This transcript was generated using AI and has been only lightly edited by a human. As a result, there may be occasional typos or transcription errors. I appreciate your understanding.

[00:00:05.020] – Intro
This is Meet the Thriller author, the podcast hosted by thriller novelist, Alan Petersen. Each episode, Alan sits down with some of the most exciting voices in mystery and suspense, best-selling legends and rising stars alike, to talk writing, process, and the art of crafting a killer story. From Dean Kuntz and Walter Moseley to Freda McFadden and Lee Child, over 200 authors have joined Alan for deep, revealing conversations that every thriller fan and aspiring writer will love. You can find transcripts, show notes, and the full archive of episodes at thrillerauthors. Com. And don’t forget to check out Alan’s own heart-pounding thriller at thrillingreads. Com/books. Now, here’s the latest episode of Meet the Thriller Author.

[00:00:52.040] – Alan Petersen
Before we dive in, a quick reminder, my latest psychological thriller, The Casual Date, has cracked the top 100 in categories like domestic on Amazon. It’s just 99 cents or free if you’re a Kindle Unlimited member. If you haven’t checked it out yet, now is the perfect time. If you’re enjoying this podcast, please take a moment to rate and review. It really helps more thriller fans discover the show. Today’s guest is Alex R. Johnson, an acclaimed filmmaker and screenwriter whose debut novel, Brooklyn Motto, is a gritty atmospheric noir set in the late 1990s New York City. The novel follows Nico Kelly, a self-loathing PI who stumbles onto a murder and gets pulled into a mystery he’s never asked to solve. All right, let’s get into it. Here’s my interview with Alex R. Johnson. Hey, everybody. This is Alan with Meet the Thriller author. On the podcast today, I have Alex R. Johnson, who is an acclaimed filmmaker and screenwriter here, and he’s making his fiction literary debut with a broken motto, a gritty, noir-inspired mystery set in the 1990s in New York City. Really excited to talk to Alex about his book and his career.

[00:01:58.900] – Alan Petersen
Welcome to the podcast.

[00:02:00.260] – Alex R. Johnson
Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:02:02.300] – Alan Petersen
You had a very successful career as a filmmaker and in screenwriting. Before we get into all about your book, can you tell us a little bit about your background and what got you to storytelling and what led you from film to writing a novel?

[00:02:16.260] – Alex R. Johnson
I’ve always, since I was a child, the goal was to be a writer. I was always writing, always trying to start a novel when I was younger and would let imposter syndrome overtake me and would abandon it. But then when I moved in, I studied film theory, moved to New York, and did a lot of film freelancing. And then I got hooked up with Mazel’s Films, which is, they’re like the godfather, grandfathers of Verete cinema, of cinema Verete. Doc style stuff. And I started this career in documentary as a day job. But I was always writing and always writing scripts and always trying to write short stories and doing all that stuff at the time. And then I started directing and people started to finally pay attention to my work, which is a struggle. No one wants to be the first person to say you’re good. So you got to convince people. And so after that happened, then I made my first film called Two Step, which is this Texas noir premiered at South by Southwest, and it’s done really well, critically, financially, as far as you know, it did great. So that started my career as a screenwriter, and What I, maybe my own naivete about the studio system was that I thought I’d make, I don’t know, every other script I wrote would get made type of thing.

[00:03:41.180] – Alex R. Johnson
And what you quickly learn is that you can have a career in Hollywood at the studio level and honestly have nothing get made. So when I made this switch from studio to independent, it just, I don’t know. I’m used to… I came from DIY independent filmmaking, and so I’m used to every day being like, What can I do today to try to get this production a step closer to getting made? Then you get to the studio system and you realize you can’t do anything. It’s just the gods are bowling in the sky and you’re just waiting. I did originally plan this as a TV show, this book, and back at the peak TV was peaking. But I don’t know, I had a half-ass pitch, and I pitched it to my agents, and they didn’t see it. And they tried to talk me out of doing it, and I got really a little defensive, as a writer can get sometimes. And I was like, Well, I’m doing it anyway. And it just started to seem like a novel. I obviously don’t do first-person in screenplay work. And as I was putting together all my notes for it, the first-person voice came And then it was also deliriously intoxicating.

