Peter Mahaffey | Contributing Writer
“This is the best time in the history of mankind to be a writer.”
So says Graham Yost, the acclaimed writer of Speed, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, and Justified, speaking to a crowded room at the Trinity TV hosted event. An amiable, film literate, and quick witted man, Yost often gave joke answers to serious questions, such as, when asked about his writing process, he responded “I always write naked.” The writer began the talk by recounting his life story, or at least his career-related life story. Born in Toronto to Elwy Yost, host of TV Ontario’s Saturday Night at the Movies, Yost grew up with an appreciation and admiration for movies. He credits the classic Hollywood films of Hitchcock and Huston with giving him the desire to pursue a career in writing and the movies.
If anyone learned anything from Yost’s talk last night, it’s that, if you are a writer, you should just keep on writing
If anyone learned anything from Yost’s talk last night, it’s that, if you are a writer, you should just keep on writing. He outlined his career, starting from his college years studying English in Toronto before moving on to getting his script of Speed sold to a studio and then finally getting to run his own show, Justified. In the meantime, he took all the work he could get, which helped him both as a writer and as a participant in the film industry. Yost wrote articles for Soap Opera Digest; he wrote episodes for the Nickelodeon show Hey Dude!; he wrote a little bit for Full House, and he even wrote a pamphlet on home care for people with catheters in their chest. The point he made was, that even though much of the writing he did for money at this time in his life was not in his own personal interest, it still kept him writing. His big break into feature films, as he said, was when his Speed script sold, and then his later break into television began by working with Tom Hanks on From the Earth to the Moon.
the real creative control of television shows belongs to the writers, which he described as both a blessing and a curse
Yost expressed his preference for writing in television, because, as he says, in television, the writer is king (as opposed to feature films where the director is the be all and end all). According to Yost, the real creative control of television shows belongs to the writers, which he described as both a blessing and a curse. Television allows writers the luxury of creating more substantial story arcs and to continue to flesh out characters for as long as they want (or as long as ratings are high). However, as he described, the span of time devoted to writing an entire series of a television show is shorter than the time given to writing a feature film script. The process, as he joked, is fun for him but stressful for everyone else, as five to six hours of each day of writing consists of joking around and teasing each other.
Yost stated that he owes his writing skills in large part to working with Tom Hanks. Together they created and ran several historical mini-series. Writing scripts of actual historical events forced him to hone his trade by striving for the highest possible level of realism in his screenplays.
His screenwriting skills shine through in Justified, a modern take on the Western genre
His screenwriting skills shine through in Justified, a modern take on the Western genre but he himself is humbled by other shows on the air, most notably Breaking Bad and Game of Thrones (which he considers his dream show for which to write). Yost marvels at these and other shows, and believes that the world is in the third Golden Age of television. He does not believe he will go back to working on feature films, although he claims to have several feature scripts forever tucked away in a drawer, instead he will continue his great work on Justified for the time being.
