Script Apart: ‘The Terminal’ Screenwriter Sacha Gervasi on Finding Inspiration in Location

This summer marks 20 years since The Terminal, a heartwarming drama about an Eastern European man stuck in New York's John F. Kennedy Airport following a military coup in his home country directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Hanks as Viktor, debuted.

Unable to enter America and unable to fly back home, Viktor’s story unfolds in just one location—a constraint that might start to feel one-note and boring quickly were it not for all the brilliantly observed characters that screenwriter Sacha Gervasi observed for himself in airports in real life and was able to pull into his script.

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“I was at Heathrow for a couple of days and saw a cleaner who became Gupta (Kumar Pallana) in the film. There was a catering guy at JFK who became Enrique, played by Diego Luna. They all appeared at different places at different times,” Gervasi told me recently on my podcast Script Apart.

Finding the Inspiration in Your Location

Airports are “places we all want to get through and get out of as quickly as possible,” Gervasi said. But if you stop and pay attention in these bustling hives of human activity, full of people journeying to different places for different reasons, there’s a near-endless well of real-life stories and characters to draw from.

“There was a guy at JFK who would sit there in a hat and glasses—he was well-dressed. He would spend all day sketching and I’d see him in the same seated area every time. I was like, 'Who is this guy?' It turns out he had been working at an advertising agency on Madison Avenue and had been fired six months before, and had not been able to tell his wife he’d lost his job. So he’d come to the terminal and sketch people,” Gervasi says, pointing to just one example.

His point is that, if you’re stuck for ideas in your own storytelling, inspiration might be waiting for you in public places, where stopping and observing people might spark your next great idea for a character.

It doesn’t have to be an airport. Shopping malls. Restaurants. Bars. You can try it anywhere.

Give it a go and see where it takes your writing. And in the meantime, listen to our full conversation in the episode above, supported by ScreenCraft.

Read More: 5 Trademarks of Steven Spielberg Movies

Check out our Preparation Notes so you start your story off on the right track!

Al Horner is a London-based journalist, screenwriter, and presenter. His work has appeared in The Guardian, Empire Magazine, GQ, BBC, Little White Lies, TIME Magazine, and more.