By Lawrie Brewster
It was my privilege recently to speak with screenwriter, filmmaker, script consultant, former journalist, English master, and psychiatric nurse practitioner Jeff Barker, whose unusually varied career has afforded him a singular perspective upon the art of storytelling.
Mr Barker’s experience embraces journalism, education, mental health, prose fiction, and the writing of motion pictures. He is also the father and long-standing creative mentor of filmmaker Curry Barker, whose recent work in contemporary horror, including Obsession and the forthcoming Anything But Ghosts, has attracted considerable attention.
In the course of our conversation we discussed the craft of screenwriting, the primacy of character, and the unique capacity of the horror picture to examine the deeper truths of the human condition. Mr Barker also reflects upon the influence of his years in journalism and psychiatric practice upon his understanding of human behaviour, together with the importance of artistic collaboration, the responsibilities of authorship, and the continual balance between creative conviction and commercial necessity.
Presented below is the complete transcript of our conversation, lightly edited for clarity whilst preserving the substance and character of the original exchange.
Full Interview Transcript
Lawrie Brewster:
Hello there, and welcome. I am Lawrie Brewster from the British Horror Studio, and I am honoured and privileged to be joined today by Jeff Barker.
Jeff’s background spans journalism, psychiatry, creative writing, and film, giving him a fascinating perspective on story and human nature. In this conversation, we’ll be talking about the craft of screenwriting.
For the first question, I have a wonderful list beside me. What first drew you towards screenwriting as a form, rather than prose, journalism, or any other writing?
Jeff Barker:
Well, it’s really cool to be here, and that’s a good question, because the truth is I’ve been writing for 25 years. Before I was writing screenplays, I was writing prose, short stories, and novel manuscripts. I have lots of short stories that are published in journals and anthologies.
I just always identified as a writer, no matter what my career was. To me, that’s who I was. My job was my job, and I cared about my job, but I was a writer first and was never going to let that go.
I think I first became interested in screenwriting probably after I saw The Sixth Sense in the late 1990s. I went and sought out that screenplay and read it, and was sort of blown away by how those words on the page could actually paint a picture on the screen.
But at the same time, back then, you couldn’t really be a screenwriter unless you lived in LA. I didn’t live in LA, and I had young kids, so that was never even an option. So I let that go and continued with my prose writing.
Then it was actually Curry who brought me to screenwriting. When he first started writing Obsession, he knew that I was the writer in the family. He wanted my input. He wrote it, and it’s not like I helped him write it, but he wanted notes from me. He wanted to know what I thought about the story.
To help him, I thought the best thing to do would be to really dive into screenwriting. I get obsessed about things when I’m interested in them. So I started reading four or five screenplays a week, really anything I could get my hands on.
It turned my life in a whole different direction that I didn’t expect, because what I saw in screenwriting was that this is the type of writing I like to do. This cinematic writing, with limited interiority, that is show and not tell. It really fit my skill set. It fit my voice as a writer, which I had developed over all those years.
So it was really just a matter of learning the mechanics and the style of actually writing a screenplay. I helped Curry some, and then I started writing my own screenplays just to see how that would go. I put them in contests and did well. I put them on the Black List and did well there too, and then opportunities started coming my way.
Finding screenwriting at this age professionally is just such a gift. I’m so thankful for it.
Lawrie Brewster:
I think that’s a beautiful thing, for you to discover and realise your potential in a vocation through the youthful aspirations of your son.
And yet, as well, the cinematic language and appreciation for cinema your son Curry will have developed is something that you will have imparted as his father too, a love of arts and cinema. As I understand it, your family is a very artistic family.
Jeff Barker:
No doubt. Curry and I, during his youth, went to the movie theatre, just the two of us, every Wednesday. That was our way to connect.
I tried to connect individually with each child, besides just what we did as a group as a family. I knew that movies were important to him, and not just to watch them and enjoy them, but to study them and learn the craft. He’s been doing that his whole life.
So every Wednesday we’d go to the movie theatre and see movies that we didn’t even really want to see, because we’d already seen everything. Those sometimes were the best ones to study, because we weren’t just lost in the story. We were able to step back and see how the cake is baked, the best we could anyway, by looking at the screen.
Then we would go sit down and have dinner and talk about it. Over the course of time, our conversations got more complex. We started doing our own research and bringing more things to the conversation.
We recently talked about all this, and we’re both grateful for the experience. We felt like it kind of put us through film school, so to speak. We joke about that, but I think it’s had a big impact on him, and it certainly had a big impact on me.
