Interview with Author & Screenwriter Lee Murray

Hosted by Dhaivat Mehta

INT. LEE MURRAY’S HOUSE - DAY

They have just finished the photoshoot. The photographer has just left.

Dhaivat and Lee sit down at the main table for the conversation.

Lee Murray is proud to be invited to be a part of this conversation around Third Culture Film and the talent that we have here in Tauranga and the Bay.

DHAIVAT

Thank you for sitting down with us for this conversation Lee. So tell us, what is your history with film and screenwriting.

LEE

I’ve always been interested in film. I am a big film viewer/consumer. It’s a different medium and a different way to tell stories. I have written some of my own screenplays, and it’s quite different from writing a novel. It’s a completely different process. I guess the real issue for me is that I haven’t had the opportunity to work with my own material in film.

My experience has been, mostly, working on other people’s material.

I have a short film in pre-production with David Jacobs Productions around dark fantasy and anxiety. That was based on one of my essays.

I’ve done a couple of feature screenplays with Doug A Van Belle from Victoria University, who has some work already in production. We have been shopping those screenplays around.

I’ve got a couple of screenplays written based on my own work, adapted from my novels, including one with Dan Rabarts who co-wrote the ‘Path Of Ra’ series with me.

But in terms of my main experience, it has been with the film ‘Grafted’. Which is out now.

DHAIVAT
How was your experience working on ‘Grafted’?

LEE

It came about in a rather non-traditional way. The producer Murray Francis saw my name in an anthology on Asian writers in New Zealand. He called and asked if I would be interested in working on this film. He said we already have a draft script and there’s been a lot of interest. We’ve brought BAFTA nominated Sasha Rainbow on as director. So we took what was a very sound script,then we layered on Sasha’s vision and some other story beats.

There are a lot of constraints working in film. Budget constraints, advice given at table reads…

I came in to do the ‘Director’s Cut’ on that film. So my first experience right the way through was top notch.

DHAIVAT

And you have said that you worked on numerous drafts of the script.

LEE

Well, any writing is rewriting. There is always revision. You put things down on the page, but there is never one right way to say something.

Obviously, it’s quite different from writing a novel where you can put everything in. You can include the internal thoughts of the characters, the landscape, you just have so much to work with.

Doing that in film is a little harder. How do you create mood? How do you explain what the protagonist is feeling? How do you show the background of the character? Do you do a flashback? All of the approaches and devices that you use in film are different from the way you would do it in a novel.

Storytelling is universal. It is the same across all the media, but the ‘how’ is different. With a novel, you’re the only one. You’re in control. Whereas with a film…the Art Department people have said — well, we think this, or we’ve got this really good idea for your monster. Then you need to incorporate those ideas into the screenplay.

Or the producer says —- we’ve got this great location. It’s almost what you had in mind, but it has these other variations that we could lean into. For example, in ‘Grafted’ the main house that was selected as the set had a pond and we thought —- oooh… we could use that.

So the director and I asked ourselves —- how are we going to write this pond in? How can we use this pond? How can we use it in a way that contributes to our story?

When I’m writing a novel, I can set it anywhere I like. I could put it on an alien planet, and it doesn’t affect the Art Department.

DHAIVAT

So did you enjoy that collaborative process? And would you do it all over again for another project?

LEE

Yes, I absolutely loved it. First of all, I was working with Sasha Rainbow and she’s incredibly gifted, full of energy and great ideas. We worked together well. Don’t forget that Mia Maramara and Hweiling Ow had already done a lot of solid work on the original script. But yes, I really loved it.

It’s not true that as a novelist you work entirely ‘alone’, but those final decisions are yours. Film is exciting in that you can bounce ideas off people and lots of people are invested in the way the film comes together. Whereas with a novel you have to please your ‘editor’ or your ‘publisher’, but at the end of the day ‘you’ have the final say in the way you approach the story.

I love both. I think they are both quite exciting processes.

And also the way a director visualizes the story is very different to the way the writer visualizes the story. The director is thinking about camera angles, the type of focus, they are curating the music, the voice, and the characters.

I was very lucky with Sasha…she asked what about the costumes and she showed me those. She showed me the people they were thinking about casting, asked me about the kinds of wardrobe, and how we would use the space—- Ooh we need a bit more conflict here, she’d say how can we do it?---we were writing like, putting in small details right up towards the end of filming.

DHAIVAT

Alright, before we head off, let’s get your top 5 movies…or at least favourite movies, directors, or screenwriters.

LEE

Well, I really love what Jordan Peele’s done. I loved ‘Get Out’. I like that social commentary through horror and humour, so I loved that one. I thought ‘Get Out’ was a fresh look at racism. This is the ‘Third Culture’ Film Festival, right? It had that fresh look, very off-beat — weird horror. The supernatural aspect and sci fi thrown in. I love it.

I absolutely loved ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’. I am going to say that it is my favourite film of all time. I wish I had written that. I saw it with my 80-year-old mum and my queer daughter. My mum said “You know, there is a lot going on in this movie”. The movie involves parallel universes and possibilities. That was interesting because for my mum that is how her life was set up. Asian women are expected to get married, have a family and that should be your focus. So for her there was only meant to be one path. Then there’s my queer daughter saying “I just love this movie” because it spoke to her in a different way. There’s that one scene where the mother says to the daughter, “you need to eat more”. That is the Asian way of saying “I love you...I love you so much, and I want you to be nurtured.” Just the possibilities in that movie. What is the right path for each of us? We’re in that Third Culture, we’re in that place of asking where do we belong? I felt ‘Seen’ by the film.

With this the conversation comes to a close, and they bid each other farewell, knowing that the next time they see each other will be at United Cinemas on the 12th of November 7pm for a special screening of ‘GRAFTED’ hosted by the Third Culture Film Festival.

Lee Murray is a multi-award-winning author-editor, essayist, screenwriter, and poet from Aotearoa-New Zealand. A USA Today Bestselling author, Shirley Jackson and five-time Bram Stoker Awards® winner, she is an NZSA Honorary Literary Fellow, and a Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow.

Lee lives in the sunny Bay of Plenty with her well-behaved family and a naughty dog.

“Lee Murray is synonymous with Kiwi horror.” —Alan Baxter, award-winning author of The Gulp and Sallow Bend.

“Horror author Lee Murray is New Zealand's Stephen King .” —NZ Woman's Weekly

“Lee Murray is a powerful voice in horror.” —Interstellar Flight Magazine