Written by Skye Slatcher
Illustrated by Serena Fadil
NOTE: THE FOLLOWING IS A WORK OF FICTION. ANY RESEMBLANCE TO PERSONS LIVING OR DEAD IS PURELY COINCIDENTAL.
ESPECIALLY YOU JENNY BECKMAN.
BITCH.
That is the beginning of (500) Days of Summer. It is one of my favourite movie openings of all time. The mind behind it is Scott Neustadter, LSE alumnus. I recently had the pleasure of asking him some questions about all things screenwriting and London.
The Daily Mail called (500) Days of Summer “surely the greatest act of revenge in the history of cinema”. An act of revenge based on Scott’s time at LSE. Based on conversations that happened in campus pubs and study spots. It tells the story of Tom (based on Scott) and Summer (based on ‘Jenny Beckman’), across their 500 day relationship.
Each time I’ve watched it, I’ve asked two questions, which I was thrilled to take straight to the source. For those who have also been plagued by these questions for a while, I think Scott’s full responses are invaluable…
500 Days is listed everywhere as a rom-com, but I’ve never liked that. To me, rom-coms are 27 Dresses or How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days: movies where the leads end up together. Scott said this: “I personally view it more as a movie about rejection and introspection than as a traditional romantic comedy and here’s why: a good rom-com is about two people and 500 Days is decidedly not. It’s not a story about a couple by any stretch of the imagination, it’s about a single individual processing the grief of a failed relationship, looking for someone to blame, and realising in the end it was him all along. Does she get a say in any of this? No, she doesn’t. Was that by design? Oh yes. The whole idea is that if he only took the time to listen and understand Summer, rather than project his own fantastical version of reality onto what was actually going on between them, it might have worked out better (or at least he could have avoided the heartbreak). I remember we wrote this one scene where Summer takes over the movie, and is like, ‘that is SO not what happened.’ And then we see her version of the same events. But we ultimately realised it was too much a violation of the rules we’d established, so we cut it. (When I think about ‘Summer’s version’ of the movie, that definitely wouldn’t be a rom-com either. Maybe more of a horror film! But I’d watch that!)”
I was recently talking to my friends about the villain of the story: Joseph Gordon-Levitt said it was Tom, and we couldn’t quite decide. Scott says: “It feels like we all do this thing, even in real life, where we HAVE to pick a side… But I don’t know that it entirely reflects reality. 500 Days is purely Tom’s movie, so naturally he’s the hero. Except… not so fast. Turns out, the more we see of the story he’s telling, the more cracks there are in his own character. He isn’t the hero at all really, just the protagonist. He’s the one who goes through the journey and comes out the other side changed – and he HAS to because he’s so fundamentally flawed from the jump. Now, I personally don’t think that makes him the villain either. But in a world where we have to pick one, maybe he is. (Summer is definitely NOT the villain of this story!)”
One of the movie’s unique features is its non-linear storytelling – and that was always the hook. Scott could never have imagined wanting to watch a movie of his own ‘idiotic romantic disasters’. He rented a DVD (“that’s how long ago this was”, he adds), called 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould, and it dawned on him, while listening to depressing music “trying to figure out what to do with [his] life”, that that could be an interesting way to tell a relationship story: “Each scene could be its own little nugget and they could look and feel different depending on where the couple was in the relationship, maybe even tell them out of order. And hey the girl’s name could be April and it would be like ‘437 days of April’ or something. I was so excited that I wrote Weber [his co-writer] an email that night saying ‘I think I’ve figured it out!’”. Scott has still never watched 32 Short Films about Glenn Gould, but thank god that movie was on the shelf of his childhood bedroom or the stories of his “idiotic romantic disasters” might have remained a secret.
And that opener? It wasn’t always guaranteed to be in the final product. Scott had been a script reader for years before he ever tried to write one, so he knew that the people whose attention he needed to grab first were going to be reading his work in a stack of scripts on a Sunday evening, “when they’d much rather be doing literally anything else”. So, the author’s note was a way to set the tone and hook them early on. “And it totally worked!”. When it made it into the finished movie, he couldn’t quite believe it. They had even debated whether to keep it in, but at the first test screening it got a huge laugh, so it stayed. A great decision if you ask me.
But what did Jenny Beckman herself have to say about it? Jenny isn’t actually her real name, but Scott gave her the script before it was optioned and she loved it. While the media called it an act of revenge, Scott says, “There was never any bitterness or vitriol and I think she understood if the movie has its knives out for anyone, they’re definitely all pointed inward.” Any time something is personal, people always latch onto it being a takedown or attack (“see: every Taylor Swift song!”). Scott gets it – this movie is about rejection based on real events. It’s emotional! But he loves the debate: “The fact that people can watch the same movie and see totally different things or even that the movie might change depending on who you are when you watch it is just so f-ing cool to me!”
