“We were interns together at A Band Apart Productions, which was Quentin Tarantino’s production company,” says Justin Halpern, about his partnership with Patrick Schumacker. “We worked in commercials and music videos…we never saw Quentin, ever. Ever.”
Back then, Halpern wanted to be a screenwriter and Schumacker wanted to be a commercial and music video director. “I always enjoyed writing, but I think I was more passionate about communicating through visuals, or words being secondary. That’s perhaps too reductive, but I think that’s why we make a good pairing.”
As writing partners, the duo have credits for $#*! My Dad Says, Cougar Town, iZombie, Harley Quinn, and Abbott Elementary. “I come at ideas from a visual or aesthetic place and Justin comes at it from more of a character or psychological place. It works for us.”
“We started out feeling like we both had to do the exact same job. We wrote stuff together. We directed together, on the side, when we still had day jobs. But when we got our own show on the air, we felt like we needed to be this two-headed entity performing the same tasks. But now, we’ve developed a system to divide and conquer.”
Halpern spends the bulk of his time in the Writer’s Room focusing on story breaking. Schumacker floats between the Writer’s Room and set to oversee the filming process.
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