NICK KAZAN - Writer
Team Deakins
James Ellis Deakins
4.9 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 April 2026
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
SEASON 2 - EPISODE 188 - Nick Kazan - Writer
In this episode of the Team Deakins Podcast, we speak with writer Nick Kazan (BICENTENNIAL MAN, MATILDA, DREAM LOVER). Nick has been writing professionally for decades, and we spend much of our conversation with him discussing what he finds to work and not work in a screenplay. Nick also shares his relationship to a script after it's entered production, and we discuss how changes made during production can enhance a scene. We also learn how he's balanced writing spec scripts with assignments, what his opinion of the three act structure is, what he needs to know before he begins writing, and when he recognizes his writing is working. Nick also shares how a Harold Pinter play inspired him to begin writing in the first place, and we learn how he's been chasing the experience of writing for the very first time ever since. Plus, Nick reveals why he didn't leverage his the reputation of his father (director Elia Kazan) to build his own career, and we ask Nick: "What makes a good writer?"
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Recommended Viewing: SHAMPOO
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This episode is sponsored by Aputure
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi and welcome to Season 2 of the Team Deacons podcast, |
| 0:07.0 | a collection of informal conversations between Roger and James Deacons and a guest. |
| 0:13.0 | We never know where the conversation will take us, so listen in and see where it goes. |
| 0:21.9 | This episode is sponsored by Aperture and its new Storm XT-52, the industry's most |
| 0:29.5 | powerful LED point source light. Brighter than a 6K HMI and powered by Aperture's revolutionary |
| 0:36.8 | Blair light engine, the Storm XT-52 is both a tunable |
| 0:41.9 | white light and also the brightest ever adjustable color LED. Storm XT-52, unrivaled output, |
| 0:51.5 | only from Aperture. |
| 0:57.7 | Today we're speaking with a writer. |
| 1:04.5 | His credits include reversal of fortune, Matilda, Fallen, and Bicentennial Man. |
| 1:07.5 | We're pleased to welcome Nick Kazan. |
| 1:09.7 | Nick, thank you for doing this. Hi. |
| 1:10.4 | Oh, it's my pleasure. Great. |
| 1:12.9 | We'd love to start with our first question, which is how did you get to where you are today? |
| 1:18.0 | Since your father was a director, was it assumed you'd go into the business? What's your story? |
| 1:24.2 | No, not assumed, I don't think. My mother was a writer, and I always saw myself as a writer. |
| 1:34.4 | And I had an experience in college where I saw a play by Harold Pinter, the lover, and I went home, and the next day, I woke up with this |
| 1:51.6 | visual in mind, and then the first lines of dialogue, and I went to my typewriter, and I typed |
| 1:59.1 | furiously for about 45 minutes. And when I finished, |
| 2:04.1 | I went in the other room and my first wife said, what were you doing? You were typing pretty fast. |
| 2:10.1 | And I said, yes, I think I wrote a one act play. And she said, what's it about? And I said, I have no idea. And seriously, it was just like I was |
| 2:22.8 | taking dictation from my muse or from a combination of my news and Pinter's muse, because there |
... |
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