Award-winning filmmaker Josh Mendoza, creator of “What Still Remains,” talks about his genre-bending debut novel, “Shadow of the Eternal Watcher,”(available now!) his journey from screenwriting to fiction, his inspirations, and the magic of the creative process.
Terry: You’ve had great success on the screen. What made you decide to write fiction?
Josh: I actually always wanted to do fiction. That’s what I originally went to school for. I was studying at Stanford.
I was in English classes doing a lot of short stories. And I actually, when a 19, 20 year old made took a film class there and just realized my mind does work very visually. Some of the short stories I was writing, people would be like, why are you writing it like this? And I’m like, Oh, you have to imagine.
I was basically describing camera angles. Oh, it’s spinning around them. So. I put that on the back burner and start chasing that film dream. And as you said before, I had my first feature come out a few years ago. What still remains that did really well and trying to get the next one off the ground. And as we were going through the pandemic and these different things and some projects start and stopped, I said, I’m going to get back to what I originally wanted to do.
Cause I had this big. Over the top sci fi adventure that I thought I don’t think I’m going to get the budget for this anytime soon for screenplay So maybe it would be cool to have it as a as a book that people could just pick up and read and use their Imagination so that’s why I started working on it and That’s what we have today, Shadow of the Eternal Watcher, who am I?
Terry: How did the concept of alternate realities and time travel come to life for you?
Josh: I always talk about how I love Star Wars and I love Star Trek and I just, I love the Twilight Zone. So it was a lot of Mirror Universe, Star Trek meets Twilight Zone just running around in my mind and I just Again, my film background, I love film noir.
So I just started doing kind of the pulpy, traditional detective story. And I thought, wouldn’t it be fun if this spiraled into this otherworldly adventure and the alternate reality. It’s not really time travel so much as they’re just way, way ahead of where we’re at. So it’s like traveling to the future, but it’s an alternate version of our reality, and I just had tried to have a lot of fun with it and do something.
Echoes some of the things we love from those classics and do something new with it.
Terry: I found your protagonist, Duster Raines, to be fascinating. How did you develop him?
Josh: I thought of him as, I wanted to play with this redemption arc, but also something that wasn’t super neat and clean. And obviously when you’re playing with the tropes, I like to take things that are traditional and spin them on their heads.
So the trope of the hard boiled detective, and he’s down on his luck, and he’s in the gutters. We’ve seen that before, but I wanted to play with this idea of, he didn’t really want to be that guy, and he just imagined this other life for himself, and what if he actually saw that other life? So that’s where this alternate reality version of himself came to fruition, and I just kept playing with that.
Spin in that and it became this kind of anti hero slash hero, Duster Reigns that I think has a lot of warts and ugliness to him, but also a lot of good. And I think that’s interesting from a storytelling perspective to get to explore too.
Terry: How hard was it to balance all the genres to create a cohesive narrative for the story?
Josh: I do this a lot. And then sometimes to my detriment, perhaps I go into meetings and people are like, I don’t know what movies it’s like. And I’m like, what’s unique. This movie and that movie. And they’re like, Oh, I wish it was more down the line. So same with the book. Sometimes people don’t want the.
Creative version, or they say they do. And then you do it and it’s, which was a little more like something I could recognize, but you’ve got to be true to yourself. And I think those stories are fun. And I try to write things that I would want to read or I would want to watch. And I think that hopefully that plays when people read it too, and they’ll enjoy it.
And it’s just supposed to be a fun, pulpy adventure with some deeper themes of self redemption and what makes you who you are and what makes us tick and the choices we make and how that leads us to where we. End up to what’s the magical Hollywood sentence for that is, you know, I hear things like Indiana Jones meets James Bond and those kinds of things.
Terry: How would you describe that for this story?
Josh: No, and now it’s been a big TV show, but when I started writing this, I thought of it as dark matter meets killing floor. So that’s now a Apple TV show, but I love that book by Blake Crouch and dark matter, and then obviously Jack Reacher’s become from the TV show.
