Unveiling Secrets: Jonathan Stokes Reveals the Untold Stories Behind His Most Riveting Works

My conversation with the five-time Black List writer.

Jonathan Stokes has written five screenplays which have made the annual Black List. They are:

• Blood Mountain (2011)
• Murders & Acquisitions (2011)
• Border Country (2012)
• Tchaikovsky’s Requiem (2013)
• Murder in the White House (2020)

That’s rarefied air for any screenwriter. He also has produced a fantastic video series I have featured here at Go Into The Story: Raising the Stakes.

Here is my interview with Jonathan.

Scott Myers: Jonathan, you’re not only a screenwriter. You’ve written novels, books, a musician. You play the spoons, evidently, and the saw. I’ve seen that on video. You created some Wiki thing that you sold. It’s amazing. You’re the Thomas Jefferson of screenwriters. You do everything.

Jonathan Stokes: Yes. First of all, I’m going to put Thomas Jefferson of screenwriters on my tombstone someday.

[laughter]

Scott: That comes from a UVA graduate, so that’s the real deal.

Jonathan: Wow, high praise. Hats off to your research department for finding a video of me playing spoons. I think Christopher Hitchens said there’s a relationship between music and writing. Show me a writer with an ear for dialogue, and I’ll show you a writer that had to take music growing up.

Scott: Okay, let’s start all the way back from where you began. I know, at some point, you were living in Connecticut. Did you grow up in the East Coast?

Jonathan: Yes, I grew up in the wilds of Connecticut, 3,000 miles from Hollywood, and wrote my first “book” when I was eight for a writing assignment in second grade.

In my little author bio page of the book, I wrote that when I grew up, I either wanted to be an author, or the guy who puts together dinosaur bones in the museum. I had narrowed it down to those two options. Then, in fifth grade, I wrote my first “screenplay.” It was six pages long, and…

Scott: Is this “Alienators”…