[00:05:04.140] – Alex R. Johnson
I don’t know. Just first person, after never writing first person, can be really fun is an easy way of saying that. But yeah, I don’t want to make it sound like it was an easy peasy way for me to get into writing. I was an established commercial producer for 10 years in trying to get attention. You know what I mean? And then it It wasn’t until I got my screenplays into some labs and some workshops that had some clout that people started to pay attention. But even that was a struggle. But anyway, so what happens is, so you get in the You’re in the screenwriting world and you’re writing these screenplays and you fall in love with the world and you fall in love with the characters and you think of all the potential and then you sell it and you’re paid for it. Most of the big money you get is if it goes into production. They back-end all those bonuses. So you You can have a very good living, but you’re rolling in cash or anything like that. If nothing gets made. But what happens is if it doesn’t get made, you lose the world.

[00:06:10.700] – Alex R. Johnson
You just lose it. You can’t do anything with it. And in the United States, screenwriters years ago, in the ’60s, I think, when the Writers Guild, we agreed to losing our copyright in exchange for health care, basically. And so that was part of the negotiating tactic that studios were like, Well, then we have to have the copyright. We’ll pay for your health care, but we have to have the copyright. So that gets frustrating when you lose, you create worlds and they’re gone. And if an idea comes to you later about a script that got abandoned and you can’t pursue it. I got excited about writing the book, A, because it was thrilling to me, and it’s something that I always wanted to do since I was a child, and avid reader. And B, to know that it’s mine. It’s my world. Whatever happens with it, the characters, I can continue with these characters in another form if I want to.

[00:07:14.380] – Alan Petersen
It sounds like a little more freedom, a little more liberating, maybe.

[00:07:17.240] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah, a little more freedom, a little more liberating, just a little slower process. But I downshifted into the pros speed.

[00:07:29.560] – Alan Petersen
But Yeah, I read in your bio, and I know this is more on the film thing, but I’ve always heard about that. What’s it called? The Blacklist or something? Not the… The great scripts go or something that never get made? Yeah. That’s so fascinating. Sure.

[00:07:42.620] – Alex R. Johnson
Franklin Leonard, I forget who he was an assistant to years ago in the ’90s, somebody famous. And he just got obsessed with the best scripts that weren’t getting made. And so back when he was just an assistant to somebody, organized this concept concept of, let’s have all the studio heads vote on the best scripts that got written that year that didn’t get made. And so he organized that. And so it’s been going on since, I think, the late ’90s, maybe the early 2000s. And in 2016, my script, Northeast Kingdom, that we sold to Paramount, that Michael Bayes’ company was supposed to produce, it made the blacklist. And so what happens is they call around and the studio executives, they vet them. So it’s actual studio executives. They’re given a limited number of votes, and they can just assign, and then they just tally up all the votes. And then I think it’s about 40 or 50 scripts a year, approximately. I don’t think there’s a set number. But yeah, so it made that list. They’ve expanded into an online system where there’s still the studio blacklist that happens every year. And then there’s a collective screenwriting thing.

[00:08:59.560] – Alex R. Johnson
You can pay to be a member, and you can critique. You can get other people to critique your work, and they can critique yours, and you can vote. And then they have their own ranking system on that list as well. But I was on the studio one. And that’s one of those. And whether or not that gets made, if I always say I was on the blacklist, that’s one of those ways that going back to nobody wants to be the first person to say you’re good. I can say I was on the blacklist, and then I can get a meeting or I can at least get an email address and try to sell myself.

[00:09:31.020] – Alan Petersen
That’s fascinating. With regards to your writing for books, novels, who were some of your literary influences? Did you like crime readers?

