Alex’s past life as a video journalist and documentary filmmaker in eastern-bloc Europe focused his lens on societies in transition. His historical TV dramas peel back layers of history to explore the effects of macro-historical forces on individual relationships, dreams, and aspirations. His documentary work includes the award-winning 2016 short Generation Emigration and the 2020 feature Escape From Extinction, narrated by Helen Mirren. He recently won the Grand Prize for his TV pilot Back Fires. Here’s what he had to say about it:
Why did you choose to tell this story above all others?
I was deep in the San Gabriel Mountains when I noticed a fire road leading to fenced-off barracks with a sign reading “Fire Camp – Keep Out.” That was my jumping-off point into researching the history of California’s Conservation Camp system, which began as a World War II-era criminal justice reform that utilized voluntary convict labor to fight wildfires in exchange for reduced prison sentences. The program was revolutionary and controversial, and I was immediately drawn to it as an idea for a TV series.
I like to write about characters and historical periods full of contradictions and moral uncertainty – from the techno-paranoia of the space-age USSR (Kosmos) to the birth of American religious broadcasting during the mass-media boom of 1920s Hollywood (Sister) to a World War II-era prison camp deep in the southern California mountains, home to convict firefighters battling wildfires in exchange for their freedom (Back Fires).
With Back Fires, I saw an opportunity to explore the moral ambiguity of prison labor in wildland firefighting as a lens to examine broader social questions in our contemporary society. I want my work to cultivate ambiguity, versus telegraphing my own philosophical or political intent. It’s your job as the reader or viewer to grapple with the contradictions I present and make up your own minds. It’s my job to make those contradictions clear – and to present those uncomfortable questions in a way that connect you to something universal.
Why are you the best person to tell it?
In my research for the story that eventually became Back Fires, I was struck by how militarized the language and strategy of wildland firefighting was in the late 1940s. And understandably so. We’d just come out of the most consequential military conflict of the modern era, and the techniques and technology of battling wildfires were directly borrowed from modern battlefield tactics. Both of my parents are military veterans, and I sensed many echoes of the military mindset in the firefighters I researched and spoke with personal sacrifice in the name of a greater good, kinship through trauma and loss, the necessity of dark humor in the face of constant tragedy, and the nagging sense that your life-or-death work is neither fully understood nor appreciated by the people who most benefit from it.
My professional background in documentary and journalistic filmmaking was critical to how I constructed the story. I took the same approach I would have used if I was making a historical documentary or news feature about the origins of the Conservation Camp system (originally called ‘Honor Camps’ to emphasize the selectivity of the program, which is the term I use in the script). That process starts with primary source interviews – and Back Fires would not be possible without the generosity of Ret. Cal Fire Capt. Jarrel “Jerry” Glover of the the Cal Fire Historical Society and Museum in San Bernardino, CA, who was a gracious and enlightening source of information regarding period firefighting tactics and technology, as well as the social relationships within the camps themselves.
Ultimately, Back Fires is historical fiction – not documentary. I took artistic liberties in constructing the inner conflicts of the individuals populating the camp, but strove for authenticity in recreating their daily lives — with danger and death lurking around every corner, but also with moments of joy and lightness and and brotherhood shared by folks from vastly different walks of life, united by loss and sacrifice and brought together to serve a greater good.
Why is now the right time to tell a story set almost 80 years ago?
The two primary conflicts of Back Fires are both informed by present day socio-political concerns. The first is criminal justice reform and the idea of rehabilitation. What is the purpose of incarceration? Is it rehabilitation to benefit the individual and society? Is it a spectrum between personal redemption and societal protection? We can see echoes of this argument in the current ongoing debates over crime, sentencing, bail reform and public safety – not to mention the controversies surrounding the modern Conservation Camp program.
The second primary conflict of Back Fires is ecological, and the present parallels are clear to anyone who lives in the western US and is watching the fire season expand in real time from a limited seasonal phenomenon to a permanent state of semi-crisis. It gives me no pleasure to observe that the story of Back Fires – and with the continued use of prison labor to fight fires in multiple western states – will only increase in relevance as our society chooses to battle the symptoms (rather than the root causes) of poverty, crime, and ecological disaster.
