Screenwriter Ron Nyswaner discusses his mini-series and gives writing tips
American screenwriter and film director Ron Nyswaner discussed his mini-series, "Fellow Travelers" and shared tips for budding writers at a Headliners Breakfast Monday at the National Press Club.
“Fellow Travelers,” which ran on SHO.com in November and December this year, is Nyswaner’s first TV mini-series. The series, set in Washington, is a fictional gay love story between two completely different men with opposing world views.
“The show reminds us of the toll taken by the ‘Lavendar Scare’ here in DC, a decades long effort by the federal government to push people out of civil service,” said Club President Eileen O’Reilly in her introduction. “It’s a piece of history often overshadowed by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the “Red Scare.”
“I didn’t hear the word ‘homosexual’ spoken aloud until I was in college,” Nyswaner said. “It was unspeakable. It was referred to as 'The love that will not speak its name'," And now, he quipped to audience laughter, some refer to it as: “The love that won’t shut up!”
O’Reilly fielded written questions on the TV series from online and in-person audiences: “Does the series have a happy ending?” No, Nyswaner replied quickly before redefining “happy” as “being moved, having a beautiful cathartic experience. It’s not unhappy or sad.”
One questioner noted that no sex scene is the same in the TV series: “They never seem to do the same sexual act twice.” Nyswaner said that when planning the sex scenes, the team said, “Let’s make the sex scenes so hot that straight men watching the show will want to have gay sex.” He said to more laughter that he hasn’t been approached, but he’s available.
The writer has “lots of rules” for budding film makers taking his master class in film and television writing, words and phrases to avoid.He encourages students to trust their gut, as most writers do, to tell them what a good story could be.
“Stories have to be undeniable,” he said. Reject any characters who profess “to speak their own truth.” Why? Because he believes no one really can. “Those who do are either boring or dangerous,” he said to audience laughter in the Club’s Headliners Newsmaker.
He asks: “Where will this story take me? What world do I get to explore?, Where am I in this story?” And another tip for his students: “Never use the word ‘trigger’ unless you’re referring to Roy Rogers’ horse.”
Other screenwriting writing tips? “A scene doesn’t get in unless it moves the story along. No ‘resolution’ in his stories, no tying up all loose ends.
“Our mission is that we leave a record of the time we lived,” the 68-year old screenwriter said of his craft. To that end, he insists his TV series use only what public figures like the late U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy and attorney Roy Cohn actually said. No made-up sexual abuse charges appear in the series. Their research unearthed a letter charging the late senator with sexual abuse: “I was sodomized by Joe McCarthy” the accuser claimed.
His 1993 ground-breaking movie “Philadelphia” brought AIDS to the forefront and earned award nominations including Tom Hanks' win for Best Actor.
He thanked his mentor, the late filmmaker Jonathan Demme, for giving him his career break when Ron was still in film school.
What’s next for Nyswaner? “I feel so satisfied. I can’t repeat Fellow Travelers. I’m writing something for Amazon right now. We tell a story backwards. I’ve never done that before.”