[00:09:41.900] – Alex R. Johnson
Yes, totally. I grew up So my parents were… I grew up a government brat. My dad was FBI, my mom was CIA, my godfather was DEA. And they were all obsessed with crime. My parents had crime books all around, and so I used to read and spy stuff. But my biggest influences as an adult are probably easily Richard Price. Nothing makes me happier than the announcement of a new Richard Price novel coming out. And Elmore Leonard, certainly. Gold Coast is right up there, one of my main influences. I think both of them have such a… They’re They’re both so good at setting the tone and the pace that they want you to read at, which I just love. That’s how I try to write, both in screenplay. And that’s something I learned in screenwriting from reading really amazing screenwriters like Alex Garland’s screenplays. He just sets the pace, just the way he writes and sets the pace as to how he wants you to read the script. And that’s That’s always been a goal and how I write is to try to create a rhythm or a beat.

[00:11:07.640] – Alan Petersen
How did Brooklyn Motto come together? What was the process from when you first started to get the idea to having a published book out?

[00:11:15.860] – Alex R. Johnson
I wanted to… I love detectives. I’m one of those Columbo freaks. The apartment is filled with Columbo posters. They We used to release the TV movies as movies in Europe, and so you can get some really great European Columbo movie posters. But I love the idea of the reluctant detective type of thing, and I was starting to think about that and trying to find a roundabout way into detecting, a detective that’s doing stuff that almost they’re bored with. And I also was interested in doing something about being 28 in that moment when you are still feeling slightly invincible, but you’re starting to realize that you got to get it together a little bit. So it’s really that moment in life where you’re going from passive to active. And so I thought, well, is there a way to find a way to have a detective that somehow fell into it through temping? Because that’s such a part of your 20s, at least in New York, it was for me in between production gigs and things. And so So the detective, he started off just as an office assistant at a tiny little bus stop ad type lawyer law firm.

[00:12:40.140] – Alex R. Johnson
And their main contract is with the city. And so the idea is I was trying to think of really boring investigative things, and contracts with the city seemed pretty boring. So the idea is that he, anytime a city employee has an insurance claim over a certain amount, it triggers an automatic stakeout thing, if it’s about an injury. So basically for 48 hours, this guy would just go out and photograph, take pictures, try to get this guy picking up things that are heavy or jumping on a trampoline or going dancing or something to negate the claim. That’s where he is at the beginning. He’s a little bit of a curmudgeon and not sure what he’s doing with his life. I liked the idea of a big case coming to him and him having to have to make the choice to step up and start investigating. That’s what happens. He’s following a police officer who’s obviously dirty, which he doesn’t realize until the night goes on doing cash pickups at various vice police locations across the city, across Brooklyn. And then he goes back to his house and he’s about to call a night when two other cops show up and they kill him.

[00:14:09.980] – Alex R. Johnson
And he has it on videotape, but it’s through a window. It’s like the gun flashes, and he knows these cops have killed him. And so he goes to his boss, and what the boss decides to do about it starts to unravel everything. And he’s forced to decide if he’s going to investigate or if he’s going to just run away. And so he chooses to investigate. And it’s that moment. And it’s also narratively time for that moment of being individuating, figuring out who you are and making those choices Yeah.

[00:14:47.160] – Alan Petersen
And I think it’s fascinating, too. And pretty cool. You said it in 1998. So this is before phones and everyone has a camera in their pocket. It’s a television camera. And what What made you pick… You’re very specific, too. 1998. What made you pick that time frame?

[00:15:05.800] – Alex R. Johnson
Well, there’s obviously big personal aspects to the story in that I’ve never written with a character that’s similar to me in any way, shape, or form. I don’t know why I always thought it was like cheating, but it’s really stupid that I thought that way. I remember hearing a Gary Steingard interview where they were giving him crap for having another protagonist that was of Russian descent in New York, and he was a writer. And he was like, Why the hell not? That’s what I feel comfortable making some of my characters. That’s my world. And I was like, Yeah, why the hell not? And so I wanted to investigate my own family, which is half Ecuadorian and half Irish and from Queens. And so as my relatives die, as there’s less people to ask questions about who you are, so then you’re forced to ask yourself those questions. And so the book was in some ways trying to figure that out. So in that way, I just selfishly picked 1998 because that was about when I was that age. And I knew I wanted to continue the story over the next 10 years in terms of things that happened in New York.