Lawrie Brewster:
It’s a truly remarkable thing for any child to be able to share that journey of being an artist and a creative industry professional with their loving parent.
In most circumstances, young artists find themselves facing paternalistic concern that they want to pursue a career in the creative industries because of the trials and tribulations that so often come with it.
The fact that you share this journey together, and that you helped lead this journey for Curry, is a very beautiful thing. I think it’s something that aspiring young artists will wish they had. You may find, in an adult way, that thousands of young artists wish you were their dad as well.
Jeff Barker:
I know. I’ve been blown away by that response. So many people reach out to me and say, “Oh, I wish you were my dad.” They’re joking about that, but I know there is some of that where they feel like if they had just had that opportunity, things would be different for them, and I feel for them.
But it wasn’t just me. Curry had a lot of parents in his life. His mom was also very supportive, all of his stepparents, and everyone was just like, “This is who this person is, and he’s going to give the world something amazing if we just don’t get in the way and we are there to support him however we can.”
There was never any talk of a practical career, or “do something else to fall back on, but keep pursuing this.” No. It was no Plan B, because if you have a Plan B, that’s going to be your Plan A. It’s just human nature to take the safest route.
So he was always going to LA. Then, as he was in high school and his younger brother started seeing that this was a reality, that this was really going to happen, he became very interested in it as well. He was always around doing the videos with Curry. They had a YouTube channel way before That’s a Bad Idea, just those two and the neighbourhood kids.
Lawrie Brewster:
That’s wonderful, because I understand Curry has a brother who is a cinematographer, Riley, and an older brother who also works in production as part of crew and so forth.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah, and that’s Jeffrey. It really is a family affair. Jeffrey wants to get into producing. He’s going to be shadowing a producer for a movie here coming up.
With my short films, they were both involved. Riley was my DP for Good Tape, which we just finished shooting here in Alabama. Then I have a film, Medium Rare, that we’re shooting in Los Angeles in August, and he’ll be the cinematographer for that. Jeffrey will also be involved.
It’s nice to have them around. I have a team of people that I trust beyond my kids, but it’s so nice to have them because we have such a shorthand in how we can talk to each other. I know exactly what Riley and Jeffrey are thinking just by glancing over and seeing a look.
Curry and I have that shorthand too. That’s why he likes to have me on set, he says. It’s not like he’s leaning on me much at all for anything, except for those moments where he is maybe unsure about something and people are telling him different things. He knows he can look over at me and read my facial expression.
That’s been really fun and just makes me feel really important. I appreciate that, because I have the same with my other two boys when I’m working with them.
It’s such a joy and a treat to be able to all be in this thing that we all love and are all passionate about, and to have the privilege of working together. It is a dream come true.
Lawrie Brewster:
It is an irreplaceable bond that you have, which is such a powerful thing to have working in the industry.
To be honest, it’s something that is at the core of even how we like to work with our own boutique studio. It’s like a family. You can love family, you can trust them, and you can also accomplish things that might test ordinary professional relationships when you need to go the extra mile. So I applaud that.
Jeff Barker:
It’s the same way with Curry. I can tell him anything. I feel 100% free to tell him my full opinion about things, because I know that I don’t have that much pull.
If I felt like what I said was going to have a lot of pull and push him one way, away from his vision, then I would be more reserved about how I share things and what I think.
But he has no problem telling me, “No, Dad, you’re wrong,” or, “I hear you, but that’s not how I want to do it.” Then we move on to the next thing.
I really love how we’ve developed that.
Lawrie Brewster:
I can absolutely see that, because in Curry’s work with his short films, even The Chair and The Devil’s Due, you see an artist-led vision. Something that comes from, I would imagine, his love of performance and characterisation. It creates a sense of authorship that transcends a singular, mercenary discipline. It’s all-encompassing.
As collaborators, I would imagine you work in a similar way, and that’s how you create something so unique.
When you’re developing a new story yourself, whether that has been in prose or script, do the ideas come to you through images, characters, a personal situation, or theme? And how important is conflict as a central theme in bringing those elements together?
Jeff Barker:
Man, all of that. We could talk for days about all those things.
When an idea comes to me, I’m always thinking of ideas, trying to think of ideas. Like any writer, I have a list of a hundred small little nuggets. But it’s usually the ones that I can’t stop thinking about, that pull at me and pull at me, and that becomes the next thing.
I always start with character, because you can plot anything. If I have two hours in complete silence, I can come up with any three-act structure plot, I feel like. So that I’m not worried about.
