Women in Horror: An interview with Thuc Nguyen

The Killer Shorts Blog is very honored to have screenwriter Thuc Nguyen for the second interview in our Women in Horror series. Not only is Thuc an incredibly talented writer, in her own right, she is a game-changer in this industry with her work as the founder of #StartWith8Hollywood. Thuc had experience with StartWith8 in other industries, and knew she had to bring this diversity, equity, & inclusion program to Hollywood. In the words of #StartWith8Hollywood, “The end goal: no more excuses. By fostering organic diversity, the indefensible precept ‘I don’t know any Women of Color who I can hire,’ will never be heard again.” It is such a true sentiment in this industry. Thuc is also the founder of The Bitch Pack, and in turn The Bitch List, to bring better dialogue, representation, and opportunities to women, Women of Color, People of Color, those who have been silenced in the industry.

Thuc’s work certainly transcends to her writing. Her horror scripts Scent of The Delta and The Stroke After Midnight give a voice to inclusivity in the horror genre. With her love for ‘spooky’ things, she allowed horror to come to the forefront in her writing during this tumultuous year, and she really incorporates her experiences as a Vietnamese-American woman into her protagonists. To see a different ‘Final Girl’ come out on top. Thuc has created space for normalizing these diverse characters.

Conversations with Thuc

Where did you grow up and where do you currently reside? Does this have any influence on your career and/or writing?

I grew up in small towns in North Carolina and in Southern Maryland (where everything is from The 1600s and hasn’t changed much). I strongly identify as a Southerner and appreciate all things Southern Gothic. I’m highly influenced by history and I like to read a lot about it-and old ghost stories. 

I mostly grew up near dense woods and even used to walk to school as a child.

Right now I live in Los Angeles, not my first choice, but here I am for now. I’m fortunate enough to be in an ethnically diverse area, and I know my neighbors. I’m sure one day I’ll recall things about them and put them into stories.

What encouraged you to create The Bitch Pack and in turn The Bitch List?

I was in some screenwriting classes and I was very tired of some of my classmates being praised for writing female characters who were the girlfriend or the assistant with no depth whatsoever.

I then went to another program, at UCLA Extension (night school), where I truly enjoyed my teachers, and they opened up a new world of writing with women I wanted to center.

It seems like, along with your own work, you have dedicated quite a bit of your career to giving a voice to the undiscovered talent and those who have been pushed aside in this industry. How did that come about for you? Was there an ‘aha’ moment that made you start this journey?

Great question. I do hate people with great voices suffering because they feel unheard. Before Hollywood, I was very used to activism, speaking up even if I had unpopular opinions that went against the status quo, so carrying that over to speaking up for others in the creative screenwriting space was not unnatural for me.

I think my a-ha moment was probably in a writing class where I was sitting in the back trying not to roll my eyes at some applauded male gaze stuff. I knew I just had to do something about it (especially when some women in my class even were obliviously cheering for objectification of female characters, etc.).

You had The Bitch List going, what made you start the StartWith8Hollywood initiative?

I had been trying to get #StartWith8Hollywood off the ground here and there and it never really stuck. I was fortunate enough to participate in Alpha Edison’s #StartWith8 in the tech world and admired that model of networking. It was the lightning in a bottle moment of getting Cassian Elwes to be the first mentor for #StartWith8Hollywood (via Twitter) and also having the backing and partnership of Cheryl Bedford and her organization Women of Color Unite (WOCU) at the same time!

StartWith8 has allowed Women of Color to make connections with mentors in the industry in such an organic way. How do you feel knowing your initiative is opening up so many doors for Women of Color in such a short time?

It’s pretty mind-blowing. I think the main part is that Women of Color are “de-mystified” more and made more “familiar” to all kinds of people, through simple communication and finding commonalities. 

One of our participants already went from no real credits to staff writer, and getting her WGA card in a matter of weeks, because we set her up with a TV showrunner mentor! Other women have gotten read by production companies they never would have dreamed of. 

