THE STORY BEHIND "CHAPMAN SPEAKS"
Ryan and Corwin met during freshman year of college back in 2020. Working on many school projects and even a podcast together, in the Summer of 2022 they got an idea: "Let's make a film".
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It was as simple and vague as that. They didn't know what they wanted to make, but they wanted to do something. That past fall, two other students at the New England School of Communications wrote and directed a film called The Game. And that summer, another video student was in a production of a film called God's Not Dead Yet. Ryan and Corwin figured they had no excuses at that point to not just go for it themselves.
The plot went in many different directions. "I recall Corwin started with this idea of doing a film about a psychedelic trip. Something really David Lynchian. We even talked about shooting the whole thing on a 50mm anamorphic, something really wacky and experimental". But the ideas took a break as their junior year began. Starting in October of 2022 they began having some meetings and tossed around some ideas. "I was getting really into writing at the time, and so my first goal was to write something good. Even if it wasn't good, something different and interesting. My main goal was something character-driven. I wanted to put effort into the wardrobe, set dressing, and color. The stuff that's easy to skip on a small budget. I wanted to create a character that people wouldn't forget. That was my goal".
The first direction was more of a sci-fi angle. "We had spitballed a bunch of dystopian sci-fi ideas. Shit about mind control, invasion of privacy, big tech. Stuff like that". These meetings lasted a few weeks, but after lots of back and forth, the direction became more clear. "Corwin and I assigned each other to write three loglines and present them the next week. When we came in the next week I had three ideas I was happy about and ready to fight for. Corwin came in and said 'I don't have three loglines, I have this one idea I can't get out of my head' and he proceeded to explain this HUGE idea about exploring every aspect of far-right hate groups and radicalization in America. At this point, we both knew I would pen the actual screenplay, so our first major compromise was me throwing away my other Truman Show-like ideas and diving headfirst into Corwin's political idea".
Once they settled on an idea, weeks were spent building the characters, the outlines, and the world. "Looking back it was insane we thought we could tackle it. Corwin was filling whiteboards like a madman, like the Charlie Day meme. I was thinking to myself how our story looked like a big conspiracy theory and then it clicked with me... that's exactly the point this is a real conspiracy going on in America". So how do you make a story out of something this big?
"At first we wanted to tackle the basic pillars of this system, so we came up with the idea of an anthology that follows multiple characters (the demagogue who leads and inspires the public, a dark-web firebrand spreading the cause online, the host of a mainstream news show normalizing these beliefs, a young man radicalized by them all, and the rich oligarch funding it all for his own interest). We wanted to show how they intertwine and relate to the same events. How they are all a part of the same vicious machine of fascism that chews them up and spits them out. I love writing parallel stories and multiple characters, so this was right up my alley". After drafting the initial outline of the story it became clear the scale was immense.
"I think we were getting lost in our own idea. We both decided we needed to follow one character. I said that our news host Chester Chapman was our most interesting character, and probably the easiest for us to pull off given we had access to a full TV Studio. We didn't want to drop the other characters, so they all became minor characters in the plot, and lots of it was pushed to the world-building stuff in the mockumentary. The mockumentary came from a character originally in the first version of the script who was a Michael Moore-type filmmaker who is forced to make propaganda films for the state once the regime takes over. After watching the mockumentary CSA: The Confederate States of America we wanted to make our own modern American version of Triumph of the Will. It was our commentary on the role of art and the control over it. So we kept this idea but instead had Chapman make the film, as many of these conservative figures delve into multi-media for some reason".
Once they had settled on Chapman as the main character, the direction became more clear. "At this point, it became obvious that since we were following Chapman and we both knew how his story would end in the original idea, his main story would involve uncovering the whole conspiracy for the audience. The story of a faux journalist becoming a real journalist". But they still didn't have a title. "The original codename was 'Wolves in Wolves Clothing' inspired by the 2006 NOFX album, with the title track inspiring a lot of our attitude while writing the script. But I'm the kind of person that will take forever to come up with a clever title, or the 'right' title for a script. So I looked at Corwin and said, okay, what are we gonna call this thing? And it takes him two seconds. He turns around and says: 'The name of his show, Chapman Speaks'. It was simple and genius".
And Chapman Speaks was born.
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- Ryan
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