Dan Pero

​Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
I live in Tampa, Florida. Super Bowl champs. Stanley Cup Champs. Back 2 Back. We proudly call our home Champa Bay.  Love it here.  Best city in America.
 
Your script stood out among hundreds of others. What was the inspiration for your story and why did you write a script instead of a short story or a novel?
I don’t remember, actually. It was so long ago. Keep reading. You’ll understand. I think it just happened. Probably after a beer. “Yesterday” came to Paul McCartney in a dream. Go figure. I think visually. I love movies. I could never ever write three pages to describe an emotion or a setting like some novelists do. And I never stood on my feet and cheered a book like I did when Rocky almost bested Apollo Creed. Only film can do that.
 
How long did it take you to write your script...and what is your writing process? Do you outline...use index cards...white board...or just start with FADE IN?
 This story was born in 1983. That’s right. Thirty-nine years ago.
I started with index cards. Shuffling scene ideas until I thought I had a story. Then writing long hand on yellow legal pad paper. Remember, we had no computers then. But I never took the time to really understand my story, its structure, plot, pacing or its characters. I just wanted to write something. So, I wrote. And every time I started, I quit. Because the product sucked. I would go at it over the years, because I loved the title and the vision I had for it. Nothing ever materialized. I just wasn’t patient enough to actually write the story.
So, the whole thing just retreated into my memory while I made a living producing political ads and advising candidates for political office. Plus, I served stints as a Chief of Staff to a Governor, a campaign manager for a candidate for President of the United States and another as Chief of Staff to a state legislative Speaker of the House.
I hadn’t really written anything for close to 30 years. Busy with my children and my career. But I found myself frequently thinking about “Skin Rippers”. I was too lazy to do anything about it.
Then about 6-7 years ago, I gave it another shot. I talked about the story with my teenage daughter. She’s a movie nut like me. She loved the idea. She encouraged me to write the screenplay. I started it, again. But it went nowhere. Again. Then I filed it away. Again. I actually still have notes on it from our conversations.
 
Still, it stayed on the back shelves of my mind stacked up with other ideas for movies collecting unused brain cells.
Until…September. My wife went to Michigan to visit her family and some of our mutual friends, leaving me alone in paradise.
Then one night while watching an old “Columbo,” “Skin Rippers” escaped the closet in my subconscious and attacked my brain. I have a strong faith. So, I believe God had something to do with it. It was time. The story fell into place like those moving chess pieces appearing over Beth Harmon’s bed in the “Queen’s Gambit.” It was like God pulled me off the couch and said ‘sit down and do this.” So, I sat down at the kitchen table and wrote the script in rough draft over four days.
Then, I bought the Final Draft software and reinputted the story into script format. That took a week or so. I shared the script with an old friend and one time producer my wife and I met at a café with her husband on a rainy night in Avignon in 1991. We have collaborated on a couple of failed projects, and she’s always been an honest pair of eyes and ears. She liked what I wrote. Really liked it.
She encouraged me to enter it into some film festivals.
 
So, hello Santa Barbara.
 
What is your ultimate ambition as a writer?
Ideally, I’d love to be a successful screenwriter until I don’t want to be one anymore.
In reality, I’d like to sell one screen play. More would be great. But one will be just fine. I’d like to have it made into a feature film.  And I’d like to have me and my family see my name up there on the screen, as the credits roll.
This would be the fulfillment of a dream.
 
Which film or television writers inspire you? Why?
I love Larry Kasdan’s work. “Body Heat” was the best. I must have seen it close to 20 times. His “Star Wars” flicks and “The Big Chill” still entertain and inspire me.
Why? The dude can write. Drama. Action. Dialogue. And the ending to “Body Heat,” wow. “It is hot.” Damn.
I was a fan of Shane Black and his “Lethal Weapon” films. Who can forget Joe Pesci’s “okay, okay, okay.” What a character. And such banter with Glover and Gibson. And the exploding toilet. Classic.
Joe Eszterhas’ scripts for “Jagged Edge” and “Basic Instinct” blew me away. Just good, tense drama.
And, of course, Woody Allen. Why? He’s Woody Allen. Okay. His story telling, dialogue and humor, pacing and characters are masterpieces that will endure in cinema forever. “Midnight in Paris”.  His best. My favorite. The old guy still has it. I watch it frequently. It’s that good.
 
