Sean Collins-Smith is a professor, former Journalist, and a self-confessed Bruce Springsteen fan. Hailing from Virginia with a degree in Cinema and Broadcast Media from Virginia Commonwealth University, he found himself working for a local NBC affiliate news station as a content specialist. Sean has covered a range of stories including the Black Lives Matter Movement, hurricanes, government shutdowns, and homicide cases. During my conversation with Sean, it was clear to me early on that he is not only incredibly smart, but also magnanimous with so much to share.
Before any interview I do, I always have my research done and questions written in a notebook at the ready. With this interview, Sean whisked me away into his life story & his journey as a writer and journalist; I ended up never having to ask him any of my chicken scratch questions as they answered themselves along the way. One big chunk of interest was politics. In such a hostile political climate, it isn’t appropriate to say we are living in unprecedented times anymore…. Things have been haywire for a while now. Sean is very open online about his stance on the political spectrum and isn’t one to shy away from difficult topics of discussion.
“One of the biggest unfortunate American traditions that have been so harmful to the national discourse is not conversing about politics. I don’t know how this happened. I don’t know when people decided to sit down at the table and not talk about politics. I think you should be talking about it all the time. Talk to your kids about it, talk to your family members about it because I really do feel like that will lead to truth.”
Sean recalls reading an article about Aaron Sorkin where Sorkin said that his family talked about politics all the time at the dinner table and that is, in fact, one of the reasons he is so verbose in his scripts. Sorkin’s parents encouraged going into detail about why he believed something and to always back it up with facts. You can see that in his scripts for The West Wing, a show where people are constantly walking and talking for minutes on end. Sean brought up another Sorkinism from Sports Night, quoting Isaac Jaffe, “If you're dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you're smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.” With conversation comes truth, and with truth comes understanding.
Sean worked the midnight shift at the NBC affiliated news station while also taking classes for his master’s degree while also teaching as a supplemental instructor at his alma mater. Sean recalls sitting in the back of the news van covering some horrific stuff. Being fifteen feet away from a dead body while waiting for information to bring back to the station elicited a dark response from Sean. He soon began writing about death, murder, and suicide.
He wrote End of Life, a pilot about a Marine and Iraq War vet who runs an elaborate insurance fraud operation by staging murders for the suicidal. End of Life was a finalist in the Austin Film Festival in 2017. Naïve to contests at the time, Sean said, “I’ve placed in this random little festival, cool.” It was Sean’s wife Allison, a three-time Emmy nominated journalist, who let him know just how huge this opportunity was. Contemplating not going at all, Allison told him they had to go. (It was during this time in the interview that I cut in asking if it was Allison I should actually be interviewing…) Sean had never networked before and Allison helped to get him out of his shell. She looked at the schedule of events and decided which happy hours and events they were going to attend during the festival. They ended up meeting Michael Green who asked Sean to pitch him End of Life right then and there. Impressed with Sean’s on the spot pitch, Green asked to read the full script.
Off the adrenaline of that, Sean wrote his next pilot, Lifers Anonymous, in 2018 and submitted it to the ISA Fast-Track Fellowship. That May, Sean won the competition. This led to Sean getting signed and deciding to move to Los Angeles to pursue his dream full time. Lifers Anonymous went on to place and win the Austin Film Festival that same year.
During the craziness of winning and moving his life out to Los Angeles, Sean flew out to Atlanta to be a contestant on TruTV’s PAID OFF, a gameshow where contestants answer rapid fire trivia questions for a chance to have their student debt paid in full. Sean had read an article in the Washington Post about how “a new show aims to eradicate student debt – one contestant at a time!” Sean’s first thought was, “wow, this is dystopian as hell.”
