Vampire hunters are an anathema for the vampire. The most legendary vampire slayer in literature and cinema is Abraham Van Helsing. Pop culture also has its monster hunter phenoms, including Buffy Summers, Solomon Kane, Carl Kolchak (Kolchak: The Night Stalker), and The Frog Brothers (The Lost Boys). All these characters are on a mission to decimate the king of the living dead. A new entrant into this exclusive club for sanguisuge venerers is Bud Jablonski of the upcoming Netflix flick Day Shift. Starring Jamie Foxx as Bud, Snoop Dogg as Big John Elliott, aka Black Cowboy, and Dave Franco as Seth, it’s a fresh new take on the vampire hunter mythology. The original script was written by Tyler Tice and was revised by Shay Hatten (John Wick: Chapters 3 and 4, Army of the Dead). 

Sometimes when you watch a film, you can feel the writer’s enthusiasm and personality permeating through the dialogue and atmosphere of the film. The characters in Day Shift are so natural that one can only ascertain that they’re an extension of the writer. Tyler Tice has had an arduous journey as a writer and is a perfect example to never give up when you love your craft.

Tell me a little bit about yourself

I’m from New Jersey originally. Right now, I’m living in Florida. I’m married and have four kids.

Do you feel like you need to move to the West Coast?

No. I used to live on the West Coast. I was there for years trying to make it as a screenwriter. I was ‘done done,’ left and moved back into my father’s house in New Jersey. That’s when I wrote Day Shift. I have never lived on the West Coast as a professional screenwriter. 

While I was living in my dad’s house, I started going to community college to be a history teacher and I hated it…! Any screenwriting book you read, they always tell you, if you can do anything else, do that. I guess I couldn’t because I just kept writing. We were going to move back to L.A., then COVID hit. We didn’t know what to do. My wife is from Florida, so we moved down to Florida. I’m going to all my meetings on Zoom anyway and I save a lot of money on rent by not being on the West Coast.

What did you write before Day Shift?

Nothing that you would have ever read…! Day Shift is the first thing that’s ever hit. The other works were stuff in the same space. Horror, action comedies. I was writing for twenty years before I “made it.”

Great. So how did this get picked up?

I won Slamdance in 2017. This was my last-ditch effort. I wrote this one script because I had this idea and was going to enter it in every competition there was. I did that and won the grand prize in Slamdance. The guy that runs Slamdance, Peter Baxter, optioned it. He brought it to Impossible Dream Entertainment, which is Shaun Redick and Yvette Yates’ company. They read it and found J.J. and attached him to it. It kept rolling from there.

How’d you come up with the idea?

I always liked the trope of the vampire hunter. It seems like whenever we’ve had a vampire hunter it’s someone like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where she’s the Chosen One. It’s something she has to do. But I thought, “What if it’s just money? What if it’s just a job?” I found that a lot more interesting. That’s how you support your family. You have to kill vampires.

How long did it take you to write it?

Not long. I got the idea in 2016, when I still lived in L.A. It took me a month or two to write. I marinated on it for a while, so I knew what was going to happen in the story. That’s why I was able to write the script quickly.

What do you love about storytelling?

Making my own worlds. Now that I’m a professional writer, I’m trying to find hobbies that I can do because writing was always my hobby, but I just can’t. I like writing. I like sitting in the dark and watching movies and coming up with my own stuff.

What do you like to do when you’re not writing?

Hang out with my family. I have four kids, so I try and make time for them.

What makes a good story?

Something you find interesting that you can dive into. Something you can lose yourself in that’s fun.

What do you think you learned the most from this experience?

It was sink or swim and I made it through. I feel like I’m stronger because of it.

When did you first realize you wanted to write?

When I was a little kid, in the late 80s. My sister and I had watched this Christopher Guest movie The Big Picture with Kevin Bacon. That was the first time I realized people made movies. Ever since then, I wanted to make movies.

Who would you say are some of your biggest influences?

I’d say Quentin Tarantino. I really like novelists. Brett Easton Ellis, Philip K. Dick, and James Ellroy are a few of my favorites. My favorite show of all time is Veronica Mars. I like Rob Thomas a lot.

What’s your favorite act to write?

The first act. I like trying to hook people. My favorite part to watch in a film is Act I too.

Have you ever collaborated with anyone?

Before all this, I was a comedy writer, and I had a partner. I did standup comedy and came out here with a partner. We were writing comedy specs. We just kind of fizzled out. He went his way, I went mine.

 What’s Bud’s driving force?

His family, which is my main driving force too. I wrote Day Shift a couple months after my first kid was born. When you have children, it changes the chemistry in your brain. You will do anything for them.

What’s the main message you want people to take away from this film?

I just want people to have fun. It’s a big, fun summer movie with big laughs and big action, with lots of violence. That’s what they were like when I was a little kid and I’m glad we could get back to that point.

Are there any genres you lean towards?

I really like crime movies and horror movies. I like mixing the two. I also like comedy. I like the comedy that comes naturally from a story because life is hilarious.

What is your writing routine?

I have a home office here in Florida because I can afford it now. I feed the kids, get them situated. I just had another baby about a week ago. My wife is still recovering from a C-section, so I get that all situated. I come in my office around 8:00 a.m. or 9:00 a.m. and work until about noon.  Then I come back in later. I’m weird, though. I’ve always written with the TV on in the background. I like to have a show or a movie on. I’ve heard you’re not supposed to do that but that’s just part of my process. I try to have something on that’s similar in tone to what I’m writing.

Do you outline?

Oh, yes. Heavily. Even more so now that I have representation. I’m working with my manager. You have to put everything that was in your head on paper and share it with someone. Before this, I always outlined in notebooks. It’s something that I can read but no one else would understand it.

How do you feel you’ve grown as a writer?

In the last two years, by leaps and bounds. Basically, I knew nothing other than how to write. It’s like learning over again. You spend all this time learning how to write and perfecting your craft. And then you get into Hollywood, and you have to learn this whole new game of Hollywood, which I’ve tried on the fly. I think I failed miserably at times, but you just have to dust yourself off and keep going.