Now that’s a big hit, but Tom Cruise before, but they were big books before too. So I just thought of it as. Those two books together and again dabbled with a lot of different stuff. It’s uh, it’s the long goodbye. It’s Chinatown It’s all those things. So I tried to it’s just a dash of that and a dash of that and how do I balance it?
I think I went too far sometimes with like certain aspects and then I let people read it and tell me what they loved and Listened to some of them and ignored others and dialed it back and ramped it back up and just kept writing and writing because that’s what It is, right? It’s You get the first bad version and then try to make it better.
How did you know when it was ready? You just start to say, because I think you could tinker forever. Honestly, I mean, you could. Um, even just recently you do that final proofread and they’re talking about commas. And you start like looking at the sentence structure and you’re like, you can really micromanage it.
And at a certain point you have to say, this is the baby. It’s the, it’s ready for the world and time to do a new one. I think. I guess that is one of the nice things with when you make a movie at a certain point, you have to release it too, but you do the same thing in movies. So you start moving scenes, you edit and when you’re writing the screenplay, you can, you just keep doing it and redoing it.
I think at a certain point you have to say, this is a really good version. What’s let live and go on to the next thing.
Terry: Which is harder, writing for the screen or writing a book?
Josh: They’re both hard in different ways, I would say. I think the trap with a book is you think, oh, I’ve got so many words, I could do whatever I want. But to me, I think where my screenwriting helped with the book is I was always thinking, how do I get through this scene?
Where’s my out? How do I keep the story moving? Where am I driving the character? And I tried not to write too much that didn’t drive the story forward and with a screenplay you’re limited You get 90 to 120 pages preferably under a hundred and that’s each page is about a minute in a movie world So you’re trying to imagine this is a 90 minute movie, right?
You have to get an actor to read a character and love them in a short period of time and you don’t have very many Words to do it, but you also have to be pithy and get them interested too. You can’t be so bare bones that it’s just dialogue either. There’s a balance there. Whereas in the book, I think it’s almost the opposite where I tried to really hone in on the things I’m good at.
I love action. I love big set pieces, though. I just tried to move the story forward and get to these different set pieces. Have fun while we’re on the way.
Terry: The finished project is almost always different than what you started out with as your dream. What did that feel like when you were sitting in the director’s chair watching everything come together for your film?
Josh: Yeah, I think I know a lot about a lot of things, but I also recognize that I’m not the best at everything. So I think in a movie, it’s great because you can get a great DP to shoot the movie. You can get a great. 80 to keep you on time. You can get great producers that see your vision and help you make the script better.
And I just tried to surround myself with really great people. And I think we, on that movie, we pulled in a lot of that USC magic and punched above our weight class in that movie. If you watch that movie, it’s a low budget film, and I think it looks like it costs a lot more than it did. So I think that’s the beauty.
And I think what’s cool about a movie is sometimes you’ve, you pre visit shot list of the year. This is what’s going to happen. But when you actually get the camera there and you let an actor do some things and you don’t, you know, cut right when you think you were supposed to, you let it run, sometimes you find magic moments that you didn’t imagine.
And that’s where the cool stuff can happen in movies is the things you. I didn’t imagine that may, that pluses your vision.
Terry: I remember as I was first watching What Still Remains, exactly what you were saying about punching above your weight. It felt to me like it was more immersed in the story than deconstructing the building of that story, which is what a lot of us in the business like to do. How did you find that sweet spot with that film?
Josh: It was, I had, I just, I can’t speak enough to the talent that was around me. I was so lucky to have. Really talented people helped me make that story better. And I had great actors who had great insights and sometimes would say, could I say this? Could I say it like this more?
And I trusted their instincts. And as long as it didn’t change the story or wasn’t a bad idea, obviously sometimes you have to pull people back, but I think I was very lucky in that I had a lot of people committed to just bringing my vision to the screen as the best way possible. And I am so thankful that they were all there, honestly.
Terry: In Shadow of the Eternal Watcher, I do sense the presence of some of those names you were mentioning when you were talking about The Long Goodbye. What other authors do you think are influencing your style?
