The Inner Game of Screenwriting with Christian Lybrook

The Inner Game of Screenwriting with Christian Lybrook Jake: I have a special guest today, Christian Lybrook, who is one of our ProTrack mentors at Jacob Krueger Studio.   I’m especially proud to have Christian here because Christian came up through our program. He’s an extraordinary writer. He has produced and directed his own work, he’s managed to maintain a career as a writer from Idaho! ( we won’t tell anybody, Christian) And he’s also just a sensitive human being with incredible emotional intelligence, towards both his characters and the writers that he mentors.  We’re going to be talking about the inner game and the personal side of becoming a writer today with Christian. Welcome, Christian, thank you so much for being here.   Christian: Thanks for having me. As you know, one of my favorite pastimes is chatting about all things screenwriting. Happy to be here. Jake: Tell us a little bit about your journey as a filmmaker. What has that looked like? And what do you think was most important thing in making the transition from being someone who is dreaming of doing this to being someone who’s doing it? Christian: Yeah. Great question. You know, when I think about my journey as a screenwriter, everybody knows that every journey is different. And anybody who’s listening to the podcast, you’re going to have a different version of what your story is.  But I think it’s helpful to talk about these stories, because they can be illustrative of the things that we have faced and the things we have to overcome. I wast somebody who didn’t go to film school, I wasn’t somebody who grew up in the business, I didn’t grow up in LA or New York.  And for a long time, I was always interested in film and screenwriting. But I didn’t think that I could do it because I didn’t know how to get into the industry.  I grew up on the East Coast. I was born in Massachusetts and moved around a lot. But by the time I was kind of pursuing writing, I was in grad school in Alaska, which is about the farthest away you can get from LA and still be in the United States.  I took a screenwriting class as I was getting an MFA in Creative Writing. And I was focused on fiction, primarily because, although I secretly wanted to be a screenwriter, I just didn’t know how to complete that training. And I took one screenwriting class, and that immediately ignited something in me, but I still was literally thousands of miles away from the industry.  And living in Alaska, and trying to make it as a screenwriter just seemed like a ridiculous ask. So  I stayed focused on prose, and eventually, I followed a girl to Idaho. And that’s where I am today. One of the nice things about Idaho is it’s a very small place. And you could do things and meet people much more easily. It’s a very small community. You meet one person and they’re going to introduce you to the next person, and the next person.  But it was also at this time when technology was being democratized. And for the first time, if you owned a video camera and a computer, you could make a movie. And that was really my entree into taking a stab at this stuff. Because I didn’t have to be in LA. I realized I didn’t have to be surrounded by pros, I could just make it up as I went along.  The first short film I made was with some buddies. None of us had training, none of us had experience. And we all thought, how hard can it be?  It turns out, it’s really fucking hard.  But it was a great introduction. And there are elements of it that I fell in love with. I taught myself how to edit.