Character is the thing. You have to be able to create a three-dimensional human and put them in this world. They have to be believable in such a way that they’re not just fulfilling plot. They have to have some sort of core belief that has to be tested at every turn, and somewhere down the road they’re going to have to change their perspective about that core belief and have some sort of growth.
They’re going to have to have a want that is driving them. They’re going to have to have a need that perhaps they don’t know about.
When you put all that together, that is when you start to get these three-dimensional characters.
In an ensemble cast, I usually write very narrow POV. I like to take one character, and I don’t always do that, but it’s something that I like because I get to embody myself more in the character.
But when you have three or four important people in a story, you have to do all that diligent work with each character, and then be honest about what they would actually do in the situation. If that goes against what you had as an idea for plot, then it just does, because everything has to serve character.
To me, that’s what really moves the story and what makes us have an emotional connection to it.
Lawrie Brewster:
I think that’s something that comes even more naturally to those who arrive from a performance background, when they’re thinking of character and inhabiting that character’s emotional space even before the writing has been put down.
They’re imagining the experiences, or the reaction of a character to a moment, something that triggers something profound and compels them to go to the page, unable to vanquish some thought from their mind.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah, I’ve learned so much about the art of acting. Earlier, I think I took it for granted. I thought, okay, you have these charismatic people who can embody different types of personalities, and it’s a true talent.
But I don’t think I realised the work that goes into it. They don’t just read a script and show up. They spend a lot of time being this person, thinking about things that aren’t even on the page, creating their own backstories.
I saw that a lot through the two movies that we’ve done. With Anything But Ghosts, Bryce Dallas Howard, who’s a director herself, brought so much to the character. Curry and Cooper wrote that script, and they had a great character on the page, but she took it to a place that I don’t think any of us really expected. That’s true talent.
Her whole life, she’s been doing this, so she knows what she’s doing.
Then also with Obsession, it’s a cast of relatively unknown actors who are now huge names and are going to go on to be huge stars. Inde Navarrette brought something to the character that neither Curry nor I really expected or thought.
If you read the script, the one that’s leaked is pretty early and a lot has changed, but even with the final script, she was going to be more of the desirable girl next door, who everybody is in love with because she’s so cool. We went low-hanging fruit and didn’t really realise it.
But Inde brought this rock and roll edge to it that really showed how she could command the room, and how she could turn someone like Bear into mush in a way that would make him do morally atrocious things.
Not that it’s her fault. I’m not saying that she made him do that. But you could see how this could happen, because she would command the room. She put Nikki in a position of dominance and power, which Curry didn’t have on the page.
So yeah, I’ve recently learned how much an actor can bring, and how important it is to cast the right people. It really will make or break a project.
Lawrie Brewster:
Yes, I couldn’t agree more. Even for my own career, principally as a producer for independent film, it has really rested on the laurels of the contributions of writers and actors.
It’s interesting. As a director, as I’ve sometimes done in a Roger Corman-esque way, if I give myself the job of director because I’m producing, I have a vision. But you are really looking to these other artists to help realise that in a way that transcends what you thought could be possible.
I think that’s wonderful for Curry, that he saw the potential other artists brought and it helped to elevate his vision to things that would have excited him even more than what was possible.
I think all good filmmakers should do that. This is more of a personal conviction, but for those who are extremely rigid or arbitrary in auteur-type principles, and they want to micromanage every artist, there’s always that risk of losing something magical or chaotic that an artist’s own imagination can bring.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah. I think part of being a good director is just casting. You can’t overlook that stuff. You can’t just go for the prettiest face or the nicest voice. You have to really do that work and have a good casting director who helps bring the right people in front of you, which Curry does.
He does everything with Skyler Zurn, who’s amazing. I hope to use her for everything, but she probably won’t be available much anymore after the success of Obsession and hopefully Anything But Ghosts. I can’t wait for people to see that movie. It’s going to be so great.
Lawrie Brewster:
With the dark wit of Curry and Cooper, that’s going to be another celebration of that side of it. I think it’s going to be something really special as well.
It’s good that time will be taken to think about how to present that to the audience, because it’s a different story and a different vision as well. It’s good to get all those ducks in a row. That’s the producer in me talking.
Jeff Barker:
Right. It’s true. When we were making Anything But Ghosts, there were times where Curry was a little worried. He was like, “This is so different than Obsession, and people are going to like Obsession, then they’re going to be disappointed because this isn’t that.”
