In this screenwriter interview, we talk to Jon Danos who just sold his screenplay TIME JUMPER after using our service.
SCRIPT MAILER: So Jon, please tell us a little bit about yourself.
JON: My name’s Jon Danos, I’m 46 and from Michigan. I spent most of my adult life trying to become an actor. I even moved out to LA for ten years and struggled and did the whole out-of-work actor thing for a long time.
SCRIPT MAILER: What was that like, living in LA working as an actor?
JON: It was a lot of fun and exciting in the beginning. Everything seemed full of promise and hope. I was a lot younger back then too so I didn’t mind the struggle. But after a couple of years of going to auditions and getting passed over for bit parts, it started to become a real grind. I mean LA isn’t a cheap place to live and I always found it difficult trying to make a living to follow my passion. I was doing a lot of part-time gigs and trying to go to auditions whenever I could.
My 40th birthday was the turning point. I’d been in LA for 7 years by then and things just weren’t working out. I remember going out with some friends for my 40th birthday and just feeling like a complete failure in life. Here I was at forty with no job, no savings, no house and no girlfriend. All my friends back home in Michigan had started their own families and had decent jobs and here I was in LA with nothing. My fortieth birthday was depressing for sure, but I still stuck it out for another three years before moving up to Sacramento.
SCRIPT MAILER: Tell us about that. Why did you leave LA?
JON: I needed a fresh start. By the age of 43 I’d hit rock bottom, emotionally I was exhausted. My career wasn’t going anywhere and life had started to wear me down. I needed to get away from LA and get out of the whole acting scene. I met a girl from Sacramento and she was moving back there and she kind of just said to me, “Hey, why don’t you come with me?” At first I though, no way, but after she left LA, I realized that I didn’t want to stick around either. So I moved up there to be with her.
SCRIPT MAILER: Did you miss acting?
JON: Not at all. By the time I got to forty I realized that I wasn’t actually any good at acting and didn’t have much talent for it. If I’d known that in the beginning it would have been much easier, but I’m a slow learning and it took a while for reality to sink in.
SCRIPT MAILER: Tell us how you got into screenwriting?
JON: That was something I didn’t see coming. So cut to age 45 and I’m back home in Michigan, sleeping on my mom’s couch if you can believe that. I’d left Sacramento six months before and was now back home living with my mom. If you’d told me at age 18 that I’d be sleeping on my mom’s couch when I was 45 I’d probably have put a gun to my head and blown my brains out (laughing…). But at least I now had a job working for UPS, so I had some money coming in. And with no girlfriend and no family, I had a lot of spare time on my hands.
I considered going back to school to study something practical like computers or business, but my heart just wasn’t in it. As an actor, I’d read a lot of scripts in LA and still loved Hollywood movies and TV shows. That was why I went out there in the first place, I wanted to be a part of that wonderful storytelling world. I knew that acting wasn’t my path, so I thought to myself, why not try my hand at screenwriting. It was like a light bulb suddenly went off in my head. I hadn’t felt this excited and alive for many years. The beauty of screenwriting is that you can do it from anywhere too.
SCRIPT MAILER: So tell us about your script TIME JUMPER, how did you come up with the idea?
JON: I spent a couple of months planning out all these different stories and ideas. The truth is I didn’t really start writing a script for a long time. I spent most of my time just going through all these ideas in my head and trying to find that one story that I was most interested in and that was the most entertaining for me to write.
The idea for TIME JUMPER actually came to me one night while I was sitting alone in my mom’s living room. I was feeling sorry for myself and thinking about all the mistakes and missed opportunities in my life. I was torturing myself: “What if I’d just joined the Navy when I was 19? What if I’d taken that job that guy offered me in LA to work for his video production company? What if I’d gone to Japan to teach English with my buddy Ken back in 2006? What if I’d married the one girl who loved me instead of pushing her away because I was so focused on my hopeless acting career?”
There were so many ifs and possibilities my head started to spin. I started thinking about all the different paths my life could have taken. I guess you could say that was the birth of TIME JUMPER.
SCRIPT MAILER: What is TIME JUMPER about?
JON: TIME JUMPER tells the story of a greedy scientist called Orson Lane. A man who discovers how to move forward and backwards along time so he can change his own reality and life path.
Orson keeps seeing his own murder in the future. So he tries to find a life path where he isn’t murdered. Unfortunately for Orson, all his life paths lead to that same conclusion. He will be murdered. It’s only when Orson changes his personality that his life path also changes.
The idea behind the movie is that our personalities kind of dictate our future and we might not end up in the same place, but our lives can have a similar outcome. You know, take my life for example. My personality took me to LA to follow this crazy dream, but I could have ended up in Nashville or Vegas or even Europe following some other crazy dream. And instead of sleeping on my mom’s couch, I could have found myself sleeping on a friend’s couch. I’d still have ended up single and without kids, all because that was the nature of my personality.
SCRIPT MAILER: That’s quite a powerful idea isn’t it. Why do you think your script got optioned by a producer in the end?
JON: From what the producers told me, it was a cool story. I mean the story and the idea are all about personality. But you know what, really this story is just about a guy who wants to change his life for the better, but he’s chasing money, women, possessions. And he doesn’t care about how his actions affect other people. He’s greedy and he doesn’t give a damn about anyone else. That is, until he finds out why he keeps getting killed in the future.
SCRIPT MAILER: Can’t wait to see the movie! Do you have any advice for other screenwriters out there?
JON: Write a story that is entertaining and that you think would be fun to watch. That’s it. I mean isn’t that what Hollywood is all about—entertainment. Also, I’d say this. Success can come out of nowhere. I’m a great example of this myself. I saw myself as a complete failure at age 45. But then the next thing I know, I’ve got a screenplay optioned and life is looking great again. Screenwriting is definitely a whole lot easier than acting. I mean, you can do it anywhere and write at a time that suits you. Most jobs and careers aren’t that flexible. You can create your own world too—it’s an incredible feeling!