Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lily Malm. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Lily, so excited to talk about all sorts of important topics with you today. The first one we want to jump into is about being the only one in the room – for some that’s being the only person of color or the only non-native English speaker or the only non-MBA, etc Can you talk to us about how you have managed to be successful even when you were the only one in the room that looked like you?
I think it all boils down to knowing you’re worth more than being excluded. Navigating an industry as male-dominated as Hollywood can be intimidating, but when it comes to being the only lesbian in the room, I’ve had years of practice.
I grew up in what’s now a pretty radically right-wing small town in the south of Sweden, where I never saw myself reflected in the world around me. Our prom came with a no-gay policy and when I eventually came out on my own terms after being outed, the reactions were mixed; many welcomed me with open arms, others took the liberty to email me their homophobic evaluations of my orientation and everyone else stayed silent. While unpleasant, it did in many ways prepare me for the film industry. Yes, Hollywood is absolutely changing for the better, but there’s still a long way to go before we can say we’ve achieved parity.
The buzz around diversity can easily create the illusion that the underlying issues are a product of the past while, in reality, that’s not really the case at all. A while back I had what many women I’ve talked to called the “full Hollywood experience” while pitching a feature spec to a well-known producer. Not only did he cut me off mid-pitch because he absolutely had to know my orientation and how lesbian sex worked, he also expected a “symbiotic relationship” in return for passing my script to his reader and implied I’d be taking advantage of HIM if I said no. Choosing between staying in the closet or being fetishized is not a fun dilemma to deal with. Luckily, I found the strength to walk away and refused to engage beyond that point, but it was an eye-opener to what women – especially queer women – who opened up the doors for the rest of us have had to navigate in this industry.
While nothing is owed to you in terms of success or career longevity, you simply have to be resilient enough to keep going no matter what. Not everyone is going to be horrible. The screenwriting community is becoming an incredibly diverse work force and the demand for new voices continues to grow every day. You’ve just got to keep writing.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
I am a Swedish-born screenwriter primarily focused on writing female-driven dramas and comedies. Half a decade ago, I emigrated to the states to pursue a career in the film industry and have since been lucky enough to place in festivals such as the Austin Film Festival and Final Draft’s Big Break as well as the Big Apple Film Festival, where my collaborator Laila Matuk and I won for Best Feature Drama. Our feature spec “Scent of Marigold” also made The Rest List as one of Coverfly’s Top 20 highest ranked scripts of 2023 out of 25,000 screenplays.
I am currently preparing to shoot my next short film, a dark LGBTQ+ drama called “Forbidden Fruit” about the fetishization of queer women. I’m really excited about releasing the crowdfunding campaign for the project in a few days as my hope is that the short film will help me make the transition from a writer to a writer-director, a hyphenate I ultimately want to claim.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I decided to prioritize screenwriting above all else a long time ago and looking back at it now, I think my commitment to always finding the time for it has had the biggest impact in my journey so far. Festival and fellowship deadlines help me stay on track and force me to move each project forward as I rely on that sweet, sweet anxiety burning in the back of my mind to keep going no matter what.
I’m also a perfectionist and spend most of my time outlining over and over again until I get it right, using beat boards and color-coded story cards. A screenwriting professor once told me that writing is like dating; if it’s right, you feel it in your bone marrow and if it’s not, it’s time to go back to the drawing board. I also had the pleasure of meeting Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski (the screenwriters behind “The People vs Larry Flynt”) at a festival last year, and they told me each draft they write consists of about eighty layers of revisions – and that’s before they turn it into the studio executives for notes. Breaking a story into beats can sometimes feel like driving through a dense haze without fog lights, but the more you do it, the stronger your intuition gets. Eventually you get there.
Learning how to deconstruct criticism is another key quality, one I’m endlessly navigating. It doesn’t matter how much time you put in or how many drafts you write if you refuse to listen to what’s not working. And it’s hard! Nobody wants to start from scratch after twenty drafts, but sometimes you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do to tell the best version of the story. Learning how to let go of your ego is essential.
Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
I won a mentoring session with Alex Convery, the screenwriter behind “Air” starring Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, at the Austin Film Festival last November and he gave me and a few other writers a master class in screenwriting that fundamentally altered my understanding of both the craft and the industry.
One of the things he said that really stood out to me, beyond his views on creating nuanced dialogue and bullet-proof structure, was his firm belief in spec writing. Essentially a spec, short for speculative, is a non-commissioned screenplay that may or may never get sold or optioned by a studio or streamer and is therefore considered a major financial risk since you may never get paid for the work you put in (only a few spec scripts are sold each year and most of the time, they wind up in a pile). But he encouraged all of us to keep believing in spec writing no matter what people tell you since no other form of writing will allow you to stay true to your own voice. Most writers get stuck writing in someone else’s, so Alex’s views on the topic were incredibly reinvigorating.
Contact Info:
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lily-malm-1bb19a188/
- Other: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm14911452/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0_tt_2_nm_6_q_lily%2520mal
