by George Loomis
A lot of buzz surrounds the work of screenwriter Zeke Farrow these days, but let’s make one thing clear: it’s really not because of him. In the words of Zeke himself, “I really am one of those cliché weirdo writers who just likes to be left the fuck alone.” Hollywood won’t be leaving Zeke alone anytime soon, though. He has four upcoming projects, including a studio picture and a cable pilot, in addition to his executive producer credit on last year’s runaway hit Gayby, which in July beat out studio fare with budgets and theatrical grosses literally 100 times greater, to become the #2 downloaded comedy on iTunes. iTunes also picked it as their overall film of the week.
<div id="attachment_5362" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Zzeke2.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5362" class="size-full wp-image-5362" alt="Zeke Farrow" src="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Zzeke2.jpg" width="600" height="400" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Zzeke2.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Zzeke2-150x100.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Zzeke2-250x167.jpg 250w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Zzeke2-500x333.jpg 500w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /></a>Zeke Farrow</div>
“I was never good at waving and jumping and shouting, ‘Look at me! I have talent! Look at me!’” Zeke remembers, describing his early years in Hollywood. “So I never did, and no one knew who I was. I just wrote and wrote and wrote and eventually I wrote something good enough that I didn’t have to shout. Suddenly people were like, ‘Who are you and why haven’t you ever jumped and shouted before?’ And I was all, ‘I dunno [sic], where were you like five years ago?’”
The latest film Zeke isn’t willing to (or should I say, doesn’t need to) scream and shout for is the appropriately titled Best Kept Secret, almost a euphemism for Zeke himself. Zeke co-wrote and co-produced the chilling documentary about JFK High, a special education school in Newark, New Jersey, where learning disabled students struggle to find a place in the adult world upon graduation. Like Gayby, interest in Best Kept Secret is spreading via word-of-mouth. New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez is even introducing new legislation addressing some of the problems facing special needs adults that are documented by the film.
<div id="attachment_5363" style="width: 570px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/still_bestkept.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5363" class="size-full wp-image-5363" alt="Best Kept Secret" src="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/still_bestkept.jpg" width="560" height="315" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/still_bestkept.jpg 560w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/still_bestkept-150x84.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/still_bestkept-300x168.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 560px) 100vw, 560px" /></a>Best Kept Secret</div>
“It’s a very important film about a very important issue,” Zeke humbly says. After a theatrical release this summer, Best Kept Secret will premiere on POV on PBS September 23rd. This is the second documentary (the first was 21 Below) Zeke has completed with director, Samantha Buck, a frequent collaborator of his since they met in New York on the set of a short film. They stayed in touch for years, doing downtown theater, while Zeke coached Samantha on her acting auditions.
“She had over 100 hours of footage,” Zeke remembers. “Samantha came to me because she wanted her films, while documentaries, to feel like narrative, character-driven films. I helped her find the story in the material to map it out, helped steer her thoughts narratively during the process and after. And then as the film started to take shape, to help the story honor the entire body of footage it came from. Many documentaries seem to do the reverse. They come up with the story first and then shoot what they need to prove it. I guess everyone has their own definition of document.”
<div id="attachment_5364" style="width: 510px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tumblr_m28phvKeJ91qfrg6o.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5364" class="size-full wp-image-5364" alt="Best Kept Secret" src="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tumblr_m28phvKeJ91qfrg6o.jpg" width="500" height="320" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tumblr_m28phvKeJ91qfrg6o.jpg 500w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tumblr_m28phvKeJ91qfrg6o-150x96.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/tumblr_m28phvKeJ91qfrg6o-300x192.jpg 300w" sizes="(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px" /></a>Best Kept Secret</div>
Zeke shares writing credit on Best Kept Secret, which Kevin Smith recently urged his fanbase to see, with the film’s director and editor. “There are three writers on the project because I look at the narrative story of the film as something that was told by three people,” Zeke clarifies. “Samantha (the director), me (the writer) and Francisco Bell, our amazing editor who helped further craft the narrative. It was actually very collaborative. I believe our credits fairly reflect how the story of the film became what it is.”
Admittedly, completing a rising success like Best Kept Secret hasn’t necessarily helped Zeke in other areas. “I don’t think many people in Hollywood care that much that I’ve made two feature documentaries. And playing on POV on PBS is for me the pinnacle of success in the doc world. But, when I tell people in meetings that I make docs, they wrinkle their foreheads like they don’t understand. Like, ‘Oh PBS? That’s great.’” This hasn’t shaken Zeke’s enthusiasm for unconventional screenwriting endeavors, or, in the wider sense, Zeke’s diverse palate. “They should think it’s really cool,” he remarks, as if correcting their reactions. “Set your DVRs… It’s a must see!”
