Some screenwriters transition from film to TV writing and some go from TV to film. Veteran TV writer Luke Del Tredici opted for the latter. He shared his thoughts with Creative Screenwriting Magazine. His new film Arizona about the 2008 mortgage crisis, starring Danny McBride illustrates his journey.
In addition to Arizona, his television credits include Brooklyn Nine-Nine, 30 Rock, Bored to Death, and The Life & Times of Tim.
Luke Del Tredici found a series of articles about “new-built ghost towns,” which led to the screenplay Arizona. Thanks to the housing crisis, various new communities were built in the desert, and essentially abandoned. Located outside of Phoenix, these ex-urban “McMansion” towns were built for the wealthy and nearly complete before the rug was pulled out from underneath them. This spawned the basic idea of Arizona.
The movie reveals images of unfinished golf courses, abandoned homes, and the stress around the crisis. “It seemed like a provocative setting to me. I was drawn to it immediately,” said screenwriter Luke Del Tredici. In terms of Arizona the state, it was essentially one of many communities affected, but it had the “biggest boom and the hardest fall.” Tredici saw this as an appealing landscape. Later, so did actor Danny McBride who played the starring role in the movie.
Other movies have explored the mortgage crisis in Florida (The Big Short, The Florida Project), but Tredici didn’t want to write a “horror movie set in the sunshine.” Instead, he chose to set his film the desert. The screenwriter wrote the movie about a year after the crisis, but despite the initial traction, the script was essentially shelved for almost a decade.
“It lingered in the way that many movies linger,” joked Tredici. At one point, the project was set for Danny McBride to make his directorial debut, but they had problems finding the right actress for the role of Cassie, which eventually went to Rosemarie DeWitt. Del Tredici felt like the idea was becoming irrelevant, but he was wrong. Arizona found new life.
“The further we got away from 2008/9, not only had the relevance not died down, but in the current Trump era, with dizzying stockmarket highs and easy lending, it felt incredibly relevant. I felt like the character Danny played, Sonny, is so much like the kind of person who supported Trump, and his anger, entitlement, and the desire to blame other people for his problems feel so much a part of this era,” said the screenwriter.
Creating Genres That Surprise
As a creator, he also noticed there had been decades of on screen genius villains ranging from Hannibal Lector to the Joker to Erik Killmonger. He pondered how the villain [Sonny] in Arizona would act. “What I’ve always felt much scarier than someone who has a plan is somebody who is dumb. Dumb people can be really, really scary.. and that feels like a message that resonates in the current moment.”
Oddly enough, De; Tredici discovered a way to use stupidity, humor and fear to explore tragedy. Part of this comes from his personality, as a comedy writer, but he isn’t attracted to anything that’s too self-serious.
“I have trouble enjoying anything if it isn’t at least a little bit funny. At the same time, I find myself tired of things if they’re just comedy—all content and no cinematic inspirations,” said the screenwriter. “A lot of it for me is just writing what I wanted to watch. Comedy and horror and thriller go really well together. Laughter and screams are both involuntary actions from the body.”
Again, Del Tredici sees this is “the news.” When he turns on the television, he finds the news both comical and frightening. “I like comedy when it is paired with other tones. I like when things are serious then funny, sad then funny, scary then funny,” commented the screenwriter. “I’m curious how you can destabilize an audience. Put them in a different emotional space and then do something funny.”
On Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Bored to Death, both shows involve characters that respect each other, but the screenwriters must also find comedy within that mutual respect. In one episode of the Andy Samberg series, for example, Jake asked five suspects to sing parts of a Backstreet Boys song, but he gets so into the music he forgets one of these suspects killed the witness’s brother. The comedy is within the juxtaposition of the dynamics of the scene.
Luke Del Tredici
Broad Comedy Meets Grand American Tragedy
For Arizona, there were certain jokes cut for budgetary reasons, but Del Tredici had a little more range than he might on a television series. They had a tight window to make the film, but first-time director Jonathan Watson changed his process from a veteran assistant director to a storyteller to finish on time.
There were scenes with coyotes that didn’t make the final cut for budgetary reasons and a few other logistical situations on set. In the tunnel scene, for example, there was a part in the script where Rosemarie DeWitt was supposed to kill a coyote with her bare hands. Logistically, this scene didn’t work in the end. But, most of the comedy went from “script to screen.”
At the time, Del Tredici didn’t know Danny McBride, so he wasn’t writing the screenplay with any particular actors in mind. To avoid disappointment, he doesn’t write characters for specific actors because they may or may not agree to take on the role. “When I wrote Arizona, Danny was in the middle of Eastbound & Down, which is a show that I just loved. It also navigates the tightrope between broad comedy and grand American tragedy.”
McBride is known for his strong comic voice. Thanks to movies like Pineapple Express, Vice Principals, Tropic Thunder, and This Is the End, he’s essentially unforgettable on screen. “I managed to get the script to him and he responded to it,” said the screenwriter. “I think because I could steal from what he had already done.” At the time, they werealso both considering the role of director on the film.