It ends with Tom meeting a new girl, Autumn. Autobiographical as the movie is, I wondered if this was indeed how Scott’s next romance happened. Not quite. She was “more of an idea than a character – pure fantasy”. We never learn what happens with Autumn: either Tom has learned something, or he is doomed to make all the same mistakes again. Scott said that in real life, he was probably heading towards the latter, but fate intervened. “The script found its way into the hands of an executive who read it, liked it, and wanted to meet with the writers. We had a meeting in 2006, and we’ve been married 15 years and have two amazing kids. All because of this script!” I think that is so perfect. Knowing how it played out in real life, 500 Days is maybe a prequel to a lovely, IRL rom-com, where the screenwriter marries the exec.
Before moving to London, Scott says he lived a very sheltered life: “I went to college very close to my hometown and then immediately took a job in New York, a mere two-hour drive away, and went straight to work. I had never travelled or done anything where I didn’t have friends or family nearby. And then in 2002, I heard about this LSE program and figured why not apply? I had hit the ceiling at the company where I was working. I had long been obsessed with all things English (especially the music scene). And also there was no way I’d ever be accepted to the London School of Economics! So when I got in, it felt like a sign, like something that was going to change my life in some way. And it sure did.”
I asked Scott the classic and cruel question of “what is your favourite LSE memory?”, to which he replied, “too many to list… The whole thing was like being on a vacation from my life.”
In his work as a screenwriter and producer, he consistently partners with Michael H. Weber. Their partnership developed from Scott hiring Weber as an intern, then as a full-time assistant. They had similar tastes in movies and books, so they spent a lot of time together. Scott would often complain about the terrible scripts he was reading, so Weber said they should write their own, and they did: “a very silly comedy that made the two of us laugh but probably no one else.” But they wanted to write a relationship movie – “we just needed the relationship to write about. When I went to LSE, we kinda found it. Things sorta took off from there!” They’ve been working together since.
He has also worked on other incredible projects. Two of my favourites are The Fault in Our Stars and Paper Towns – both John Green adaptations. But the first book they adapted was The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp. Both being bookworms, “the prospect of adapting someone else’s story felt like a breath of fresh air after writing something so awkwardly personal.”
They loved the experience and the movie caught the attention of two LA producers (Wyck Godfrey and Marty Bowen), who had just optioned an unpublished manuscript of The Fault in Our Stars. They wanted to know if Scott would be interested in reading it. Agents and managers were initially reluctant to say yes, because Scott’s father had recently lost his battle with cancer. They sent it anyway and he loved it. He and Weber then had to begin the tricky task of convincing the producers that they were the only ones who could do it justice: “I think we won the day when I promised we could do it in two weeks.”
When the novel came out, it was a phenomenon. Scott explained, “naturally there was interest in making more movies out of John’s material and we were thrilled to be considered. As much as we love writing original material, the sense of accomplishment in taking a remarkable book and turning it into a semi-decent movie is still very satisfying!”
Another incredibly exciting project Scott worked on a couple of years ago was Daisy Jones and the Six (“which I got to work on with my wife!”, he emphasises.) Up to this point, his experience had been in writing movies, but the story of Daisy Jones was too “vibrant” and “expansive” to fit within a two hour run-time: “I loved the world Taylor [Jenkins Reid] had created so much, I didn’t just want to pop in and visit, I wanted to live there. And that, to me, meant television where you can take your time and let the material tell you how long the adaptation should be.” If you haven’t watched it yet, you absolutely should.
I obviously had to ask what projects are still in the works. They’re working on two at the moment: “both very different from anything we’ve tried before.” The first is a film about Chris Farley, which they are hoping to make in early 2026. The second is an animated movie for the DC Universe – essentially the origin story of Robin (of Batman and Robin). Scott is very excited about both (as am I!!).
One decision to apply to a Master’s programme at LSE kind of changed the trajectory of Scott’s life, it seems. It gave him new experiences and the story for the movie that would kickstart his career in screenwriting (and for which he won a number of awards). It feels like the obvious lesson is to take every opportunity – but that’s too cliche. Maybe instead the lesson is to have a complicated and emotional relationship with someone, which kind of fundamentally changes you, and then to make everyone else debate your story when you turn it into a movie.
I wonder, as I’m writing this, if I will ever be someone’s Jenny Beckman/Summer, or if I’ll be the Tom. Or if someone reading this will turn their own LSE ‘love’ story into a cult classic movie. I think we need fewer investment bankers and consultants and more people with personal, emotional stories to tell.