After constantly seeing ads for the show while watching Impractical Jokers, Sean finally applied to be a contestant. Two months and several interviews later, he was cast to be on the show. Sean had never applied for anything like this before, but much like his first time with anything, he was victorious. Watch the video of his epic win below:
The video of him winning circulated the internet. With confetti falling to the ground and the studio audience going wild, it truly looks like the last scene in a movie. It is a fairy tale ending that many in the United States dream about having on a daily basis. As of February 2021, the student loan crisis has tipped over 1.7 trillion – trillion with a T – dollars. 40 million borrowers across the United States collectively owe this much to the government, with this number now the second highest next to credit card and auto loans. With relief programs and those advocating in congress to throw out the debt out altogether, the majority still pay the monthly interest fees with no end in sight. Student loan debt growth rate outpaces the rise in tuition costs by 353.8% and first-generation college students are twice as likely to report they are behind in making student loan payments due to inadequate knowledge or help from family members; it is an unfair uphill battle. On a personal note, I have seen many of my close friends quit their dreams to pursue their day jobs in order to pay off debt they couldn’t comprehend when applying to college at 17. Sean won $77,509 in his game show debut.
The crippling burden of student debt has become so widespread, many have considered not applying at all. Young adults find themselves in a catch-22 as the average US college student is $30,000 in debt by the time they graduate.
Speaking about underdogs and how difficult it is for the average American to make it out of their student loan debt, our conversation soon flipped to the challenges of making it in the contest world with seemingly low barriers for entry. Understanding how lucky and fortunate he has been within the contest circuit, Sean has a firm stance when it comes to celebrities submitting for screenwriting contests: DON’T. “Imagine being someone out there who has submitted to 50 or 60 contests and hasn’t even made it to the semi-finalist round and then they see this guy who is a millionaire - and they are an Oscar or Golden Globe nominee - they are well known. I hate to put roadblocks on anybody, but for someone who has media access and a manager and an agent and a lawyer… I do side with the people who say there should be a barrier there.” There have been a few household names in the press who have been criticized for entering novice level screenwriting contests, most notably Transformers and Honey Boy star Shia LeBeouf. The Holes actor recently came under fire for winning the Emerging Screenwriter prize at the Sun Valley Film Festival in May of 2020 after winning Screenwriter of the Year at the prestigious Hollywood Film Awards in 2019 - which is no small feat. Still, screenwriting contests are in place solely for new and emerging writers who have no connections in the film industry. Shia entering – and winning – takes a spot away from someone who wouldn’t be able to thrive in the prizes (meetings with high up producers and studio executives) otherwise. Many on the twitterverse believe that up and coming festivals accept entries from celebrity names in order to promote their festival and to get it put on the map. “This is for the people who don’t have industry access and how they can’t usually fly across the country for meetings they wouldn’t have had otherwise if they didn’t win, and that’s really cool. I feel like whenever you let someone in who already has industry access – and the whole point of these things is to get industry access – you have overstepped, or I should say you have eradicated your mission. I feel like it’s a form of self-immolation. You have set yourself on fire so that this person can now have a way in.” As many feel cheated out of their $50 contest entry fee, many women in the screenwriting community feel even more angry with the former Even Stevens actor when news broke about sexual assault allegations against him. But that is for a whole other article entirely. We move on.
Finally, I asked Sean what he is working on. When I recorded this interview, Sean told me about WONDER DRUG, a limited series he was meticulously working on. WONDER DRUG is about the 1960s Thalidomide scandal in the US and how a female FDA regulator was thrust to the forefront of what would become one of the most tragic pharmaceutical disasters in history. Having never heard of this myself, Sean explained that Thalidomide was a drug developed overseas to help ease pain women experiencing morning sickness, but the drug was flawed and caused severe congenital deformities in fetuses and even infant death in many cases. Ongoing effects of this drug still appear in adults today and are they only now getting the justice they deserve.
Described as a cross between Chernobyl meets Erin Brockovich, WONDER DRUG has since gone on to become an official selection of the Sony Pictures Television Diverse Writers Program and is the number 1 read pilot on The Black List.
As our conversation drew to a close, I was delighted to listen to another idea Sean has in the works called Midnight Blue that is also in his crime drama wheelhouse.
We can expect big things from Sean in the future, I can’t wait to see where he goes next.
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