We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Shreyas Ayaluri. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Shreyas below.

Shreyas, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

I like to think of myself as someone who has a lot of stories to tell. Stylised stories of hope, love, and pain and I do that over an over again. I also occasionally rhyme. Some times, but I digress. The vehicle that I use to ship these narratives is comedy — so you won’t see it coming. Does that mean my screenplays have no message? Well, I try my very best to mask the heavy stuff but if you look for it, you’ll find it. Watching movies have always caused in a stir in me that I find difficult to put into words so I’ll take the help of Nicole Kidman who famously said the apt words — “That indescribable feeling.”

The goal has always been to write movies with the hope that they truly entertain. I don’t want to ever come across as being clever or preachy. Silly, sure. Funny, absolutely. Absurd, why yes. But contrived intensity? No freaking way. I tend to dance around ideas that are too real or ideas that couldn’t be farther from reality. And I love that space. The broad spectrum forces me to get out of my cheap coffee zone and into the pumpkin spiced lattes of the world. In the end, all my stories have a bit of me. Something that might’ve happened to me, or that I’ve felt, or I’ve want to really explore. And that’s what meaningful stories are to me. Truth, slightly doused in fantasy and fiction.

Lately, I’ve been on a bit of a short screenplay spree and churned out varied pieces spanning across genres. A cosmic love story, a cultural horror, a 3-minute comedy around a mother’s insecurities, a cautionary spectacle that explores the nefarious underbelly of the inner-city seen from the POV of an immigrant woman called the “Creatures of the Night,” but the story I’ve found to be meaningful of late is the one on the art of breaking in, very aptly titled “The Serene Place Where The Stars Poop” which is an ode to us film school kinfolk who worship Hollywood.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m an award-winning screenwriter, creative producer and songwriter based out of Los Angeles. On days when I’m not clacking away, I am also a deeply curious soul, poking my noes in music, tech and sneakers.

My work has won and placed in top tier film festivals and screenwriting contests such as The Austin Film Festival, Screencraft, StoryPros Awards, Outstanding Screenplays, TheScriptLab, FilmEmpire, Filmmatic Screenplay Awards, Beverly Hills and so forth.

I studied Advanced Screenwriting from UCLA, and Screenwriting for Film and Television from New York Film Academy. I previously wrote for Broadway, and also moonlit as a Judge / Festival Programmer at a prominent NYC based film festival. Thus far, I have written over sixteen original screenplays spanning across features, TV and shorts. I’m currently working on my seventeenth project and I’d be remiss not to mention that much to my family’s pride, I am on my O1 visa.

Talking about inspiration — If it weren’t for True Romance, I’d still probably be working in Advertising and writing copy or worse, auditing a car-manufacturing plant. It goes without saying Tarantino has served as the biggest inspiration for me, and having met him four months into moving to LA is probably the stuff that dreams are made of. Larry David, Alexander Payne, Mike White, Judd Appatow, Wong-Kar Wai have all influencers and instigators to a certain degree in my life.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

As a creative, it’s being able to quench that thirst, to scratch that itch over and over. But as a comedy writer, it has to be the laughs — not a cackle here and there, but whole hearted guffaws. And not awards, placements, or laurels. I mean, accolades are a great push and often serve as a calling card or an ice-breaker — a mere “You’re on the right track,” perhaps but genuine laughter is the purest form of validation for me, or for any comedy writer for that matter. The fact that they went along with my idiosyncrasies and had a great time gives me all the energy I need to think of another boisterous idea, and to keep that brain churning.

I often invite people over after a freshly written draft and we do something called as “staged readings,” not without a beer or two of course. We each have a character to play and we read the whole script aloud which frankly has helped me so much in terms of — how my dialogs are sounding, finding typos, understanding the pacing of the script and so forth.

With that said, if I’m able to convert an unpleasant incident, or a passing thought into an amusing story, I’ve done what I set out to do. The motive has always been to make people forget their routine lives, take them on an unexpected journey and hopefully make their day.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Unlearning is a behemoth of a word. Terrifying even in the beginning, but a staple in my diet today. I unlearn quicker than learn these days. Jokes aside, learning the craft, the art and business behind, itself is a life-long process. You’re never really up there.

Being an outsider, and somewhat of an introvert, the odds were already against me. And I remember, a mentor at the time mentioned two things — First : Win or place high in a festival and managers will be flooding up your place, and second : Networking. He said the latter close to eleven times, so I’ll begin with “Networking.” There’s the Jordan Belfort way to do it where you might find yourself occupied with pitching yourself so much so that it all becomes transactional. I had to unlearn that way and find my way which was a dash of humor, a sprinkle of charm with a side of genuine interest in listening more than speaking.

This brings me to my second lesson I unlearnt. My first ever screenplay titled “Amuse Me” won the best screenplay award at a screenwriting contest and fetched many other significant placements, and I thought to myself — this is it, I made it. CAA and Gersh will now have a bidding war over me. A boy from Hyderabad, India with nothing but wonder and a self-deprecating sense of humour has made it in Hollywood. Little did my 23 year old self know, and I quote Mark Duplass here,“The cavalry is not coming” and it did not. I was able to put queries down but nothing beyond that. Everyone needed a portfolio, say at least 3-4 such screenplays with awards, to even be considered by boutique agencies. Always take the film school stuff with a pinch of salt, or Tajin — whatever you’re into.

The bonus lesson I unlearnt was to be married to my ideas. You have to be able to “Kill your babies.” When you’re just starting out in screenwriting, they teach you to “write what you know” and I’d like to believe everyone starts out the same way. I did too. It’s only when I started to write personal experiences objectively, is when I started to see gold and feel the growth.

Fellow peers often ask me “What’s the best script you’ve written? And I say “I haven’t written that one yet.” I’d like to believe that my best is ahead of me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://linktr.ee/ayalurishreyas
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ayalurishreyas/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shreyas-ayaluri-64000886/
• Other: https://writers.coverfly.com/profile/shreyaschaitanya33402 https://www.imdb.com/name/nm9316498/