Chris Ross Leong is an Award Winning Screenplay Writer. His Screenplay NeverWere won many film festival awards all around the world. The King Review Film Festival proudly presenting the interview of Chris Ross Leong.
1) How do you select a concept for writing the Screenplay ?
Hah! Good question! I laugh because for me it's more like the other way around -- it's a matter of the best concept selecting me to be the one to bring it to life, cos there are many, many floating around inside, all saying "me! me!" - and some of them, what I call the "stickiest" of them, just don't go away until I've realized them fully and properly.
2) What is the inspiration behind the writing of the Script "Neverwere "?
The inspiration behind "NeverWere" has always been my Tribe members and partners, the infamous actor/dancer/celeb paul gunn and his other wing, the late, great, Jo Anna "Ziggy" Heckman. We had just formed our production company, the Ep!c Film Foundry, and they had just finished working on the movie "Werewolves and Bikers", through which I just discovered this subculture of people who basically lived on the road: the bikers and the truckers. So that's how it started - werewolves and truckers, basically. But the more we got into researching the backgrounds of these straightforward, honest people, the more we wanted to have the story be about the light, instead of the usual darkness. Thus the story of a werewolf princess falling in love with a regular-seeming guy, and an unusual twist to a very traditional story.
3) Why do you want to become a screenwriter?
I started writing stories at 12. I was very lucky to have received a superior English education at a venerable London school, so there was nothing wrong with my English, spelling or grammar, even at that age. However, I soon learned the differences between the book form (meant to be read from a book, usually in silence) and the stage form (meant to be listened to and watched through the actors performing the piece) and finally the differences between stage and screen. At around the same age I was a competitive concert pianist and playwright, and acted myself in various commercials and feature films. So screenwriting was a logical progression for me. However, my first professions in film were actually cinematography and film direction, so it was many years before I actually filmed something of my own. It was just something I've always done.
4) How do you continue a flow of creativity day by day?
It's more a matter of stopping it. Many decades of taking classes and courses and running creative exercises have opened the floodgates, so to speak. But to digress by regression, at first it was "how to be creative?" and then it was "how to be professionally creative?" - by which I mean two things - one, how to recognize good creativity from bad, both subjectively and objectively, and then, how to do good art and be creative at 0900 every Monday until 1900 every Friday, without fail? Then you work at it, occasionally hitting a high point in a low average, then working at raising the average until no matter what, something okay to decent gets completed on deadline. Then finally one works to raise the entire standard of all one's work, concentrating on the lowest standard of output and working to strengthen it.
After all of this, you can see that for every set up for a situation, instead of thinking of and processing, say 5 or 6 escalations to the same number of payoffs, you get much more yield if you try 50 to 60 variations, and look for something unforeseen, unique, inspiring. In short, creative, instead of re-creative. So every day the creative juices flow and throw out a yield of raw ideas. Then it's up to us to curate, and so build the best yield possible.
Image 1 : Official Poster of his Screenplay NeverWere
5) How do you deal with criticism about your writing?
"Waaah! Why doesn't everybody love my writing!!!" - like that?
Or like: "you know, Mr. Leong, I'm a very important critic and I can offer you my most veritable opinion right now on your work. It's worthless!' to which the reply has to be: "Yes, I know it's worthless, but tell me anyway".
Hey it's their job to be the carnival barkers outside the tent. It's our job to put on the best show we can, inside the tent, with what we have.
6) What is your favorite genre of writing?
I'm definitely in the genre of "epic"! Whatever the story, it must be as original and moving and informative, in the sense memory meaning, as possible, affecting the audience and taking them on as grand a ride as possible. Yet also I'm a strong believer of the classical story, like the fairy tale, like folklore. Because those are the stories that have stuck around the most, and are consequently the "stickiest", the most helpful to humanity over the ages.
7) What writers have influenced you and why?
In the beginning, probably the Brothers Grimm, then as I grew into my teens, John le Carre, Ian Fleming, John Fowles, Leslie Charteris, Alastair Maclean, then a whole slew of thriller writers like Lee Child, as well as science fiction writers, notably Frank Herbert, Ursula LeGuinn, William Gibson. I continue to read them daily, because they have expanded my inner world to contain entire multiverses, every day, while addressing the regular every-person's tastes and needs.
8) What do you find the most challenging aspect of writing and how have you overcome that challenge?
It's the devolution of the industry in which I'm meant to work. Mostly it's all about "content", per mouse click, per minute. Shot for a cinema, shot on an iPhone for Tiktok, nobody seems to know or even care. Which is leading to a race to the bottom, because, as we all know, streaming content online should be free. It's a concern, and a challenge, when IT metrics are applied to feature film stories.
Do we write to that new medium? Or do we branch out into more specialized sub-cultures, like werewolves and truckers? Or marksmanship competition for "Deadeye"? or the Indian dance world of "LoveBeats"?
My solution is simpler: no stone unturned. Just keep writing what moves me, what tells me it needs to be out there, and
9) What can we expect from you next?
Haha! writing a new story, of course! Several possibilities in process, will go with the stickiest concept!
10) How do film festivals help filmmakers ?
You know, I feel that more online presence is required, because most of us can't afford to fly around the world to chat with our fellows in all of these wonderful places.
Also, it's up to the film makers. Mostly everybody is still old school, in competition with each other. Massive egos abound. Everybody with an agenda.
None of us is really doing anything to react soon enough or strong enough to the fact that if we don't stop doing this, the entire cinematic industry will be torn apart.
We have to write stories that matter, that are relevant. Not just a repeat of a copy of someone else's copy.
That's how.
Will it happen?
That's up to you. And to me.
Image 2 : Certificate presented by TKRF
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