Today we’d like to introduce you to Jake Curtis.
Hi Jake, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I started off doing long-form improv comedy around London. The London improv scene was just forming as I was growing up in London, and it was an amazing thing to get to be a part of. So many creative communities feel bogged down by the established institutions, but suddenly, there was this world of people carving out their own community. I loved it. And since what we were doing was called “Chicago Style Longform Improv” – I thought I better move to Chicago.
After four years in the Midwest, I figured I’d earned some nicer weather and moved to Los Angeles, where I began pursuing a career in film. I attended The American Film Institute Conservatory and three films, two car accidents, and one small breakdown later – I graduated. Now, I live in LA with a giant cat and a sunny porch.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
It’s certainly never a smooth road for any creative endeavor. Especially as a freelance writer, there’s a huge amount of personal and mental management that you need to maintain to even stand a chance of putting out your best scripts. There are days I’ll wake up panicked and need to calm myself down. There are days I wake up lethargic and need to put the fear of God in myself. Especially at the start, when no one wanted to read anything I wrote – let alone produce it – I had to work hard to build a community and support system around myself that would allow me to keep going. It’s an odd thing to convince yourself that you need to get out of bed to write a script that *might* be good, that someone *might* then want to read, and then *might* get you paid… in three years’ time.
Lately, I’ve taken to thinking of a writing career closer to being a professional athlete than an artist. You wake up every day and try to make sure you’re in good enough shape that when the important moment comes, you’ll be ready.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Coming from improvised comedy, I focus a lot on rhythm in my pieces. Having to come up with a show on the spot, you become hyper-focused on the ebbs and flows of the audience: when they want a joke, when they want a twist when they want something completely new. And so, in all my scripts, I try to keep a laser focus on what’s needed in the pacing of the script.
I enjoy reading my pieces aloud – which often scares my cat – but if it’s not flowing rhythmically, then I know I haven’t quite cracked it yet.
I grew up in a chaotic family, so I enjoy writing about big families and, just in general, big scenes filled with too many people. To me, the comedy of life is the overlapping of everyone’s own schemes and so I like to fill my scripts with more and more loud people until the whole thing topples over.
Are there any books, apps, podcasts, or blogs that help you do your best?
The biggest help to my own work has certainly come from reading other scripts. I’d recommend this to any writer, but especially screenwriters, as we tend not to do it. But almost every script is available online and the process of engaging with a script, acknowledging the decisions they made, and engaging with a movie script as a literary work is better practice than anything. It’s engaging the side of your brain that will ultimately have to make these decisions on your own scripts. So, read scripts.
Other than that, I use Notion to organize my life. I use synonyms.com to make my writing sound better. And I use YouTube to not write. I wouldn’t recommend that last one.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @imjakecurtis
