Anna Klassen, Screenwriter
Interview: Jesy Odio
Photo: Dana Boulos
In a cut-throat industry in which they say you can’t get anywhere unless you know someone that knows someone, Anna’s trajectory is the Cinderella story of meritocracy.
Moving from Oregon with zero connections in Hollywood, she is currently penning two feature scripts for Netflix, one for Millie Bobby Brown and her sister and the other based on two literary legends, Alice and Dorothy. She has also published a book on screenwriting: not the usual how-to, but instead a book about how to prove to others that your ideas are worth pursuing. It happens to be published by Screencraft, a organization that in some ways has played the role of Anna’s pumpkin carriage.
A while back we sat at LaMill and caught up. We then walked to the Silver Lake reservoir, where Dana Boulos photographed her on film. Anna was the perfect subject, with a blinkless, militant gaze. She’s always on. She’s intention, talent, and drive in one body.
Do you believe a good script can get tossed out onto the 101 freeway and still get made?
Absolutely. I wouldn’t have pursued a career in screenwriting if I didn’t think the work could stand on its own. However, I imagine that connections and nepotism certainly make it easier. I’m the first person in my family to do anything like this. If your Dad or Mom is a producer or director, that will help you exponentially. That doesn’t mean that you will be good at it. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you will value the position that you’re in as much as someone who got there by pulling themselves up. For me, I was an entertainment journalist for the past six years. Four of those years were spent writing articles, doing interviews, coming home and writing scripts at night and on weekends, not having a social life—writing scripts because it’s what I ultimately wanted to transition fully into. I’m screenwriting full time which is amazing, but it took so much time and sacrifice to be able to do that. I very much appreciate people who put in the hard work to go where they wanna go.
What has been your experience submitting to writing contests ?
I have a lot of feelings about contests in general. Some contests are absolutely worth applying to. Some contests are just a money racket. As someone who didn’t have any connections in the world of Hollywood, winning a contest felt like my only way in.
My script ‘14 Words’ placed in a few contests, and won the ScreenCraft Fellowship, which was so much more helpful than winning any other contest.
What sets Screencraft apart?
It’s not like, ‘here’s a prize’, and here’s bragging rights. Instead, it was “here’s a bunch of meetings with people who can actually further your career.” So that was really helpful.
So was winning a contest the secret to finding representation?
Yes and no. I was at Sundance Film Festival and I was speaking to a friend of mine who said: “I have a manager friend who is looking for more female writers to sign”. He really liked my script but didn’t want to sign me immediately. Once I won the fellowship, he immediately signed me.
Would you say that ‘14 Words’ put you on the map?
My manager asked me to write another feature. What actually got me noticed was the script about J.K. Rowling. It earned a top spot on the 2017 Blacklist and got me — literally hundreds — of meetings around town. I knew that because I was a journalist, I wanted to write something based on a true story and I knew that I wanted to write about a woman. There is so much we don’t know about J.K.’s story. Being a huge Harry Potter fan, I thought I knew everything there is to know about her. I was also shocked that no one had written a biopic about her before. After writing it, I realized it was such an obvious idea.
How can women support women in this industry?
It’s up to women to hire more women. If you have a female director on a project, she is more likely to hire other women in key roles. But of course, men need to do this too. As an industry, we’ve recognized there is bias and discrimination in spades, so now we have to take real action to change the tides. Hire more women. Hire minorities, give non straight white males a chance.
When I was first starting out, I considered using my initials and not my full name for my scripts. My mom is also a novelist and she uses her initials. I asked her why and she said she didn’t want to be judged for her gender. J.K. Rowling was also told by a publisher to change her name to just the initials in order to sell more books, because little boys weren’t going to buy books written by women. I ultimately decided not to do that. I decided to own my femaleness.
Given that you’re pitching in person now, you can’t hide your gender anyway. What’s that process like?
When I go into a pitch, I like to spend a lot of time developing the it, researching it, and practicing it to make it seem as natural as possible. Execs always want to feel like they are part of the inception of whatever you are talking about. It’s a lot of collaborating and improvising. One thing I’ve learned is to not take it personally if your ideas don’t immediately resonate with a team. There are a million other factors at play, and your job is to present the most “you” version of that film or TV show. It may or may not be what they’re looking for, and that’s OK. I learned that so much of screenwriting is not writing.
