes from, but it's a really beautiful experience when you, when you commune with your imagination.

AH: Bush and Renz are the writer-director duo behind Antebellum, starring Janelle Monae. Their upcoming projects include Inkwell, a TV drama about a group of Black surfers that find themselves battling a mysterious dark superpower, and Rapture, their second feature movie. You’ve been listening to How I Write. You’ve been listening to How I Write, hosted by me – Al Horner – with production by Kamil Dymek. Music is by Oliver Knowles. Our theme song is by Nafets. How I Write is brought to you by Arc Studio Pro. Get your free trial today by visiting Arc Studio Pro.com. Thanks for tuning in – we’ll see you next time.