FilmForce: A Conversation with John Scott Shepherd

Reprinted from IGN Film Force

April 30, 2002 - John Scott Shepherd was, until very recently, a writer coming to the end of his rope. Not that desperation or financial hardship is anything new in Hollywood, a place where dreams and visions collide with reality and compromise with often soul-dousing results. But Shepherd was not some starry-eyed hack fresh off the gumdrop express more interested in partying than peeling off a great story. John Scott Shepherd had three kids, a wife, and a former career as an award-winning advertising man who was fast approaching bankruptcy in Kansas City. Say what you will about the heartland and salt-of-the-earth and all that noise... if there is a pecking order for writers flirting with financial ruin, it is far more romantic a notion to be single and broke in the City of Angels or New York than married with children in the great fly-over.

Says Shepherd of his debt: "I couldn't even pay the interest, let alone the debt. I was basically freewheeling into the dark well of bankruptcy and taking my family with me."

Stick with me, this one has a happy ending.

When John Scott Shepherd awakens this morning, he will smile in the mirror and possibly pinch himself as he has no less than five projects in various stages of development at major motion picure studios. Oh yeah, and he's a multimillionaire. Though you may have seen the fruits of his screenwriting labor in the Tim Allen flick Joe Somebody or more recently in Life or Something Like It starring Angelina Jolie and Edward Burns, Shepherd's work that will most likely resonate the loudest is the novel and forthcoming film entitled Henry's List of Wrongs.

In the novel, a ruthless and wildly successful man named Henry Chase (aka The Assassin), finds himself one morning being picked up drunk off the floor by Sophie, a maid in a hotel room, the very hotel his company was purchasing in a hostile takeover. As he comes too, he is reluctantly whisked on a mission by Sophie to right his wrongs, to visit and apologize to the five people he harmed the most. What follows is an amazingly smooth and fluid read, a romance for guys without all the frilly nonsense.

During a stop in L.A. to promote the publication of Henry's List of Wrongs, Shepherd took some time to chat with IGN about the novel, writing in general, and the benefits of righting a wrong.

JOHN SCOTT SHEPHERD: If I were going to read a book about a romance, I would want to read this book. Most guys when they write books, we're apparently expected to write very feminine things and I didn't. I wrote about a guy who is very masculine.


IGN FILMFORCE: Henry's not very likeable when we meet him.

SHEPHERD: No, he's an asshole. Total asshole. I challenge the reader. I believe in the reader.


IGNFF: When is it appropriate to right wrongs? Are there some things better left alone?

SHEPHERD: No, I don't think so. I think it's never better left alone. That's my choice. We'd all like to say it's easier to just leave it because he or she would be better off if I never touched that wound. I don't think so. It's so easy to say that, isn't it?


IGNFF: Yes, I suppose it is. I was thinking about some things in my past... old relationships... and kept wondering should I delve back in?

SHEPHERD: Yeah, if you hurt somebody, I think it's okay to approach. I don't think there's a deadline. I think you can go back. I think you can say, "I'm sorry." It's part of your life. The past is always present, I really believe that.


IGNFF: I noticed in the book, a couple of characters didn't forgive him... well, they eventually did. Should it be more of an issue of getting something off of your chest or just seeking...

SHEPHERD: You think it's selfish, that's what your saying.


IGNFF: I think it is.

SHEPHERD: I don't think so. I totally understand what you're saying, that it might be selfish to clear your conscience and all that but I don't think so. I think that's an excuse. I think it's just something people say. People like to be apologized too. It's a good feeling, a nice feeling for someone to come to them and say, "You know what? I screwed you over and you know what? I was wrong."


IGNFF: That's something to think about.

SHEPHERD: Yes, but I do know what you're saying and it is on some levels selfish.


IGNFF: It feels like an intrusion, like it might be an intrusion.

SHEPHERD: I don't think so. In my experience and in the experience of people I know, it works. You would think it would maybe be like unearthing old wounds or something. The people I've known and myself included who have gone back and touched people we know we've hurt find that to be not true.


IGNFF: Tell me a little bit about how you came to write this book? Was there a defining moment?

SHEPHERD: Yes, there was. I had gone through that thing in the midwest where everyone thought they had to write screenplays. So, I was all about screenplays and became a good screenwriter I guess. But at that time, I had gone through a couple of agents and been optioned on a screenplay and was like the ultimate dude in the midwest who wanted to write screenplays. My agent Ken Atchity said, "What if you wrote this as a book?" It changed everything because my whole life at that point was about selling a screenplay. It turned my life around. I forgot I was a writer. I was all about trying to break in and then realized I was supposed to be very serious about what I'm doing. I got in touch with parts of me that I didn't even know I could write from. It was really, really exciting, like 3am exciting. It was so cool. I remember what it felt like to be a writer, be an artist.


IGNFF: I think many screenwriters go through that... or maybe they never make it to that point at all?

SHEPHERD: I think it's really hard because in the film business, we're told that we're really just part of the system and we forget about the fact that we are artists and storytellers. It was a really exciting moment for me and I've never stopped it since then. There are a lot of people in the movie business who don't really understand me... I'm a storyteller still and I'm just writing.


IGNFF: Were you thinking at that point that you would turn this into a movie?

SHEPHERD: No, I was just writing and it was so incredibly fantastic. Every day that I went down to the basement where I write, I've never been happier and I'm constantly trying to recapture that. And I did. Recently, I really did with my last screenplay. Just [tapping into] that energy that comes from you naturally is fantastic. I loved it, loved every second of writing that book was so cool.


IGNFF: That's something you don't hear very often when talking to writers.

SHEPHERD: If I could go back and feel like I was feeling every second while writing that book, I would in a second. It was unbelievable.


IGNFF: The character of Sophie, where did she come from? It took a while for me to buy into their relationship but once I did, I bought into it completely. Have you met any Sophies?

SHEPHERD: I've met a lot of Sophies. Sophies are girls who are just smart. They're girls who look you in the eye. You're on an airplane, turn to your right, look at a girl and she looks you right in the f***ing eye. You know? And then you realize that she's smart. She knows you, knows you better than you know yourself. She's got you pegged.


IGNFF: I was also thinking while reading it was how well it flowed. I wanted to know if your writing style was reflective of where you are in your screenwriting style as well.

SHEPHERD: Somebody just sent me to look at Amazon where a reviewer wrote "John can write in one sentence what other writers can write in one paragraph." It was really flattering. I don't know, it's just the way I write, very spare.


IGNFF: Economical. It really works.

SHEPHERD: I just write. I am definitely into expressing myself and I guess I'm honest, kind of uninformed. I'm not informed by anything. Everything I write is completely from me. I'm not even sure what that means. I love writing. If I could shut off the world, just sit down and type, it would be so awesome, so amazing.


IGNFF: And yet the world ticks on.

SHEPHERD: Yep, it just keeps coming.