Script Apart with Al Horner

That's all, folks? Not by a long shot. Coyote Vs Acme – the Who Framed Roger Rabbit-esque courtroom comedy written by my guest today. Samy Burch – was famously cancelled by Warner Bros in late 2023 but has since experienced a remarkable revival, making its way to screens this summer as the result of enormous public outcry.Today on the show, Samy breaks down both the film itself and the ways in which life imitated art in the aftermath of the movie's creation. The Dave Green-directed Looney Tunes tale is ultimately a story of David vs Goliath – an underdog (quite literally) going up against a huge corporation. That's what the story of Coyote vs Acme itself ended up becoming. On this week's episode, Samy and I dissect it all.Script Apart is hosted by LA-based journalist, screenwriter and script consultant Al Horner.For comprehensive feedback on your screenplay, head to scriptapart.com/coverage.Want more Script Apart in your life? Subscribe to our Substack today, featuring exclusive essays and interviews.Support for this episode comes from our friends at Final Draft.Follow Script Apart on Instagram and TikTok.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

The thing about machines is that we expect them to keep chugging on – to never break or falter. In the late 1990s, a mixed martial artist named Mark Kerr found himself struggling to shoulder the weight of that expectation. Mark was a winner – a muscular behemoth beloved by fans of a rising new fighting league, called Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC for short. His fans across the world knew little of his agonising behind-the-scenes struggle to keep up that facade, to keep entering the ring week after week, to keep The Smashing Machine as he was nicknamed chugging along – never breaking, never faltering. Addicted to powerful painkillers, the pressure to win was killing him.Which is why The Smashing Machine, the recent biopic about Kerr, from my guest today, writer-director Benny Safdie, is a sports movie unlike most others. Think of a sports movie you love. Break it down at its core and I bet you, it’s a tale about someone learning to win, right? Starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt, The Smashing Machine is about someone learning to lose. The liberation that comes with it. The power of realising that we’re not our accomplishments. What defines us is our actions out of the wrestling ring – whatever your version of that ring may be. On today’s episode, Benny tells me about the quote, “radical empathy” that guided this story – and how it was also perhaps present in his work up till now. Films and TV shows like the hugely acclaimed Good Time and Uncut Gems, both created with his brother Josh – and The Curse, created with Nathan Fielder. We get into all the key beats and scenes from The Smashing Machine in our usual spoiler-filled detail – including that mesmerising ending in which Dwayne Johnson seems to unburden himself of the expectation that he can never falter, not just within his performance of Mark Kerr, but also kind of as himself, this megawatt blockbuster star whose recent career took an interesting path to this story, filling it with metatextual meaning. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected] get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today on Script Apart – all aboard a conversation about The Lost Bus, with a writer who’s glued me to my screen time and time again over the last few years. Brad Ingelsby is the creator of Mare Of Eastown starring Kate Winslet from back in the pandemic. He also created this year’s stunning Task – an HBO drama with Mark Ruffalo about an FBI agent investigating a string of violent robberies in rural Delaware County, which is a recurring backdrop to his storytelling – and the Apple TV+ thriller Echo Valley. This year, you might also have caught his collaboration with director Paul Greengrass – a thriller that would have been an exciting throwback to the disaster cinema of decades past, were it not for one particular interesting texture to that film. The Lost Bus told the true life tale of a bus driver, Kevin McKay, played by Matthew Maconahey, who stepped up to save a class full of children amid devastating wildfires encroaching on the small town of Paradise, California. Those fires were in 2018. In January this year, California was devastated by all-new wildfires that cemented a sense of new normal. Climate scientists are warning in unison that we can expect more of the precise scenario depicted in this movie. So, how did that fact affect Brad’s approach to the script? What’s behind his love of stories set in rural communities not often depicted on-screen? Why is it that his storytelling often centres around parents being pushed away by children on the cusp of adulthood? And what lesson is there about writing and life in the fact that, at the end of The Lost Bus, McKay reaches a realisation: the only way out of the fire is through? Brad spills all in this riveting chat.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected] get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

