MICHAEL MOORE
 MICHAEL MOORE
Where do you live (City, State, or Country)?
Nashville, Tennessee Your script stood out among hundreds of others. What was the inspiration for your story and why did you write a script instead of a short story or a novel? I’ve always been drawn to high-concept, grounded sci-fi that uses a speculative framework to explore tough questions. Ideas about identity, memory, grief — the things that make us human. Retrograde was born out of such questions. Simple, yet devastating situations. What if you could erase your worst memory, but it required erasing every moment that led to it, including the ones you love the most? So much of our pain is intertwined with love, sacrifice, and dedication. I wanted to explore the cost of trying to erase only the grief and guilt. As an added layer of complexity, I framed the question through the lens of a main character who was facing an inevitable degenerative disease. Someone losing pieces of themselves, while their partner grappled with a new normal. However, there’s a possible solution: an opportunity to utilize a cutting-edge procedure that would enable them to switch places, saving one person at the expense of the other. People say they would do anything for the person they love — but would you take on a disease that you witnessed rip your other half apart? The emotional cost and moral ambiguity immediately appealed to me. Structurally, the challenge with telling a story this complex in a shorter script is that too much detail or density can overload the narrative. To address this, I used a backward-moving structure that reveals more truth as we go deeper into the past, layering tension and meaning without exposition. My goal is for you to feel as if you’re experiencing the memory erasure process right alongside the characters. Scriptwriting versus a novel made sense for this kind of story because it’s so visual. I aim to write very lean and cinematic, but you still only get a fraction of the emotional weight that will come when this film hopefully gets produced. You’ll see lights, colors, physical motifs, and shocking revelations. In a screenplay, you feel the story. You’re in it. And that’s what I wanted to portray, frame by frame. How long did it take you to write your script...and what is your writing process? Do you outline...use index cards...white board...or just start with FADE IN? The first draft came together quickly, within a week or two. When it comes to my process, I don’t outline in the traditional sense, but I spend time thinking about the tone, theme, and what I want the audience to feel. From there, I try to capture that essence in a very cinematic opening image. After establishing this starting point, I see the film — each scene, turning point, character beat — as though I’m watching the movie unfold and transcribing what I see. Whether it be academics or my legal career as a corporate finance attorney, I’ve always been able to hold conceptual and structural ideas visually in my head. As I experience things in life (emotional reactions from people, legal concepts, films), I’m creating a sort of pattern library in my mind. Then, when I encounter or analyze something new, it feels like I’m pulling from a particular visual construct that applies to that interaction. That’s why outlining on paper feels like I’m writing down what’s already in my head. With Retrograde, I tapped into the conceptual structure of films like Inception, Ex Machina, Eternal Sunshine, etc., that I’ve watched for years. I didn’t realize at the time, but I’d been focusing on the flow, beats, etc., and creating a model in my mind for certain types of movies. And my legal training helped with distilling the visual concepts into lean writing. Long-winded answer, but it helps me articulate where I believe my speed and inclination for film structure comes from. But even then, I’m continually refining and polishing as I get feedback from competitions and coverage services, which I believe is crucial for crafting a story that will resonate with high-level readers and audiences. What is your ultimate ambition as a writer? I only started writing in May 2025, so I have a lot to learn and experience, but my desire is to leave a creative mark that meaningfully contributes to the art form and makes people question complex human issues. I write to explore the systems dictating our lives — whether shaped by nature or humanity. If a work leaves you unsettled or questioning what it means to be human, it's doing its job. From a craft perspective, this might sound crazy, but I want to write an Emmy and Oscar- nominated screenplay. I don’t at all discount the work and good fortune that would be required, but it’s an aspirational target. And it’s not about the money or fame, as I have an established legal career that I love, but my screenwriting goal will push me to create stories that operate at the highest level in craft, while maintaining emotional and intellectual weight. Was your entry at The Wiki Screenplay Contest a full script or “the first ten pages”? Why did you make that choice? I submitted the full script. Retrograde is engineered so the emotional reveal and the conceptual twist depend on the entire structure. You can appreciate the setup in ten pages, but the impact comes from watching the story collapse in reverse until the opening tragedy transforms into something totally unexpected — something painfully human. The script functions at its highest level when experienced as a whole. What’s your all-time favorite movie or television show...and why? A close call between Inception and Interstellar, but I’ll say Inception. A perfect marriage of structural ambition and emotional truth. Christopher Nolan builds a narrative within a narrative, but at the core, it’s about something very human. A man reeling from the grief and guilt of losing his wife. The sci-fi complexity serves the emotion without overwhelming it. |
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What advice do you have for writers hoping to win a contest or place as a finalist as you have?
I’d say write what you want to see. Contests see hundreds, thousands of scripts. I only had to attend a couple of festivals to find out there are books and videos widely known as foundational screenwriting guides; but I hadn’t read them. If I had, would I have tried to write a reverse chronological story with an opening image entirely reframed by an ending twist of possession? Probably not. My very first script, Moonshot, is an irreverent story about an alternate history of the moon landing with Neil as a maverick, gum-chewing thrill seeker; with a midpoint tonal shift into cosmic dread, recursion, and government paranoia. A wild story, but it’s my story. It’s won a couple festivals, placed as a finalist in many more, and was a huge step in establishing my voice. If you’re passionate about your story, it’s going to bleed onto the page. And people will know it’s real, not just craft and 3-act structure. What else are you working on that the world needs to know about? I’ll try to be succinct because I have a few projects in development. Retrograde is one short in my anthology series Affect Protocol. The first season begins with five festival-proven shorts exploring systemic control, memory, and weaponization of feeling in near- future societies — in the vein of Black Mirror, but with a more emotional, character-driven core. It will span multiple seasons, using festivals and contests as a barometer for which themes are resonating the most with audiences. I have a second limited series in process titled Collective Unknown, which kicks off with Moonshot (mentioned above) and follows different versions of similar characters across recursive timelines. I’ve completed the first season of three episodes, which interrogates buried memory and hidden artifacts that echo across time, in a world where our search for purpose may outlive our existence. Then I have a sci-fi epic series set in a post-automation future, exploring class-reversal, identity, and knowledge that can’t be downloaded. I’m finishing the pilot now, but ten pages of an early draft has also placed with Wiki. And finally, I’ve just completed my debut feature screenplay, Shadows, a 101-page psychological sci-fi thriller that expands on the consciousness transfer and memory erasure themes of Retrograde. It’s told in eight segments, where an expert neuroscientist is trapped in recursive realities, trying to erase the guilt of a buried choice that she built entire worlds trying to forget. It blends the intellectual structure of Inception with the personal storytelling of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, creating a unique narrative that's intricate but carries deep emotional weight. Since I’m not a year into the craft, I’ve been focusing on writing, but I absolutely plan to get these stories produced soon. Regardless, I won’t stop writing. Below is my Instagram Handle and a link to my IMDB, if anyone would like to follow my work or discuss/request samples of any scripts or other documentation. Instagram: moore_stories_10 Michael H. Moore - IMDb |