Josh: Oh goodness, that’s a great question. Like I said, The Long Goodbye, and then I just always am reading and getting inspired by people, and obviously the book’s done, but now I’m reading like Rob Hart, and I love what he’s doing with like the Paradox Hotel recently.
He did the warehouse and just like, Oh, that’s so smart. And it just gets my wheels spinning. So I’m just always, you read and you watch movies and you look for great ideas and great talent. And then you say, I have a similar idea. How could I make it better? How can I make that different? How can I, that was like what I was thinking I wanted to do.
So what’s something completely different I could do? Or that was a great way to do that. How can I steal that and make it my own, but make it different? And that’s a lot of creativity, too, is you build upon these things that have been done before and then you try to do them different, hopefully better, and then make it your own, too.
So what was your process for writing the book? Yeah. So, like I said, I’m very visual. So I had the beginning of the book was very clear in my head that what is chapter one now is him driving up to get this Kate. So I was like, okay, what’s that story? So I just started imagining these different points.
Along the way, like nails on the, on a board and tried to tie strings between them to get to the next point and the next point and my process. I don’t do a crazy detailed outline. I take notes, a lot of it’s in my head and I let the story and the characters speak to me as I go. And I’m a bit, I’m a very big believer in it’s much easier to fix problems and reread and.
Rewrite things than to stare at a blank page. So I just try to get the words down and that’s prolific as Stephen King’s book. I think he says he writes 2000 words a day and God bless him. I’m lucky if I get 2000 words a day, but I just try to do 500, a thousand words a day, and if you just keep chugging, eventually you’ll get to that 80, 000 word mark, that’s the baseline for a book.
And then you got it and you can go back and reread and rewrite and get other people to read it and tell you what’s working and what’s not, and just keep. Shaping it. And then. I, and I find sometimes that things that, which you spoke to with the movie, it’s like things I thought were going to be a certain way as you’re writing and you’re letting the characters go and you get lost in that, for lack of a better word, the muse speaking to you, sometimes sometimes.
Magic happens there too. And you are like, Oh, it could go actually completely different. And this, this could happen. You’re like, then you finish and you’re like looking at it. You’re like, I don’t even know where that came from. You reread it. You’re like, I guess I wrote this. It’d be on my computer. It’s a fun, cool experience when you read back and you’re like, okay, yeah, this is actually pretty good.
And it, it takes a long time, but it’s, it’s exciting. And sometimes you’re asking yourself, where the heck did that come from? No, for sure. Just the other day, I was flipping through it and I’m like, Some of it I vividly remember writing and some of it it’s, I think it just pours out sometimes.
Terry: Can you sense when the muse is upon you? And what do you do? Do you stop what you’re doing and find a keyboard and start banging it out?
Josh: I think that’s one of the problems with our modern world is that we don’t let ourselves be bored, sit around, Dare at the screen. The second we started to get bored, we’re like, Oh, I’m gonna pick up my phone and we all do it.
I do it a lot. I’m scrolling Instagram. I’m on some website. I’m reading the New York times, whatever it is, right? And so sometimes for me, it’s just like, Hey, I may not get a lot done today. I’m going to sit here for two or three hours and if I, if I’m done in 30 minutes, cool. Three hours is about my max.
I’m not one of those guys who’s like, I’m going to sit here right for 12 and a half hours. And sometimes it just hits you and. When it goes, you just got to keep going and let it go. But I think that’s the thing is let your mind, you have to let your mind get in the space. If you don’t do that, if you’re just always go, you never let the, that muse can’t speak to you.
If you’re driving down the street, talking on your phone, doing all those things, you got to sit down, turn it all off and stare at the screen for a bit and figure it out.
Terry: Redemption is the central theme in this story. Why is that idea important to you?
Josh: A lot of my stories, I’m just very interested that we could all be, and this is a big theme in this book, but it’s true in all my writing, is every day of our lives, we make choices and we go on dates, we get married. Take jobs.