But over time, and now, he doesn’t feel that way. Now he’s more excited about, “I can show my range. I can show that I’m not just one note.”
Because this is different. It’s very scary, but it’s also very funny. But it’s not joke funny. It’s just people doing funny things, which happens in Obsession too. But it’s Curry and Cooper, and they just have this chemistry, and it’s going to constantly be funny.
It’s kind of like if you took Ghostbusters and you dropped it in Hereditary. That’s the tone of the movie.
Lawrie Brewster:
You will know anyway, Jeff, that British humour and alternative humour tend to be quite dark and absurd. So I think Curry holds a special place in British arts, especially for that.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah. I’ll tell you a quick story about it. Curry grew up a huge Harry Potter fan. His whole room was Curry Potter, and it was such a monumental part of his upbringing that we don’t shy away from talking about it, even though it’s controversial, just because it meant so much to who he is. To erase that part of his life would be a mistake.
He loved Harry Potter and he always practised his British accent. Believe it or not, he has a really good one. Every time we would go on vacation somewhere and there would be people from all over the world, like if we went to Universal Studios or Disney World, for the whole day he would just speak in a British accent.
He would walk up to other people with British accents and talk to them, and they would be like, “Oh yeah.” Recently he told me that when he was in the UK promoting Obsession, even as an adult alone on the streets, he was still doing that.
Lawrie Brewster:
That’s wonderful. I would not have guessed that.
Funny enough, training in accents is important in all the films we produce, because they are anachronistic and require accent work that trains our actors in 1930s and 1940s British received pronunciation. So it’s all rather Old Vic.
Even when we’re producing promotional materials, we do it in the form of old newsreels and things. The science of the accent is fascinating. Of course, there was the American Transatlantic accent as well.
Megan does workshops with RADA voice specialists, so if Curry ever wants to really nail the 1940s British film accent, I think I would love to hear him do that.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah, you would see straight through it probably. But for the novice, they would be like, “Oh, it’s believable.”
Like I said, he’s been doing it for decades, so he’s probably developed a British accent that doesn’t exist. It’s probably just a hodgepodge of regions and stuff. But it’s pretty fun. It’s a fun party trick anyway.
Lawrie Brewster:
This is about character development, Jeff, and your approach towards that, especially when you’re writing people who are flawed, frightened, obsessive, and morally complicated.
Jeff Barker:
Those are my favourite, because that’s real.
All my years working in psychology, I was a psychiatric nurse practitioner for nine years, and spent much of that time working at a psychiatric hospital where people were sometimes in there and didn’t want to be. They felt traumatised and victimised by the system that was trying to help them.
It’s a complex thing. People were experiencing pain and trauma at their highest, where they were having hallucinations and paranoia. The brain was trying to protect them from dealing with whatever horrible reality they had just faced, or were currently facing.
It was such a gift to be able to spend time with people like that and learn to empathise and try to put myself in their shoes the best I could.
That has carried over into my writing. It’s interesting to me and it’s important to me to study the human condition.
I couldn’t write just a one-note, happy-go-lucky character. I’ve tried, but even then they have many flaws and many things to work through and deal with. But it’s real life. That’s what we look for when we watch a movie. We want to learn something about ourselves.
Gravewater, which is probably my most celebrated screenplay, and which I think hopefully will be a movie someday, whether I direct it or someone else does, deals with a woman who in many ways becomes the villain, much like Bear, kind of. But it comes from a different place. It comes from a place of being obsessed and loving someone and not wanting to lose them.
That one pops into my head, but really all of my scripts involve that sort of thing.
Lawrie Brewster:
That’s interesting when you talk about the human condition, because I feel as well that it is one of the most fundamental things for any artist, especially a writer, to appreciate.
But that requires experiencing it too, which makes it so much more challenging for many younger writers if they haven’t had as much of those experiences. They have to insert themselves into the mindsets of people who would ordinarily be older, to have experienced more things, from grief, loss, love, and all those qualities.
I think there probably isn’t enough advice for aspiring writers to go out there and experience those things. Find those things. Even if it was volunteering at charities, or just actually meeting people and seeing people who are going through transformative life experiences.
For me, I’ve experienced that just in my personal life. But when I was young, it was reading, and history was a big interest. When you’re exposed to these life-changing, often tragic moments in people’s lives and histories, it does make you evolve as an artist if you come to terms with it.
Jeff Barker:
I would say, though, that all writers, even teenage writers or people in college, can pull from some experience that they’ve had.