What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show?
 Yo. “Rocky”. Hands down, Adrian.
Please, indulge me, while I explain.
 My wife and I were just married a few months. I had moved to DC to work with the premier political consulting firm in the country. My wife stayed behind to complete her senior year at Michigan State University. It was a lonely time. “Rocky” was playing at a theater on my way home from work. So, I’d stop there often to get inspired. To lift my spirits. Recharge my emotions.  “Rocky” did it every time. I must have stood on my feet for that 15th round slug fest with Apollo Creed two dozen times.
“Rocky” is the ultimate story of the underdog. And it’s such a wonderful love story, too. The action and the score motivated me, not so much to swallow raw eggs or get up at four in the morning to run to the National Monument, but rather to try and write a movie. So, that’s what I’ve done off and on since 1977.
 
I bought Syd Field’s book and started to write. Mostly garbage, but over time, I got better at it.
I won the Bronze Award for Best Original Screenplay at the Houston International Film Festival. It was so long ago I forget when. I do recall the decade: Reagan was President.
USC Film School accepted me, but I couldn’t go, because I couldn’t afford it.
I had an agent for a bit. A producer I met at a screen writing symposium in Houston liked an idea I had. I wrote the script; he optioned it and got a lot of coverage on it. But no takers.
Other scripts got passed around the studios but were rejected, like most are. They should have been, upon reflection. They weren’t written well.
 But I continue to write. It’s a slog with no agent. It’s easy to quit. I’m always writing on spec and, unlike 1977, no agent will even acknowledge an inquiry or look at a script unless you have representation. So, I don’t have many expectations. I write because I enjoy writing. And I don’t golf or fish.
 So, thank you, Sly. You inspired a young guy to write. And now I’m an older guy. Still writing. Enjoying it. And the product is actually good now. Yo.
 
What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have?
 Ernest Hemmingway once said, ‘if you want to be a writer, write.’ So, I’d say, write. Find the time when you’re most creative and write. Maybe it’s early. Maybe it’s late. Maybe it’s on your lunch hour. Just get the words out there. When you think of something, write it down. People may think you’re a tad off. Well, you are. You’re a writer, afterall. Don’t try to be perfect. You can’t be. And never give up. All we have is our dreams and hope they come true. But we gotta work at them.
 
I don’t know how contests work, really. I’ve entered two in 40 years. I was blessed to be recognized each time for my efforts. In the case of the “Skin Rippers”, I am honored to have earned exemplary grades from the judges. I’m thankful for that. Perhaps, this contest will take me higher. I can’t control that. But frankly, what I was most pleased  with my screenplay was that I finished it. I completed something I started 39 years ago. When I typed, “The End”, elation seized me beyond words. My entire body shuddered. And I’m not embarrassed to say I cried. I had finished.
 
What else are you working on that the world needs to know about?
 I’m rewriting and updating a script I wrote about 27 years ago. It’s registered as “Dire Straits.” Rather than white supremacists, ISIS terrorists attack the National Governor’s Conference on remote Mackinac Island in the Straits of Mackinac.
 The terrorists want revenge on the Michigan Governor, Katherine Willis, a former special forces night stalker chopper pilot and war hero. Willis flew the extrication mission to free our American ambassador from Karachi during the Afghan war and captured the head of the ISIS cell and got him imprisoned at Bagram for the duration of the conflict. He escapes during our Afghanistan withdrawal, makes it to Michigan and is now seeking revenge. He wants America shamed. And Willis dead.

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