Drew Chapman: The King of Fear, Hollywood & Geopolitics
Geopolitics & Empire
Geopolitics & Empire
4.2 • 568 Ratings
🗓️ 6 December 2015
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Drew Chapman discusses his work creating geopolitical fiction as a television writer, producer and novelist. He talks about his writing process, a minor incident with the Chinese government while blogging, the connection between Hollywood and the US Government and how the digital media revolution might affect traditional content such as physical books and television media versus eBooks and online media (e.g. YouTube, podcasts). He also gives advice for future writers and film producers.
Websites
Books
amazon.com/Drew-Chapman/e/B00F7B63TO
authors.simonandschuster.com/Drew-Chapman/409262442
About Drew Chapman
Drew Chapman was born and raised in New York City. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in History. His early work history included: bike messenger, newspaper reporter, bootleg T-shirt salesman and knish vendor at Yankee Stadium. He wrote his first novel in fourth grade. It remains unpublished.
After college Drew moved to Los Angeles and began working in film production. He got an agent and took a position as a staff writer for Disney Animation. He has since written on projects for studios including Disney, Fox, Universal, Warner Brothers and Sony. He wrote and directed a feature film, Stand Off, starring Dennis Haysbert and Robert Sean Leonard.
Drew works extensively in television, where he writes under the name Andrew Chapman. He has sold pilots to ABC, Fox, Amazon, ABC Family, and Sony. In 2014 Drew wrote and produced an eight part limited series for ABC called The Assets, and this year wrote on and co-executive produced the second season of the spy show Legends for TNT.
His first novel, The Ascendant, was released by Simon & Schuster in 2014. The sequel, The King of Fear, will be published as an eBook series starting November 3, 2015, and will be released in paperback February 16, 2016.
*Podcast intro music is from the song “The Queens Jig” by “Musicke & Mirth” from their album “Music for Two Lyra Viols”: http://musicke-mirth.de/en/recordings.html (available on iTunes or Amazon)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Drew Chapman is joining us here with the Guilada Geopolitics podcast. He has a history degree, |
| 0:14.7 | and he is an author and television writer and producer. He has written for Fox, Universal, and |
| 0:19.6 | Sony, among other studios, and has written and directed a feature film called Standoff. He has written for Fox, Universal, and Sony, among other studios, and has written |
| 0:21.7 | and directed a feature film called Standoff. He has also written and produced ABC's The Assets |
| 0:26.9 | Limited TV series and produced legends for TNT. His first novel, The Ascendance, was published last |
| 0:33.0 | year, and he just recently released the sequel, King of Fear. |
| 0:37.9 | We'll be talking about geopolitics in the realm of fiction, |
| 0:41.3 | as well as what it's like working with the topic |
| 0:43.3 | of geopolitics in the world of television and publishing. |
| 0:46.8 | Drew, thanks for being here. |
| 0:48.5 | Thanks for having me. |
| 0:50.1 | Let's start with the theme of geopolitics and fiction. |
| 0:52.5 | One of the goals of geopolitics, as I see it, is to understand the reality of international affairs |
| 0:58.1 | and what is really happening geographically in a place and why. |
| 1:02.8 | And I interview guests who attempt to decipher these seeming mysteries of current events. |
| 1:08.0 | So maybe you can start off by telling us about your first novel, The Ascendants, |
| 1:12.5 | and how writing about some of these political economic themes in fiction is similar and different |
| 1:19.3 | to real-world geopolitical events. Okay. That's a great question. Well, you know, I mean, |
| 1:25.8 | without, I'll sort of talk about what the book is about in a moment, but I would say that my overall sort of philosophy when it comes to fiction and geopolitics is I'm obsessed with geopolitics of all kinds, economics, you know, the sort of military group think between nations. |
| 1:47.6 | And what I look for when I'm about to write a book or going to create a television show is |
| 1:54.4 | I look for the thing in the world that seems to create the most fear among the people of mostly in the United States, because that's my main audience, but, you know, my book's been translated into a bunch of languages and the television shows all get sold around the world. So I'm always looking for that thing in the world of geopolitics that just strikes a nerve in people so that when they read about it in my books or they see it on the television in the newscast or in a television show, they begin to, in a way, panic. |
| 2:32.3 | And that's what I'm looking for. I'm looking for that in, that psychological in people that says, |
... |
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