Unlocking Secrets: Sean Robert Daniels Reveals the Untold Stories Behind His Craft

Sean Robert Daniels’ original screenplay “Killers” is a taut, finely crafted thriller that won him a 2012 Nicholl fellowship. For those of you toiling away on spec scripts outside the United States, Sean can be an inspiration for you as he lives 10,364 air miles away from Los Angeles, all the way in Centurion, South Africa.

Here is my 2012 interview with Sean in its entirety.

Scott Myers: Let’s start off with this. Is it true your father named you after Sean Connery because he’s a big fan of James Bond?

Sean Robert Daniel: It is true. He was a big James Bond fan. I never really asked why he decided, but I think he was that big a fan. Sean Connery always seems to be in adventurous movies. Maybe he was hoping that I would lead a similar type of life.

Scott: It sounds like in some ways you may have done that as you’ve been to every continent on the earth, including Antarctica where supposedly you were on an island surrounded by penguins.

Sean: [laughs] What happened there was this: my Dad was turning fifty, all of us in the family had managed to get through our various travels to all six of the other continents, so he decided for his 50th he was going to take us all down to Antarctica.

Truly, it’s one of those things that you should plan one day to do. You have to leave from a town called Ushuaia on the very bottom edge of the world. It’s quite a very unusual town. I’d love to go back and spend more time there.

The whole town is very much in constant twilight because it’s so far south. We were there in the middle of summer, and it was snowing and twilight. Very unusual. You’re surrounded by the phrase, “the end of the world,” the entire time, partly because it’s the Tierra del Fuego, the land of fire, but also because it is the southernmost city in the world. There’s an apocalyptic feel to the place, which is very appealing.

You leave from there, and it takes about a day and a half for the ship to get to Antarctica. Every day you do two or three excursions out to the mainland or the islands. On the one island, it was breeding season. We were surrounded by 100,000 breeding penguins. It was quite cool. You’re not allowed to approach the penguins, but if the penguins…