5 Questions With Our Comedy Contest Grand Prize Winner Matthew Hirschhorn

"The Thallus of Marchantia" is loosely inspired by a real college prank that took place at the University at Buffalo in the early 60's. My fictionalized version is set in 1968 and tells the story of Marty Goodman, an insecure college student who manages to trick the entire city of Buffalo into believing he is the prince of a nonexistent country called "The Thallus of Marchantia". After originally concocting the idea as part of a social experiment for his psychology final, Marty quickly realizes that he could potentially use his new identity to score with the daughter of a United States Senator and his unattainable dream girl, Eve Ryan. Naturally, things quickly spiral out of control.

I was inspired to write "The Thallus" after being told the real story by someone who was at Buffalo at the time. It's actually an incredible story. These guys called the Buffalo evening news and told them "The Thallus" was coming and they actually ran the story. All of a sudden, the Mayor of Buffalo is offering the Thallus the key to the city. Everyone should look up the story. It's really hilarious. I knew that if I could create a strong specific motivation behind the main character pulling this prank and then had a bunch of stuff go horribly wrong for him, all the elements would be there for a funny unique comedy.

I've just always found it hilarious when people pretend they know what they're talking about but really have no clue. Even though this story takes place in the 1960's, well before the invention of the internet, it's still human nature for people to go along with the group rather than question something they suspect might be wrong out of fear of looking foolish. So even today, it still seemed like a relevant theme to explore in a comedy.

I've been writing since I was 20 years old and I just turned 27. I think I've written eight screenplays and my process for all of those was to basically think of an idea, think of a bunch of funny scenes, and try and piece them together...which is the worst process ever. I feel like only in the last few years have I started to finally understand what it takes to write a professional screenplay and I've been able to go back and work on two of my ideas that I felt had the most potential, one of those being "The Thallus". That lack of having a process is probably why I've been working on "The Thallus" for five years now.

So while I have only really been working on old stuff recently, if I were to start something today, my process would definitely be to outline every key story beat and to know as much as possible about every character before I ever write a word of the script.

Aside from the thousands of little things I've learned about writing a screenplay, the most important thing that I've learned in general since I started writing is that if I'm ever debating whether something is good, it's never good. At least for me. Sometimes, I'll ask myself if something can be better, whether it's a specific scene or a character's story arc, and I used to say to myself "It's probably fine". And I've been wrong every time I ever said that.

I'm sure most people my age who write comedy will say they were influenced by Judd Apatow. I would love to say something different but I can't. Unfortunately, I am one of the thousands of comedy writers trying to be the next Judd Apatow. Superbad, 40 Year Old Virgin, and Knocked Up are the movies that most make me want to write movies... I also love Chris Lilley. He's a genius.