What kind of writers do representatives and producers love? This kind ...

In 2006, they sold "Deers and Beers" -- a film they're slated to direct -- to Ivan Reitman's Montecito Picture Company. That same year, they landed the assignment to write "Strike," a Paramount Vantage pic directed by Mark Waters. A pitch session got them a rewrite on Fox's "Time Travel for Dummies." Another pitch sold "One of the Guys" (featuring Sandra Bullock) to Fox. In 2007, they sold a TV pilot, "Housesitters," to BermanBraun and Fox, and they were recently tapped by Sony to adapt the novel "The Swap" for John Calley Productions.

Now repped by Andrew Kersey and ICM Agent Ava Jamshidi, brothers Tim and Tom Mullen are screenwriters, soon-to-be directors, and perhaps even producers. In other words, hot and getting hotter. They were raised in Helena, Montana -- according to their own account, in a loud Irish family. In 2000, Tim moved out to Los Angeles and a year later, Tom joined him. In the spring of 2004, a staged reading of their first script, "Deers and Beers," set the wheels in motion. They met Kersey and things took off.

Q: Thanks for the interview.

TOM: We were excited about the MovieBytes aspect of this because we used to read MovieBytes (and we still do), but before we sold anything, we'd always check the script sales and read the articles about people who sold stuff and be so jealous.

Q: You guys have had a great year!

TOM: It's been about a year and a half. The strike kinda' screws up the timeline. The strike allows you to reflect on good things that happened, but also gives you huge pressure in the fact that you haven't done anything for the three or four month blip that we had.

TIM: It gave some writers the chance to write that spec that they've always wanted to write. It gave me and Tom the chance to "reflect" I guess, because we didn't do any writing.

TOM: We golfed our heads off.

Q: You golfed?

TOM: Yeah, we did. The execs told us, everybody's writing; all the writers are writing during the strike. I knew all the writers weren't writing, because the strike started in the fall. You're immediately going to chalk it up as, "We've got an extended holiday break."

TIM: It hit during Thanksgiving and Christmas. Between the picketing, and the family stuff, we didn't squeeze it in.

Q: Tell me about "Deers and Beers." (Ivan Reitman's Montecito Picture Company)

TOM: We're hopefully going to be directing that for Montecito. We're going out to actors, now. It's been a surprising blessing.

TIM: It was the first script we wrote.

TOM: It was that first script you have to just purge and get your life experience out of the way and this was it. It is always going to hold a special place for us and the fact that Montecito is giving us a chance to direct it is just awesome.

Q: What's happening with "One of the Guys"?

TOM: It's at Fox. We're all finished with that. We look at scripts as these ornate little ships that we spend all this time crafting and then we push them out into the tides and they just disappear. We try to emotionally detach as much as possible once we finish it.

Q: What is "Strike" and how did you land the opportunity to write it?

TOM: A comedy we're writing for Mark Waters who directed "Mean Girls," "Freaky Friday," and "The Spiderwick Chronicles." That was our second deal after "Deers and Beers." It's the one that broke us in. He picked "Deers and Beers" out of a pile of specs and said these are the guys I want to write this idea that I've had forever.

It was a Monday morning in 2006 and I got out of the shower that morning and I had four missed calls on my phone and I said, "Well, I don't even have that many friends." We had gotten the calls from our manager and our agent and they told us that Mark had read us and loved us and asked how soon could we be on the Paramount lot.

We went in and sat down with Mark and his executives, Jessica Tuchinsky who runs his company, and Veronica Brooks.

TIM: And they pitched us the idea [for "Strike"] and we said, "Yeah, we love it." And then we spent the next couple days coming up with our take on his idea and presented it to him. He liked it and we sold it to Paramount Vantage a little bit after that.

TOM: I remember the feeling of desperation like "We cannot lose this gig." We always hear these stories about people that get their chance to get in the room and do their thing. We left that room after he pitched us the idea and gave us a couple pages of thoughts, and I think we spent the next 36 hours putting together a treatment and handing it back to them before the weekend. I think he was thinking, "What the hell is wrong with these guys?" (laughs) He brought us into Vantage. It resulted in what I think Tim would agree was the easiest pitch meeting we've had since.

When you're with a guy like Mark Waters, he can walk you into the room and say, "Hi. These are the guys that are going to write my movie. Tom, say something funny. Tim, say something funny." And we're outta' there. It's only gotten harder since then, believe me. That's a really great project we love.

