The Most Talented Chemist in Hollywood
The Most Talented Chemist in Hollywood
Scarlett Bermingham ’04
BY JESSICA HALSTEAD
Scarlett Bermingham ’04 is a lot of things. But she’s not sure she wants to be called a “filmmaker.”
“That always seems a little pretentious to me,” Scarlett says, laughing. Even though, technically it’s true. Scarlett’s creativity is, put simply, the force behind films—some of which may soon come to a big screen near you. The world “filmmaker” encompasses a lot of smaller jobs under one umbrella—acting, writing, producing, and directing. Scarlett has dipped her toes into all of them. “But what I make my living doing,” she says, “is writing movies.”
So what, exactly, does that look like? It varies, but a typical day always starts with Scarlett and her husband and writing partner, Andrew Rhymer, focusing solely on their two-year-old daughter. “She’s number one when we wake up in the morning,” Scarlett says. Then, it’s all about big chunks of time spent writing.
What those chunks look like depends on the project and where it is in the production process. Toiling over a script on a deadline means “we’re glued to our chairs all day long, basically, and hopefully we eat,” Scarlett says. After sending those scripts out to producers, who make notes and edits on them, Scarlett and her husband have some time to breathe. “There are days where we’ve gone a whole week without sitting down at a desk,” she says. Scarlett believes in those “breaks” because, she says, “I think you have to refill your cup as much as you put work out.” Refilling her cup still looks like work in some capacity. “Our job is also to watch movies,” she says. “So sometimes, we’ll go see a movie or watch a video or something.” It’s all part of the creative process.
THE PROCESS
How does a film get from a fledgling idea to sold-out showings at major theater chains or on streaming platforms? That’s a long and arduous process, one that Scarlett knows well. She and Andrew are currently working on a film adaptation of the beloved children’s book, “The Paper Bag Princess.” That process started way back in 2017, when Universal Studios won a bidding war for the rights to make the film based on the book. Elizabeth Banks was brought on to direct, and Margot Robbie’s company, LuckyChap Productions, is slated to produce. And then?
After the previous writer left the project, Scarlett and Andrew pitched themselves as writers for the film. “We essentially applied for the job,” she says. After duking it out with several other writers and writing teams, the pair landed it. They signed a contract and got straight to writing. “Basically, we do it in segments,” she explains. “Our contract says, turn in the script to the producers. They can give us back notes, and then we will work on another draft.” Once the producers think it’s ready, the script goes to the studio, in this case, Universal. “Universal really liked it,” Scarlett says, “and they had a ton of notes.” At this point, because the initial step of the contract has been completed, studio execs can technically hire other writers to take over. But Scarlett and Andrew were rehired, under a new contract, to keep going. When we spoke, they’d turned in the latest draft to producers a few weeks ago, and were waiting on notes. This back-and-forth can take months. But once the producers and the writers are on the same page, the script can go to the studio, bringing it one step closer to filming.
Scarlett sees those producers as partners in the creative process. That’s certainly been the case with her other big feature film project in the works, called “Big Time Abroad.” Scarlett and Andrew pitched the idea to production companies and sold it last year to Andy Samberg’s company, called Party Over Here. They’re working closely with a producer there, Ali Bell. “She’s kind of been guiding it creatively,” Scarlett says. Ali encouraged them to pitch the film to New Line Cinemas, which bought it. When it comes to pitching to major studios, it’s helpful to have producers as guides in the process. “Studios are big, studios are the money,” Scarlett says. “So, it’s helpful to have more people on the side of helping guide the vision of the film until it gets to the studio. And then, the studio can do whatever they want with it.”
Including, unfortunately, deciding not to move forward in the production process at all. Even though Scarlett has managed to get two features to studios, the reality of the film industry is that those studios can pull the plug at any time. Studios shelving projects, after years of writers and producers working on them, is not uncommon. Sometimes, films are fully shot and produced before they’re dropped by studios. Scarlett mentions the feature film, “Batgirl,” on which development began in 2017. After filming for five months in late 2021 and early 2022, and after entering post-production, DC Films and Warner Bros. Discovery pulled the plug on the whole thing.
Scarlett was never attached to “Batgirl” and has no connection to the film, but its fate is a striking example of the harsh realities of the film industry. “This is why our industry is super crazy right now,” Scarlett says. “I just think it’s wild that you can get that far, and then studios are like, no. It’s a wild, wild business.”
PARTNERING UP
A wild business, but one that she shares the ups and downs of with a writing partner who happens to be her husband. The two met when they were 17 and freshmen at NYU. They worked on some short films together, but mostly supported each other’s endeavors. Andrew went to film school, and Scarlett to acting school. Then—“I hit a wall with acting,” Scarlett says. ‘It’s so hard to have any sort of control in that kind of profession.” So she started writing. “I always say, if the situation had been reversed, and he just decided to start acting and done really well, I would have been like…” she laughs, implying that she wouldn’t be too pleased at first. “But Andrew was so supportive of my writing, without being like, this is how you need to do it.” The two worked on independent projects for a bit, making progress in their individual writing careers. And then the pandemic hit.