[00:16:23.580] – Alex R. Johnson
And I didn’t want to start it too early, and I didn’t want to start it too close to 9/11 because it becomes such a dominating just tonally and emotionally, it just affected the city in such a way that I wanted to get a couple of stories out before we hit that. But so there’s that. And also I knew I was going to do late ’90s, And then I found a date book of mine from 1998, pre phones, because I used to do freelance film production and commercial production. And so you get put on hold and you have to block out dates and stuff. And so you don’t get double-booked. And so I use that. And then also I had rock shows I went to and dates or things I thought were dates, didn’t end up being dates, and movies and shows and stuff like that. So I was able to put my head back into it in some ways. And then I ordered some Village Voices online from 1998, and just seeing the ads and just the muscle memory of all that stuff, it all came flooding back to me. So, yeah, it was pretty selfish.

[00:17:35.000] – Alex R. Johnson
That’s why I did it. Probably the furthest back I can remember, clearly. So, yeah, there’s that.

[00:17:42.820] – Alan Petersen
So you have a lot in common with Nico, right? With your character, Nico Kelly?

[00:17:47.680] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah. I mean, the genetic makeup. I didn’t want to go there. Nico’s father is a heroine addict or was a heroine addict and a failed musician. My father was pretty high-ranking FBI agent for most of his life. So there’s that. But it’s really just the genetic makeup. And specifically, Being half Ecuadorian and not generally looking. People don’t generally think I’m Ecuadorian. They generally think I’m either Jewish or Italian-American. It’s It’s almost like you’re privy to a lot of more overt racism, not directed at you, but that you witness by people. I wanted to explore that a little bit. So there’s all that stuff. The family makeup is different. I mean, all the narrative is… But I leaned in on location, especially because I needed to remember it. So I leaned in on locations that I knew both in my family’s history and personal. Yeah.

[00:19:01.660] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, I really like your background because we’re pretty similar on that because my mother is Costa Rican and I was born in Costa Rica. But everyone looks at me and Alan Peterson.

[00:19:11.760] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah. My middle name is Rafael. Well, but nobody ever does that.

[00:19:19.660] – Alan Petersen
When I saw that on your bio, I was like, Oh, my God. I can relate with that one.

[00:19:24.120] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah. So I had the Irish side of my family. You just with the stuff you witness, you’re just like, uf. But even family members telling you jokes and bad jokes involved with a punchline is racist Latin stuff. And you’re just like, I am happy. You know, and they’re just like, Oh, yeah. God, oh, God.

[00:19:51.560] – Alan Petersen
So obviously, Brooklyn is a huge part of the story. And you live in Brooklyn, right? Is that- I do. I do.

[00:19:59.040] – Alex R. Johnson
So I My family is from Queens. I live in Brooklyn. I moved to Brooklyn shortly after… Like anyone, you live when you move and you’re young, in the city, at least, you go where you can afford. You’re bouncing around and your new apartment every year or whatever. But then my wife and I settled in Brooklyn in Park Slope. But then we did leave for 10 years, 10 brief years. We went to Austin, and my wife had a job opportunity in Austin. And for me, it’s a very big filmmaking town, and there’s a lot of filmmakers there, and it’s close enough to Los Angeles. It was actually very convenient to go to meetings and deal with stuff in LA. So we went to Austin for about 10 years. It’s a great place to visit. I love the people I met and that I socialize with, and I love the filmmaking community there. But it’s also just… It’s Texas, even though it is Austin. And I’m a New York person, an East Coast person. And so it never really took. And during COVID is when I started writing the book. And that really… Covid really highlighted that we didn’t have family in Texas.