Q: And there is more -- yes?

TOM: We rewrote a script for Fox called "Time Travel for Dummies." It's like "Dude Where's My Car" meets "Back to the Future."

TIM: We had a TV show.

TOM: Right. We had a TV show we sold to Fox last season. It didn't get picked up, but it was a great experience. We worked on that with BermanBraun and they brought it to Fox. We love Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun over there. They run an amazing company, but the strike season screwed things up for a lot of TV scripts. We got back from the strike and had new executives on the studio and network side.

Q: I interviewed Andrew Kersey. You guys have a great manager.

TOM: All our friends are in the industry and our antennae were up as far as what kind of people we were going to run into. It just so happens that Andrew was the first guy out of the box. And we were like, "Wow, this guy is a normal guy that ...we like!" He is just so open and accessible and he has made this experience so seamless and enjoyable that I really don't envy anyone else's representation.

Q: In his interview, while he was discussing "One of the Guys," Andrew said "Tom and Tim already had a studio exec fan base and successful pitch track record." Can you talk about how you built your fan base?

TIM: I don't think that just Tom and I built a fan base. We took the meetings that our agent set us up for. Then, we would go into the room and a lot of the execs -- we just really clicked with them and wound up not talking that much shop. We would talk about what we've been doing outside of writing and created a lot of good relationships the same way you'd create a good friendship relationship if you met someone anywhere. I think it was Ava, our agent, who gave these people our script and primed them for us. It definitely wasn't just me and Tom going in there and talking to them. We just happened to click with a lot of the execs that we met with. I can't think of any meetings where we've walked out and Tom and I aren't laughing and loving having had that meeting.

TOM: I think that's a part of the job that we actually do relish -- the social aspect of it. Not in terms of going out or becoming best friends with everybody, but we're locked up in a room for ten hours a day, so we really look forward to going out and meeting other people that are doing this job.

TIM: And Tom and I live together, so anything that we have to say, we've already said to each other over the past twenty-some-odd-years and we just like having a third party that we can talk to ...

TOM: ...who hasn't heard our same stupid jokes for the last fifteen years. (all laugh)

How we got a lot of these meetings initially -- we had a spec that went out, our first spec before "Deers and Beers" got picked up that was called "Urban Cowboys," an underdog sports comedy that just came along, unfortunately, at a time when the marketplace was flooded with them. It was just after "Dodgeball," so any screwball sport that people wanted to explore was, unbeknownst to me, out on the market already. It didn't sell, but it got us a lot of generals and we took those like it was the last shot at the NBA finals. We thought, "We are going to soft-sell the hell out of "Deers and Beers," which was our first script and was unsold at that point. Also, [we wanted to] go out and show that we normal guys, who are here to do a great job writing and not make the executive's job any harder than it has to be. We're not demanding auteurs, who demand control of every bit of the project. We want to be open. We have a rule where we never say "no" to a note in the room. That job is actually done later when it's not your emotion telling you "no." It's some logic, but that takes some time to explore.

TIM: If we actually ever said "no," we'd hopefully have a good reason why that note wouldn't work and a solution for it.

TOM: Being diplomatic and being fun for people to work with does go a long way in this business.

Q: What is "Deers and Beers" about?

TIM: It's about Tom and I growing up in Montana. We saw Montana as this place that is kind of the Wild West and there is a lot of freedom there. We sat down and started crafting the idea. It turned into a story about Clint, a highschooler, who has the duty to pull off his senior keg in this small town with this deputy on his tracks. He has trouble deciding whether he wants to go to college or stay in his small town and whether he wants to pursue the senior keg.

TOM: I remember a girl that, when we first moved here, we used to tell her stories about growing up in Montana and she just couldn't believe what we could get away with up there because she was being ferried to the theater by her parents -- her and her friends -- at age sixteen.

TIM: She grew up in California.

TOM: She's a Newport girl. And there's a society here that really binds you into the rules that come with that. That's just not the case in the Montana we grew up in. As much as we love John Hughes movies and all the high school stuff you see on the screen, none of it looked like what we experienced growing up in Montana. I think that is true with a lot of people who grow up having to make their own fun, essentially.