They may not have gone through a divorce or had their mother die, but they may have lost a pet. They may have had a best friend who moved. They can still understand pain and grief in different ways.
I think that’s one of the beautiful things that we’re experiencing now with Gen Z. As a culture, they had this collective trauma they all had to deal with, where they missed school, whether that was high school or college. They were away from their friends. They had to go to school on their computers and try to manage their time, and they didn’t have the executive function to do that yet.
They had to take all of their social interactions and move them completely online, and learn how to handle multiple personas depending on who they were talking to. All these things are unique to their generation. Also, for the first time, being afraid of this unknown thing that was killing people that you couldn’t see when you went outside.
Those are things they can pull from, and they are. You’re starting to see that with movies like Obsession. Not just Curry, but I think people in the Gen Z generation are now just starting to get a platform, and so we’ll start to see more and more of that.
I’m excited for there to be more female voices from Gen Z, because that’s a whole other thing. Every generation has something that they’ve dealt with, and you always see that in art.
The millennials went through 9/11 as young adults, so that’s usually some sort of fear of the unknown, of being dominated by another force, and safety being taken away for the first time. You start to see that in art.
I agree with you that as you get older, you have more to pull from, but there’s always something that you can pull from as a writer.
Lawrie Brewster:
Too often, young people and their real experiences and feelings are dismissed or diminished. So they’re out there on social media creating their own art without those voices stopping them.
It surprises people of older generations that audiences resonate with and relate to their stories and experiences more than the content or films produced often by people their age or older. We’re seeing that with this cultural reformation taking place in cinema at the moment.
I think we’ve kind of answered this one, but perhaps if you feel there’s another point to add: given your own background in psychiatry, has your understanding of human behaviour changed the way that you write characters in conflict?
Jeff Barker:
Mostly what I said before applies to that, but one thing to add would be that my understanding of mental illness shows up a lot in my writing.
One of the things that movies get wrong a lot, and it bothers me, is multiple personality disorder, or what is really called dissociative identity disorder. How it’s portrayed in the movies is not accurate.
Most often, what happens is someone is dealing with some sort of trauma that is so powerful, so overwhelming, that they choose to take on a different persona, a different identity, often leaving the place where they were.
The classic textbook example is a man who was married to his wife for 40 years, she dies, and then after the funeral he gets on a bus and goes somewhere else and takes on a different identity.
That’s true to dissociative identity disorder, but it doesn’t have to be that extreme. I have a script that I wrote about dissociative identity disorder, and the more accurate portrayal is that this person chooses, as a defence mechanism, to basically become another person, whether they realise it or not.
They become so far detached from who they were that their brain, to protect them, starts to block that off so they can’t easily go back to it. They don’t forget, but everything previously is walled off and they take on this new persona.
To me, being more accurate with what people actually deal with, as opposed to the Hollywood boogeyman version of mental illness, is way more interesting.
Lawrie Brewster:
Yes, it’s true. There is always a reductionist fetishism for these things to contend with. And yet there are not just more truthful, but better ways of telling stories by expressing the deeper realities of those conditions, because we can relate to them more than these more absurd, over-the-top renditions.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah, that’s so true.
Dissociative identity disorder is very rare, so most people’s experience with it has been in cinema. That has been so ingrained, because it’s such an easy device to pretend someone has puppets in their head and they pull one forward, pull one back. It’s an easy go-to for trying to explain something.
Lawrie Brewster:
Jeff, what do you feel separates a script that might seem well-structured from one that feels genuinely meaningful or artistically credible?
Jeff Barker:
This is what we were talking about before. It’s all about character.
You can have the most intricate plot in the world. Think about a thriller where you have someone who’s trying to accomplish something and there’s a ticking clock, and you’re constantly putting obstacles in their way. They get past this obstacle, then there’s an unbelievable obstacle. You say, “There’s no way to get out of this,” and then you find a way to get out.
Those stories are interesting, but only if we truly care about the character. The only way we’re going to care about the character is to relate to them in some way, and for them to be three-dimensional and not just one note.
Their sole existence can’t just be trying to go through this obstacle course and get to the prize or save someone, or whatever it is.
You have to have, like I said before, a core belief that has to be tested at every turn besides just the action. They have to be learning something a little bit as they go, so that at some point they have a choice. Most often, they choose to see things a different way and evolve. But they don’t have to. They still have to face that choice, and they have to make a decision, and it has to be earned.
By doing that, you’re also planting wants and needs for the character.
