BWW Interviews INADMISSIBLE Playwright D.B. Gilles

The world premiere of D.B Gilles' INADMISSIBLE is currently running at Tribeca's Canal Park Playhouse. Directed by Sherri Eden Barber and starring Charise Greene, Richard Hoehler and Kathryn Kates, the play is a hilarious, insider look at the backroom dealings of a graduate admissions committee at a university that is striving to make it into the Top 10. 

Gilles is the author of one of the most popular screenwriting books, 'The Screenwriter Within: How To Turn the Movie in Your Head into a Salable Screenplay' (Crown 2000) and co-author of the George W. Bush parody 'W. The First 100 Days: A White House Journal' (Andrews McMeel 2001).

His film work includes the screen version of his play 'Men's Singles', 'Burn Rate', 'Thinly Disguised' and the screen adaptation of 'Spinning Into Butter'. He has written pilots for CBS and wrote for 'Herman's Head' and 'Barclay's Beat' for FOX. He is also a produced and published playwright. Four of his plays are published by Dramatists Play Service: 'Men's Singles', 'The Girl Who Loved The Beatles', 'The Legendary Stardust Boys' and 'Cash Flow'. His most popular play, 'Men's Singles', has been produced throughout the world. He has also been published in The New York Times.

The accomplished writer recently spoke with BWW about his current production, the art of playwriting and the reason he believes a political parody book may soon be a thing of the past. 

The premise of your play is hilarious. What was your inspiration for it and do you have any personal experience in the college admission's process? 

Well about ten years ago I was at a party talking to somebody who had been on a graduate admissions committee. And as he was telling me about it, I thought 'wow that's kind of funny and a good thing to parody' and it gave me the idea for the story. I really wrote it as a screenplay for Adam Sandler. It was going to be a little bit sillier but when I finished it, it became, for lack of a better word, too talky for a screenplay. I started to think that it might work better as a play. So I put it away for a while. You know its hard to go from genre to genre.

But along the way, while I never did graduate admissions, I did do undergraduate admissions, which is basically reading submissions. And I got an understanding of the fundamentals of what happens when someone submits something, a creative portfolio. I learned what they do and you know it's kind of basic, it's common sense. So that was my own experience. But I talked to different people at different schools that have been involved at the lower level, where I was, as well as the higher level, and that's when I realized it's really a tough thing to do. Let's say a school has thirty slots available. What happens if they have a hundred or three hundred people who want those slots? So that's where it becomes a daunting job.

When I wrote the screenplay, I had a similar plot as the play now has, but it was a different storyline. Adam Sandler was going to play a guy who gets a job at a small university as a basketball coach who happens to be really good at trivia. So a history teacher dies and they need somebody to replace him, and because he's good at trivia, they give him the teaching job and it sort of goes on from there. Along the way, besides being a popular history teacher, he's brought into the admissions office and that's where he brings the silliness as well as the logic of somebody who's never been exposed to that situation. In the play, he was to be the younger female character, the adjunct professor. 

So that's kind of how it evolved, and then along the way I did a couple of re-writes and had a meeting or two and got feedback. And because I'm a writer, I know a lot of writers and I asked my friends because we are each others best critics. I'd ask them, 'so what do you think?' and I kept getting more feedback such as 'let's try this, let's try that'.  Of course the rehearsal process is wonderful too. I have a wonderful director and cast and there's nothing like seeing something on its feet. An actor might say 'can I say this instead of that' and 'wouldn't she do this instead?' You know that kind of stuff. So the whole rehearsal process was terrific as well.

I'm wondering why you decided to write the play from the point of view of the admissions committee as opposed to the point of view of the applicants. 

It's so funny you ask that because I did try to find a way to do it from the student's point of a view, but I couldn't find the story. You know, I'm a writer as well as a teacher and I've been teaching lots of students. I've taught everyone from incoming freshman to grad school students. As a writing teacher, sometimes you hear an idea and the person has the situation but they don't have the story. And sometimes it's a good premise, but what's the story? And that's what drives writers nuts! I don't care what age you are. So from the point of view of the students, I couldn't seem to make that work, but I could make it work from the point of the admissions committee. Again it was always Adam Sandler in my head - not the goofy 'Happy Madison' Adam Sandler. You know as he's matured his characters are no longer the goofy guy, they've become much more articulate, so it would have worked. So I had that situation, I had the story all mapped out, so I just had to go where the muse hit me! Once you find the story, that's half the battle - it becomes a whole different game. 

You kind of touched on this already, but being that you are a screenwriter and a playwright, when you do come up with an idea for a story, what is the process you go through to decide which route you are going to take? 

It's a great question, I'll tell you why. You get an idea and you say what is this? Or let's just say you get an idea for a play. Is it a one-act play? For INADMISSIBLE, we decided to run it without an intermission. Originally it was a two-act play but that's the beauty of the rehearsal process, which is when I decided to make the change. Because it's a fast paced show, we decided, you know it's going to have an imbalance and I don't like an imbalance when I go to a show. We would have had a good solid fifty-two minute first act and then it would have been a twenty minute second act. So I said 'let's run it straight through'.

