Saturday Morning Massacre: Aaron Leggett and Jory Balsimo's Marathon Writing Sessions

This is the second in a series of four interviews related to the Austin-shot movie Saturday Morning Massacre (Jette's review), which recently premiered at Los Angeles Film Festival. Check back for the others in the next couple of days.

As Saturday Morning Massacre's producer Jonny Mars told us, the writers were brought in after the producers developed a treatment for a horror movie based around the Perry Mansion. Aaron Leggett and Jory Balsimo, longtime writing partners, have the details on how the script came together. 

Slackerwood: Tell us how you guys got involved with this film.

Aaron Leggett: We'd been writing with Spencer [Spencer Parsons] for a couple years. Spencer had a short playing at SXSW and he was crashing on my couch since he lives in Chicago now, and he came home one night and said, "I might be working on this crazy horror movie." We're like, "Hey Spencer, we just finished writing a horror script. You should try to get us on board." So he talked to Jason [Jason Wehling] and Jonny and a couple of days later we were on it.

Did they give you a premise?

Jory Balsimo: They had a core story that was already pretty much set in stone. They wanted "Scooby-Doo-ish."

Leggett: We kind of came in and filled in the details. I think there was one big night where we got to see the house.

Balsimo: Yeah, we walked around the house and hashed some ideas at. And then we went to Spider House.

Leggett: It was like a marathon. We got the bones taken care of that first night and then we fleshed out a 25-page treatment based on on those notes we had.

Balsimo: I think that was about 12 days. Aaron and I were writing about 10 hours a day for almost two weeks almost, and still writing on set as well. With this kind of thing, you almost have to, based on practicality and budgetary reasons. If we can't afford to do something, we have to rewrite the scene. It was fun.

Leggett: We learned a lot. It was our first feature.

How did you two meet?

Balsimo: Aaron and I started waiting tables together and started writing together. Spencer was Aaron's roommate when we started writing together. So I'd go over to Aaron's house and then we'd walk down to Donn's Depot.

Leggett: We had a little table in the corner of Donn's Depot and that's where a lot of our ideas come from. That's our spot.

Balsimo: And Spencer started coming along, because these guys had written another horror script together.

Is there anything you're working on now that you can talk about?

Leggett: I don't know, have you talked to Spencer? Talk to Spencer. There are a couple of projects we're trying to get off the ground.

Keep an eye out for our next Saturday Morning Massacre interview, in which we take the writers' advice and talk to Spencer (Parsons).

[Photo credit: "Aaron Leggett and Jory Balsimo" by J. Kernion. All rights reserved.]