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Pete Bridges on getting spec script The Fall picked up by Spielberg’s Amblin

Pete Bridges.

Last week, Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment announced it had closed a deal to develop The Fall, a thriller based on a spec script by Melbourne writer Pete Bridges.

Set during an alien invasion, the story focuses on a newly divorced couple who must make their way on foot through downtown Atlanta to the suburbs where their young children are at home. It will be produced by Madhouse Entertainment’s Adam Kolbrenner with Robyn Meisinger as executive producer. No director or cast is attached as yet.

Bridges’ first script, Resurface made last year’s Black List, with Broken Road producing.

IF spoke with Bridges, who is represented by Verve, Madhouse and attorney Kim Stenton, about the Amblin deal, Resurface and his start in the industry.

IF: How’d you get your start in the industry?

PB: I dropped out of high school in my final year and just started writing. There weren’t really any uni courses for what I wanted to do, so I got a head start on crappy part time jobs while I wrote. I tried to get a few things together in the local industry, but nothing really took off. So I started concentrating on Hollywood stuff.

It was much easier to get read back then (early 2000s), and I made a few contacts and developed a script or two with reps and producers. But I was too young and temperamental. I didn’t take notes well at all. So I kind of just burnt out.

I then had a ten year detour where I started a family and small business. Every year was going to be the year I got back to writing, but it wasn’t until last year I finally did it. I learnt more about writing during those ten years of not writing than I would have if I had stuck with it. I was determined to put together a portfolio of six spec scripts before trying representation, but I got impatient and started cold querying with the first one I finished; Resurface.

IF: How did you secure representation as a writer?

PB: It is incredibly hard to get read now. Even with the connections I still had, I was only getting thrown on the ‘to-read’ piles with everybody else. I got some requests, but followed up on them for about four to five months until they hit dead ends.

So, as these things go, I got drunk one night and was feeling sorry for myself, so I spent a hundred bucks on Virtual Pitchfest. You pay $10 per pitch per contact, but you’re guaranteed a response within three business days. I’m not getting paid to endorse or recommend them, but at that point it was worth $100 to me for quick and definitive answers. I queried 10 production companies, got seven quick no’s and three yes’s.

Then maybe a day or two later, I got an email from Jeremy Stein at Broken Road, saying he loved the script and they wanted to do something with it.

From there, it was really fast. Jeremy asked who my top picks would be for a manager, and I said Adam Kolbrenner at Madhouse. They were friends, so it was a quick referral; I got an email from Kolbrenner about 12 hours later. He read the script on his lunch break, loved it and wanted to sign me. We talked, did a polish on the script and then started interviewing agents a couple weeks later.

I went with Adam Levine and Adam Weinstein at Verve because we had a great call. They pointed out specific lines or moments in the script that they loved, which none of the other agents we interviewed really did. It was more relaxed and casual, which is my preference. I also didn’t want to get locked into a big agency where your stuff mostly gets packaged internally with the company’s talent, whereas Verve focus on writers and directors exclusively.

IF: What was the process of getting on the Black List and how did it change your career?

PB: It’s part politics, part luck. Your reps remind everybody how much they liked your script when voting time rolls around. Because we were already set up with Broken Road, the script didn’t go out as a spec. All of the reads we had were from execs who read the script before I went in for general meetings. I did a week of generals in LA a week before the list was announced, so I wasn’t really expecting to make it on. It was a nice surprise and it definitely helps. My next week of generals earlier this year was packed with execs who had read the script off the back of its Black List placing.

IF: Where did Resurface come from?

PB: It was going to be a monster movie set at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but the more I researched the trench, diving, submersibles etc, the more I realised the conditions were scary enough without introducing actual monsters. Then Gravity came out and it cemented the decision to play it as a straight survival thriller. I didn’t get around to writing it until maybe six months before The Martian came out, and I was still cold querying that whole time. I was still pitching it as ‘Gravity at the bottom of the ocean’ then. But when The Martian blew up, I was just in the right place with the right script.

