Meet Myles Lazarou | Screenwriter

We had the good fortune of connecting with Myles Lazarou and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Myles, why did you decide to pursue a creative path?
I pursued an artistic career for a simple reason: I want to genuinely love what I do. Telling stories has been a passion of mine since I was a child and honestly way before I thought about it as a career. I’ve done the corporate thing before and I just knew it ultimately wasn’t going to make me happy. The path to becoming a professional screenwriter has had its fair share of stress and bs but whenever I complete a script there’s just a level of passion and fulfillment that has yet to be rivaled by anything else in my life. Maybe I’m just a junkie who can’t quit the feeling but I’ve become incredibly determined to make a life from this. I always tell people that even though I may not be making a whole lot of money from it, I already have my dream job. There are times, times which occur frequently when I am overcome with self-doubt and wonder if I’ve made a mistake committing as hard as I have, but I always come back around to realize how much I get out of the process of creating alone. Even though our capitalistic society is always telling you that it’s about money or the product or the fame or whatever, it’s really about passing on a vibe or emotion through the art form. For me, it’s about growing and challenging myself. It’s not easy, and I forget that almost as much as I remember, but I guess that’s just a part of the struggle. Not to sound morbid, but one day the sun is going to blow up and take the earth with it. Everything will be lost, nothing will remain. It’s a bit of a universal memento mori, a reminder that my enjoyment of life in the here and now is probably the most important thing. I think of how Emily Dickinson’s poems weren’t discovered until after her death. Now I don’t know if somewhere Emily is enjoying the validation of strangers beyond the grave, but I choose to believe that she wrote those poems in the moment because it felt good for her. If it was good enough for Emily Dickinson, then I’m sure I’ll live.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
This is a funny question to me because I feel like I’m still incredibly early in my journey as a screenwriter. I have yet to join the writer’s guild or have a credited script on a television show or feature film. That being said, I feel like it’s only a matter of time.

After graduating college I did an unpaid internship for a well-known producer before joining the mailroom at United Talent Agency. I had already written a pilot and plenty of short films while in school but felt like I needed to take the classic advice of going the talent agency route. It was an incredibly difficult time in my life. I was going through a breakup, suffering through severe depression, taking care of my elderly grandmother with dementia, and dealing with the loss of my other grandmother and the distribution of my grandparent’s estate. All of this was during my first suit and tie job. I was working long hours, getting paid what is now under minimum wage in Los Angeles, and finding zero time to write. Finally, a day came along where they wanted to promote me and I decided to take the risk and quit right then and there. I had this feeling that if I didn’t get out I was going to continue settling for a life I didn’t want and that my dream of telling stories would die. It was the kind of decision that most people would say made little sense. I lost most of my work friends, I moved back in with my parents, I started going to therapy, and most importantly I started writing again. Pretty soon, I was doing freelance script coverage and churning out shorts, features, pilots, and episodes.

None of it was easy though. I’d try and shoot the shorts and disaster would continually strike. I had no money so everything I did was guerilla style. After two shorts failed in preproduction, I decided to write a feature film that I would star in myself and that I’d shoot on the streets of LA for under $15K which is about $10k less than what Kevin Smith had to shoot Clerks. I was probably in over my head but I didn’t care. We were in preproduction when the pandemic hit and put everything on ice. Undeterred, I immediately buckled down and wrote a feature film, a family drama road trip film, that would time out to be over three hours. Feeling like I had little to lose I sent it to the producer I used to work for and his positive feedback and genuine love of the script changed my life. The problem is a low-concept, 3-hour, indie feature, is basically unsellable. One of these days, I’ll cut it down but from that point on I became convinced that I could make a career out of this. So I just kept going. I wrote three episodes of a comedy, a period murder mystery feature, a limited series coming-of-age drama about my years living on a farm in NC while in high school, another feature, and am currently working on a limited series.

Between all the writing, my siblings and I shot a short film in secret during lockdown which actually went on to win a few festivals. It was kind of like a mini-film school. With just three days of shooting time, I wrote it, directed it, color-graded it, edited it, and wrote an original song. Even though hardly anyone will ever see it, I’m immensely proud that I got it done and that it was done with family. Through the years of writing, there’s been a lot of tough breaks. I’ve placed in plenty of big contests with the hope of gaining representation from an agent or manager with no luck. I’ve had my work read at studios and by agents with no one quite willing to take a gamble. I’ve had my race called into question and been told to be something that I’m not. I even had a manager back out of representing me in the last year. The strikes hit and I was completely ghosted.

