Sitting in a posh hotel lounge in Boston, screenwriter and Boston University alumnus Jeremy Catalino reflected on the script that brought him from a dingy apartment in Hollywood to the pinnacle of his industry.
His latest film is a raw, rambunctious indie comedy, titled “Crash Pad,” about an ambitionless young man who falls in love with a married woman after a one night stand. The young man ultimately winds up moving in with the woman’s vengeful husband.
The film stars Domhnall Gleeson and Christina Applegate. It premiered on Sunday at the Boston Film Festival before its wide release to theaters on Oct. 27.
The idea for “Crash Pad” didn’t appear out of thin air, Catalino said, but was rather based off a personal experience that happened over 10 years ago when he was a young, cash-strapped writer stuck in Los Angeles.
Catalino said he was writing a column for a “now defunct website” when he began receiving emails from an older woman in Oregon.
“After a while, the emails kind of turned sexual,” he said.
Catalino described a “very awkward” weekend rendezvous when he first met with the woman, who was married but separated at the time. After the experience, Catalino said he found himself wondering about the consequences of his actions.
“I thought to myself … ‘What if she tells her husband, and what if he comes after me?’” he said.
It was then that he had the “initial germ of the idea” for his film.
According to Catalino, the film wrote itself from that moment onward, and in Catalino’s 2006 script — then titled “Bim Bam Baby” — landed on the prestigious “Black List,” an annual aggregation of year’s most-liked screenplays voted upon by industry development executives.
That same year included scripts for Academy Award-winning films “There Will Be Blood” and “Life of Pi.”
“That year I barely got on,” Catalino said. “For a tiny indie comedy going up against . . . the biggest writers in the industry, it was incredibly flattering.”
Despite its acclaim, the script sat in what Catalino called “development hell” for six years.
“We had different directors and different stars attached . . . but with a big producer it kind of slowly died,” Catalino said. After reworking the script and seeing time lapse, “it wasn’t hot property [anymore],” he added.
The script was revived when director Kevin Tent reached out to Catalino about making the film. The two became friends and collaborated for several years to tweak the script before the film received financing and went to production.
It was a huge win for Catalino, who just years before had been living the starving artist life in California, hoping for his big break.
“Before [Crash Pad], I had written directed and starred in an independent movie called ‘Night of the Dog,’ which was four short films all rolled into one,” Catalino said.
They shot the short films on a budget of $500 to $1,000, each without permits, he said. The original plan was to make “Crash Pad” in similar fashion, shooting the film in Catalino’s Hollywood apartment with him as director and lead actor. But after the script landed a larger producer, Catalino was forced to change his plan.
“Once the actors started getting interested, they knew they could get a big-name director, and I was pushed out,” Catalino said.
He added, “Although I love the result of the movie now, and I love Kevin, the director, I deeply regret not sticking to my punk guns and saying, ‘No this is mine, I’m going to make this.’ That could have sent me on an entirely different path.”
While Catalino said his passion for film was realized after watching “A Few Good Men,” he claimed that writing for The Daily Free Press while at BU allowed himself to discover himself as a writer.
“My junior and senior year I had a weekly column called the Cat’s Meow,” Catalino said.
It was then, he said, that he realized he could combine his embarrassments with his passions and “lay it all out on the line” as a writer.
“That’s when I found my voice … That’s the most important moment when you realize what’s unique about you and where you should steer every project,” he said.
Samantha Ludden, a sophomore in the College of Communication, attended the screening and said she appreciated that personality and voice in the film.
“The humor was genuine,” she said, adding that she enjoyed the dialogue and characters that added interest to the film. “I was never bored while watching it.”
For Catalino, he said the successful debut of the film he “bared [his] soul in creating” is particularly meaningful considering the difficulties he faced to get here, and the lack of familiarity he has as a screenwriter.
He said, “Now, I’ll forever have something to show.”
