The Hollars screenwriter Jim Strouse is a storyteller who collects life’s intimate moments, weaving his films from the fabric of the everyday: the way a wife speaks to her husband, a simple haircut, a tire swing. The resulting films New York, I Love You, The Winning Season, and People Places Things, can almost be said resemble family photo albums brought to life.

In The Hollars, directed by and starring John Krasinkski, John Hollar is forced to return to his hometown after news of his mother’s illness, and there reconnects with his dysfunctional family.

Creative Screenwriting spoke with Strouse about character-driven movies, basing a script on real-life events, and what makes a good story.

Note that this article contains spoilers.

Richard Jenkins as Don Hollar, Sharlto Copley as Ron Hollar and John Krasinski as John Hollar in The Hollars. Photo by Jonny Cournoyer, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

What led you into screenwriting?

Jim Strouse

I grew up in Indiana and I always wanted to write, from Kindergarten on. I loved writing.

What led me into screenwriting was moving to New York after college. It was the social circles I ran into in New York. I met a lot of aspiring filmmakers and young filmmakers and it flipped a switch in my mind. I was writing a lot of short fiction and I veered over into screenwriting from that move to New York.

Your characters are very relatable and your movies are certainly character-driven. Where does that kind of mentality come from in your writing?

During High School I went to the local Art House Theater and spent all of my free time in video stores. The stuff I write comes from the filmmakers that I admired as a young person.

A big one for me was Steve Buscemi, who I ended up working with on my first film (Lonesome Jim). Trees Lounge was why I wanted to be a screenwriter.

It was so much about character and this naturalistic idea that small lives matter, that a movie doesn’t have to be about huge things. If your voice is honest and authentic you can really take a person on a small journey and it still be very meaningful.

Steve Buscemi, Jim Jarmusch and Tom DiCillo, that whole 90’s Indie scene was very influential to me. Johnny Suede (Brad Pitt and Catherine Keener) was one of my favorite movies as a late high schooler and college. Really just an oddball, dry and to-the-point movie. I think you could show some people and they wouldn’t even think it was a comedy, but the first time I saw it I was just laughing out loud. Never sort of winked at the audience – they were more interested in the human condition and relatable lives than sort of big stories or broad stories.

Sharlto Copley as Ron Hollar in The Hollars. Photo by Jonny Cournoyer, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

In The Hollars, there is a scene where they’re sitting around watching HGTV and commenting on it. How do you keep track of these ideas? Are these real events or just things you make up?

The Hollars is based in real life events. That’s my family, more or less, that I was drawing on and a lot of the stuff depicted in the movie actually happens.

My parents are both alive, no one passed away, but years ago my mom had this event, much as it’s portrayed in the film. She had a tumor growing and one day had a seizure and fell down in the bathroom.

I was living in New York, working in film and had written a couple screenplays, but when I came back home, I knew that this was going to turn into a story in some way.

I didn’t start writing it until years later, but it was a special event. I came to understand my family and myself in a new way after it, and it was very periling, and yet really funny. I never laughed so much with my family and that was something really informative to me.

I thought that it was terrible, but that there was a lot of humor and a lot of good in it, as awful as this thing was that my mom was going through. It forced us all to face things about each other that had been long simmering.

A lot of stuff is real in The Hollars, and drawn directly from life.

How difficult is it to edit real life events when you’re writing a screenplay?

I’ve never had a problem with drawing from life and exaggerating it. I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me but I always feel like any experience I have is fair game. It can work its way into a screenplay verbatim, or it can be bent to what I need it to do or be in the world of the screenplay.

I have a system of experiencing events and then funnelling them into my tone. So hopefully every scene has a point to it. Everything is moving towards a larger picture while also revealing character and feeling authentic.

I write a line, I read it over, I write another line, I read both of them over, and I do that until the whole thing is almost finished. I’m reading it over and over, and I get really nitpicky about certain words and the way it sounds. My two main criteria are that it feel authentic, but it also has a flow and a rhythm to it.