What themes are you exploring in Back Fires?
One is masculinity, and the evolving social construct of masculine virtue. Compared to the 1946 world of Back Fires, we have an entirely different vocabulary now to talk about the trauma of the Greatest Generation and the visions of hell they experienced overseas and carried back home. The postwar narrative around WWII has always seemed very triumphalist compared to more contemporary conflicts like Vietnam or Iraq. We won the war, the boys came home, went to college on the GI bill and transitioned to civilian life. But that wasn’t a universal experience – some of these men were damaged and traumatized in obvious ways, others more subtly. And society was telling them to bury it inside, take it to the grave – or to manifest that anger and guilt and negative emotions in ways that were socially acceptable for men, namely aggression, alcohol or violence. I want Back Fires to ask directly, “What’s the cost of all this bravery, and who pays?”
The second major theme is personal redemption and the idea of freedom through service. I always found the concept of convict firefighters loaded with natural symbolism. What is the true measure of a human being? Can we be defined by our best moments – by heroism and service and bravery? Or our worst moments – our crimes, our failures, the hurts we inflict on those we love?
Lastly, at its core, Back Fires is a modern take on the man-vs-nature stories of Jack London – mortals pitted against the terrifying indifference and mystery of the natural world. The men approach their work like soldiers, but how do you defeat an enemy that doesn’t think? An enemy with patterns and rhythms and behaviors that we can study and predict, but also one fundamentally beyond our complete control and understanding?
How would you pitch this project in terms of similar films and TV shows?
Rescue Me, for its fearless examination of repressed masculine rage and trauma.
Orange Is The New Black, for its endless empathy and compassion for all its characters.
Band of Brothers – with dashes of the cynicism of M.A.S.H. and Catch-22 – for the terrifying and disturbing stakes of survival, and the bonds of kinship forged through tragedy.
1883, for its gritty survivalism and earthy physicality, as well as its characters’ fraught relationship with the danger and beauty of the natural world. I want Back Fires to leave you with the feeling of ash and grime smeared on your face, your clothes drenched in sweat and smoke, dust and dirt crunching between your teeth.
Who is your dream cast?
Back Fires has a pretty sprawling ensemble cast, so I’ll limit my answer to a few of the bigger roles:
Josh Brolin as Ned Austin, the swaggering he-man platoon supervisor of the convict firefighters. Austin is fiercely protective of his men, but refuses to admit that he’s physically slowing down – and that his pride actively puts himself and his charges in danger.
Lance Reddick as David Cleaver, Austin’s hard-ass enforcer. Reddick’s performance as the ambitious police lieutenant in The Wire captured a sense of eternal frustration and resignation, and also someone who wears a mask of tough-guy stoicism to mask his self-doubt.
Jared Harris as the bookish and intellectual criminal justice reformer Dr. Hampton Morris, whose cold rationalism will bring him into conflict with-
Kevin Costner as Sheriff Leach. I find Costner’s performance in Yellowstone more complex than many critics seem to acknowledge, and his John Dutton character would be similar to Sheriff Leach in terms of embodying a man driven by fear that his time has passed – that society is leaving him and his values behind. Costner has that rare ability to be menacing and tragic at the same time.
Steven Yeun as Sam Park, the smart-ass city boy Korean-American college dropout whose ailing immigrant father disowns him after his conviction. Sam struggles to adjust to the physicality of camp life before gradually ascending to a position of leadership in the platoon.
Bo Burnham as the Forest Ranger Swede Nelson – technically an authority figure over the convict firefighters who goes to great lengths to gain their respect, but at the end of the day lives somewhat of a lonely existence. He’s neither a cop, nor a firefighter, nor a convict – he stands alone, and in some sense can sense he’s fighting a losing battle against mother nature. I’ve been a Bo Burnham fan since he was a teenage YouTube star, and I’ve always been fascinated by how he weaves darkness and vulnerability into his comedic persona.
What does the season arc look like?
