Writing “Mud”

“I just write character first. I put plot second.”
Writer/Director Jeff Nichols (Mud)

The reason I’ve spent all week writing about Jeff Nichols and/or his film Mud is not just because he is currently a screenwriter/filmmaker based outside of Los Angeles—but because I think Mud will end up with Oscar-nominations for Best Picture and best original screenplay. In various interviews Nichols has said that the Arkansas-centered story had been kicking around his head for ten years.

“It started with a book in the Little Rock (Ark.) library that was a collection of photographs of people who made their living off the river. Then, the idea of a man hiding on an island in the Mississippi River just struck me.”
Jeff Nichols
The Fresno Bee

That book is The Last River: Life along Arkansas Lower White by Turner Browne.

Then as I pointed out in the post Screenwriting…