Write On with ‘The Beta Test’ Writer-Directors Jim Cummings and PJ McCabe
Write On: A Screenwriting Podcast - A podcast by Final Draft
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In The Beta Test, a married Hollywood agent receives a mysterious letter for an anonymous sexual encounter and becomes ensnared in a sinister world of lying, infidelity, and digital data. Writer-Director Jim Cummings tells Write On: "I had the idea for the letter service, and I called PJ and I was like, 'What would you do if you got a letter in the mail, personally, that invited you to a no-strings-attached sexual encounter?' And he said, 'I wouldn't go because that would be insane,' and then I thought, 'Yeah, but what if you were somebody that would?'" Writer-Director PJ McCabe goes on to discuss their collaborative process: "It's really just the two of us with our laptops out in [Jim's] garage, and we'll just walk around acting it out, and we'll do it a million different ways until we find the way we do it that makes us laugh… and the best setup and payoff in a scene that keeps it the most interesting and moves it, logically, to the next step in the plot." Don’t forget to subscribe to the Write On Podcast on iTunes! Now available on Google Podcasts!