What you brought up earlier is that each scene has to have some friction or conflict. I usually say friction because conflict sounds like fighting or arguing. But any sort of friction, even if it’s just a friendly scene where two people are setting something up and they’re at a convenience store, they can’t just have a super friendly chat. There has to be some sort of friction there, whether it’s mechanical or through dialogue.
That’s what makes the script interesting. You don’t feel like the scene we’re in is only there to get us to the next scene. That becomes really boring and doesn’t work.
Movies still get made that way, and those are the movies people walk away from and go, “Okay, I saw it,” and then you forget about it two minutes later.
Lawrie Brewster:
Yes, I can’t agree more with that assessment.
It’s interesting, though, that there are filmmakers, often writer-directors in my experience, who derive comfort from excluding depth in their character and focusing on plot or gimmicks. It’s almost a way to remove themselves from the emotional stakes of their artwork by thinking there are a set of more commercial or pop-cultural rules that can allow them to achieve success without emotional vulnerability.
But if your film doesn’t have that, and your characters don’t have that, and if you as an artist are not willing to expose a part of yourself to that, it’s very hard, as you explained.
Jeff Barker:
Those movies do get made.
Lawrie Brewster:
Usually they do. But—
Jeff Barker:
You could always take a movie like that and make it better by digging into character a little more, in my opinion anyway.
Lawrie Brewster:
Of course. As a script consultant, you could take a concept or a pitch for a project like that and then observe that it’s missing a heart and a soul, then find a way to put one in it. Suddenly, it comes alive.
Jeff Barker:
Then I’m a miracle worker.
Lawrie Brewster:
In today’s film landscape, how do you feel writers can best balance artistic ambition with the need for a clear commercial hook? You might disagree with this premise altogether, which is fine.
Jeff Barker:
You do have to balance it.
If you want to make a small arthouse film and pay for it yourself, and show it on DVD in the neighbourhood, you can do whatever you want. But commercial, to me, doesn’t necessarily mean a brainless popcorn movie. It just means something that has appeal to more than one set of people, something that has a chance of people spreading word of mouth.
That’s what’s happened with Obsession. The word of mouth has been insane, really more than we could ever imagine.
That’s why I always say I write psychological horror that is commercial. If you just say you write psychological horror, people will be like, “Oh, those are those creepy movies where you’re trying to figure out what’s going on.” Okay, but I don’t want to put myself in that box.
I also want to say, “Okay, but this has the potential to be commercially successful.”
I don’t really write popcorn movies either, where you just sit back and it’s like eating candy, it’s fed to you too easily. I want the viewer to have some of their own stakes, some of their own buy-in, where they’re figuring things out along the way and connecting the dots.
That’s one of the reasons Obsession was so successful. One of the passes that Curry did was addition by subtraction, where you go in and just take away things that you can take away.
If you can take something away, no matter how cool the scene was, and the story doesn’t change, then most likely you should probably take that away. When you do that, you end up with some holes in the story, not plot holes, but holes.
That’s where people can go in and play. They can fill the dots and figure things out on their own. That’s where you see people coming up with all these wild theories about the movie, which has created all these conversations and buzz about it.
So that worked way more than we even imagined. I think that’s what you’re talking about, balancing being true to the creative idea, but also making something that would have mass appeal.
Lawrie Brewster:
I think that’s a fantastic example. Even in my own filmmaking, I could be guilty of putting too many bells and whistles in, or overexplaining.
I think that’s something younger artists right now in film seem to be more comfortable with, acting in this metaphorical, allegorical quality. You’ll see thirty-somethings or even forty-somethings online agonising over the precise logical details of a film, or how this could have happened or should have happened.
Jeff Barker:
No, I’m dealing with it now, because I have this recent example provided by my son of exactly how this can work, and it’s beautiful because it’s something he and I talked about for years.
Even now, when I’m talking about writing on a project with a producer and executive, they’re doing their job. They’re supposed to be asking the tough questions. But it’s constantly like, “What’s the lore? How does this work? How can you explain it? Make sure that the audience understands.”
I’m constantly saying, “I can explain it to you, but I don’t necessarily think it needs to be in the screenplay, because we need to give the audience room to figure things out and not spoon-feed them everything.”
It’s not as enjoyable an experience.
Lawrie Brewster:
You’re right. There’s something of mysticism about good horror filmmaking that allows a scope for mystery and imagination to fill in some of the blanks. It terrifies many producers and distributors, but—
Jeff Barker:
Yeah. With Obsession, and I can say this because it’s public now, at one point there was a producer involved who was willing to give Curry more than twice the budget he had, which is still a small budget, but a significant increase, if he would just go after the more typical storyline, which is the low-hanging fruit.
I could say this to you and you’ll be like, “Yeah, I’ve seen this movie a hundred times.”
That is where Bear realises he made a huge mistake and goes down this rabbit hole trying to figure out what the One Wish Willow is, how it works, why it works. Then once he figures that out, he has an arc to go and try to redeem himself by trying to undo all the things he did and fix it.
This is the low-hanging fruit that a lot of filmmakers would have fallen for, and this would have been a lesser movie by a significant margin.
It also would have taken away all the character work put into these characters, because now you have Bear, who sets off all these horrible things, and you’re trying to have him redeem himself and fix a problem that he created, and save the girl, the damsel, that he put into this bad situation, and give him some sort of credit for it.
That’s set up for so much failure. Curry was never interested in that. Thankfully he found Capstone, who was willing to let him do it the right way. I think that’s a great example.
Lawrie Brewster:
I think that is fantastic.
I almost sometimes wonder, and I speak for myself in this respect as well, if there’s not something of the neurodivergent artistic principle in this refusal to compromise once you have a particular vision. Double the money? No, no.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah, right. Curry doesn’t care about money, which is also a gift. You’re right. It takes a lot of guts to say no to that. It wasn’t at the time like pick option A or B. It was like, “This is option A. Take it or leave it.” Then leave it.
That’s scary, because you want something so badly. You want to make this movie so badly.
I think part of Curry’s neurodivergence is ADHD, and that’s a huge part of his success. It’s a gift. If it’s harnessed, it’s like a superpower.
Lawrie Brewster:
I also have ADHD, and at times it has its drawbacks. But I wouldn’t have the boutique sustainable studio that we have if it didn’t come with the benefits of that.
When I saw the interview with you and your wonderful son, when he was holding the cushion, I was like, “Yeah, he’s one of us.” Because I think we almost have a whole ADHD studio here. They all have cushions when they’re talking, or they’ll be fiddling with something.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah. I think a lot of artists are ADHD in this business in particular, because if not, you can probably get overpowered by this fear of safety. Like, “Okay, this is my passion, but I need to pay the bills. I’ve got to get the real job,” rather than being the delivery driver or being the waiter so that you can barely get by, but at the same time you have your time and you can get the momentum.
That’s scary. People with ADHD get so singularly focused and obsessed about what they love that it doesn’t bother them as much. I think a lot of other people unfortunately just become more like, “Okay, well, I’m going to get a real job.”
Lawrie Brewster:
Sure, because your son had a job that supported him just enough to get by, and then he devoted all his energy into creating wonderful works of art to build an audience with Cooper and to share.
I’ve always suggested that to the young folks in local colleges who get involved in our stuff. I say, “Don’t feel bad if you’re doing something like stacking shelves, serving coffee, whatever it is. Whatever can feed you and put a roof over your head, then put everything into your craft and your art, and you are then an artist.”
Jeff Barker:
Yeah, that’s for sure.
Lawrie Brewster:
Regarding your thoughts about genre cinema, especially horror and thrillers, what do you feel about the freedom that affords writers and artists? Do you think it can offer them more opportunities to explore serious ideas than many people would ordinarily assume regarding the horror genre?
Jeff Barker:
Absolutely. That’s why I love it.
Especially modern horror. I’ve never really been a huge fan of just straight slasher horror. It’s fun, but again, unless you get me super invested in a character, then I’m not as interested.
That’s the task before Curry now with Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which he’ll kill. He’ll be great. He’ll make us care about these people, and it’ll matter.
Modern horror, especially when it’s done well, is basically drama. Whatever is going on internally, whatever pain, trauma, or grief is so overwhelming that it manifests outside the body in some way, in some external force.
That’s when it works best.
Horror has looser rules and looser guardrails. It is less formulaic. It allows you a broader playground to explore all of these things.
It’s not the only way. You could explore the human condition in a rom-com, but it’s more difficult because a rom-com has to hit a certain tone. It has to hit certain expectations. You already know exactly how it’s going to end, because if it doesn’t end that way, you can’t really call it a rom-com. It has to end happily ever after, with a kiss or whatever you’re building towards.
That in itself is entertaining. I love a good rom-com. But to tell true stories about the human condition, you need this playground where you can get down and dirty and not be afraid of where to go.
That’s one of the things that is Curry’s fingerprint, or his signature. He doesn’t pull any punches. He’s not afraid of being mean. He really just wants you to feel something and see something.
Lawrie Brewster:
I think that’s a wonderful example of a set of principles and values that Curry embodies, which, as his father and then as an artist as well, you have helped shape. It’s a wonderful thing, because I happen to agree with those principles.
Jeff Barker:
We’re right. We’re right.
No, it’s 100%. That’s why I love writing psychological horror. You just have so much freedom, and if it’s done right, it can really mean something.
Lawrie Brewster:
Absolutely. One can look even at some of the greatest works of William Shakespeare, from Macbeth to Hamlet. There’s psychological horror, there are thrillers, and there’s a special power they possess because they’re able to take those themes exactly as you describe and run farther with them, with fewer constraints than might be associated with strict drama conventions alone.
Horror offers us the chance to produce powerful dramas with these expressions that transcend what is often an ephemeral version of ordinary reality, because that changes with the winds of performance style, aesthetics, and tastes.
Right now, detachment is what one describes as naturalism. Sitting in a diner, window-gazing, with a soft electronic score and three minutes of silence.
Jeff Barker:
Right, right.
Lawrie Brewster:
If you go to the pub with me on a Friday, though, it’s like all the works of Shakespeare combined into three hours of drinking.
Jeff Barker:
Yeah. Well, I want to do that so bad. I want to go to Scotland and go to the pub with you.
Lawrie Brewster:
Oh yeah. It’s an intense drama. There’s no detached, whimsical—
Jeff Barker:
I bet you that would be an experience that would find its way into my writing.
Lawrie Brewster:
Looking back over your own personal journey through journalism, psychiatry, creative writing, and screenwriting, what do you feel each discipline has taught you about storytelling? And am I missing anything that has really informed your storytelling?
Jeff Barker:
I was also an English teacher back in the day.
All those things have made me who I am, which is unique. Everyone’s unique, so it’s not like who I am is any better than anyone else. But for me, this has defined who I am, all those experiences.
Even as a news anchor and a reporter, especially out in the field, that was my gateway to talking to people in the middle of trauma. I think that’s what made me interested in psychology, which led years later to me getting into that field.
Showing up at house fires, showing up after homicides, and talking to family members who could barely keep it together but wanted to talk to me because they wanted their loved one’s story to be told. Those were gifts.
Those were moments that I cherish, not because of their pain, but because of the honour of being included and being seen as significant or important at that time in their lives and in their trauma.
Even being a news anchor, sitting at the desk and learning how many people are involved over how many hours every day just to get me to this one moment of reading off this prompter, helps you learn teamwork and how things are put together, and how people are passionate about things. That certainly translates to filmmaking.
I’m appreciative of all of them. Again, it’s unique to me, but everybody has their ingredients of how they got to where they are today.
Lawrie Brewster:
Thank you, Jeff, for sharing with me your wisdom and insights, and your creative processes.
For our audience, could you recommend a way for them to best keep up to date with your latest artworks and consultancies as well?
Jeff Barker:
Jeff Barker’s website is the best way, because if you go there, you can get to everything else, like the social media and the podcast. So yes, Jeff Barker’s website is certainly the best way.
Lawrie Brewster:
Well, thank you so much for granting Amicus Horror, the British Horror Chronicle, and myself your time.
Whilst I certainly don’t need to wish it, I will still nevertheless wish you the best of success for yourself, Curry, Riley, and Jeffrey, as well as Cooper, of course, and all the other wonderful collaborators you’re working with to create such fantastic horror art.
Thank you so much.
Jeff Barker:
Thank you so much. Super cool being here.
Closing Note
Mr Barker’s observations remind us of a simple but often neglected truth: that construction alone does not make a story live. However sound the machinery of plot may be, it is character which gives a picture its pulse.
The horror film, at its best, is not merely an apparatus for alarm. It may serve as a serious dramatic form, giving outward shape to grief, obsession, longing, trauma, guilt, and moral conflict.
For writers and filmmakers drawn to the darker provinces of cinema, Mr Barker’s counsel is at once practical and humane: begin with character, allow mystery its proper place, trust the intelligence of the audience, and leave room for the actor to bring life to the written page. Above all, never mistake a tidy plot for a living story.
About Mr Lawrie Brewster
Mr Lawrie Brewster is a producer and director with fifteen years of experience in independent horror cinema. He leads the British Horror Studio, serves as President of Amicus Productions, and oversees the British Horror Studio Community initiative.
For further information, visit www.lawriebrewster.com.