[00:21:07.960] – Alex R. Johnson
And the original plan was to move further West to LA, eventually, for my work. It just made no sense to move further from family, as once COVID made it clear that occasionally there’s going to be a global pandemic and you’re going to want to be close to your family. So I escaped back into New York in the book, but we had always been talking about trying to figure out when to come back. And then we came back about three years ago. And literally, I’ve initially moved right back in the same neighborhood, Park Slope, which was terrifyingly weird because everybody was 10 years older. And I I recognized everybody. And I’m like, certainly, surely I do not look 10 years older, these people, right? And then we moved to another neighborhood, a new neighborhood, because it felt weird being in the same neighborhood after 10 years gone. And now we’re back. And Texas in some ways feels like a little bit of a fever dream, but there are still aspects of Texas that I love. I still always write. I’m doing something now that is a Texas true crime story that I’m working on. I do love Texas.

[00:22:19.260] – Alex R. Johnson
It’s one of those places that feels, I don’t know, makes you believe in folklore exists in America. There could be an undiscovered thing somewhere because it’s this mysterious world. But Brooklyn is home, and I’m really happy to be here. My sister and nephew were just visiting yesterday, and we all went to go see the Metts and all that stuff I couldn’t do when I was in Texas. So I’m happy to be back.

[00:22:48.060] – Alan Petersen
I’m curious about your writing process and your writing style. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Do you outline? Are you a disciplined type of writer? Is it chaos?

[00:23:00.000] – Alex R. Johnson
Oh, chaos. So I’m sticking to the same writing, literally. I mean, it’s not like… I’m going to be the first person to tell you this style, but creative writing, sophomore year, Rick Cannon was my teacher in high school, and he taught us the concept of the spillage page. And so whenever you did creative writing in his classes, you do an essay, you had to turn in three things. You had to turn in your spillage page stapled, and then your next page was your first draft, and then your next page was your final draft. And so the concept of the spillage page became what drives me, which is basically a document that you’re not allowed to erase. If you write the stupidest thing on it, you got to teach yourself to not be embarrassed by it because no one’s going to see it except you. And if they do see it, you’re dead. So who cares? So I do that. So I do a spillage document, even with screenplays. And it’s just almost stream of consciousness, bits of dialog. And I have a bunch of documents for various projects that I’m trying to develop. And I get that to a good media length So I feel like I have enough energy and kindling to get the story past the set up and into get the momentum going.

[00:24:24.680] – Alex R. Johnson
And in the process of writing Brooklyn Motto, like I said, I was starting it as a TV show, and I was just doing my general spillage page. But then I started, I really need dialog. I need to hear the characters start talking to figure things out. It’s a big forward-backward process. You have to just be okay with rewriting and the time it takes. It’s not good for Hollywood. They don’t like it because there are people that can just crank out these analytical treatments, beat boards, and then this happens, and then this happens, and I can’t. I literally would have to write the script and then pull a beat board out of the script I write. So I was doing that, and that’s how the first-person thing, I was doing some dialog, and that’s how the first-person thing came in. So I do that, and it’s worked for me. It’s sloppy and can get chaotic. But that, combined with the need to hear dialog, I have to hear the characters start talking in my head to to figure out where I’m going. Yeah.

[00:25:33.960] – Alan Petersen
And what about the actual tool that you use? Is it a word or something different?

[00:25:38.980] – Alex R. Johnson
Well, it’s like I just use word, but I’m rethinking it now that there’s this old subscription. Software subscription.

[00:25:47.960] – Alan Petersen
There is a subscription now.

[00:25:50.900] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah, I just use word. But I’m rethinking it now that there’s This old subscription, software subscription. There are these descriptions now. Yeah, I just use Word. You know what I do a lot is in my spillage pages, I’ve transferred to a notes app. So I just use it my notes. So it’s sunk up with my phone and my laptop. So I’ll be in bed and I’ll just open up my spillage and I’ll stick a bit of dialog down or something like that. But when I wrote the book, I wrote it in Word, and that’s mostly out of not knowing any better. I think I learned about Scribner through episodes of your podcast. That’s how out of touch I am. But I’ll probably look into that. But I’ve never been good. I use Final Draft for my screenplay work, and I know there are better screenplay writing programs out there, but they’re all just cards and colors and all this stuff. I just want to write.

