Inspiration for a great storyline can come from anywhere — whether that be a classic work of literature or a great pop song.
It’s become somewhat of a bit for “Blue Film” writer-director Elliot Tuttle to reference Lana Del Rey’s music in his screenplays. He’d written three (as yet unproduced) screenplays before his feature debut about a fetish camboy who agrees to spend the night with an anonymous client, who turns out to be tied to his past. Each time, Del Rey released new music while he was working.
“She was always soundtracking what I was doing, so I would include one reference to her in every single thing I was writing,” Tuttle said amid a conversation Variety moderated in partnership with the Santa Fe International Film Festival to salute this year’s 10 Screenwriters to Watch.
For the climax of “Blue Film,” Tuttle borrows a line from Del Rey’s 2023 track “The Grants.” As the older man reflects on the memories he and the sex worker have made of each other, he says, “I’m gonna take mine of you with me.” (Del Rey dropped “There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Boulevard,” which featured “The Grants,” while he wrote “Blue Film.”)
“It’s so funny because I really did not ever think that anyone would clock that. But then I also made a movie for gay guys, so I should have realized that someone would,” Tuttle quipped, making the theater full of film festival attendees laugh. Recently, he continued, a Del Rey fan account noticed the homage. “It was kind of the coolest I felt during the entirety of putting out this film!”
Tuttle wasn’t the only one influenced by pop music. While adapting John Steinbeck’s “East of Eden” into a Netflix limited series, Zoe Kazan found herself listening to a ton of Olieat. “I listened to that probably hundreds of times, and it ruined our Spotify account for the year,” Kazan joked. “It like filled me with a sense of exquisite, precise rage, and that was what I needed for Cathy.”
When Aleshea Harris adapted her award-winning, genre-bending revenge play “Is God Is” for the big screen, she drew inspiration from works by Rihanna and Doechii.
“In my pitch deck for the movie, I had a still from Doechii’s ‘Crazy’ music video,” Harris said. “There’s a lot of unrepentant rage and self-embodiment in that video. And it’s a little weird, which I always thought ‘Is God Is’ is a few clicks left of center.”
Harris continued, “The summer I wrote the bulk of the play, I was listening to ‘Bitch Better Have My Money’ on repeat. … It’s very vivid. The video is so dope. There’s a revenge narrative inside of that video, so the muscle of that is certainly in the spirit of the film.”
When writing “Tony,” the untraditional origin story about Anthony Bourdain’s early years working in Provincetown before becoming the celebrity chef, writing duo Todd Bartels and Lou Howe only used his memoir “Kitchen Confidential” as a jumping-off point.
“My favorite part of the writing process is I see it as an excuse to go somewhere, and so we went to Provincetown … and spent the better part of three days hanging out in the greatest bar in America. It’s called the Colony Tap, which is a place that can only exist in Massachusetts. It’s sort of Celtics and Red Sox and maritime flotsam and jetsam, and sort of the bones of fishermen past,” Bartels said.
There’s something of an “osmosis,” he explained, about letting a location get into your bones like that. “Then when you have to go back to Los Angeles and you’re stuck alone in your cave with Final Draft, it sort of writes itself a little bit.”
When watching the finished film, Howe realized their early life experiences wormed their way into the screenplay, too. “My first job was washing dishes in a fish market on Nantucket. Todd worked in a fancy French restaurant when he was in high school,” Howe said. “There’s something about those experiences with working early in your life — you think you know how to do something, and then you learn the hard way that you really don’t — that feels very universal. That drew us into Bourdain, but it also made it feel so much more universal.
“Mouse” writer and co-director Kelly O’Sullivan summed up the experience of finding inspiration quite simply: “I feel like it can come from anywhere and everywhere.”