Season one of Back Fires alternates between serialized episodes that advance the overall plot established in the pilot and self-contained prequel episodes that dive deeper into each individual inmate’s personal history, showing the lives they left behind and the circumstances that brought them to prison – and ultimately onto the fire lines.
I’ve got a two-part episode outlined for the end of season one inspired by a series of recent events here in California. Part One sees the Sheriff’s Department and the Honor Camp firemen form an uneasy truce in order to track down a serial arsonist who sets fires deep in the woods, then waits for firefighters and police to arrive before setting more fires behind them – trapping the first responders inside multiple fire lines. Part Two would involve the Honor Camp men serving evacuation orders to hostile locals as the arsonist’s fires grow out of control. The Camp men are met with refusal and sometimes violent resistance, which complicates their firefighting work and puts everyone in grave danger.
I’ve got another episode drawn up – again inspired by real events – that would show our Honor Camp men being forced to work alongside an all-female inmate fire crew from a different camp. I see that episode as seeding a potential season two that would center around that same female Honor Camp, but in the next decade – the 1950s. Subsequent seasons would jump forward one decade at a time until we arrive at the present day – where we find ourselves still having similar debates about criminal justice reform and ecological disaster.
How do you define your writing voice?
Immersive, immediate, physical, visceral, literary.
Where do you draw your main inspiration for your work?
History and current events! I read four or five different news outlets every day and am constantly saving anecdotes or quotes that I like for future inspiration – even if I don’t know at the time how I’ll use them. Journalism is the first draft of history, right? One essential resource for my historical scripts is newspapers.com – it’s a fantastic way to study how people wrote and spoke in different eras, as well as their real-time social and political concerns, undiluted by modern historical hindsight. Although my next script set in pre-Christian Baltic Europe will be a bit more difficult on the primary-source angle!
On an emotional level, every character in Back Fires is grown from a seed of my own heart and mind – my personal fears, dreams, joys, and tragedies. “Write what you know” is a dull cliché and somewhat limiting if taken literally – but metaphorically, it can be a powerful tool in terms of harnessing emotional experiences and sculpting those into something entirely new. On that note, I try to study actors’ techniques as well, because there’s so much to be learned from them in terms of building a fictional character with emotional authenticity. Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares should be required reading for every aspiring screenwriter.
What are three things that few people know about you?
1. Hiking, surfing, and strenuous outdoor exercise is a crucial part of my writing process – not just as a ‘break’ from writing, but as an active component that I build into my schedule. There’s something almost mystical about reaching a state of separation from yourself that’s extremely conducive to conjuring up characters and conflicts. I don’t know why, but some of my best ideas have come to me in states of complete physical exhaustion and isolation.
2. I got my first rejection letter for a creative ‘work’ when I was six or seven years old. I wrote a letter to the LEGO company proposing a set based on Vikings – forts, ships, mythology and monsters. I loved LEGOs like a lot of other kids, but I was always more into the character-creation and world-building than the engineering and construction aspect. I would give all the LEGO characters names and backstories and then throw them into epic, multi-act dramas – sometimes involving other toys, such as a shark I’d play with in the bathtub. LEGO corporate actually replied to my letter, politely stating they don’t accept unsolicited ideas. Fast forward to 2005, when LEGO launched multiple Viking sets. I think my mom still has the company’s form-letter response on their corporate letterhead circa 1996 – I’ve got the receipts, LEGO!
3. I’m a classics nerd – I studied Latin for seven years in school. I got pretty deep into translating Virgil’s Aeneid, as well as the poetry of Catullus, whose most famous verse is now tattooed on my arm. Any Latin scholar will tell you that you can’t study the Latin language without learning Roman history – but you can’t study Roman history without absorbing Greek and Persian and Egyptian history and culture – and so on. On that note, my absolute dream project would be a high-gloss prestige drama series about the life of Alexander the Great, combining the historical realism of HBO’s Rome with the sweeping, multi-layered plot arcs of Game of Thrones.
How do you want your writing to be introduced at award ceremonies?
That it immerses you in a rich, detailed world completely foreign from your own, while still connecting you to an emotional experience that’s timeless and universal. That it’s terrifying, uplifting, heartbreaking – but always so immediate that you can’t look away.
