#Paige dylan screenwriter movie

And I remember thinking, “If you can be a mom like this, then maybe I can do it. Scott: Was that before you’d had kids, Amy?Īmy: Yes, yes. There were two ways to do everything: bath, bottle, bed - a right way and a wrong way. She had this very beautiful little baby boy, but she somehow was able to make the casserole, and hold the baby, and drink a glass of wine, and I was just like, “Wow, you can be a mom like that!?” My friends that were moms were very starched and proper. I went to their house and Paige made a casserole with shrimp. We met, and I fell completely in love with her.Īmy: I remember actually the first time we met. My husband and I lived in California, and they lived in New York, and she came out one time on a trip with Brian.

Our husbands were actually in the same business, and they were friends. Paige: It’s been a little over 20 years I guess. Paige: We have known each other for…God, Amy, how long has it been now?Īmy: It’s been like 21, 22 years. How did you meet, and when did you start thinking you would work as a writing team? Scott: I gather you two have known each other for twenty or so years. Scott: Mainly it was to service your development as a writer? I ended up halfheartedly working a little bit, but that was never really my motivation. In an acting class, you can gain an understanding of what works, what doesn’t, what seems natural.

It’s funny because I took acting classes since I was in my early twenties, actually not because I was necessarily interested in acting, but more because I was interested in writing. Scott: Paige, I think you come at the writing thing from a somewhat different kind of a trajectory, a background in acting, right? She has really scratchy handwriting but there it was in pen, on a flat grey card, “Yes Amy. (laughs) Somehow I figured out what building it was and I just dropped my thesis off thinking, “Well, it would be enough for me-if Joan Didion says that I’m a real writer, even if I never get a book published that would really be enough for me. Joan Didion using that giant brain of hers to decide if Cindy Crawford should be allowed to put wet over dry. I think Joan Didion was on the board of the building. I read about some spat Cindy Crawford was having with the board of her apartment building and it mentioned Joan Didion. I think I was rejected by about every literary agent in New York City. I graduated the MFA program and was already getting a lot of resistance to my writing. Scott: Is it true that at some point you dropped off a manuscript at Joan Didion’s doorstep?Īmy: Oh my gosh, how do you even know that story!? Yes. I taped it to my wall and it stayed there for many years. And it didn’t matter because I remember being called up to get the participation certificate at a school assembly and I remember walking back to my seat smiling, feeling really proud. I had no idea what their organization was. Of course I didn’t realize that Daughters of the American Revolution were never going to choose Amy Lynn Levine from New Jersey. My first writing contest, was for Daughters of the American Revolution when I was in fourth or fifth grade. Anyway, I think that’s how I started writing again, in those letters to Marty. At there were no scanners, or email or anything, so faxing felt immediate. Nothing romantic, just thoughts, large and small. Marty’s probably 15 years older than me, and a brother of a friend and, I don’t know how it started but I would write him letters and he’d write letters back. I was friends this man, Marty, whose father was a holocaust survivor and mother was a holocaust survivor and both of them had died. Sometime during that summer, as I was getting better, I started writing on this old blue typewriter I had from high school. In the spring of 1994, I fell into a bad depression. How did you find your way into the writing life?Īmy Koppelman: I actually just started writing to try to express the feelings in me, like a vehicle for a receptacle for sadness. You’ve got a new one coming out in November. University of Pennsylvania, undergraduate, Columbia MFA, you’ve now written three novels. Today in Part 1, Amy and Paige describe how they got into writing, how they met, and what the origin was for I Smile Back:

#Paige dylan screenwriter movie

Starring Sarah Silverman in a breakout dramatic starring role, I had the opportunity to talk with Amy Koppelman, who wrote the novel upon which the movie is based, and co-writer of the screenplay adaptation along with Paige Dylan. The movie I Smile Back is rolling out in select theaters this week. Interview (Part 1): Amy Koppelman and Paige Dylan