The biographical musical drama Clouds is based on the memoir Fly a Little Higher: How God Answered a Mom’s Small Prayer in a Big Way by Laura Sobiech. In the film, a young musician named Zach Sobiech (Fin Argus) discovers his rare cancer has spread and he only has a limited time to make his dream of becoming a musician come true.

“It started out seeing Zach’s video,” said Casey La Scale. “My wife had seen the video online. I was blown away, then randomly, a month later my manager said he found an interesting book and it happened to be Zach’s story.” Since Casey had previously produced another movie in the same realm, A Walk to Remember, his manager suggested turning the story into a movie.

Casey sent the book to Patrick Kopka, who also felt an immediate connection to it. “Every studio had already passed on it. They saw it as Fault in Our Stars – even Warner Bros passed on it. Luckily, I had a relationship with them, but sort of as the last favor I had, we overturned that pass.”

Casey La Scala

Casey and Patrick took a swing at the screenplay, but they felt like something was missing. “We did the family version, then the teen version, then we ended up finding Kara. She came in with fresh eyes and then we started getting some momentum.”

Kara, who had worked on Soul Surfer and Carrie Pilby, had also been following the real life story of Zach Sobiech. Thanks to her relationship with Director Justin Baldoni, she was invited to take a look at the screenplay.

“I watched the documentary and felt kind of overwhelmed. It was such an incredible story with incredible characters, but it’s so sad. There are so many parts to it.” That said, when she asked herself “Who’s story is this?” She changed the perspective to Zach’s POV and pieces of the story finally fell into place.

Clouds Framework

For each new assignment, Kara Holden thinks about a quote from poet Mary Oliver as she begins to shape her main characters. Oliver writes, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your own wild and precious life?” She continued, “That’s Zach’s question.”

Trying to find her way into the story, she got the idea to write about a college essay from Zach. “He’s confronted with the college essay, but he realizes he will never go, and by the end we realize, he wrote it anyway. I called Justin because it was important for me to stay true to the story, but I did want to have room to make it cinematic.”

Justin called Zach’s mother, mentioned the idea, and the writers were surprised to learn that the real Zach Sobiech did actually write the essay. “She sent it to me and that gave me so much of his voice in a new way.”

Patrick Kopka

Thinking about a “wild and precious life,” Kara saw that the story wasn’t about dying, but instead it was about living. “We started to focus on the music. One of my favorite movies is the musical Once, so I was thinking about how people came to know Zach through his song.”

The song, also called “Clouds,” which hit YouTube in 2012 told the story of Zach’s mindset around the osteosarcoma diagnosis in an optimistic way. “It’s about how he grows and what he goes through in the song. Then, each character was fleshed out from there. What do they each want to do with their one precious life? It’s a love story to music, but also with elements of the teen story and family, but from Zach’s point-of-view.”

Crafting True Stories

The overall plot came from the memoir, but books are never exact blueprints for screenplays. “How do you tell that story with so many different pieces and stay true to each character? You have to be very careful on how you shade those stories,” said Casey. “People go to theaters because they want that experience.”

Kara Holden

“Having the true story helps the studio be able to market it, but when writing a true story, it has to be authentic, so you’re sort of in a box,” said Casey. “You can’t just say, what’s best for the film? We had some liberties with the Nicholas Sparks novel (A Walk to Remember), but here, we all had a relationship with the family and a responsibility to tell the story in an authentic way.”

In the end, the writers said everyone in the family said they loved the final cut. “We all had tremendous access to everyone,” said Patrick. “They were all very sensitive, especially if they knew someone they thought someone else didn’t know. They knew bringing up one thing might hurt someone else’s feelings. We worked with Zach’s family to make that happen.”

Kara said she’s worked on multiple true stories that never made it to the screen. The difference in this story, perhaps, is the additional musical touch. “It’s a true story and there’s been music written to show a sense of the characters and help people relate to it. That was really special. It’s a true story, but also the story of an artist. We got to build off Zach’s artistry.”

Aside from the beauty within the story, there’s also the elephant in the room that the story is about death and it’s geared towards a younger audience. “Let’s just hit it from the very beginning so we can get past it and let this story breathe and be about Zach’s life,” added Kara.

To do this, structurally, that meant opening the movie discussing the pending death. “We’re not going to dance around it. We’re going to talk about it and show you what’s real. It’s not meant to be melodramatic, but a launchpad of hope. We have this news, how do we deal with it? This is news people get everyday. Everyone dies, but not everyone gets to live. That’s a fact of life. We don’t have to over dramatize it, but we don’t have to shy away from it either.”

“It’s a movie about hope and joy. We’re not lingering in [death], but we’re not scared of it either,” said Kara, based on a conversation with the director. “I think that’s why this movie resonates. Life is happy, sad, tragic, amazing, and beautiful. We tried to put that in one film.”

Zach Sobiech (Fin Argus) & Sammy Brown (Sabrina Carpenter). Photo by Laurent Guerin

In the end, the complex emotional film worked in such a way that Disney picked it up for Disney Plus, airing it along with Hamilton. “It felt awesome that Bob Iger got it,” said Kara, after a deal with Warner Bros fell through essentially due to theaters closing in 2020. “They want films that revolve around hope,” she said of Disney. “Even Marvel is about what one person can do to help humanity. It’s about making the world a better place. Zach is one of those characters.”

This interview has been condensed. Listen to the full audio version here.