Michael Lee Barlin made the Black List 2015 with his screenplay Final Journey, a winner in the 2015 Page Awards about an elderly Inuit woman forced out of her village to survive alone on the savage arctic tundra. Michael Lee’s screenplays have placed in the Austin Film Festival, Sundance Feature Film Program, ScreenCraft Screenplay Competitions, Fresh Voices, Fade In Awards and twice in the top 15% of the Nicholl’s Fellowship. Michael Lee also wrote, directed, and produced the six-time festival award-winning 35mm feature The Pig Farm. He is repped by Lee Stobby.

We recently explored the impact of The Black List in What Does the Black List Mean for Screenwriters and Hollywood? Here we sit down with one of the lucky and talented screenwriters that actually made the list, Michael Lee Barlin. 

ScreenCraft: Congratulations on making The Black List, Michael!  Can you tell us a little bit about where your screenwriting journey began?

Michael Lee Barlin: Firstly, Ken, thank you for the interview! I’ve been a longtime fan and user of ScreenCraft services and screenplay competitions so it’s a pleasure to be the actual subject for one of your stories!

As for me, I’ve been writing and making movies my entire life. When I was eight, I filled an entire marble notebook with an epic story called Space Snake. But the story never read the way I wanted it and it was years later that I realized I had written it more like a screenplay (sans formatting) than a proper prose story. I described what I saw and heard rather than any inner thoughts, etc. Soon after I started experimenting with 8mm cameras and the day my parents brought home a video camera, it was all over. I took it straight upstairs and spent hours making crude stop motion movies. Those hours stretched to years and really taught me the hard way (the just doing it way) how to tell stories in a visual way.

It was in my first semester in college though that I took an extra-curricular class on screenwriting and finally learned how to properly write and format a screenplay for film or television (after getting accepted to NYU and Syracuse, which proved too expensive, I attended the State University of New York in New Paltz). I then took two more years of screenwriting classes (in addition to production classes) and became a teacher’s pet of sorts, where my screenwriting teacher’s faith in me made me believe I had a real gift in this type of storytelling format.

Been writing screenplays ever since.

ScreenCraft: How did you get your representation?

Michael Lee Barlin: This past October, my script Final Journey was a Bronze Prize Winner in the Page International Screenwriting Awards. Lee Stobby, who also reps Bubbles which was the top script on this year’s Black List, was a judge for the Page Awards and reached out to me before a couple others did. Since he was first, we met up and he was so impassioned about me and the script, and just so amazing and enthusiastic all around, I signed with him that night. Best decision I’ve ever made.

ScreenCraft: Was Final Journey your first spec to hit the market?

Michael Lee Barlin: On this level, yes. I’ve been shopping around my previous scripts for a few years to a growing contact base but never had an experience like this. Lee got this script EVERYWHERE.

ScreenCraft: Tell us a little bit about the development of Final Journey, where the story came from, and how it evolved into the script that made it to the Black List.

Michael Lee Barlin: I came up with the original kernel of an idea when I was eleven or so, believe it or not. I was walking home one hot summer day in upstate NY dying of thirst and, trying to psyche myself out of minding how thirsty I was, tried to imagine a story scenario where someone would WANT to be dying of thirst. I then recalled hearing about the Inuit tradition of the elderly leaving the tribe to die in the tundra when they became too old to be of service to the community anymore, and it occurred to me then that would be an interesting story to tell. What would a journey to die look like?

That idea then rolled around in my head for years, not only NOT going away, but finding plot details here and there, and growing bigger and bigger until, after trying to write big commercial scripts for a few years, I finally had to put that story to paper before I went crazy. I didn’t know if anyone else would ever like it — I just knew I LOVED it. But then, after all the big “commercial” scripts I wrote over the years, this was the one that got everyone’s attention…

ScreenCraft: What has The Black List experience been like leading up to the announcement and shortly after?

Michael Lee Barlin: Incredible. A dream come true.

Oh, you want more? Well, after signing with Lee, he sent it all over town and everyone started requesting meetings with me. I’ve been on close to twenty meetings in the past month with execs at huge production companies and studios all over town. It’s been wonderful and surreal.

Then, about one week before the Black List came out, one exec predicted I would make the List this year because everyone in town was talking about it. Thanks to that comment, I ended up not sleeping for a week basically from nerves and excitement, and on the Monday morning the Black List came out, I sat at my desk at my day job sneak-listening to each script announcement until I was shocked to hear Adam Morrison say my name and inform me that the next year of my life would be amazing!

Shortly after my Twitter and Facebook pages “blew up” with congrats from all my writing and industry buddies who knew what the Black List actually was, then civilian friends and family who could tell it was a big deal from all the press, etc. I went out for drinks that night with Lee, and the Black Party the next night.

And now I have many more meetings, and more interest in Final Journey, lining up in the new year. So we’ll see!

ScreenCraft: What’s your next project?

Michael Lee Barlin: I’m currently securing the rights to a biopic I’d like to write one day, and developing a new spec Lee and I are excited about that basically takes the best aspects of Final Journey and puts them all in a more “commercial” context.

ScreenCraft: What advice do you have for screenwriters hoping and wanting to be on this list in 2016?

Michael Lee Barlin: Sign with Lee Stobby!

I think the Black List scripts stand out to execs because they are all very original and different from anything else crossing their desk. So don’t worry about being “commercial,” or chasing trends, where you’re competing with the white noise of hundreds of other similar scripts floating around, and just write something from the heart—something that really excites you. Be as original as possible and don’t just make it good, or even great, but make it INSANELY great. Make it a story you would lose your mind over if you saw it in a theatre one day—the movie YOU’ve been dying to see. Write THAT story, no matter how counter-intuitive it might seem (like the story of an elderly Inuit woman in her final days). Chances are, that’s the screenplay that will get you noticed.