“It was less a collaboration of me and Danny sitting in a room writing and more of me watching him and him just being so fucking funny,” joked Tredici. “I was trying to capture what he was doing in other things and put them down on the page.” Despite the obvious collaborative forces working on the movie, it was another eight years before the project was finally made.
Eventually, Danny McBride decided he would play the lead rather than Seth Rogen (who still had a cameo) and asked Jonathan Watson to direct. Watson was a first AD for over twenty-five years on films including Bad Boys, The Amazing Spider-Man, and The Green Mile, but McBride was the first to give him a chance in the director’s chair.
At various points of the process, Del Tredici didn’t think the movie would ever get made and he hasn’t written a spec script since. When everyone did finally agree to make the film, he went down to Albuquerque to be on set and toss in lines for a limited rewrite. “There’s no way to do both,” said the writer about television work and spec work.
Writing Unexpected Comedy
“Comedy is all about surprise. What I like in TV shows and movies—I like it when you don’t know what’s going to happen. You don’t know how the plot is going to resolve, but you also don’t know moment to moment what the tone is going to be,” added Del Tredici, who is inspired to write by fear, failure, and insecurity as a writer. “You generally don’t know how a scene, or story, is going to end.”
The screenwriter cares more about the nuts and bolts of the writing process and he’s less concerned with character, theme, or situations. Instead, it’s the juxtaposition or anticipation that makes the comedy work. “It’s just being an audience member. I like not knowing what’s going to happen.”
Arizona certainly found a home with Danny McBride, Seth Rogen, David Gordon Green, Jody Hill and the rest of the gang at Rough House Pictures “You just don’t know tonally what you’re going to get. They make surprising things.” He pictured Jody Hill’s Observe & Report mixed with the Coen Brothers’ Burn After Reading while writing Arizona. This mentality also helps Del Tredici avoid any type of creative block or comedy block in his work.
As a TV network writer, delays are not an option. “We come in every day. With 30 Rock, you’re making 22-episode seasons of TV and it’s just every week. There’s a new script. You rewrite it. You hear a table read. You rewrite it. You’re simultaneously breaking the story for next week or down the road. You don’t have time to be super precious about your process or sitting around waiting for inspiration.”
Del Tredici acknowledges this can sometimes result in weaker quality programming, but the clock is certainly ticking in the TV writer’s room. “When you’re on this runaway train to production, you sometimes make decisions that aren’t the best decisions. Sometimes you don’t have the time to finesse things, but it also forces you out of this desire for everything to be perfect. Make choices and take big swings.”
Fusing Voices Through Collaboration
In his day job, the screenwriter shows up for work, writes for 10-12 hours, and then goes home. The next day, he does it all over again. Luckily, he’s able to fall back on this discipline for his film work. By the time Tredici got to 30 Rock, the show had been around for a while. He did receive an Emmy nomination, but doesn’t feel like he deserves credit for the massive success of the TV show.
This is also true for his latest role on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. “I’m proud of the show and my voice is in there, but a lot of other people’s voices are in there too. So it’s hard to say it’s my writing in any tangible sort of way. I love that, but…Arizona is the only thing that’s been made that I can point to and say that’s inequitably my writing.” McBride and Watson also added small aspects to the script.
The screenwriter wants television writers to embrace the collaboration. At the same time, he feels like critics don’t value work if they don’t see it as a single creative vision, which is especially true for filmmakers. He understands that people associate movies with directors, but movies are also collaborative. This is also why critics have glorified the idea of a showrunner on television to maintain a singular vision.
“They want to say that anything good is a product of this one person—this unflinching creative vision. There must be shows like that where it is one person putting themselves on the line, but I think the thing that makes TV great and interesting is that you have to produce so much of it—it can’t be one person’s vision. It has to be 6-8-12-15 writers working together and voices coming together. It’s not one person getting their way.”
Like many successful television writers, Del Tredici understands that the best joke should always win and there’s no room for ego in the TV writer’s room. As someone who loves film and television, he watches a lot of both and doesn’t understand writers who say they don’t watch either. But, there is a difference between the two and it’s very clear in his writing style.
“This movie is very cynical and I’m a cynical person. There’s not a lot of good outlook on this country and the time we live in.” Despite the cynicism, Del Tredici understands he once confused cynicism with intelligence. “Things are only smart if they’re sarcastic and cynical,” he thought, but that is no longer the case.
When Del Tredici met Michael Schur (producer of The Office, Parks and Recreaction, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, The Good Place), his style of comedy changed to become more well rounded and accommodating. “Mike believes really strongly in the idea that you can make smart, intelligent comedy that’s not mean-spirited and not merely cynicism. That’s been interesting for me.”
“A lot of people who work in comedy use cynicism as a crutch. You can be really funny and smart, while also making humane things,” he said about his various jobs. “That being said, there’s real value in satire and shocking people or finding an outlet for anger and angst. You have to write what you find funny.”
Listen to an additional audio conversation with Arizona Director Jonathan Watson HERE.
