Maya Forbes and Wally Wolodarsky are celebrated veterans of television writing, screenwriting, and directing. This husband and wife writing team have their roots in comedy, but have also written incredibly poignant, heartfelt dramas like Infinite Polar Bear, which received high praise at Sundance. 

Wally is also an actor who’s had roles in numerous films, including several Wes Anderson ones. His acting background is a touchstone for his writing craft. He continued to stretch his creative skills with his directorial debut Coldblooded (1995), which starred Jason Priestley. 

Maya’s first television writing job was for The Naked Truth, but she cut her teeth writing for The Larry Saunders Show. She finally got behind the camera for Infinitely Polar Bear and The Polka King and most recently The Good House. She and Wally have been writing together for over twenty years and their synergy radiates from their writing. 

In this case, writing with a significant other provides the magic sauce for their storytelling. Their latest collaboration is the adaptation of Ann Leary’s novel The Good House, in film starring acting virtuosos Sigourney Weaver and Kevin Kline. Set in a small New England town, film confronts alcoholism in a funny, ubiquitous manner. Maya’s roots are in this type of environment, so she had a keen insight into that cultural enclave. As a biracial person, she has a particularly unique understanding of those surroundings.

How long have you guys been writing together?

Maya: We’ve been writing together since 1999. We’re married and that was when our first child was born.

Wally: We’d had separate careers then slowly merged into one organic entity.

How did you get your starts writing?

Maya: I graduated from college, and I was on the Harvard Lampoon. I hadn’t really thought about being a television writer but a lot of people on the Harvard Lampoon went into television, so it suddenly seemed like a possible road. But my first job… I was part of the first Disney Fellowship Program. They still have it, it’s much smaller. It was the first year and it was ten writers at Touchstone, ten at Hollywood Pictures, and four TV writers. That’s what moved me out to Los Angeles. I wrote a script that first year and nothing happened with it. I ended up writing some TV specs and got a job with The Larry Sanders Show. I worked in TV for a long time after that.

Wally: A high school pal and I got jobs as PAs on the It’s Garry Shandling’s Show. He said, ‘Let’s write a script.’ We wrote a spec script and ended up selling it to them and that led to The Tracey Ullman Show, then The Simpsons. I wrote and directed my first movie in ’94. It’s kind of a continuum.

What are your strengths as writers, separately and together?

Wally: Maya’s very good at logic. She’s the puzzle master. She has more of a math mind than I do. We share similar strengths. We’re very interested in character. This movie is a perfect example. It’s the generator for a whole movie. It’s a person struggling and trying to figure out what their life is going to be.

How did you guys get involved with The Good House?

Wally: We read the book. Every so often you read a book and go, ‘I think this is a movie. Don’t you?’

Maya: We were drawn to it because of the central character. Back to strengths, we’re both comedy writers, but I think that Wally is really quite funny.

Wally: We’re very attracted to the drama in people’s lives, but I can’t get through the day without laughing about something.

Maya: And I can’t get through a day without crying about something.

How does your writing process differ when you adapt something as opposed to writing something original?

Wally: When you read something and think ‘Wow, this is a movie,‘ it’s providing you with the instant skeleton, roadmap of how to proceed. For me, plot is always the backbreaking part of any project.

Maya: I was once lucky enough to sit by William Goldman at a dinner. He told me that when he was adapting a book, he would read it multiple times, underlining in different colors. When he would look at it, the things that had all the colors, those are the must-haves. Those are the pieces you’re going to take out and figure out how to string together. That’s really useful when you’re working on a book because there are so many things that you really like… a movie is a whole different animal that you have to make work in ninety minutes to two hours. So, you have to jettison one of those things that you liked. You try to get a little flavor of them into what you’re doing. There’s a real balance between delivering on all the character stuff we want to see and making the plot move.

Wally: Having the plot, the skeleton, is a huge relief. There’s also a liberty when you’re writing you’re own. We’ve also written many original screenplays. It goes both ways. Sometimes it’s nice not to have the skeleton. But when you get a really good book, it’s just there. Like this one. We had to compress things because it takes place over a much more expansive amount of time.

How big of a role does environment play in Hildy’s internal/external journey?

Maya: That was another really appealing thing to us. I grew up in New England and we often go back during the summer, to Massachusetts. The appearance of that world is very inviting, almost aspirational. And yet, the reality is not that. There’s much more going on and it is hard to be in a small town where everyone knows everyone else’s business. You feel like you have to armor yourself up when you go out into the world so that people aren’t going to see what’s really going on. That environment was very appealing to us because we can understand why someone would want to live in it and what the harder elements to living in a place like that are.

What’s Hildy’s primary motivation?

Wally: One of the things that’s so appealing about her is that she’s so dynamic. moving-forward kind of person. What makes her so interesting is that she’s also hampered by this other issue that’s gone on parallel tracks with her through her entire life. All that ambition and drive for success… it’s almost like drinking is the release valve for that. They work well in parallel until they stop working. That’s what makes the book so interesting. You’re at that point where she’s not the top broker anymore. She’s lost her mojo. She’s gotten out of balance.

Maya: Hildy’s a survivor and a fighter. That’s something we really liked about it… I always want to see women with agency. Women who want things unapologetically. The things that allowed her to succeed are also the things that are holding her back. Her focus on surviving is what’s keeping her from growing beyond the traumas of her childhood. This need to survive is keeping her drinking.

When you have such a strong central character, how do you develop the secondary characters?

Wally: Going all the way back, I’ve been very influenced by Preston Sturges. He would always give delicious little moments, even to the guy that serves the beer. When I’ve acted, even in the smallest parts, you realized you’re the star. We make sure every character has their moment.

Maya: They’re the center of their story.

Wally: Exactly. As a writer, that’s what makes writing fun. Not that everyone deserves their moment but that everyone has a story, even if they’re blowing through for two lines.

How long did it take you guys to write the first draft?

Wally: Pretty reliably in the two-to-three-month range. That sounds lovely and fast, but we never stop until the last frame is edited. One of the great things about being with Sigourney, amongst many things, was that she was always willing to look a little more into the character.

Does having directed help your writing?

Wally: Oh, yes. They’re so intermittently linked.

Maya: Once you’ve directed a movie, you get a better sense of what is and isn’t going to work, particularly once you’ve edited a movie. You’ll see a scene an know it’s not going to make it because it repeats too many beats of the last scene.

Wally: When you’re writing,  you think, ‘We’ll cut this in editing. We don’t need this scene.‘

Maya: You also have a better sense of what you do need. You cut one scene, then put a little something extra into the scene that you are going to keep. You cover your bases that way. You also understand for actors what are interesting things to play.

Wally: The other thing about directing that’s helpful for all writers is sometimes when you’re writing a scene, you write it without really picturing it. Without really understanding the geography of how it would even make sense if it were filmed. When you have that directing experience, you ground yourself in the scene.

Did you have a favorite scene that you wrote?

Wally: I’m partial to the comedy stuff.

Did you learn anything from this project that you’ll utilize for your next projects?

Maya: You always have the things you wish you’d done.

Wally: I’ve learned that you just find a way.

What do you love about storytelling?

Wally: I’ve ruminated on this recently. Sometimes you think, ‘What do I know, I’m just a dopey writer making these entertainments?’ But I’ve gotten more in touch with the deep roots of storytelling and how important and invaluable it is to a culture to help people understand their own lives. Entertainment is so old and so deeply rooted in being human, I have more of an appreciation of it.

Maya: It’s a way to have empathy for other people and to create it.