Leaping from whimsical Redditor to professional Hollywood screenwriter is the stuff of many Internet denizens' dreams. But for James Erwin of Des Moines, Iowa, it's just life these days.
During a lunch break last August, Erwin joined a Reddit thread and laid down the first installment of a sparse, noir-ish narrative addressing whether a modern American marine battalion could defeat the entire Roman Empire. Fellow Redditors were immediately hooked. They demanded more with up-votes and comments, pushing his work to the site's front page. By day's end, Erwin had an offer for representation from the talent management firm Madhouse Entertainment. Two weeks later, he had an offer from Warner Brothers to do a full screenplay.
Freelance journalist Jason Fagone wrote a fantastic full-length profile of Erwin for the most recent issue of Wired magazine (go buy it!). In the article, we learn Erwin may be lucky, but he's also talented: he's penned two encyclopedias, one on American secessionist movements, one on American military actions; he's written for McSweeney's, and he's a two-time Jeopardy! winner.
We tracked Erwin down Monday to ask a few him questions ourselves. He's part-time now at his old job writing software manuals for a financial services company. He works on the first-draft screenplay — called Rome Sweet Rome — between helping his wife prepare for their second child and care for their young son. Here's what Erwin had to say about Reddit, writing, and his life's crazy course of late.
Q&A with James Erwin
So just where does the project stand now on its way from Reddit to the movie screen?
Warner Brothers accepted the treatment and gave me a little feedback. The first draft screenplay has been vetted by my mangers, so now I have a month-and-a-half left to tweak it. Once I turn that in, then we'll see who they get to be interested in the movie and see what gets changed depending on who acts and directs.
What was your reaction when you heard from Madhouse just hours after posting your first comment?
I wasn't dubious, because I'd already been contacted by a producer from Europe and had several offers to syndicate the remainder of the story. I was cautious with everyone that first day, but thought it was entirely plausible the Madhouse guys were credible. I Googled them, and they seemed to have some big names and a good reputation on some of the message boards screenwriters use. So I thought, 'If I'm going to make the most of this opportunity, I'm going to have to put my hand out there and trust people.'
What do you like so much about Reddit?
'It's the human condition plus points,' is what I told Jason. What I love is it takes conversation and improvisation, and turns it into a game where you can see the points rack up in real-time. It almost makes it more addictive than the real world. It you're speaking with someone, you can see if they like what you're saying or not — but you don't get points for it.
What's happened to you over the past six months obviously wasn't possible just a few years ago. Do you think your story right now is simply a creature of the Internet or something more particular to Reddit?
Reddit has a sense of immediacy a lot of other sites don't. It's possible to go to a lot of other sites and throw up a big chunk of information and hope people see it. But the way Reddit works, it's wave after wave of viral content on the first page, because people have to constantly vote things up. In that regard it's easier to put something up and see what people think of it very quickly. I think that's a big part of what happened with Rome Sweet Rome. It wasn't just that I put something good up. If I had posted that whole thing a few hours later, so many people might not have seen it. For everything to happen the way it did required that massive gut-level response. The whole thing was just so, so very lucky. I worked hard to get the skills that went into this, but it was a very brief window I was able to exploit.
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