TIM: We get that a lot from executives we talk to where we're like, "Look, our high school wasn't the 'Clueless' high school where you went to a mall, and not everybody was good looking. Our weekend was grabbing a twelve-pack or more and shooting guns and messing around and buying a beat up car from the junk yard and driving it off a cliff." That was what we did and a lot of the executives out here say, "You know what? That's exactly what I did." I think most of the U.S. comes from that same type of high school experience and we wanted to show that.

TOM: I would describe it succinctly as a red state "American Pie."

Q: And that got picked up by The Montecito Picture Company?

TOM: By Montecito during the last round of general meetings that we took after our spec script went out and didn't sell. We regarded Montecito as nothing short of the Holy Grail of comedy. We loved "Old School"; we loved "Road Trip" [Montecito films]. And we couldn't believe we were in the room. We met with this executive who we really hit it off with. He acknowledged that "Urban Cowboys" was not what they were looking for. We had an opportunity to mention "Deers and Beers." The executive, Ken Holdren, is no longer there, but he was the first champion of the script and he said, "Now, that sounds like something we'd be interested in." So, we sent him the script. After a couple weeks of hearing little bits and pieces of things that might be exciting and that it might get going, we got the offer. It was just such a cool thing.

Q: And how'd it come about that you'll be directing that?

TOM: They optioned it. At the time, it was a way for the company to hedge its bets on how that writer is going to develop professionally. It gives them an opportunity to get the temperature for that script around town, before putting a lot of energy into it and keeps it alive on their radar for the time that they have it.

During the time that they had it, Tim and I started to get assignments and do some big rewrite jobs and we sold the pitch with Sandra Bullock. I think we became a little more viable in their eyes. I come from the school and they seem to as well, that there's nothing more important, as far as directing goes, than just being familiar with the material and knowing what you are going for. I'm not giving short shift to the visual appeal of an "Underworld" or a "Spiderman." There are a lot of stories that need to be told in a straightforward manner and the most important thing is just having a good handle on the material. I think that is what Montecito was going for.

TIM: And I think they look at [the fact that] we basically lived that story. We lived that town. We know those characters. They see that as more easily fitting us into the director's role because we'll be able to tell that story visually because we know how it looks, smells, and sounds.

TOM: And we did our due diligence. We took a directing class over the strike. We took a UCLA extension course that was actually really great in terms of working with the actors; putting a name to the things you've seen before; and the work that you have to put in.

TIM: We did a spot for major league baseball that was really cool with Jeff Probst, the host of "Survivor." That was pretty good experience too.

Q: What was the first thing that happened to get your career going?

TIM: I think the first thing that happened was that we wrote "Deers and Beers." We had a close friend who was a director and we gave the script to him as a barometer to see whether he would like it; whether we could actually write. And he came back and said, "Wow. Is this the first time you've done this? This is good. This has a lot of potential." So from there, we took his notes, polished it up and then had a reading at Lee Strasburg Theater. Right, Tom?

TOM: I have yet to have a more stressful wait-to-see-what-they-think-of-our-writing moment. And he's our friend. He's a TV director and he definitely knew what he was doing. And I remember that we went to lunch at Louise's Trattoria on Ventura and Tim and I were there just waiting to see what he'd think of it and he loved it. He couldn't believe that we could write. I think at the time, we were the only non-industry people in our circle of friends. I was working in PR. Tim was working in computers. We always wanted to write, but we never told anybody. We didn't want to be one of those guys who bragged about writing a script and couldn't do it. We finished this whole thing before we finally had the guts to mention it to our friend, ["Wicked Wicked Games" Director] Terry Cunningham, "Hey, you know what? We wrote a script." It was after a screening of one of his movies at AFI. I remember the look on his face like, "Holy crap. The Mullen Brothers wrote a script and I'm gonna' have to read it." He said, "Give me the script." So we ran to our car, eager as beavers, and grabbed the thing and brought it back to him. I remember him thumbing through it just to see if it was formatted correctly and it was, so he said, "Okay, I'll give it a read."

Q: So he read it, and ...?

TIM: We met with him at Louise's Trattoria and as silly as it sounds, I thought it was funny how he named our characters. He was using the same names we used and we just made them up. I don't know why, but I was always entertained by that -- he was using our characters' names. It had just been in my and Tom's world for so long and now this third party was saying our character names.

TOM: And that's still the thrill of it, that some shit we sat around and just made up around the table, what we talked about that morning is now being talked about by people we read about in Variety.