That being said, if you are a playwright and you have an idea, you have to ask, 'is it big enough to be full length?' Sometimes it's not big enough, so you write a one-act play. I've taught playwriting as well and one of the rules we always teach is 'if it's sixty pages long, it's a one-act play. Eighty pages or more, it's a full act play. But then of course you have that no man's land. If you write a sixty-three page play you have that middle ground. So then it depends on when the play is once it's on its feet.

It's the same way with a screenplay. You get an idea and you say, 'is this a short screenplay or full length screenplay or is it really a screenplay at all?  Maybe it's a play or a novel. So it's these decisions you make. Most people I know tend to write one thing. They are either screenwriters, playwrights or they might be in television, it's all the same way. Is this a screenplay or a TV series? You have to balance it. I'm a playwright but I'm also a screenwriter. I always encourage people to do both. To try to do everything.

It's funny. I've published three books on writing and filmmaking and if you had told me twenty years ago that I would have one of the most popular books on screenwriting out there, it just came out in the second edition this past year, I would have said 'You're nuts. I hate journalism! I like to make stuff up!' But my agent said 'hey you're teaching screenwriting. Ever think of writing a book on screenwriting?' I said 'not really but let me think about it' and that's how it happened. 

I know that you've also written some political satire. I was wondering what your thoughts were about the current bid for the Republican nomination. Do you look at that as potential material for another parody book?

Well, I wrote a parody about George Bush with a friend of mine, Sheldon Woodbury. Remember the election nobody knew who won Bush or Gore for a few weeks? Well that had given me an idea. The first hundred days of a president's administration is supposed to be defining for what he's going to do during his entire administration. So I had an idea that if Bush won, I could write a fake diary of his first hundred days in office. Unfortunately, I couldn't propose it to my agent because I didn't know who won the election! But when the news eventually came that Bush won, I called my agent and said I had this idea and she said 'give me some samples'. So within ten minutes I sent her a sample and overnight she had a deal! But she said 'we need this in three weeks'! So I called my friend Sheldon and said we gotta do this and we got it done in three weeks! It happened fast and it came right at the right time. It was a nice, fun thing.

But what's happened over the years in doing these parody books, it's kind of like it's a timing thing. You have to find the right person at the right moment in time and it's got to be done quickly. My feeling is that a lot of publishers in the last several years have changed for a lot of different reasons. They're kind of reluctant to invest in the quick book. Five months ago I sent my agent an email asking 'what do you think of a parody of Michelle Bachman?' Remember she was kind of on the rise for a while. And my agent said 'I don't think so because it's too soon'. You don't know what will happen and then look what happened. It was just an idea I had, a situation, but I didn't officially pursue it and it's a good thing because she's gone, gone pretty fast!

One of the funniest things I saw recently was a tweet that somebody wrote saying that Newt Gingrich is Benny Hill reincarnated. I think that's hilarious and if you look at him you say 'you know, it's true!' A lot of young people don't even know who Benny Hill is, but I think it's hilarious. But right now it looks like it's going to be Romney.  And now with the internet, there are so many bloggers and tweeters who are doing parody. Where somebody might have had a parody book deal ten years ago, now they are just posting it or tweeting it.

Yes, I see what you mean! So what are your hopes for INADMISSIBLE once this run ends?

Well whenever you do a show at this level the hope is that it moves to a larger venue and has a nice run. Right now we're in a wonderful theater, beautiful little space. And I hope that either an investor or a producer hears about it, sees it, and asks 'what can we do with this?' Another theater might see it, like the Manhattan Theater Club for example, who has a bigger space where you can move it up. That's the dream. I've had four plays published. You hope it gets picked up and gets published by the Dramatists Play Service and that it has a life. My first play was publishd thirty years ago and I still get royalties. It's a completion. You write it, if you're lucky, you get a production, if you're really lucky it becomes kind of a fact. This show has a nice little run here. And sometimes, if something succeeds in New York it will go to LA. It will have a nice life and then you get it published. That's the ideal path.

Well judging from last night's great audience response, I think it has a great future.

Thank you. Yes, it was a good show. It was only their fifth performance in front of an audience. At this level of theater you can't have four weeks rehearsal. You can't have three weeks of previews. The cast and director are wonderful, they did a great job so I'm very happy.

INADMISSIBLE is now playing for a limited engagement through Saturday, February 18. Performances take place at Canal Park Playhouse (508 Canal Street, between Greenwich and West Streets in Tribeca). The performance schedule is Wednesday – Saturday at 7:30 PM. The regular ticket price is $18. For tickets or more information, call OvationTix on 1-866-811-4111 or visit www.canalparkplayhouse.com.