It’s very gratifying to hear these gals report back to me how happy they are because of these conversations and how they didn’t have to pay a fee, or write a trauma porn essay to be able to get meetings, and new friendships. I hope they will come back and help others.

Your script Scent of The Delta made it to Sundance Development Labs Round 2 in 2020, what made you want to write this spooky film?

Besides the usual being obsessed with New Orleans which I have been spending time in for half my life, I was finding more out about the Vietnamese community there. I have since written about that particular part of the culture for various magazines and outlets, like The Daily Beast. I wanted to write a long-form story about a Southerner Vietnamese-American woman like myself and what she goes through.

Scent of the Delta opens in October in New Orleans in the modern day with a Vietnamese-American woman returning to the city. We find out about inter-generational trauma, and every day violence, like micro-aggressions, that she has to deal with. It asks the question whether or not she will take matters into her own hands when it comes to these jabs at her (and women like her) and outright violence towards Vietnamese-American women, such as murder (spoiler alert).

We go through not only the Halloween season, but the eerie holidays of ghosts of the past, present and future (ala the “American Christmas time”), and into a new year.

The story has a touch of Stephen King’s Sometimes They Come Back. It shows us the power of Americana and what that means to us and how we use it for good or for bad. 

Seemingly each year we get an announcement about yet another Vietnam War movie. A couple more are going into production right now. Vietnamese women are very stereo-typed in them. We never really see the horrors of war from their point of view- when it comes to being killed or sex work (and how that’s approached and what their power or powerlessness is). 

In Hollywood, we’re mostly shown the suffering of American and Western men from that point of view. My story shows how this war has affected multiple generations. If not for this war, certain humans wouldn’t exist. If not for this war, I would not be American and here doing this interview with you. 

I explore how this intertwined history of the two countries of Vietnam and The United States can never be undone, giving us undercurrents of horror, not from the generation on the ground killing innocent people, but also in the now, where Women of Color endure violence in the form of white feminism, racism and sexism all compounded. 

In this story, I subvert these “Asian demure flower” and “dragon-lady” tropes in not just the Vietnamese-American woman lead, but also her mother who worked as a stripper on her own terms, not as a “me love you long time” prostitute. 

Not only are you bringing to light Women of Color in horror and beyond, but you are opening up stories championing sex work in your leads. What was the inspiration behind a sex- worker revenge story feature called The Stroke After Midnight?

When I was at UNC-Chapel Hill, I took a bunch of communication classes for one of my undergraduate majors. One of these was about “Oral Traditions” (good and bad that get passed down). I was taught about “dead baby jokes” and “dead hooker jokes”. Apparently dead hooker jokes are very much alive and well, as we’ve seen evidenced from some men on Twitter recently.

I got the idea to subvert this notion as well- give the power back to an undead woman who in life was strong with her sexuality and killed by men—literally. Central to this story is actually this woman’s relationship with another woman- who brings her back to life.

I thought of the words from the Chaka Khan track “I’m every woman. It’s all in me.” In each of us women is the power to help other women so we can all benefit from each other’s powers, hence the “skank-enstein-ing” of a woman in the story. We must be intersectional in order to align the powers.

I am truly honored that for the latest iteration of this story that I have gotten to collaborate with the most excellent and talented Janese Taylor. Whose lived experience really makes the story and the relationship between our two Woman of Color co-leads the best it can be, bringing their bond and support of each other in life and in death- into a sisterly one. The story benefits like it never has before with our combined writing strengths.

Was horror your goal from the get go or did you come into it later in your career?

Horror has taken me over lately because of the Coronavirus surrounding us all, or my old age, or both. I have dabbled in horror before, but it’s come to the forefront more so recently for me. When I was younger, I wrote cute-sy romantic comedies, then I found out I could write a historical epic. People used to say writers should stick to one genre, but to satisfy myself- I really can’t do that. I may go back to rom-coms one-day, who knows. For now, horror is really on my mind. 

I used to watch horror as a kid and have always enjoyed watching it. Being happy with my horror writing is its own set of kicks—pure joy.