[00:26:45.000] – Alan Petersen
Yeah, you got to do what works for you because it could be overwhelming if you start seeing all the other stuff.

[00:26:50.480] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah, it’s like when I was in film production, I got out of editing because every six months, there was some new technology that was coming in that you had to learn. And I was like, Oh, writing, it’s just words, but it’s still this new stuff all the time, too.

[00:27:05.580] – Alan Petersen
And do you try to get in the habit of writing? Do you write every day?

[00:27:10.980] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah, I do need about a four-hour window to be productive. Sometimes if I only have a little 90 minutes or something, I might not even focus on it. I’d like to have a four-hour window. But yeah, I I try to be disciplined in the mornings and nothing too early. I’m not waking up with the birds or anything like that, but just when my kid goes to school and start my day. But I do. That’s my one stickler. If I can’t get a good chunk of time, I’ve found that I’m not productive. And then I think like, Well, if I have 90 minutes, maybe I should go to the gym instead of if I don’t have the four hours. But But also the book process was such a new thing for me. It did take adjusting to that slow count and just getting okay with like, Okay, I did a page. I did a page today. I did a page and a half. Okay, great. Oh, I did three pages. Great. And just adjusting to it. I do feel like having done it, though, once, I was trying to make a comparison to it to a friend I have a friend who runs marathons, and they don’t really train anymore because they know how to pace themselves.

[00:28:37.600] – Alex R. Johnson
They do like four marathons a year or something. And I was like, Oh, how do you run? And they’re like, I just run like three miles a day. But in When the marathon comes, I know how to pace myself. And I do feel a little bit like that now about the next book is, A, I know that it can end. And B, understanding the the process and the pacing of it and not to lose myself in depression over it.

[00:29:08.140] – Alan Petersen
Just out of curiosity, for a screenplay, how many words is a typical average movie screenplay?

[00:29:13.660] – Alex R. Johnson
I don’t know words. You don’t count by words, just the page. I mean, there’s nothing like being in a room with somebody who, when you hand them a script, flips to the last page and just tries to see how long it is. That’s pretty common. So it’s typically between 90 and 120 pages, and it’s the idea is it’s about a page a minute, roughly, averages out. But I feel like screenplays have gotten a little more literary in the past 10 years, and so it wasn’t that huge of a jump, but you do have to be more economical. I mean, that’s the true art of it, is finding a way to craft a scene tonally, timing-wise, and still be economical and make whoever’s reading it really feel like it’s alive. I always go back to Alex Garland, Annihilation, beautiful scripts. Just to really learn. You see everything, and it’s not long in its descriptions. But yeah.

[00:30:21.920] – Alan Petersen
And is this something now, since you have the contacts and experience, are you trying to get Brooklyn Mado now back into the film?

[00:30:29.160] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah, I’m going Yeah, I have to do. I was just talking to my manager, and I was like, I’d like to send it out to everyone, the folks that… The annoying industry term agents always use are your fans. Your fans. They’re talking about like 35-year-old junior executives that don’t get half of the references you make, or that’s probably three quarters. So I am going to send it out, but I need to do what’s called a one to be like, this is how I see it being a TV show. Do this, this, this. This will be the narrative thread, and please give it a read. So we’re going to try. But I think everybody starts a conversation off about the current state of TV. Tv is weird right now, which basically means we’re at about a 30% production rate of what we were before the strike, and it doesn’t seem like it’s really going to expand. So there’s just not a lot of work There’s not a lot of shows. They’re going back to a lot of reality stuff. So it’s hard. You really got to break through with something to get it made more so than ever nowadays.

[00:31:43.660] – Alan Petersen
As you mentioned that you are working on new books, new novels.

