JOHN PATRICK McHALE & XAVIER JACKSON
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 PictureXavier Jackson
​Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
We live in Normal, Illinois.
 
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?
It is a tremendous and humbling honor to win this innovative competition. Nurses are heroes and we asked them to be super-heroes during the pandemic. This film script attempts to capture the crisis in health care during the pandemic as well as highlight racial prejudice, problems in the medical workplace, and society in general. Our other collaborations have similar themes of community unity and division as well as social, economic, and racial justice.
No one has told the story of the personal struggles nurses endured and continue to suffer in the wake of the international pestilence wrought by Covid. We felt that dishonored the sacrifices made by those who bore the brunt of the battle. 
            Writing in script form is a unique art form in which we aspire to grow in our craft.
 
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?
We have considered the idea for about a year, but really worked on is for about 6 months to get it to where the script is today. We use a collaborative process we learned from Garant and Lennon. We got together over the course of a couple of weeks and hammered out a rough 20-page single spaced, scene -by-scene description of the film. Then we broke the script into 4-6 scene blocks. Then we wrote assigned alternate blocks of scenes. The first writer sent his scenes to the second writer, who edited and added their scenes. Once we had the film outline like that, we use it as the close guide to what we write in the script.
Then the real work began: Revision. Rewriting is where the good can be turned into great. We appreciate input about how to improve the story. The Santa Barbara Screenplay Awards has been an indispensable source of critical suggestions that has made the work stronger.
 
What is your ultimate ambition as a writer?
Our ultimate mission is to share our cinematic vision recognizing individual struggles in characters’ lives that represent the larger problems of community division and solutions of respect, reconciliation, and social and economic justice.
PictureJohn Patrick McHale
Which film or television writers inspire you? Why?
We are inspired by many writers. Schrader, Stone, Haggis, the Coens, Tarantino, Gibney, the Epstein brothers, and Chayefsky are some inspirational writers for us. These writer’s capture real emotion, pain, existential angst, yet leave room for hope. We are also inspired by classic American writers like Steinbeck, Hemmingway, O’Neill, James Baldwin, and Alex Haley. The list could go on as we appreciate a wide range of quality writing.  
We are unique in that we really share an uncanny common appreciation for a wide range of film. It is great to write with another writer who shares your sensibility. We often find ourselves saying, “I wish we wrote that.”
​What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show?
Picking one is almost impossible. We both love The Wire, Pulp Fiction, Do the Right Thing, Taxi Driver, Platoon. Network, The Godfather. Gandhi and Last Temptation of Christ are fantastic films that tell timeless stories. There is a canon of great films and series, and we love great stories.
 
What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have?
Keep writing! We will never be recognized for scripts we do not write. Find your truth and work to develop the craft to show it in your scripts.
 
What else are you working on that the world needs to know about?
The world could also use our contemporary urban dramatic feature, Heartland in the Hood, in which Cody Walker, Nebraska farmer and veteran, struggles to keep his family together as they lose their farm but inherit a neighborhood corner store in south Chicago, confronting economic hardship, culture shock, and gang violence while grounded in traditional American family values. Rural U.S.A. meets urban America.
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