By Stephen Hintz.
Anthea Anka
The sun sets over the sleepy Mississippi capital of Jackson. Box trucks and production vehicles line the cordoned-off Farish Street where a small indie film is being shot at a forgotten diner called Peaches.
“That is exactly how I envisioned the busboy I never wrote,” Anthea Anka jokes as a young man dressed in white dishwashing scrubs ambles by the frenetic set of the film Battlecreek. Her husband Ashley, dressed as a small-town cop for their cameo as diner patrons in the script she penned more than three years prior, takes pictures of every prop, camera and crewmember.
Peache’s Cafe
“Enough already,” she complains good-naturedly, as he asks another passerby to take a picture of the two of them. “I say enough, but I’m going to thank him when I’m looking through all the pictures back home,” she admits.
Anka is currently in the midst of the aspiring screenwriter’s dream come true, one when “fade out” is typed on a completed film script…production. The culmination of an idea. The world that at one time existed only in her head, then on loose sheets of fragile paper, has finally manifested itself in flesh and bone and brick and mortar. And film.
Bill Skarsgaard as Makhotin in Anna Karenina
In Battlecreek, Bill Skarsgard (Netflix’s Hemlock Grove, Anna Karenina) stars as Henry, a gifted young painter with a rare skin disorder who lives in an economically depressed Southern American town. Due to his affliction, he must live his life at night. When a young woman, Alison, played by Claire Van Der Boom (The Square, Red Hill), being chased by her own demons stumbles into town, their blossoming romance compels him to challenge his provocative, overbearing mother Tallulah played by Paula Malcomson (HBO’s Ray Donovan, The Hunger Games, Deadwood) and break free of the lies that have bound them together for years.
Paula Malcomson as Trixie in Deadwood
Life has been breathed into characters that once only spoke to Anka. To see the bustling crew, support vehicles, office trailers, elaborate sets and out-of-the-way locations make her pause. “Outside of the birth of my son, four-year-old Lucian, this is one of those life experiences on that same level,” she explains.
Those life experiences started in small town Carmel, California, where she was born the fourth of five girls to Lebanese model Anne De Zogheb and American/Canadian singer Paul Anka, also of Lebanese heritage. Growing up with a famous father, who led a busy and exciting life often far from home, wasn’t always easy. Yet Anka found a sympathetic ear with another child of entertainment, Alison Eastwood, daughter of Maggie Johnson and actor/director Clint Eastwood. Though they had lost touch, the bond they formed as children had remained strong enough for Anka to reach out to her to direct her project.
Anne De Zogheb and Paul Anka
Eastwood is just as happy to be directing her sophomore feature, her first being Rails and Ties starring Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden, with someone she considers family. She reflects, “It is so amazing to be working with not only such a talented writer but a longtime friend. Having that history has helped our collaboration process and we are both on the same page as far as our vision for this film,” she affirms.
Anka’s journey to this point is a lesson in tenacity. After majoring in literature at the University of Michigan, she moved to New York where she sang in clubs and took odd jobs trying to discover her niche. After a couple of years in the Big Apple, Anka, now 42, had an opportunity to work for a Los Angeles music publishing company and decided to make the move. There, her first challenged to write a film script by Lance Gentry, another friend and ardent supporter since their teens. She sat down in her father’s study in Los Angeles and banged it out on a vintage typewriter. With that first script, she caught the bug.
An opportunity working for GQ in London came and although Anka loved her time in England, she knew that she needed to be back in Los Angeles. “One of the editors asked me what my plans were and the more I thought about it, the more I knew I wanted to be writing for film. And I needed to be in L.A.”, she remembers. So she returned and joined the Writer’s Boot Camp, where she wrote and wrote and wrote. By the end of the program, she finally had a script that she felt was worthy of consideration.
Knowing her father would appreciate her hutzpah, Anka went through his Rolodex and found producer Jerry Weintraub’s contact information. She submitted the script for Across the Pond to him in her father’s name, asking for a favor from a friend. John Tomco, one of Weintraub’s development directors, called her a week later and said that despite Tomco’s reticence giving a charity read to a script by famous person’s kid, he fell in love with it and wanted to option it.
From there, Anka spent the next year on the Warner Brothers’ lot in development. She attended meetings, learned how to defend her ideas amidst the onslaught, and was paid to do multiple rewrites. Ultimately, the deal fell through, but not before instilling her with the confidence that she knew she could make it in the cinema biz.
Anka continued to write and had many near misses before Battlecreek found its way to her childhood pal Eastwood. “I had seen a poster for her film Rails and Ties at the movie theater one night and saw that she was now directing, to my surprise,” she recalls.
Kevin Bacon as Tom Stark and Miles Heizer as Davey Danner in Rails and Ties
“I e-mailed her and we caught up,” Anka goes on, mentioning to Eastwood that she was writing, as well as filled her in on what else was going on in her life. “I sent her Battlecreek and she immediately responded to it, saying she wanted to direct it and would send it to a few people. She sent the script to Connie (Hoy), who really liked it and came aboard. The rest, I suppose, is history.”
