MK

Education: BA Film - Columbia

Place of Residence: Los Angeles, CA

Companies Read For: PAGE Awards, Big Break

Job Prior To Entering Film: Punk rock bass player

Favorite Place to Read: Dive bars

Favorite Movies: Robocop, The Exorcist, A Fish Called Wanda

Favorite Screenwriters: Milius, Coens

Favorite Directors: Fincher, Carpenter, Bava, Raimi, Miller, Spielberg, Zemeckis, Kurosawa, Scott, Coens, Scorsese, Jackson, Wheatley, De La Iglesia

Favorite Novels: Catch-22, Confederacy of Dunces, Master & Margarita

Favorite Writers: Howard, Lovecraft, Stephenson, Jackson, Tolkein, Doyle, Nabokov, Bulgakov, Steinbeck

Analyst Interview

WHAT ARE THE MAIN THINGS YOU LOOK FOR WHEN YOU READ A SCRIPT?

Compelling characters and organic dialogue. Engaging storytelling. A firm grasp of the project’s genre and its needs. Solid craft skills.

WHAT MAKES BELIEVABLE CHARACTERS?

Writing from the inside out… At all times, the writer has to be aware of what the characters are thinking, what they want and why, and the ability to bring their thoughts to word and action.

WHAT’S THE MOST COMMON MISTAKE YOU SEE?  

A fuzzy idea of the script’s genre and paradigm. Quite often, writers are told to just “write a good story,” and they do so without any consideration of where the end product might sit in the current market. So they get frustrated, because they wrote a script about whatever, and reps and execs aren’t expressing interest.

WHAT KIND OF SCRIPTS ARE YOU MORE LIKELY TO CONSIDER?

Horror, thriller, action, comedy.

WHAT’S THE BEST SCRIPT YOU’VE EVER READ?

A former client wrote a unique period thriller that really blew me away. It was called THE PARLOR, and unlike anything I had read before, or since. We briefly had a director attached, but it was too weird to get traction with the studios.

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE MOVIEGOING EXPERIENCE?

The first time I saw Peter Jackson’s DEAD ALIVE at a midnight screening. The audience had zero idea what they were in for, and absolutely lost their minds. We staggered out of that theater, looking like we’d survived a plane crash.