There’s a mystery afoot on today’s episode of Script Apart – and that mystery is how you write a film like Wake Up Dead Man, the new Knives Out movie from my guest today, Rian Johnson. How do you craft a whodunit that’s simultaneously gripping, hilarious and loaded with weighty reflections on religion’s use as a weapon of fear in our current political climate? In the words of Benoit Blanc, it “makes no damn sense” to me, “Compels me, though.”Which is why it was such a treat to ask the man himself. Rian’s a filmmaker who you might know from 2005 high school noir Brick, 2008’s The Brothers Bloom or the fantastic 2012 sci-fi Looper. He directed one of the best episodes of TV this side of the millennium in the form of Breaking Bad’s ‘Fly’ episode, and created the brilliant Poker Face, starring Natasha Lyonne. In 2019, he wrote and directed Knives Out, starring Daniel Craig as a Southern-accented sleuth, which was a huge sensation. A sequel followed in 2022, as part of a major deal with Netflix. And somewhere amid all that, he made a low-budget indie that probably completely passed under your radar because it was barely discussed upon release. Let me just check my notes here… Star Wars: The Last Jedi? Never heard of it personally.Wake Up Dead Man is maybe his most personal and politically-charged film yet, though, as you’ll hear in this conversation. Rian’s relationship with religion is… well, it’s complicated. In this spoiler conversation, he tells me about his lapsed faith and story of growing up in the Church… before leaving it. It’s a story that totally altered my perspective on The Last Jedi – a movie about lapsed faith – and shone a fascinating light on this latest adventure in the life of Benoit Blanc. We get into the overlap between the “cult of personality” church figurehead, Wicks, in Wake Up Dead Man and the politicians in our newspaper headlines each morning right now – many of whom position themselves of Christians and preach messages of fear; them against us. And Rian also tells me what the future perhaps looks like for him, twenty years on from Brick – the next steps in his storytelling to come.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected] get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today on Script Apart, we’re off to see the wizards – the wonderful storytelling wizards, that is, behind the first ever musical we’ve covered on the show. In the early ‘00s, New York-born-and-raised playwright Winnie Holzman was, like the rest of the city, still reeling from the September 11 attacks that claimed 2977 lives. It wasn’t just the attacks themselves that haunted her – it was the division they wrought too. Racial minorities – America’s Muslim population, specifically – were scapegoated and othered. All of a sudden, a war stood on the horizon. And so, Winnie got to work with composer Stephen Schwartz on a musical that would subtly grapple with the skyrocketing racism of that moment. Soon, something Wicked was to come our way.Inspired by a book of the same name by author Gregory Maguire, Winnie and Stephen's Broadway extravaganza took one of the defining stories in cinematic history – the Wizard Of Oz – and invited audiences to look at it a little differently. What if the so-called Wicked Witch Of The West in that film – all green skin and shrill cackle – wasn’t actually the terroristic threat that Dorothy and viewers thought her to be? What if there was a more tender truth to this woman, who lest we forget, in that 1939 movie, was just trying to retrieve the ruby slippers worn by her dead sister, crushed by Dorothy’s house when it’s transported via tornado to Oz? Chances are you know what happened next. Forbes Magazine estimates that 65m people have seen Wicked since it hit Broadway in 2003, quickly expanding around the globe. It’s the fourth longest-running play in Broadway history. And now, it’s a blockbuster smash too. Last year, Winnie’s screen adaptation of the musical, written with my other guest today, Dana Fox, of Cruella fame, began its emerald takeover of movie theatres. That first film, simply titled Wicked and covering the first half of the stage play, was a smash. Now, Wicked For Good is here, bringing this tale to the end of its yellow brick road, and Winnie and Dana are full of emotion and reflection. In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, they tell me about the strangeness of this movie arriving in this particular political moment. I don’t know about you guys at home, but the sight in Wicked and Wicked For Good of marginalised groups – munchkins and animals – rounded up and forced from their homes in a year of ICE raids and anti-immigrant anger, struck a really heartbreaking chord for me. It’s not all politics, though, I promise! We also get into the prisons of perception that Elphaba and Glinda, played by Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande respectively, both exist in and have to break free of in this story. And you’ll also hear the pair’s reflections on the huge differences between this story about the Gregory Maguire original, which saw Elphaba join an underground terror cell. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected] get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

How well do you know Ryan Coogler? A couple of years ago, the Oakland-born filmmaker began “to reckon with the fact that the audience doesn’t truly know me at all.” Which might sound strange at first. At that point in his career, the writer-director was all but a household name. His 2013 debut Fruitvale Station had earned him the keys to the Rocky franchise, resulting in 2015’s acclaimed Creed. His next step was to helm a superhero movie that transcended the genre. That film, 2018’s Black Panther, wasn’t just another Marvel movie. It was a bold, operatic, Kendrick Lamar-soundtracked moment in the culture, that surpassed a billion dollars at the box office. In 2022, a sequel followed, grossing just shy of that mark and capping a remarkable decade: Coogler, critics raved, was a filmmaker who’d grown into the spectacle of blockbuster cinema as a Hollywood craftsman, without outgrowing or leaving behind the powerful character-based emotion and