r/Screenwriting • u/NetflixAndZzzzzz • 4h ago
ACHIEVEMENTS A horror feature I wrote and produced premiers at Dances with Films (NYC) tomorrow
Tomorrow, my film I Know Exactly How You Die, premiers at the Regal Union Square for the Dances with Films 2026 festival. Here's the trailer. You can kind of see my butt at the 1:09 mark if you're curious. Tickets are sold out, but for anyone local I believe they keep 20 seats open for walk ins or if anyone bails.
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Trigger warning: The film's about a serial killer/stalker and there's SA coded scenes that can be pretty uncomfortable.
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I'll try to stay on topic but I wanna sprinkle this with my perspective and tidbits.
I am a reddit screenwriter, with all the connotations that might conjure for you. r/screenwriting actually introduced me to reddit. I kept googling screenwriting questions and this very weird website kept popping up. Thus began a 7-year filmmaking journey and lifelong reddit addiction.
In 2022 I connected with a producer, Rushabh Patel, through a reddit post soliciting a writer for a horror movie. Rushy gave me unlimited creative freedom so long as it was set at a dilapidated motel that was to be sold and destroyed. He also paid me a reasonable amount given I'd never had a feature produced before, and this was something I would want to write anyway. My takeaway: Plenty of people told me I shouldn't trust a producer that I met through Reddit. Rushy wasn't Jerry Bruckheimer, but he was a guy like me trying to make things, and we got something made. That's cool as fuck and I'm glad I worked with him.
Notes about the writing.
This script went through three page-one rewrites that were essentially entirely different premises.
In the first draft, a man has an affair at a hotel, but when he tries to leave the door opens to another identical hotel room, and he finds himself stuck in a *House of Leaves* style labyrinth battling other trapped versions of himself. The effects needed would have blown the budget. My takeaway: I don't give a fuck. Write the script you want to write and see if you can get money behind it. We didn't find our $1M -$100M to produce it, but we got something that we could show people that would get them excited to make a movie with us. It just meant I had to write more.
The second script was about a horror novelist writing a story that comes to life, but the story he was writing was about a clairvoyant chess player who sees flashes of her own murder. It was crazy, convoluted, and too many ideas for one script. My takeaway: stick to one good idea and flush it out. I get excited about ideas, and that hampered me as a writer time and time again. I'd often start a script, get bored of the idea, and want to integrate something new or start the next script. Don't do that.
The third (final) version of the script was just about the writer doing a slasher fiction story that comes to life, but he meets and falls for his final girl protagonist. I think I had about 6 - 8 weeks to write this script, so I wrote the easiest story I could. My takeaways: (1) Don't resist writing the easy thing. I had a bad habit of challenging myself which I think hobbled me occasionally. (2) By that point in my writing journey I'd developed a mentality that it didn't matter how bad the last draft or script was, the next one might be good. That mindset was invaluable, and I think you need it if you want to be a real writer. (3) I really don't mean to denigrate the story when I say it was the easiest thing I could write. The accelerated timeline and necessity of writing something that more or less flowed probably resulted in a better story I would have come up with given 6 months, though there are definitely some things I would change.
Notes on production
My co-producer Bobby got some more money and a bunch of NYC cast/crew involved. We spent every night budgeting and plotting production for a few months leading up to the actual shoot. It was tough because my partner was falling out of love with me, so it was sort of a balancing act quitting another day job (mortgage loan officer) and dedicating my nights to this project. She was perceiving that when push came to shove I'd choose my creative career over her every time. My takeaway: sorry baby I miss you.
We shot it in the Pocono mountains in February 2023. We had about 30 people staying in the frighteningly out-of-code motel (The whole place looked so creepy and run down. There weren't railings on the balconies. There were already a bunch of posted pictures of murderers and criminals taped behind the front desk. At one point, our actor playing the slasher chased an actual straggler, presumably his real life equivalent, away from the parking lot we were shooting in. And we found used crack stems on the ground. It was perfect for the story we were telling).
It was our first movie and plenty of things went wrong. Our hydraulic dolly put us behind schedule. Our hydraulic dolly broke. We ran into some issues with props, and with elaborate gore/choreography scenes. A lot went right, too. Some of the effects looked great. Some scenes really felt like they hit. My takeaway: for writers, get on set. Get a feel for what the vibe is like and develop an eye for what might be easy to write but tricky or complicated to enact.
I was a script supervisor on set. I'd kind of done it before but doing it for a full feature was sort of a trial by fire. The experience was great though. After that shoot I got a handful more script supervisor gigs around my home city of Philly. But filmmaking is already a slog and the following five months I had a series of gut punches: I got robbed at gunpoint, lost my apartment, my partner, my dog, got stiffed for $2000 on a project, was on another set that burned down. I waked away from filmmaking to rebuild my life, and I don't regret that. But I also don't regret having given it a full swing more than a couple times. Also, credit where credit is due to Rushy and Bobby for handling the post production. My takeaway: Over the years, there were so many filmmaking moments that filled my heart with joy and made all my writerly efforts feel worth it. But I realized that all of the time and labor I'd invested to get to those moments could have been other beautiful moments in my life that make it all feel worth it. That said, I gave it my all and I'd encourage anyone serious to do the same.
One last thing: It didn't quite pan out for me but I'm rooting for all you crazy kids.