We do these different things and it leads us inevitably to a certain point in our lives. And I think people, even if they’re happy with it, they always think back and say, well, if this was different, what if that was different? When you’re living a mundane, normal life, it’s, yeah, it could, maybe I’d be in Alabama or maybe I’d be in, in New York and doing the, be an editor at Random House versus whatever it is.
But for me, it was like, okay, what about this guy who saw himself as this great man, but never really did anything about it and just. I don’t know. I just find that interesting that he’s made a lot of choices throughout for himself and what happens when he has this opportunity to maybe do something for himself, but also has found that maybe he should be doing things for others too.
And just playing on those tropes and that struggle within, I think is what makes the book interesting as it goes, as it spirals into a space opera fantasy catastrophe. Yeah.
Terry: What’s been the feedback from those who’ve read the finished product?
Josh: It’s been really positive so far, and we’re just starting to get out there.
We just got a review from Library Journal that was very positive. I’m very excited about and started to go out to these different bloggers and netgalley people and it start, we’re just starting to get the ball rolling with reviews and so far so good. And having lived the movie world, you take it from both sides, obviously.
And you just look into, you write this for me. I wrote it to be read. I want people to read it. I want people to be entertained by it. That’s like the dream. So just trying to get it in front of as many eyes as possible. And that’s like you said, that’s where the, the reviews do come in. They’re important.
They get other people who maybe pick it up. So you’re just always trying to find as many people as you can. You want to say, Hey, I like that. It’s like, Hey, would you go maybe. Tell us some people you like to do,
Terry: right? The great Marshall Brickman supposedly said that what happens once you get the idea for a movie done into a script and start production, this truck pulls up to the set and compromises start rolling out of the door. Did that happen to you in the writing of The Shadow of the Eternal Watcher?
Josh: I think that’s one of the nice things about a novel. Is maybe the compromises are more in people giving you feedback that maybe the thing you thought was. This beautiful moment is actually terrible, whatever it is, it’s maybe not as good as you thought it was, it’s maybe could be better, and you’re pushing and stretching the pages and the words to find the best story, and I think that’s not so much compromise as just being open to better ways of doing the same thing, whereas in the movie, like we said, mine was lower budget, there was a pit in my movie that like, we were like, we were doing it until two days before, and I was like, I don’t think we can actually take the pit, so we need to Rewrite this and do something different.
That’s the movie world, is where, like, this cool thing you wrote, we can’t actually do that. Or the fire marshal says we can’t set that on fire because it’s going to burn down the forest. We can only burn this much stuff. And you’re like, there’s only so many things you can say. Or it’s the fire marshal, so we can’t burn that.
I guess we’re not burning it, so it’s not being burned. Whereas if you write it into the book, it happens, right? What’s next for you? Like we said, when we were talking before we went on the air, I’ve got a couple of scripts floating around with my manager right now that I’m very excited about going to some production companies.
I think it could be great movies. So I’m excited about those opportunities and I’m plugging on a second duster rains book. I’ve got some ideas there that are. It’s starting to get on the page and I’ve got another book in my mind that I think will get out of this universe and maybe be a little more in the, I’ve got a couple kids and I’ve been, I read to them every night.
So just reading a lot of these middle grade, young adult books to them. It’s got my brain spinning of why did you get into writing in the first place? What was fun about it and maybe getting back to some of those roots and trying to write something more for that young adult preteen era. So, yeah. Just, you have to keep writing, right?
It’s keep storytelling and just keep putting it out there until you get the yeses and you get to do the next thing.
Terry: What attracted you to writing in the first place?
Josh: I just, I remember it was just a simple thing. I was in high school and I just remember taking, I think it was honors junior English and we were reading a lot of the American classics like the great Gatsby and the sun also rises and Zora Neale Hurston and just.
Yeah, I’m like, Oh man, I just love the way I feel when I read these books and I wish I could do that for other people. And then just started thinking to myself, well, why couldn’t you do that for other people? And you tell people you’re going to be a writer and they’re like, Oh, sure you are. So it’s just, it’s a passion and it’s a journey too.
It doesn’t happen as fast as you might think it will too. Sometimes you just got to keep going and finding ways to keep having the passion that you had before. So I just keep plugging away.
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