complexity that he delivered with Fruitvale Station.And yet still, the 39-year-old found himself concerned that for all that visibility, he perhaps hadn’t yet made a film that was wholly his– his personality, his history, his family lineage, imprinted in the page, pressed into celluloid. Those films were his takes on existing IP – or in the case of Fruitvale, a true story. And so, he got to work on something new. A film inspired in part by his uncle James, who loved blues music and told stories of a different America. A film that had plenty to sink your teeth in for genre cinema enthusiasts – but simultaneously dove into questions he was grappling with, in the wake of considerable loss. Ryan’s Uncle James died during post-production on Creed. Other family members had passed away too. And then of course there’s Chadwick Boseman, the star of Ryan’s Black Panther smash hit, who died following a battle with cancer in 2020, hitting the writer-director hard. Today on Script Apart, Ryan and I break down how those losses manifested in Sinners – one of the most critically acclaimed films of 2025. He tells me about the conversations with his Uncle James and his Grandmother that helped inform this vampire period piece, starring Michael B. Jordan as Smoke and Stack – twin brothers with a dream of opening a juke joint for their community. We also get into the meaning of Sinners’ dance sequence, in which Sammy – played by Miles Caton – summons the ghosts of Black musicians past and future. And we talk about why this is a story about the joy of community when you look past the blood shed – the defiant glee of deciding to build something of your own, in a world that lets you own so little. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected] get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Today, Shane Black is back, returning to Script Apart four years since his last appearance on the show! His new film Play Dirty is a heist movie that in some ways he’s been waiting his whole life to make. Fans of his will know that Shane often centres stories around flawed male characters who are informed by the pulpy novels he grew up reading. After decades creating his own spins on the literary tough guys in those books – such as Riggs in Lethal Weapon and Harry Lockhart in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang – this new film goes straight to the source, directly adapting one of the novelists who inspired him at an early age: Donald E. Westlake, or Richard Stark as he was sometimes known. Westlake wrote 28 books in total about a career criminal named Parker – a cold, calculating loner who lives by a code: thou shalt not double-cross. Unless of course, he’s double-crossed first… In this spoiler conversation, Shane tells Al about what Parker means to him as a lonely bookworm adolescent, and how he threaded the needle between this quiet character and the quippy dialogue both he and star Mark Wahlberg specialise in when it came to telling his own Parker story. We get into how he constructs his action scenes, how his writing has and hasn’t changed as a result of CGI – and why there was only one outcome possible in this story for a certain character who doesn’t make it to the end credits.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected] get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Put down your briefcase and put on your dancing shoes, everybody, because today on Script Apart – a podcast about the first-draft secrets of great movies and TV shows – Mike Flanagan is back, tap-dancing through the end times with me in celebration of The Life Of Chuck. As I put it in my feature for Empire Magazine earlier this year, when I covered the movie’s theatrical release, the phrase “feel-good” isn’t often associated with the apocalypse. Nor, to be honest, with Mike’s work in general, as one of the streaming era’s premier fright-masters – a writer-director whose output so far have included vampire priests (Midnight Mass), acid showers (Fall Of The House Of Usher) and some of the most harrowing small-screen deaths in recent memory (The Haunting Of Hill House, I am still not over you)."Feel-good" is not how you’d typically describe the icon of literary terror he’s becoming closely associated with, either. The Life Of Chuck is the third time Mike has adapted the great Stephen King, after Gerald’s Game and Doctor Sleep (he also has new adaptations of Carrie and The Dark Tower on the way). But The Life Of Chuck is, nonetheless, as “feel-good” as apocalypse stories come. It stars Tom Hiddleston as an ordinary-looking man who mysteriously begins appearing on billboards as a divorced couple’s leafy suburban existence is interrupted by a series of globe-threatening disasters. The mystery of “Who is Chuck?” propels a story more still and sentimental than many viewers might expect from Flanagan, from King, from the end of the world.In the spoiler conversation you’re about to hear, Mike calls in from the set of Carrie, which he’s in production on at the moment, to break down the film in extensive detail. We get into the meaning of the Carl Sagan-inspired monologue that Mike added to King’s source text. We talk about the one detail in the film’s transcendent dance sequence that breaks my heart just to think about. And of course, we touch on that moving, ambiguous ending and how it fits into a body of work that often involves locked rooms. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Instagram, or email us on [email protected] get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Get coverage on your screenplay by visiting ScriptApart.com/coverage. Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy