No free drugs for Nicholl Fellowship winner Jeremy Bandow

by Rebecca Collins, MNDialog • If you’re into the local film scene at all, it has probably come to your attention in recent weeks that the Twin Cities can now count a winner of the prestigious Nicholl Fellowship among its citizens. Jeremy Bandow of Minneapolis was one of six screenwriters to win this year’s competition. Screenwriters can be an elusive bunch, especially if they aren’t out there directing their own material. How does one even know who they are? So I decided to arrange a meeting with Jeremy to talk about screenwriting, which of course ended up also being a discussion about pretty much everything else. NOTE: In the spirit of full disclosure, it turns out Jeremy and I went to the same junior high for one year in Neenah, Wisconsin in the late 1980s. Although we were one year apart and didn’t know each other, we both remember our school as being pretty much a warehouse for angst-ridden pre-teens. I promise that this very special connection in no way colors this article. No favoritism from me, Mr. Bandow.

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What was apparent right away is that Jeremy likes where he’s at. Meaning living and working in Minneapolis. He tried L.A. in 2000, working as a PA, but didn’t last a year. It wasn’t his thing. But being in that environment made him realize that someone needs to be responsible for creating and writing stories. It dawned on him that “oh, they pay people to write this stuff,” and he got busy. He started by writing out scenes on his computer, translating the visuals he saw in his mind, without knowing how to write a script or anything about format. Eventually he enrolled in the screenwriting program at Minneapolis Community & Technical College and credits the program with, ”teaching me ideation, character and story development, outlining, scene by scene breakdown(s), all the stuff that goes into a script before I even start writing.” Unlike a lot of us struggling to write screenplays, hopefully sell them and slave at a day job, he’s a full-time writer, currently working on five projects at once, although all in different stages. “I don’t like to work on one project at a time because then I become obsessive about that one project,” he said. “I’ll be researching one, writing a couple, have one on the back burner…” His winning script, Hive, went through about five revisions and took three and a half years to complete. Hafed Bouassida, his professor while he was at MCTC (he graduated in 2006), guided him through the process, serving “script supervisor.” It was Bandow’s writing but Bouassida’s collaboration on story that resulted in the final project. “Hafed is all about education right now but he’s done it all, especially when he worked in Europe,” Bandow said. “He’s so modest he doesn’t talk about it but he’s an extremely creative person.” So what is Hive about, exactly? Well, I can give you the broad strokes. It concerns an American soldier in Baghdad on the Fourth of July. The entire story happens in 12 hours as the soldier wakes up in a military hospital, escapes the Green Zone and is on the run from both the U.S. military and Iraqi forces as he tries to get to an Italian journalist he’s in love with. The story deals with the difficulty of getting the truth out about war and what happens to people when they’re caught up in a military conflict. As Bandow puts it so succinctly, “It’s about sex and death.” Right on. When a screenwriter wins a competition like the Nicholl, other writers imagine bidding wars, wooing, limos, free drugs…Not exactly, according to Bandow. Sure, there is no denying that winning the Nicholl propels a writer forward. It’s a calling card, a guarantee of a script being read instead of recycled and an entree to making very, very good connections that are not made easily, especially when one lives in Minnesota. And the prize money is nice. But Bandow imagines Hive will be put into a drawer for a few years. “People aren’t making Iraq war movies now,” he said. “No one wants to make that script. But they want to know what else I have.” Thus some of the current projects will actually have people to go to for consideration when they are finished. We also ended up talking about our love for the Twin Cities. After all, you can raise kids here, it’s affordable to live, people aren’t craning their necks to see who’s riding in every car cruising the streets, trying to spot celebrities. It’s becoming a bit easier to actually live here and make a living screenwriting, whereas before it was pretty much impossible. It would be nice, we agree, if there was a TV series shot in Minneapolis. As might be expected, movies came up quite a bit during our talk. Here’s a sampling of the territory we covered: North By Northwest—Eva Marie Saint is still alive! And she was on the Nicholl committee this past year! Platoon—good war movie Apocalypse Now—even better war movie Pending remakes of Footloose and The Wizard of Oz (as if we learned nothing from The Wiz) Candy, starring Heath Ledger (got a bit boring) The Woodsman, starring Kevin Bacon at his most ridiculous Hard Candy Slumdog Millionaire—each of us plans to jump on the bandwagon and go see it Meshes of an Afternoon—Bandow’s pick for one of the best experimental films he’s ever seen, although how many experimental films he’s seen remains unknown The Road—He admits to having abandoned the book partway through No Country For Old Men Burn After Reading—I didn’t think or feel anything about it after I saw it…Wait, did I see it? Originally published on 12/8/08.