TIM: So, we put on the staged reading and we got friends -- actors that we knew and we had a staged reading where they're sitting in chairs and going through the whole script. Tom read the narration and each character read their lines.

TOM: And Terry invited every producer contact that he had. So we had a bunch of junior development execs there, some managers.

TIM: We had an acquaintance that was also from Montana that showed up, ["Hatchet" Producer] Cory Neal, who is friends with Andrew Kersey, our manager. He said, "Hey, I just went to this reading with these guys I met -- fellow Montanans -- and it's called "Deers and Beers," and it's a funny script." So we got Andrew through Cory.

We met with Andrew. He asked us about some other ideas and then we started cracking ideas with him. We got our agent, later -- probably a year later.

Q: So you didn't go to film school?

TOM: No, I went to journalism school and Tim went to business school. I think the only viable writing credit Tim had was "class clown" during his senior year in high school.

TIM: I don't think I actually wrote anything down. I was just loud and obnoxious.

TOM: In our partnership, that is what he brings to the table. He is that guy with the funny ideas that are going to make you laugh. He always comes up with something funny for someone to say. I was the nerdier bookworm type who edited his campus paper and went into journalism, but I always had a humor column in college. I remember that I used to just love the immediate reaction you could get. That day that it would come out, you would see people reading it. You'd see people laughing. I knew then, that was the biggest thrill I could ever have is having other people read something I'd written and think it was funny. And that's the only high I ever chased.

TIM: I remember sharing that a little bit. One week Tom was out sick. I don't know if he was really sick or he just couldn't come up with anything, but he said, "Do you want to write my column this week?" And I said, "Hell, yeah!" I spent the whole column ...

TOM: ... making fun of me!

TIM: Making fun of him. I really had nothing to say. I was just trying to put wrinkles where a smile had been. (all laugh)

TOM: I gave my little brother my column spot and he just ripped on me in front of the whole campus. It was the best humor column of the semester. Everybody loved it. We knew then, "God this is just so fun. Imagine doing this for a living."

TIM: Growing up, Dad would always have the video camera. We would make little shorts, little Christmas movies. We were movie buffs. Inside, we knew we were pretty good at storytelling too, coming from our loud Irish background.

TOM: I think the loud Irish family has so much to do with it. In our family, if your story doesn't have a punch line at the end, don't tell it. We don't do sob stories. We don't talk a lot of politics, but if you can't handle a joke or being the butt of a joke, do not sit at our dinner table.

TIM: I remember growing up, when you'd have the sleepovers, you'd have a friend that came from a different kind of family that would come over and have dinner with us, I remember after that, a few friends saying, "Oh my God, I love going to your house for dinner. It is the funniest thing." It's like a half-hour stand up where the parents are yelling at the kids, the kids are trying to be funny and it's mayhem. To give credit to our parents, they never tried to quash that. If you had something to say, they didn't come down on you and they let us be who we are.

TOM: I remember when I told Dad I was quitting my job to do the screenwriting thing full time. This is when Andrew came onboard and that's the point at which we said, "Well, we need to get serious about this." I told my Dad and he said, "About time." If we didn't have that support, I don't think we'd be doing what we're doing.

Q: When you were setting up relationships, when you had people reading for you for the first time, did you have a process of keeping in touch with any of those producers or execs after the initial contact?

TIM: Facebook.

TOM: It wasn't around back then.

TIM: No, it wasn't. It is now, though. That's the way to do it.

TOM: Tim and I are definitely not schmoozers. We don't network for the sake of networking.

TIM: I guess that is one of our greatest non-strengths.

TOM: If we like a guy or girl, we like hanging out with them. But we aren't going to go to things just to go to things. I don't think we're necessarily good at that and I don't think it behooved us early on. We were really counting on our director -- friend, Terry Cunningham, and his relationships. Cory Neal showed up. A friend of mine had done an internship for him or something like that and we got Andrew from there. You're thrown into these rooms and they're like playdates and if you get along, great. But we're not the guy who's going to chase you down with our script. We don't want to be overzealous. This town is very heavy on that and so short in the grand scheme of things on original writing and ideas.

Next month, in Part 2, Tim and Tom Mullen discuss their creative and collaborative processes.

Would you like to have your question answered by pros working in the industry? If there's a topic you'd like to see addressed in this column, please send me an e-mail (CindyRinaldi@visionization.com) with "WBW" in the subject line.