That’s not how Zeke always speaks of his films, which have received recent Twitter shout-outs from Chaka Khan, Paul Feig and Kerry Washington. “I wrote a crazy indie thriller called A Film by Vera Vaughn. I think it’s probably my project that will be hardest to get off the ground,” Zeke says of his newest screenplay, which has already caught Anonymous Content’s attention. The screenplay follows a damaged artist like the heroine Nina of Black Swan through a hallucinatory world with all the rules of Mulholland Drive.
As if that’s not enough to keep track of, there’s also a MTV show Zeke’s writing, plus an upcoming feature film for a YouTube superstar. “It’s going to be a half-hour teen romantic comedy based on an idea that I turned into a screenplay first,” Zeke explains of the MTV pilot, based on his screenplay Fuck Facebook which made last year’s Hollywood Hitlist. Zeke remains tight-lipped about the MTV show, but continues, “The TV show will be different because the screenplay was an R-rated comedy with adult elements…. MTV doesn’t swim in that pool, so I started from scratch for the pilot.”
Finally, as for the YouTube star (yes, it really is this hard to distinguish all his irons in the fire), Zeke explains that he hit it off with Shane Dawson (the male Jenna Marbles) rather immediately. “I met with him a few times to get a sense of who he is. Shane and his producer, Lauren Schnipper, approached me because Shane wanted to branch out from YouTube and direct a feature film. Shane has a huge, devoted fan base and I think our project is going to really be awesome for him and his fans.”
“Being taken more seriously makes pitching awesome,” Zeke says of his newfound credibility. “Directors and producers and executives and actors really listen [to me] now. They’re expecting an amazing story, and I give them everything I’ve got. I do like that the people who have finally found me and are hiring me are extremely respectful of me and my work.”
“It can be frustrating to have the pressure of coming up with ‘great ideas.’ And even more frustrating trying to articulate those ideas, when you don’t even know what they are yet,” the reclusive writer elaborates, regarding his work style. “I know a lot less about a project before I start writing than Hollywood screenwriting books tell you you should know.”
<div id="attachment_5365" style="width: 610px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><a href="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/12RDP_GAYBY_SPAN-articleLarge.jpg"><img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-5365" class="size-full wp-image-5365" alt="Zeke Executive Produced the feature film Gayby" src="http://192.254.190.185/~erikpsc/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/12RDP_GAYBY_SPAN-articleLarge.jpg" width="600" height="370" srcset="https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/12RDP_GAYBY_SPAN-articleLarge.jpg 600w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/12RDP_GAYBY_SPAN-articleLarge-150x92.jpg 150w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/12RDP_GAYBY_SPAN-articleLarge-300x185.jpg 300w, https://www.creativescreenwriting.com/cswcms/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/12RDP_GAYBY_SPAN-articleLarge-405x250.jpg 405w" sizes="(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px" /></a>Zeke Executive Produced the feature film Gayby</div>
No one is as respectful of the work itself as Zeke, who enters a process he calls “trance” when he writes. “For me, writing is an exercise in self-hypnosis,” he elaborates. “My favorite part of writing is when I go into what I call my trance. And when I get myself into my trance, I tap into both the world around me, and the world I’m creating at the same time. And suddenly something takes over. And the story becomes inevitable. And the characters become actors, not puppets. And I give up control.”
“I learned how to do it myself, and I can’t imagine anyone teaching me,” Zeke continues, reflecting on his trance. “Teach yourself! Maybe it’s like meditation? Maybe I’m meditating on my story. But I get into this zone where the world around me disappears. I’m inside the white walls of the page. The characters are alive in my head. And the words just appear on the screen. Everyone talks to each other, but really it’s me talking. It’s my voice. It’s my screenwriting voice. And, of course, I’ve made outlines and I know where I’m going generally. But it’s the HOW the characters get there that I don’t.”
If Gayby and Best Kept Secret are any indication, Zeke will have to enter, and re-enter, his trance process for many years to come, with few breaks. But that’s also how Zeke likes it. “I don’t think that work is the enemy or opposite of life. And sometimes they are one and the same. I’ve spent my entire life writing. It’s more than a job. It’s more like a devotion.”

Zeke Farrow’s Best Kept Secret

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