How To Evoke an Image in The Shortest Way Possible: An Interview with ‘Lift’ Screenwriter Daniel Kunka

In the new film from director F. Gary Gray (Friday, Set It Off, The Italian Job, The Fate of the Furious, Straight Outta Compton), a band of expert criminals led by Cyrus Whitaker (Kevin Hart) is recruited to do what they do best — lift $500 million in gold from a passenger plane — but they must do it mid-flight at 40,000 feet! Starring Kevin Hart, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Vincent D’Onofrio, Úrsula Corberó, Billy Magnussen, Jacob Batalon, with Jean Reno and Sam Worthington.

Prime yourself to jot down notes as you read this incredibly informative conversation about the art and craft of writing compelling action screenplays – and really any genre screenplay – with screenwriter Daniel Kuna.

Daniel’s latest action film, Lift, dropping on Netflix today, is full of action, twists, and big set pieces. Daniel spoke with Script about the nearly 13-year process of taking the “sticky idea” of “gold on a plane” to landing the script in front of the likes of Simon Kinberg and Matt Reeves, to selling the script directly to Netflix. 

In what seems like a free mini-masterclass session, Daniel enthusiastically peels back the curtain on his writing process and how he approaches writing characters, and action sequences to planting plot devices, and how to concisely evoke images on the page. Plus, he shares what scripts he’s currently reading, and his cozy go-to must-read screenplays when it comes to studying the art and craft of screenwriting.

This interview has been edited for content and clarity.

Sadie Dean: How did you land on this concept for this movie?

Daniel Kunka: So, it's both a long story and a short story all at once. It’s about a three-year process from when I sold the script to Netflix, and we're making the movie - which is very, very quick - and I wrote the script in the three months before that. So that was very, very quick. But I actually had the idea for the movie like a full 10 years prior. It was after my first movie had come out, a movie called 12 Rounds, it starred John Cena. And I read this article that was just about a gold transfer on a plane. And it was how if you were in Europe, you could be on a passenger plane from London to Zurich and what you don't know is that underneath your feet, there is a pallet of gold just sitting there that they're moving from bank to bank, and you have no idea. And it's an immediately sticky idea, right? Gold on a plane. And it's how they're marketing the movie right now. It's undeniable, right? It’s got that thing. And so it was just a matter of saying, ‘OK, if there was going to be gold on a plane, how do you steal the gold on the plane?’

And I came up with an entire pitch that actually if I were to go back and read the pitch right now, it would be 85% of what's in the movie right now. And so, I pitched it to one or two places, but it was sort of at that point where in my career, it was kind of a crazy pitch. And it had all these moving parts. And I think, rightfully so, most places were like, ‘You're a young screenwriter. I don't really believe you can do this. But if you write it, we'll read it. But we're not going to buy it as a pitch.’ And so, it sort of shut the process down pretty quick. And it was always just like, ‘OK, Dan, if you want to do gold plane, you have to write it.’ 

I always send an email of all my ideas and like gold plane was always right there near the top of the list. And for 10 years, I either had something else come up, or I was onto a different project, whatever it was, gold plane was always the second or the third one on the list. And cut to three years and three months ago, I had written a script that I wasn't terribly happy with, and we were in the pandemic, and I was just like, ‘I want to do something fun.’ Sometimes timing really matters and it's like we hadn't had a heist movie in a while or this particular sort of team heist movie in a while. And it just felt like the right time. And so, I opened up my old pitch, and I said, ‘Well, this still works.’

And so, then I sat down, and as I said, sort of wrote it rather quickly. And then I sent it to my agents and my managers, and they had a few little touch up notes. But everybody was like, ‘Alright, well, this is the thing. It's gold on a plane. Let's go see what happens.’ The script went out on a Monday. Without any producers attached, it was just sort of a naked spec, which is very old school, no attachments. I think the business has now sort of switched to this new model of having actors and directors and everything sort of pre-attached to a script. And we were like, ‘Nope, gold on a plane. Do you want to make it or not?’ And we went out. 

My agents were able to put us together with Simon Kinberg and Matt Reeves, and they brought it into Netflix - Netflix read it on that day, they were very excited about it. And we had a deal, and they brought it in. And I remember the very first meeting we had after we sold the script, they said, ‘We're gonna make this movie.’ And then three years later, we did.

Sadie: One of the things I enjoyed about this movie is your cast of characters. It was like you they had the ethos of Indiana Jones coupled with the camaraderie of the type of characters found in Ocean's Eleven. What was your process behind breaking these individual characters?

