Heather Haggerty and Nanou Matteson are a superteam of film producers who brought us the recent award-winning comedy starring Rita Moreno and previous Story Makers podcast guest Steve Goldbloom. Their film East Side Sushi has also had remarkable success. We dig into the creative side of marketing your art and its connection to your values, about when and how to consider your audience, about keeping your budget small and your quality high. We talked about creating a fictional world and about the importance of the look of a film in conveying story. They discussed the mistake of writing off an elderly character or assuming a character has to be the race, gender or sexual identity they start of being in a script. We got into subtext, and when being “on the nose” can be useful, the pleasures and practice of collaboration, the structure for an outline or story templates, and their uses and shortcomings, and the importance of transformation.

Links:


The Visual Story

Save The Cat

Film Specific, Stacey Parks

Steve Goldbloom

Anthony Lucero

Saudi Arabian film, Wadjda

The film, Brooklyn

The Lives of Others

Lindsay Doran’s Three Rules

Mira Nair director of Monsoon Wedding Masala

Mike Mills film, Beginners

Cocktail, Jean Cocteau

Pixar Storytelling Template:

Once upon a time there was ___.

Every day, ___.

One day ___.

Because of that, ___.

Because of that, ___.

Until finally ___.

Heather Haggerty & Nanou Matteson

Heather Haggerty & Nanou Matteson

Currently, Matteson and Haggarty have a feature film titled Remember Me starring Rita Moreno and silver screen newcomer Steve Goldbloom in festivals. They are also producers on the feature film, Carrie Pilby, starring Bel Powley, Gabriel Byrne and Nathan Lane, which is in post-production.  Their last feature was the critically acclaimed East Side Sushi, won 13 Audience/Best Narrative/Best Screenplay/Jury Awards on the festival circuit in 2015, has had its national US theatrical run since September 2015 and is being distributed by Samuel Goldwyn Mayer and Sony.

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival–everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.