[00:31:48.780] – Alex R. Johnson
I’m working, yes. So I’ve got my spillage document. It’s pretty deep on the next book, which would take place in 2000. And so I’ve got that going for the next installment of this series with Nico, The Detective. So I have that. The process had made me want to adapt some of my earlier work that didn’t go anywhere in terms of that I’ve always been a huge fan of in terms of my screenplay work, maybe look into adapting some of my earlier work into novels. And now I have the idea, much to my agent’s annoyance, now when I have new ideas, sometimes I’m like, I don’t know, maybe that would work better as a novel than a screenplay. So I have a few of those that I’m trying to process. And then I’m about to get started on a podcast, this Texas True Crime podcast, which I’ve never written before. So that’ll be interesting. But I think you got to… As the TV and film industry collapses, I’ve got to find other ways to make a living.

[00:32:57.280] – Alan Petersen
Well, yeah, that’s a great skillset to right? Survivability, adaptability.

[00:33:02.640] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah, I try.

[00:33:05.480] – Alan Petersen
So before I let you go, Alex, I was asking my guests for… I have a lot of aspiring writers. What advice would you give, especially if there’s a screenwriter, filmmaker out there who’s What’s your opinion about writing a novel?

[00:33:17.880] – Alex R. Johnson
Well, I’d say if you’re a writer already, don’t let the imposter syndrome stop you. If you do anything with words, I’m a huge advocate. If you’re a lawyer, if you’re, I don’t know, you’re a copy editor, if you’re able to express yourself through words, you can write a novel. You know what I mean? That’s the hardest thing is figuring out how to express information clearly. All you need to do is read a college-level paper to understand how it’s actually a rare skill. So I suffer from pretty heuristic imposter syndrome my whole life. And we were talking before we started recording about the blurbs, and it’s amazing. You go out to get the blurbs, and then you get a blurb, and then you feel good about your sofa five minutes, and then, Where’s the other 10? So I would just… If you write, you’re a writer, and obviously read. I always tell people, and if anybody is interested in figuring out how to be a screenwriter, I’m not a big fan of the Save the Cat type stuff. It’s not really how I work. If it works for you, great. It doesn’t work for me. But really want to understand the concept of beats and rhythms and how things work in scripts.

[00:34:30.000] – Alex R. Johnson
I always recommend that people watch a movie that they’ve seen before that they love with their laptop open, with the screenplay in front of them. And as things are going, they scroll, read it, watch, watch, read it, pause, What’s going to happen is you’re going to see that big things happen at the same times in almost all the movies you’re watching. You don’t go, Oh, the page 32. That’s when the big thing happened. And then it’ll happen between page 29 and 36 in every single movie you’re watching. And it’ll just teach you to figure out… You should do your own thing, but there is a language that you have to be able to speak and the rhythms that as the audience is used to experiencing, and so you’ve got to hit those things. But mainly, my big thing is, try to shut up your imposter syndrome. I’m saying that more to myself, probably. But I think that’s the biggest hurdle. It was the biggest hurdle for me in terms of novel writing, and it’ll come back once I start writing the new one.

[00:35:33.780] – Alan Petersen
All right, Alex, where can the listeners find you? Like your website, social media, all that good stuff?

[00:35:38.760] – Alex R. Johnson
Yeah. So on Instagram, I got off Twitter. So on Instagram, I’m @haciendafilms hacienda Films. And at Blue Sky, if you search Hacienda Films, I’ll come up. And so the book is Brooklyn Motto. If you go to brooklynmotto. Com, there’ll be a link to order it, all the usual places. If you want to watch Two Step, it’s available out there on all the rentals. I think it’s on Prime. It’s on iTunes and Prime and Google Play. But yeah, so that’s it.

[00:36:14.540] – Alan Petersen
All right, Cool. Thanks so much, Alex, for being on the podcast. Nice talking to you.

[00:36:17.860] – Alex R. Johnson
Thank you. I appreciate it, Alan.