Alum Spotlight: KAITLIN FONTANA

Kaitlin Fontana (SWC alum ‘17) is an Emmy-nominated writer and director. Her feature film script, GIRLFRIEND ON MARS, was on the 2019 Black List and her directorial debut, FRANCHESCA, was a Sundance Film Festival selection. Kaitlin lives in Los Angeles, CA, and was born in Fernie, BC, Canada.

Fontana’s credits include hosting the Writers Guild of America, East podcast, OnWriting.. Her writing has won prestigious honors including the inaugural WGA/Made in New York Writers Room Fellowship, NYTVF 2018 Development Deal with Audible, 2018 WriteHer List Honoree, NFF 2017 Showtime Tony Cox Episodic Comedy Screenplay Award, which included a spot in the Episodic Comedy Screenwriters Colony, and 2017 Bitch List Honoree. 

Last month, Kaitlin hosted Screenwriter Sessions LIVE, our inaugural collaboration with the Nantucket Film Festival. She moderated conversations between a group of 25 writers and screenwriter greats, Nancy Meyers, Stella Meghie, Leslie Dixon, Greg Nava, and Charlie Kaufman. It was a unique, singular event and Kaitlin was a big reason for its success. 

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SWC: So what are you doing these days on the day to day? 

I have a day job and this is something I talk about a lot about with my students and when I'm mentoring. My day job is not related to the industry or my other writing work. I work as an assistant to an artist who lives in New York. When I moved out to L.A. during COVID, she was kind enough to say “yeah, go for it” because I was working remotely already.  So I work during the day doing that, I teach classes sometimes at night, and then around that I do pitches for films and other writing work. I do my writing work whenever I can. 

SWC: What’s your COVID reality? Is it having a big impact on your daily life?

I have actually found COVID to be the most busy and productive time of my career. I have a number of projects in the offing now that I don't know that they would have necessarily taken off with the same speed. I feel like being available to chat with folks over Zoom first from New York and then from here has helped me to advance in my career a little bit. And I know that's a very privileged thing to be able to say in such a terrible, difficult time. 

SWC: Do you put your writing and development time in one box more than the other? With regard to film and TV and podcast and other forms of storytelling?

I went to Screenwriters Colony for the Episodic Comedy program and if you would have asked me then I would be like, oh, TV is where I'm headed. But then I wrote a feature film that got on the Black List, and actually film is always what I wanted to do. I was just a little afraid because it seemed so big when I was entering it from TV. But now features are the prime focus. In part because I like the closed loop which is something Nancy Meyers said the other day [during Screenwriter Sessions]. I appreciate that it has a beginning, middle and end. In TV, you're lifting so many other things when you're trying to sell someone on your idea. I have a lot of friends who work in TV and I see the sort of the things they go through regularly and it doesn't feel like as much of a home to me, which isn't to say I wouldn't love it there. I certainly love a writer's room and feature writing is much more isolated. But in terms of the work, right now I’m extremely drawn to writing features. That said, I have a short that  I'm working on, and I do have a couple of TV projects that are in their own stages and one sort of early stage podcast project.

Kaitlin Fontana directing on set in Manhattan with Samantha Bee, Masha Gessen, and Jason Alexander on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee.

SWC: I saw that your directorial debut made it into Sundance. A lot of screenwriters are asked if they want to direct. Do you have any specific advice for writers who are considering taking the leap from writer to writer/director?

KF: My piece that went to Sundance was an indie episodic short, so it was the first episode of a short series. I didn't make it with the thought that it was going to be submitted to Sundance. I made it with Franchesca Ramsey, an excellent, wonderful, super smart, super amazing performer, comedian, actor, writer, who I work with quite a bit. She and I were paired together by our mutual manager to work on this project. And when I was writing it and everyone was excited about it, they were like “Who do you think should direct it?” And I was just like “Me.” It was a little bit hubristic, I think, on my part. But also I felt ready to do it. I had been directing short form comedy for the previous three or four years in New York City and I felt like I could do it well and cheaply and that it could be an interesting experience. And it was the first time I had a set where I actually had like a proper crew and money. 

As for takeaways, I would tell someone — you’re ready. You might not feel ready, but you're ready. You just have to do your work. I felt really prepared when I hit the set. And don't be afraid of what you don't know. I fully admit that in my first conversations about getting a crew together with a producer they were like, “Do you have an AD in mind?” And I was like, “Let me think about that.” And I'm Googling under the table: What does an AD do?

You can’t sit on your hands and say “I don't know if I'm ready to do this” forever. At a certain point, you have to leap and trust that you can do it and trust that if you've been watching and paying attention to how other folks do this and you're coming into it with empathy and an open heart, that you have the skills you need to do it well. 

I'm taking a directing class through Sundance right now just to brush up some skills and one of the first things the instructor said was, don't be shy about what you don't know. Especially when you're being bombarded with a thousand questions on set, which happens. It's okay to be like, “I don't know, but I'll find out.” Next to Screenwriters Colony, Sundance is the organization I owe the most to in terms of craft. 

SWC: How do you bring your personal self, your politics, your identity, into your writing, directing, and/or producing life?

One of the things that I was asked with FRANCHESCA was what do you want your crew to be like? The only thing I knew because I'd been doing this for the previous few years on the comedy side is that I wanted an all women crew. When we were at Sundance, people asked us about it all the time as if it was this incredible achievement. And I was like, it's not hard to say that's what you want. Those women exist and they don't get hired as much as they should. 

There was one dude on set. And he was so out of his element, it was hilarious. There was a point where we had to move a pool table at a venue that we were trying to convert. And he looked around and you just saw that he was stricken because he was like, “Who do I ask?” Because normally there's a bunch of burly guys around. And without him saying anything, nine women just got together and moved the table. He was shocked. But I felt for that guy because he's experiencing the thing that a lot of women experience the other way almost every time you're on a set. It's super powerful to have the moment where you're the other. 

Kaitlin Fontana and Franchesca Ramsay at a press interview at Sundance in 2018

SWC: Did your desire for a female crew have to do with the piece itself or just your desire to flip the normal system? Or something else?

I have always made feminist comedy and been part of feminist comedy communities. I used to run a late night-style show in New York called The Box, which was a feminist comedy show, basically. I had an all women writing staff and it was very queer oriented. But it's interesting. I'm curious to see how the comedy scene comes out of COVID. The prevailing vibe in the theater we performed in was bro, which had been the case in a lot of comedy then and now. But when we started doing The Box, it was like the audiences changed in the bar. After the show you'd look around and it was just full of women and queerness and the vibe of everything completely changed. 

My experience of working in environments that were specifically femme was so positive that really at the outset, I was like, “well, I'm diving into this unknown thing with this short and a thing I know is going to set me at ease is just having a lot of women around because I like working with women.” And it does change the vibe of the set. 

I had at that point worked professionally in TV for a couple of years on sets that ranged in make up, but mostly were all male or mostly male. And I watched how the temperature changes in the room or how certain things are handled or how people talk to each other. And it just felt like my home was with a set of women and that's what I wanted to create. So as far as that's related to my identity as a woman and a queer person: I think that that's part of it, certainly. But it's also about creating opportunities and making sure people have a chance to get good on sets. And women just have fewer chances to get good on set. But it's also just what I wanted. It's what I felt good about having around me, the energy that I wanted around me, and to a larger point about how my identity interlocks with my work, I write and create projects about femmeness and queerness, but, importantly: Any explicit opportunity I've been given is by a woman. It’s amazing that women are like “you know what, I think you could do this and I want you to try.” And that was the same approach on FRANCHESCA, working with three women executives. I told the AP who was crewing the shoot, “I want all women.” She's like, “Oh, that's exciting. I'm going to try for that.” You know, women get excited to help each other. And it's really amazing. That's been a huge part of my career. 

SWC: You mentioned craft and Screenwriters Colony in the same sentence, so I need to follow up on that. Can you just speak a little bit about your Screenwriter Colony experience?

First of all, it's extremely well-run. It's this beautiful opportunity for writers that I didn't know existed. I won the Showtime Tony Cox Award that year which granted me an automatic slot. I'd never been to Nantucket and all of it was very fresh to me. When I arrived I happened to be with — and I'm completely biased when I say this, but — the best group of human beings I've ever met in my life. To this day we are on a text thread, the four of us. We talk every single day and have spoken to each other every day with very few exceptions. Something sparked there and it was like a long term love affair between the four of us. There's nothing necessarily on paper to say that the four of us would glom onto each other the way we did. We're different people but we are, all of us, very close. We share work. We have writers groups. We help each other's projects. We pump each other up, like I got a text from them this morning, like, “Hey, you have pitches today. Good luck.” You know, it's a very supportive group of humans and the best people.

And we love Eric Gilliland, our mentor, to death. He's the best human being. We had a formative time in the trenches with our scripts. I feel really lucky that I had that experience through SWC. You get the incredible permission to just work on your work and not have to worry about feeding yourself or where you live. It was a leveling up for me, especially because I'd always written between other things, between doing weird jobs and running shows at night or doing improv or whatever, and I was always running from place to place.

SWC: I like to ask people to reflect on their childhood in some way. Is there something about your youth, the home in which you grew up or your early relationships that help you make sense of you as a writer? 

I grew up in a tiny Canadian ski town in the Rockies of five thousand people and the thing that started me on the path that I'm on now is that my mom was an actress and a drama teacher and a lover of television, film and comedy. She started me young on that. It’s a shared love of ours. She showed me SNL when I was young. We watched The Simpsons together. We watched all these shows. We still watch shows together remotely and then we text each other about it.  She's engendered this massive love of comedy in me for sure. She was a really good ally to me through my teenage years. I was an indoor kid and I loved to think and write and watch TV and watch movies from a very young age. TV and film has always been like a friend to me, and to be able to make it my job is very special.  

SWC : So many contemporary parents stress about screen time it’s interesting and even comforting to hear someone describe it as a productive, safe space. 

I was a kid of the 90s, so I was raised by TV in part. My mom was a single mom, she was a teacher. She had a job. And so I spent a lot of time in front of the TV and some people would argue that it was bad. And I think there's definitely good and bad things about it. But it also informed some aspects of my imagination. It taught me about story, created the writer and director that I am today in many ways. So I regret none of that time. I think it was well spent. 

SWC: Do you have any comedies you want to give a shout out to? Something current that makes you laugh?

KF: There is a series of comedy videos on Instagram by a character performer here in L.A. called Lisa Gilroy, which is called “Conversations with My Period.” She plays herself and her period, and they're brilliant. They're 30 seconds or one minute long about the thoughts that are going through her head while she’s experiencing her period. It's specific and weird and hilarious. I think she's shooting them all herself, which is brilliant. Her use of the camera is really dynamic, and I really noticed that on top of how funny the work itself was. I was stunned by how well she uses the camera as part of the game. She's using a lot of classic comedy structure too.

And I just finished the brilliant French series, Call My Agent, or as it's called in France, Dix Pour Cent. It’s sophisticated comedy and oozes empathy and has all these fun cameos from famous French performers. I teach pilot writing classes and I'm always examining half hour shows and I haven't been as affected by a half hour comedy series as I was by this one. It got me through the pandemic, actually. It took me two months to build up the mental preparation to watch the finale because I was really sad about letting these characters go.