You have an extensive career containing comedy projects, how do you find intertwining comedy & horror? Does it come naturally to you? Did you always intend for your work to encompass both?

I didn’t really think about it. I really enjoyed watching horror-comedy and just really bizarre kind of gross comedy and gross horror- and thought- I can do that. I like laughing at how silly horror is sometimes whether the filmmakers intended it to be funny or not.

You are clearly a champion for women. Are you hopeful, with creators like yourself, the tropes around women in horror will start to dissipate and evolve?

Yes—absolutely. I’m hoping to be part of dissolving tropes related to my background and being able to lift up others to destroy stereotypes that have plagued them too.

I really want to see Scream Queens and Final Girls who are not always white. Every time you see write ups about horror films, we see white women who are protected and survive. We need to see something different now.

We’ll see more Women of Color as the leading role? Is that a goal for your career, to change that narrative?

100%, if I can help it. Having a lifetime of lived experience as a Woman of Color and seeing horrors others may not ever have happen to them, I naturally translate this into screenplay form.

What is your favorite horror film?

What a tough question. I really enjoyed the Vietnamese horror that’s getting remade by Hollywood: The Housemaid. It sneaks some history and socio-economic-colonialist issues in there very deftly. I like nice basic horror stuff to like The Woman in Black.

Of course, I’ll remember 5 horror films I really love after this gets published!

Are there any projects that YOU want to share or highlight? What’s next for you?

Yes, thank you kindly. Besides The Stroke After Midnight, my collaboration with Janese Taylor, I have a couple other horror stories that can be a television series or a film.

There’s Hagstone: Beth, a war correspondent in her 40’s, takes time off to write a book at a secluded seaside cottage. There she finds rocks with holes in them referred to as hag stones. It’s said that whoever looks through the hole of a hag stone can travel to another dimension. Beth unravels a horrible shameful bloody secret that the house has kept through-out space and time.

Blood Drop Killers was very fun for me to write. It goes something like this: Two Women of Color, who are supernaturals, must save each other in order to save the soul of New Orleans from racists.

I’ve got another New Orleans based story called The Devil Made Me Do It in New Orleans inspired by ghost stories in the public record about strong-willed women and their interactions with The Devil, who turns out to be a “Karen”. There are so many different kinds of women in this story of various backgrounds, races, sexual orientations, etc..

Another recent story has the working title of: Mindy Wu Tran Versus Silicon Beach. It’s a satire of the tech industry in Los Angeles where a Woman of Color founder has to battle racism, sexism and white feminism in order to keep her start-up alive (one that actually does NOT cater to the 1%).

My passion project for a while has been a feature about The Anarchists of Chicago, headed by a mixed-race Woman of Color in an interracial couple. The story’s name is currently Parsons: The Haymarket Affair. It shows us that history repeats, working class struggles are still here and we must continue to fight for The 99%. For this I was interviewed for a documentary about labor history with Noam Chomsky and reporters from The Boston Globe. I hope I’m not on the cutting room floor for it 😉

Like many who write for the Killer Shorts Contest, Thuc was very much in the thick of the horror genre this year. Her horror scripts Scent of The Delta and The Stroke of After Midnight definitely give voices to people who have been told they don’t belong in this genre. The Bitch List and #StartWith8Hollywood work to end this. I, for one, am so inspired by Thuc’s work in how quickly her initiative was able to get Women of Color set up with mentors and staff writing jobs from no prior credits. Thuc’s work is certainly one to watch out for.

You can find out more about Thuc’s work on thebitchpack.com.

Follow Thuc on Twitter (@BiatchPack) for updates.

Check out #StartWith8Hollywood, an initiative that pairs Women of Color with industry mentors to further the careers of their mentees. Founded by The Bitch List’s Thuc Nguyen and Cheryl L. Bedford, founder of Women of Color Unite.

For more on screenwriting, visit The Screenwriters Network and join the discord server to network with over 6000 screenwriters.

Featured image: provided by Thuc Nguyen from the #StartWith8Hollywood website.