Richard Jenkins as Don Hollar and Margo Martindale as Sally Hollar in The Hollars. Photo by Jonny Cournoyer, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Can you talk a little bit more about logistics? What are some of your writing rituals?

I have two kids, a 12-year-old and a 9-year-old and they are my main focus. I teach writing and directing at the School of Visual Arts in New York and I like to play basketball so my rituals have become: whenever I have an hour or more I sit down at the computer and work on something.

When I’m writing, I try to set time aside so I’m writing a little bit each day. If I’m not working on something specifically, I don’t write.

I’m actually prepping a movie right now that I wrote and I don’t plan to get back to writing anything until that’s done. My rituals are whatever the day dictates as far as kids and work go, and then I cram writing in wherever it goes.

In your opinion, what makes a good story?

I’ve been teaching screenwriting now for six years or so, and my thoughts have really evolved over time. What I look for in a good story is just a point of view – a voice. It’s less to me about plot than it is someone who can convey a unique vision, like Todd Solondz (Weiner Dog, Happiness), or Kenneth Lonergan (Analyze This, Gangs of New York). Someone who has a recognizable voice which they can convey and sustain over an entire screenplay. That, to me, is the most exciting type of story.

I read a review of a film once, A. O. Scott of the The New York Times I think, who said “The film had no recognizable human behavior in it.” That always stuck with me. Every movie should have recognizable human behavior, no matter what the genre, and no matter how stylized or exaggerated.

John Krasinski as John Hollar and Anna Kendrick as Rebecca in The Hollars. Photo by Jonny Cournoyer, Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

From a teaching perspective, what do you find to be the most common problem in screenplays?

I’m dealing with very young people, so they’re undergraduate age and their life experience does not match the types of stories they’d like to write.

Oftentimes, I’ll have this conversation where I can see the influences are there, but there’s no direct line of knowledge or experience to back it up. If it’s like a cop story or some sort of genre thing, but I’m thinking, “Where are you in this?”

I always tell my students, you don’t have to write an autobiography. I’m not saying you need to strictly write stories about 19-year-olds going to film school, but ideally you’ve got to be in there somewhere. If you’re not, then you’ll borrow from things you’ve seen and that just becomes a facsimile of a facsimile. And there are definitely no recognizable human behavior in those types of things.

In class, I say, “Just think of any day that you live and all the conflicting thoughts and feelings that you have, the chaotic jumble. You’ve got to try to catch that and harness it to some degree for all of your characters.”

People don’t act strictly the way you need them to for the story you’re trying to write. For me, writing is like channelling these people, almost like a medium sitting at the table—I know what I want these people to do but also what would they do, and I try to negotiate those two things.

John Krasinski as John Hollar, Shartlo Copley as Ron Hollar and Josh Groban as Reverend Dan in The Hollars. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

Is there a single thing a person could change to improve their writing?

As I’ve seen it in the classroom, I think the biggest hurdle a writer has to overcome is him- or herself. I have seen many screenwriters in my class who simply aren’t writing. If you’re not writing there’s no magic thing that’s going to happen in the future, you have to write.

You have to write, and you have to allow yourself to make some garbage, too. I understand the impulse to be a perfectionist and only want to make great things but just finishing a screenplay is the achievement. That’s it. Don’t worry about if you’re going to sell it or what’s going to happen, just finish it.

I see so many people get to the halfway mark and then put it down and think they’ll just pick it up later and I feel like the biggest hurdle is one’s own procrastination or self-doubt. I tell my students that writing a first draft, for me, is always the race against one’s self-doubt, and if you put it down for too long, doubt’s going to win out.

Is there anything else you’d like to share about The Hollars?

I’ve only seen it once and I’m excited to see it again. Usually, the stuff I write is so small in scale that I just don’t even assume anyone else is going to want to direct it. This has been fun, to see it through someone else’s eyes.

Featured image: Charlie Day as Jason, Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Gwen and John Krasinski as John Hollar in The Hollars. Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics

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