All of this is to say that the journey has forced me to learn a lot about myself. It’s allowed me to see this business from multiple angles. Whether through taking acting classes, making my own short film, working as a production assistant, working under a producer, or working at an agency, I’ve found that my journey has given me more empathy for the people I hope to collaborate with. It has given me more life experience and even more life to draw from in my writing. It has shown me that I’m more tenacious than I ever thought. It has taught me how to keep challenging myself and improving as a writer. It’s also shown me the dark sides of following your passion. The world is far from a meritocracy and luck is essential to success. Anyone who tells you differently likely has survivor’s bias. Even so, I pray that luck comes my way, and I work to make my own luck as paradoxical as it all sounds. To be frank, I think to try and do this requires a certain level of delusion. It’s all based on opinions and perceptions. The entertainment business is mostly homogenous. If you don’t fit the mold or the industry’s idea of what you should be you’re going to run into a hell of a lot of obstacles. I know I have. Breaking in is still the biggest challenge I face. I haven’t overcome that one. The thing is, I’m a little too obsessed, a little too confident, and having way too much fun to quit.

So what sets me apart from others? Well, I think I can write in any genre and give you something you haven’t seen in that genre. I draw from a weird ass life experience as a half-black half-Jewish LA native turn farm boy turn elite Ivy League high jumper. Despite the specificity of who I am or where I’ve been, I feel like writing has been this connector to the universal emotions we all feel as people. I think I can write in any genre because I think it’s a matter of tapping into the humanity we all possess. Humans are complicated in simple ways, if you can figure that out then I think you’ve got a jumping-off point for anything.

The thing I’m most proud of is honestly that I just keep going. I finish every idea I set out to write. I never question my dedication. That alone helps me sleep at night. It may sound basic, but I do the damn thing. I used to feel uncomfortable calling myself a screenwriter because I didn’t have the markers of success one would expect. Then I realized, this shit is my everything. If I can’t own it, then I can’t own myself and that’s no way to live. I am a screenwriter simply because I have a massive stack of scripts to prove it. If the world could know anything about my story or my brand or what I’m setting out to do it’s that I want to give you a good time. I want the world to have as much fun with my writing as I do. I want the world to be able to sit down and enjoy something fresh and original, and I know I have that.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
Oh, man. LA is such a huge sprawling city that I think to truly experience it you have to not only actually move here but also have an open mind and wallet. I actually keep a massive list of restaurants that I love so I won’t list them all out but a nice hack about LA is that so many of the neighborhoods are culturally specific. I mean there’s a little Tokyo and a Japan town. There’s Chinatown, Thai Town, Little Armenia, El Salvador Corridor, Koreatown, Persian Square, Little Ethiopia, and probably some others that I’m missing. Go to any of those places and you’re guaranteed authentic cuisine from around the world. In my opinion, Los Angeles is the most underrated food city on the planet. I haven’t even scratched the surface of the food truck scene. Even outside of these neighborhoods, great food abounds. So if I was hosting someone, which I have many times, I’d probably just draw straws or throw a dart at a map, if we’re still too indecisive then I’d take them Downtown to Grand Central Market and let their brain explode from all the choices.

Each person is different, right? So I always like to make recommendations whether it’s food or television or whatever, based on a person’s personality and not just what I like. You got to get into the character. If they like comedy I’m taking them to the Comedy Store. If they like architecture I’m driving them through the hills and Hancock Park. If they like art I’m taking them to the Getty, If they want a nice view I’m taking them to the Griffith Observatory or Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area. If they like surfing, we’re going to El Porto. If they like the beach I’m taking them to Point Dume. If they like hiking I’m taking them up to Sandstone Peak. If they like music we’ll see a show at the Greek or the Troubador or maybe even a Sofar Sounds show. That’s the thing, there’s so many options it’s crazy.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
My family. My two older brothers Thayer and Julian, my younger sister Michaela, my girlfriend and my parents. Without them, I’d probably have given up a long time ago.

I’d also like to shout out my roommates: Oseoba Airewele, Andrew Barlow, and Lionel Chambers.

Image Credits
Thayer Lazarou Lionel Chambers