“We were stuck together every day,” she says. “It was like, let’s write a movie, while we’re sitting here.” And that was the beginning of their formal writing partnership. Living with your writing partner has its perks: when the two are in a writing push, they talk about the project over breakfast and when they go to bed at night. “It cuts out the, ‘I’ll meet you at your place and we’ll talk about this for an hour,’” she says. One strength of their partnership is that they hold each other accountable. “If something in the script doesn’t feel right, or truthful, or doesn’t pass the smell test, we’re both good at calling each other out on that,” she says. After years of working separately, it’s gratifying for Scarlett to see their partnership work. “Both of us have spent a lot of years struggling in the entertainment industry,” she says. “So it’s really awesome to realize we just needed to put our brains together!”
Scarlett and Andrew’s wedding
Scarlett and Andrew at the Tribeca Film Festival
Scarlett and Andrew with their daughter
The film that they started working on together during the pandemic—which is still in the development process—has seeds of inspiration in one of Scarlett’s favorite activities during that time. “All we wanted to do was watch movies from 1997,” she says. “Just give me a nostalgic blockbuster movie.” One of those films was the remake of “Ocean’s 11,” (which came out in 2001, but still). “It’s such a perfect movie. And we were very much in the business of, I don’t want to work on things that take years off my life,” Scarlett says. “I wanted to be entertained at the office. Life is too short!” All of that coalesced into an idea—“what about a rom-com jewel heist movie?” The two wrote a draft. But alas, Scarlett says, “it didn’t work.” Still, it was the first time the two had worked together on a feature—the beginning of a fruitful partnership—and they didn’t let the idea for the rom-com jewel heist film die. They decided to return to it when they had more time, after scripts for “Big Time Abroad” and “The Paper Bag Princess” were in. That time has come. When we spoke, Scarlett and Andrew had just pitched the idea to several producers and had settled on the ones they wanted to work with. The next step is to take it to studios. “In a perfect world, several studios want it and it becomes competitive,” she says. “I mean, in a terrible world, nobody wants it! But hopefully a couple of studios will want it.”
WHAT IT TAKES
Having to navigate an uncertain industry isn’t for everyone, but certain skills Scarlett has honed over time have helped. I asked what she thinks that other people—maybe students at St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes who hope to enter the filmmaking industry—should know about what it takes. “Definitely resilience,” she says. “I would say my entire 20s were spent going to job interviews where people said no,” she says, laughing. “You definitely have to be okay with no, because that’s so much a part of it.” Scarlett recognizes that now, she has a good community and “every advantage in the world.” But it wasn’t always that way. “It’s not a guaranteed path, and we were really fortunate that we were able to stick with it.” She also would encourage people to listen to their inner voices about what they want to make. “This is going to sound pretentious,” she says, smiling, as she refers to a Steven Spielberg quote about listening to the whisper inside you. “It’s really tempting to see something and think, that looks good. I want to do that now,” she says. “But we’re not in this to try to make duplicates of things we like. You’re trying to listen to your own voice, and I think that’s really hard.”
Former Performing Arts Chair Jim Marvin, Scarlett, and Upper School Art History Teacher Jean Hunt backstage at the Folger Theater.
That idea actually partially came from Mr. Luke Jacob, her sophomore English teacher at SSSAS. “He told us about how there are only seven stories in the world,” she says. In other words, every story that has ever been told falls into one of seven categories. “I love that,” Scarlett says. “Obviously, it’s a big generalization, but the idea is that if every story has already been told, well, the only option to tell a story is to tell it through your lens. It’s the only way that you are ever going to tell something original.” She notes there’s a temptation to try to imitate popular styles, but at the end of the day, “the things that really work are when you can really hear someone’s voice.”
Mr. Jacob wasn’t the only memorable force behind Scarlett’s formative years at SSSAS, which she joined in kindergarten in 1991. The school’s small class sizes meant that she got more face time with her teachers. That was helpful, especially in subjects in which Scarlett says she struggled. “Bless all of the math and science teachers who were so kind to me and gave me so much extra help,” she says, laughing. Scarlett fondly remembers Mr. Roger Bolland, her chemistry teacher, taking the time to write a note to her parents that said something along the lines of, “Scarlett may not ever master chemistry, but she’ll be the most talented chemist on Broadway someday.” She was touched, because it was a sign to her that her teachers were adept at noting what each students’ strengths were and working with them accordingly. That’s not to say they let anyone off easy. “The art, the reading, the writing…the demands they put on us really set us up well for the future,” she says. The academic demands—and support—meant a lot to Scarlett. “I felt very seen as a student there.”
“The [SSSAS] teachers were just a huge part of my life at the time. I still think about the pieces of literature I read with them in English class, and I can reference those more closely than I can reference most stuff I read in college.”
The theater and English departments, of course, were cornerstones in Scarlett’s experience at SSSAS. “The teachers were just a huge part of my life at the time,” she says. “I still think about the pieces of literature I read with them in English class, and I can reference those more closely than I can reference most stuff I read in college.”
At St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes Scarlett did a production of “Macbeth” with former Theater Director and Teacher Jim Marvin and Art History Teacher Jean Hunt. And just a few years ago, Scarlett was able to do a reading at the Folger Theater in Washington, D.C., of what she calls a “Lady Macbeth origin story” she wrote. In the audience? Both Mr. Marvin and Ms. Hunt. And that’s the kind of full-circle moment that feels like it belongs in a movie.