Daniel: It's an amazing process really - I love team movies. I love guys coming together as a team. And I think my goal was to sort of set out and really embrace this team concept, but I have to say, I love that you respond to that, because I think when you watch the movie, the cast is so good. And these actors really embrace these roles. 

And we're able to, in a huge movie with a lot of moving parts and a lot of people on screen, the funny safecracker is the funny safecracker, and I think that you can go a couple different ways with that, but when Billy [Magnussen] steps in that role, he makes it someone you're instantly attracted to. As much as I would like to say I will take all the credit and say that was on the page from the beginning – you know, I had a female driver, and then Úrsula [Corberó] takes that role and it becomes something else.

I think, in such a sort of a team atmosphere, the sort of archetypes that those characters are, are very similar to what I had in my original draft. We had an older, sort of wise mentor character to Cyrus, we had the wisecracking safecracker, we had the female driver, and in the different versions of the script, I would give them color and details and would always sort of have those sorts of things. But when you get to actually making the movie, those actors do such a great job of embodying them and seeing them and living in those roles. That it's far more effective than I could ever be on the page, right? 

I tried to bring that. And I think when people read the script, they get the idea of what that is. And I think it's a writer's job to sort of give enough in those situations so that when people read the script, they think, ‘Oh, OK, I get it. The funny safecracker guy, and he's not going to be able to break into the safe, and there's a whole thing.’ But until you really put that person in that role, and see it on screen, I just think it's a little bit different. It's just like writing and the movie are sort of a little bit different mediums.

Sadie: Can you share any insight on writing action scenes? Like, knowing when and where and when not to put in fight sequences, or planting plot devices, how to drive story, but also keeping characters at the forefront.

Daniel: I could talk for days on this topic. So, I'll try to keep it short. I love screenwriting. This is what I like to talk about. So, there's a couple of things that I think are good tips that I have embraced using that has sort of helped me. One of them is an overall structure that I have found very helpful in talking to people who make movies about movies, but also helpful when I'm writing and thinking about ideas. And that's, I think when you're a younger writer, sometimes structure is a little bit intimidating. And I think you hear a lot, it’s like, ‘The structure, it's too rigid.’ We've got our three acts. And we know that at the end of the second act, we're gonna have a really big downbeat. And then we're gonna have a climax. And it's like, ‘Oh, it's too limiting.’ And I actually believe that a great structure is super freeing.

And I think what it does is it allows, it's sort of like...I'm going to come up with a new analogy here, which I don't know, that's going to really work, but it's like, when you're on a train on a track, right? Like, you know the train has different stops, and they're gonna hit all the stops. And as a writer, I think you want to know that your train is going to hit all those stops when you're plotting all this out. And then it's like, the track in between is when you can really have your fun. But as long as you know you're going to where you're going, you're always going to get to the end. 

And so, I like to talk in pages, right? So, it's like, we have our first act. And you know, that's 28 pages, roughly, whatever, no one really cares what the numbers is. But that's how you should think about it in your head. It's like, OK, we're gonna meet our characters. We're going to set the scene. We're going to have our stakes at the end of that first act. There's going to sort of be a decision that's made that shoots us into the movie, right? And that's a fairly easy structure.

If you're going to talk about pages, like everyone always talks about page 10 having an inciting incident, and it's like, yeah, sure, by page 10, you should sort of know what kind of movie we're in. But then you're gonna get into the first act, you're gonna make that decision, and you're gonna go. And then I like to think of it as you know, something has to happen on page 45, page 60, page 75, end of the second act, and page 90 and you're out. 

And whether those pages are exact, they don't have to be. But like the last four scripts that I've written, like Lift literally had something big happened on page 45, and page 60, because I think inherently in my brain, I knew I had to get to those points. So, you sort of tell your story like that. But what it does is it allows you to always keep your story moving. I actually think the sort of midpoint page 60 moment in scripts is often overlooked when people are crafting their second acts. I think especially now more and more, I think you're seeing movies, sort of embrace that, ‘OK this movie was this, but now it becomes something else at that sort of midpoint.’

So, in a general sense when you're talking about all that action, and how do we craft it, I think it's really important when you're telling your stories, to really look, and make sure you have those points of action sort of laid out. So that you might not know how to get from 45 to 60, but you know by the time we get to 60, this has to happen. It's a way to sort of keep your stories with a momentum, because, you know you have to get to that point. You've got to get from here to there. You got to make stuff happen, you have to have drama, you have to have character.