IF: Spec scripts are generally considered a risky bet – what prompted you to sit down and write The Fall?

PB: I’m most comfortable writing on spec. I need to do my writer’s cut before I start taking notes, whereas writing on assignment or pitch is more collaborative, for better or worse. If I’m going up for an assignment, I’ll just make sure I’m hyper specific about what my vision is for the project, then live or die by that take. But with specs, I’m writing what I would pay to see. I’m watching the movie in my head, fully cast, as I write. I write tight and edit as I go. The more I can see it in my head, the more I can sell others on it. So far, it’s working for me.

IF: How did Amblin end up acquiring it? 

PB: We went out wide with it, and we had top shelf producers claiming their territories at the major studios very quickly. The first part is really fast. Dozens of huge names are reading your script in a day or so, then pitching themselves as the right company to claim a specific studio. Kolbrenner already had a relationship at Dreamworks, so it went there without attachments, directly to the development execs. And it turned out they responded the most to it, because it has a very family oriented Amblin vibe, which they’re really trying to get back to with their films. It was the right fit. They got exactly what I was going for.

IF: Have you spoken to Spielberg about it? On the surface of it the plot sounds reminiscent of War of the Worlds with Tom Cruise.

PB: I’m not that important yet. But he did have to sign off on it. The thing is, the similarities to War of the Worlds are very superficial. The execs at Dreamworks pitched it to him specifically to let him know how different they actually are. That was a very tense week of waiting for a decision.

The Fall is a contained relationship drama that plays out against the backdrop of an alien invasion. It’s contained on the two leads, and it was written to be told in real time. We’re not cutting to worldwide destruction, we’re not following different heroes and points of view, and the aliens’ plans and backstory are purposely broad strokes, because they’re not really what the story is about. It’s about two people in a broken relationship who realise how trivial that is at the end of the world, and they have to stay together to get home to their kids. These are the characters fleeing in the background in Independence Day.

The other goal was to write an alien invasion movie where we don’t win. We can’t possibly win. Stephen Hawking said as much years ago, and that always stuck with me. Anybody capable of reaching us is so far evolved and advanced from us that we’d just be insects to them. And I don’t think that’s a spoiler. Even Will Smith is not going to drive off an alien invasion in 100 minutes real time.

IF: Are you full-time in LA now, and what’s your daily routine? What are you working on now?

PB: Not yet. Visas can be a nightmare to obtain in this situation. I’m not a 20-something single writer anymore who can rent a studio apartment in West Hollywood. I’ve got a wife, two kids and four dogs. Your cost of living in LA goes up dramatically right there. But it is in the immediate future.

I don’t have a daily routine. My writing is 90 per cent staring at walls and thinking, or playing Minecraft with the kids. That game is mechanical and repetitive enough that you can daydream right through it.

The last 10 per cent is bashing it out in the cleanest, leanest way possible. I hate reading scripts, so I write mine for people like me. I write like I’m describing the movie in real time to a blind person. It does not go unappreciated either. Every second meeting I get thanked for writing scripts that are quick and easy to read.

Right now, I’ve got two more sci-fi specs I’m working on. I pitch on assignments that come up too. I fell into sci-fi though; I have a strong interest in comedy and horror as well, so I’d like to diversify at some point.

I also have a low budget supernatural horror project set up with JDL Films in Melbourne. It’s called Between Lives and it’s very much in the same vein as Insidious and The Conjuring. We’re just waiting on a distributor to come aboard so we can get going on it. Things move slower here, but JDL have stuck with this thing for over a decade. It will be nice to see it come together.

  1. Thanks for your story, Pete. The story behind the story. With the business all about building bridges, a name like ‘Bridges’ doesn’t hurt. More similar interviews, please, IF.

    Graeme Bond
    CEO Birdsong Press
    WA

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