Unveiling Secrets: Sam Regnier Reveals the Untold Stories Behind His Most Captivating Works

My conversation with the 2015 Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting winner.

Sam Regnier wrote the original screenplay “Free Agent” which won a 2015 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Sam and I had an excellent phone conversation in which we covered a lot of territory, his background and how he got into writing, a deep analysis of “Free Agent”, and a discussion about the writing craft.

Scott Myers: You grew up in the Midwest?

Sam Regnier: Yeah, I grew up in Kansas originally. Overland Park, Kansas.

Scott: In your acceptance speech for the 2015 Nicholl Award, you thank your father for teaching you about work ethic and your mother for teaching you to love story. I was wondering if you could maybe unpack that in terms of how you learned the lessons from each of them when you were growing up.

Sam: My dad was an entrepreneur. He started a bank out of a trailer — like a house trailer — in Kansas. My mom worked there, and they eventually grew it into a regional bank. My dad has always been dedicated to the idea that if you work hard every day that eventually you’re going to get what it is you want.

My mom is an obsessive reader. If she was in the middle of a book, she’d bring it in the car and try and get a paragraph in while she was driving, which isn’t the safest thing in the world, but… [laughter] …it definitely filtered down to my brother and my sister and I. We would go on these road trips to Colorado or Minnesota, and we would go for two hours, three hours, in the car, and nobody would say a word, because my dad’s driving, and the rest of us are reading. That’s the way we grew up.

Scott: And I’m assuming your reading led you into writing…

Sam: Yeah, I started writing pretty young. When I was still in elementary school, I started doing a little bit of fiction. But really, I focused on poetry. I entered a variety of poetry contests starting in middle school, all the way through high school. I did OK.

I focused on writing poetry through high school — then graduation starts sneaking up and I realized — not only did I have no idea what I want to do with most of my life, I didn’t know where I want to go to college, or why I wanted to go there. There were only…