We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Erica Beeney a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Erica, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today One deeply underappreciated facet of being an entrepreneur or creative is the kind of crazy stuff that happens from time to time. It could be anything from a disgruntled client attacking an employee or waking up to find out a celebrity gave you a shoutout on TikTok – the sudden, unexpected hits (both positive and negative) make the profession both exhilarating and exhausting. Can you share one of your craziest stories?
A couple of years into my Hollywood writing career I got a call to meet with an executive at Paramount to discuss an unusual re-write project.
There was a film that had been partially shot in Eastern Europe. The premise was a continuation of a sub-genre of movies known as animal movies, in this case a friendly pet chimp is recruited into an evil scientist’s plan to create a race of super robo-chimps to take over the world. But mid-way through the filming the chimp bit an actor, and the replacement chimp got caught up in quarantine at the border. So the movie shut down but they still had 2 weeks of filming left from a completion insurance payout. Could I look at the script, the existing footage, and see if there was a way to craft a better story out of the Frankenpieces?
Normally this was something I would apply myself to. It was a puzzle with a high level of effort and a low chance of success. But I had a fascination with chimps and other apes in movies. I was interested in the chimps on stools outside of African bars who smoked cigarettes and were trained to play dead when you shot your finger at them. It was an intriguing assignment. So I wove in another story, a young boy character, and made the stakes more personal and heighten the impact of the final fight scene, the robo-chimp overriding his programming to protect the boy.
I came back for a second meeting with the executive, who would go on to run Warner Bros. for a time. I pitched him my fixes, leaning into the grand Nutty Professor/ James Bond potential of the story. but never losing sight of the emotional soul of the story, a classic tale of a boy and his dog; only this time the dog was an armored primate. It was the best possible version of the worst possible movie. The executive nodded, then after a few beats asked, “And what’s the chimp’s arc?”
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I am a writer, primarily of film/television. Writer winner of Season 2 of Project Greenlight (HBO), The Battle of Shaker Heights. Captive State, Desert Warrior (in theaters and on Hulu in 2026) Novel-in-progress. Get advice you didn’t know you needed on my Substack: Ms. Duckweed’s Guide to Gracious Living.
For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?
I think it’s very difficult to have a successful professional life as a writer. You’ve heard the discouraging news before but few people can sustain a high level of income year after year writing. Even successful novelists or Hollywood writers have good years and lean years, as do many other self-employed professionals. I do think at regular intervals everyone has to ask themselves the hard question if they’re pursuing a creative career: is this the only thing I can do, with my life and my resources? If the answer is yes then keep going. But ask yourself again in a year. Because if at some point you can think of anything else you’d also kind of like to do, you should do it. A creative mind shouldn’t be limited to traditional forms of straight storytelling. A creative vision often pairs exceptionally well with another job or career. To wake up every day to the thankless task of filling the blank page, you have to want to do it. You don’t have to want to every day, but big picture you have to be invested in the process of learning about yourself and the world through writing (photography, sculpture, music, etc.). If you aren’t deeply interested then it’s not worth it, because the other rewards — success, creative influence, are few and far between. But we can each get better at our chosen craft whatever it is and however we express it, so that if success doesn’t ultimately follow, we have the knowledge that we gave it our best shot before we laid down our pen.
Looking back, are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Scaffolding. In life, schedule, professional networking, story-telling. The more helpful structure you can put in place for yourself the more easy it is for success to come as well as efficiencies. I was too focused on each creative project as an individual job and not enough on the bigger picture of what I was learning with each job I took, who I was working with that I liked, and how I could build on that by choosing writing assignments carefully with a goal in mind instead of just accepting whatever projects came my way.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://msduckweed.substack.com/
- Instagram: @ericabeeney
- Facebook: erica beeney
