This summer marks the 20th anniversary Terminal, A moving drama directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks as Victor, it tells the story of an Eastern European man who is stranded at New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport after a military coup in his home country.
Unable to enter the United States or fly back home, Victor’s story unfolds in only one location—a limitation that would have been difficult had screenwriter Sacha Gervasi not observed the remarkable characters at the airport. It can get boring quickly.
“I was at Heathrow for a few days and saw a cleaner who played Gupta (Kumar Pallana) in the movie. There was a catering guy at JFK who was Enrique (played by Diego Luna). They were all in different places at different times,” Gervasi recently told me on my podcast, Script Apart.
Find inspiration where you are
Airports are “a place we all want to pass through and leave as quickly as possible,” Gervasi said. But if you stop and notice this bustle of human activity, with people traveling to different places for different reasons, you’ll find there are endless real-life stories and characters to draw from.
“There was a guy sitting there at JFK with a hat and glasses—he was well-dressed. He would spend all day sketching, and I would see him in the same seating area every time. And I was like, “Who is this person? “It turned out that he had been working at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue and had been laid off six months earlier and couldn’t tell his wife that he was unemployed. So he would come to the terminal and sketch people.
His point is that if you get stuck in your own storytelling, inspiration might be waiting for you in a public place, and stopping to watch people might spark your next great idea for a character.
It doesn’t have to be an airport. shopping center. Restaurant. bar. You can try it anywhere.
Give it a try and see where your writing goes. In the meantime, listen to our full conversation in the episode above, powered by ScreenCraft.
Read more: 5 trademarks of Steven Spielberg’s movies
Al Horner is a journalist, screenwriter and presenter based in London. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Empire, GQ, BBC, White Lies, Time and more.