Take her film, for example: “Mouse” is a coming-of-age drama about a teen girl and her best friend’s mom who develop a unique bond after tragedy. “My partner and I were referencing ‘Psycho’ a lot, in that one of our lead characters dies very quickly, like 30 minutes in,'” she said. “We were like, ‘How do we get it to feel like this character, who is not our lead character, is Janet Leigh?’ Like we think this is going to be the star and then we subvert it.”
While crafting the film, O’Sullivan said she came to a realization about writing. “For a while, I thought it all had to be highbrow references, and then learning more about writers I love, you don’t have to just be citing poetry; you can be citing a TikTok account if that’s actually inspirational to you.”
“Sense and Sensibility” screenwriter Diana Reid concurred: “I feel like you’re always like swimming in this soup of influences,” she said.
For her adaptation of Jane Austen’s classic, Reid looked to Sally Rooney’s works and referenced another popular rom-com franchise. “There’s a big plot point in the film that’s based on ‘Bridget Jones’ Diary,’ which is kind of funny because it’s like ‘Bridget Jones’ was a modernization of ‘Pride and Prejudice,’ and then I took something from Bridget Jones to put it back in a very traditional adaptation of ‘Sense and Sensibility,’ so it’s like the snake is eating its tail,” Reid shared.
The panel took place the day before the movie, starring Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles, would open in theaters.
“I’m excited and nervous,” Reid said. “It’s such a privilege to work on — obviously — something like Jane Austen, which already has so much cultural capital and a lot of people care deeply about. It’s daunting, but then also it’s a privilege.”
Was anyone else anxious the night before their project debuted?
“The day my show premiered on Netflix, I projectile vomited, so I’d say I was really calm,” Kazan quipped, as the audience cracked up. “It’s great for me,” she added, smiling.
Indeed, things have really worked out for Kazan. “East of Eden” debuted at No. 1 on Netflix’s global chart with 6.5 million views and has spent 3 weeks in the top 10, tallying more than 25.3 million total views. The limited series has ranked in the top 10 in 80 countries and was the No. 1 series in 22 countries this week. (The limited series also drove a 156% global increase in first-time listeners to the audiobook of John Steinbeck’s classic on Spotify.)
“East of Eden” shared top spots on the Netflix charts with Felicia Pride’s series, the revival of the classic comedy “A Different World,” which debuted the week prior.
“I mean, the anxiety — I don’t even have words for it,” Pride said about waiting for her show to launch. “But I also felt like, ‘Thank God it’s finally going to come out.’ Like there was also a relief. You’ve been working so long … you just want it to come out after a while so that you know how people are going to respond and you can get over that part of the process.”
Pride needn’t have worried either. “A Different World” climbed to No. 1 in the U.S. (and at least 14 other countries), and has spent 3 weeks in Netflix’s global top 10, with more than 11.2 million total views. The HBCU-set series was swiftly picked up for Season 2; Pride took a break from writers room to fly into New Mexico to collect her trophy alongside the class of 2026, which also includes Beth de Araújo (writer-director of “Josephine”); Chuko Esiri (screenwriter and co-director of “Clarissa”); and Rebekah Taussig (screenwriter of “Being Heumann”), all honored in absentia.
Curious, Kazan asked how the experience prepping Season 2 differed from the first go-round.
“I just know what the show is now. I don’t feel the pressure of a season two,” Pride replied, sharing her sense of relief and newfound confidence. “I was very clear talking to my execs at Netflix, like ‘I’m just going to do the same thing.’ And there was support [for that], like, ‘Yes, let’s not reinvent this in season two,’ because sometimes shows try to do that, and I don’t think that is a great thing to do.”
Indeed, every writer has their own process — whether that means diving deep into thef 1987’s “A Different World” while crafting the pilot) or finding deeper meaning in supplemental research (Kazan combing through Steinbeck’s journals); if it means holing up solo (like Harris did writing “Is God Is”) or trading pages with a collaborator (à la Bartels and Howe)
Watch the full video above as the panel unpacks their methods for getting their brilliant ideas onto the page, then the screen.