And the page numbers are not just for the action, like I think a lot of it is action, but I also think whatever your page 60 has a twist on it, but it makes it a character moment. Like in Lift, page 60 is sort of like when they really find out how much pressure Jorgensen is putting on them. And this is really life or death. And it's not just about this and are we going to do this or not, it becomes a decision for the whole team. So, when the whole team sort of comes together and says, ‘We're going to support you Cyrus,’ and going off and completing this heist. It raises our stakes; it changes the direction, and we know we're off. And we know we only have 10 days instead of 15 days and all these things get ramped up all at once. That's a big picture note.

Little picture note, when you're writing action...writing action is very difficult because it's both less is more, because you don't want to over-describe. I feel like over-description is sort of the death knell of younger writers. Because in developing your vision, I think it's easy to over-describe what you're sort of seeing on screen. And I think when you read a lot, which I think is an essential thing, you see these writers who are very, very good, and very, very clear. They're able to convey the scene with as few words as possible. 

And that's the magic sauce of all this if you want to work and be a screenwriter, you have to learn how to evoke an image in the shortest way possible. And so that really gets into the craft of laying out these action scenes and yes, there's going to be a fight. But you know, picking out those two or three beats that really are important and visual and calling that out in your writing, so that the reader gets a good sense of that, but isn't bogged down by all this description.

And so, I think you need to keep the script moving by being very economical with your word choice. And the fights never gonna be...I write, ‘they fight sometimes.’ And they do. And like these amazing stunt coordinators, and directors, and people come in and do all this sort of stuff. But it's a really delicate balance that you find as a writer where you need to manage how you describe and how much you give.

And I like intercutting. I think intercutting is a really good tool you can use in your writing, to sort of convey the feeling of what this scene is going to be like, if the action is fast-paced, and there's a lot of stuff going on in the cutting and the tension. You don't want to overuse it, but I think a little bit of cross-cutting in your writing can give people the feeling that you want them to have and what they'll see on screen even though if it's not the exact way you're writing them tumbling and doing all this sort of stuff.

So, it's little tricks that you pick up both by doing it a lot. And then also reading a lot. I think it's still the most essential tool to being a screenwriter is reading other people's work and seeing how the people who are really good do it.

Sadie: That was such a great min-masterclass session on mapping out those beats. I’m curious, what scripts are you currently reading?

Daniel: It's crazy. I have a lot of them. I've read Glass Onion like 15 times… I've got all the West Wing script books…And it's like a warm blanket. I already know what they are but I like to get into it. The script that I'm reading now that I've read, probably three times in the last month is Oppenheimer, because I think A, it's insane, the structure, all of Nolan's structure is crazy. I read the Prestige all the time, or watch the Prestige all the time, like. But when I'm talking about inner cutting, and how he's able to, even his first act, how he builds tension through this sort of inner cutting of the stories, it's not just in the movie, like if you read it in the script, you feel it.

And he's also what no one will give him credit for because he's doing so many other things - the dialogue is so precise. And I know that they always say, ‘Shorter is better’ on dialogue, right? But the economy of words he uses, and the way he is conveying character, but also tension, but also heavy exposition. It's like a magic trick. It's insane. And again, he'll never get the proper credit because he's doing so many other things. The movie’s got so much other stuff happening. But what it really comes down to is he has an economy of dialogue that's insane.

The award script season, especially now when they're putting them all online, like I've got a folder where it's just, it's called “Scripts to Read” and I'll just go down and it's like, ‘Oh, that's a movie I love,’ and it's like boom, PDF, boom, drop it in there - American Fiction - done, drop it in there. And then I'll slowly make my way through them over the course of the year, or whatever it is. But I think it helps.

For Lift, I read Ocean's Eleven like six times - I love it so much. And different sort of heist movies and other things. I think it's important not just to watch them, but to also read them. Because you see when you're doing a complicated heist sequence, and we're intercutting and a lot of information, and it's like what are we describing? What are we doing through dialogue? It's like, well, how did they do it when they wrote it? And you'll see, because there is that magic that happens between just the page, and then what you see on screen. And so, it's interesting to see…again, it's a magic trick, as a writer, it's your job to sort of figure out how to get the directors and the actors to make the scene you want by using as little words as you can. And sometimes it works amazingly. 

Lift is now streaming on Netflix.