“The process was long, looking for money for around four years. We had financing in place, then lost it, then fell in with people we didn’t quite trust and felt like they didn’t understand or really appreciate the project like we did. So we ended that relationship and were back to square one. It was very much a journey of contacting everyone we knew, turning over every stone.”
“I’m glad that it happened at this age, so I can be appreciative. If it had all been easy, it wouldn’t have been the same. You have to keep banging on the door, someone will open it,”
“That’s one the great things about writing. We get to put ourselves into our stories. If you finish any kind of writing project, such as a film script, that’s huge. Do as much of the creative arts for yourself, and be at peace with that,”
Alison Eastwood with her father, Clint Eastwood
How did you come up with Battlecreek and what did it tackle for you personally?
I wrote the script many years ago. At the time I was writing a lot of comedies and was getting tired of that genre and really wanted to write something subtle, poetic and dark. I was also obsessed with the idea of writing something that took place primarily at night, the quiet and beauty of those nighttime hours and create a character that was a Watchman of sorts (hence the Frost poem) in this town, the eyes and ears to the local’s secrets, and of course harboring many of his own. The skin disease was a device of course that made him an outcast of sorts and kept him locked away from the sunlight hours, but for me, Henry probably would’ve made that choice on his own, prefering the solitude of the night.
For me personally, it was a challenge to switch from comedy to drama and not rely on the joke in the scene, also I’m big on dialogue, and it comes easily to me, and in this script I had to really hold back and always opted for the less is more approach.
What is your writing schedule?
My writing process is pretty simple: I like to wake, drink coffee, run, then write. I’m a big morning writer. Then usually break after a few hours then go back to it if it’s going well. I believe in a lot of movement when writing, I pace, I walk, I carry a notepad when things come to me. Ideas come at any point and if I’m in deep to a script, I and things aren’t coming, I leave it for a bit and let things wash up on shore, as they say. The worst is if I try to pressure things too much.
Where do you write?
I like to write at home, usually on the sofa. As I said, I like to move, do things in between scenes (if I’m trying to solve a problem) and I don’t like to be stuck in a cafe. I usually outline in a cafe, or the library so that I’m forced to get it done, as the outline can usually be the hardest to flush out. But once I’m into scenes, I like to be at home, so if an idea isn’t coming, I can get up and clean, vacuum, what have you and let the idea/solution come when it’s meant to.
Connie Hoy (producer), Anthea Anka (writer) and Alison Eastwood (director)
What is your rewriting process?
Rewriting process is about understanding the notes as best as possible (whomever they are from). I read through them several times and make sure I understand the ‘why’ of the notes, and if there are any that feel utterly pointless or contrary to something I truly believe in, then I will challenge them. Sometimes I’m right in my convictions and other times, I’m surprised that the note actually is for the betterment of the script. That old saying, kill your darlings, is cliched by true. Often times, something you hold onto too tight in your script is often the thing you should lose. I’m also a big fan of the sweep through, once all the notes are in, I will read through and tweak the script for quite awhile. I will leave days in between to get some distance then re read it and often things will pop up again if they’re not working.
How do you know when your script is ready to show to others?
That’s a hard one….sometimes it’ just instinct (of when to show it to others), other times, if I think I’m too close to it, I’ll show it to someone to get advice. often, simply prefacing it as a first draft, people understand that its a work in progress.
How many trusted readers do you show your draft to?
‘Trusted readers’ is a small circle I suppose. My husband is a great sounding board, my manager, and my best friend who is also a writer. She is an excellent editor.
How do you approach screenplay structure?
Structure for me is all about the outline, if I don’t get it worked out there then I’m going to have problems. I was taught the general structure of… first act, inciting incident into first act turn…second act midpoint and second act turn, escalating the problem until the resolution in the third act, or the concluding event (whether it’s conclusive or not). I try not to get too hung up on formulas, but following them loosely does keep one on track to make sure you hit all the appropriate beats.
How do you approach genre requirements?
Genre requirements I’m not so hung up on or necessarily believe in. I don’t believe a comedy only has to be funny and rely on the joke, or a drama only has to be dramatic and so on. I believe it’s about the story and if that story encompasses many emotions then so be it. To me genre ‘requirements’ equals studio film lol and that often means you are writing for an audience and not necessarily for yourself. Obviously at times you have to do this, but ultimately the best writing is going to come from within you and not because you think you have to fit into a genre.
How do you inhabit your characters and find their voice?
Characters and dialogue come the easiest to me. Often the feel like they write themselves (sometimes better than others! lol). I try to spend a lot of time thinking about the character before I write, making lists of their habits, what they wear and who they are, their principles, flaws etc, what they smell like, eat and so on, and then once I have fully grasped who they are and what makes them tick and more importantly what makes them unique and human, then the dialogue seems to write itself.
