Interview - Screenwriter Ben Miller

Ben Miller is the writer of DO NOT DISTURB, a Hollywood Genre Action Screenplay Competition winning screenplay about a bumbling pretty-boy criminal who screws up a job, and he and his scruffy partner decide to lay low at a luxury LA hotel where they cross with a British playwright and a Hollywood starlet. Do Not Disturb is a crime comedy in the vein of GAME NIGHT and IN BRUGES with a little bit of THE WHITE LOTUS thrown in.

Ben is currently in the writer’s room for the first season of The Testaments on Hulu, the spinoff of The Handmaid’s Tale, where he will co-write episode 9. On the feature side, Ben’s spec script DO NOT DISTURB was selected for the 2024 annual Blacklist. Ben started as a PA on The Handmaid’s Tale, rising to the ranks of Writer’s Assistant on the show’s final two seasons.

We spoke with Ben about his background as a screenwriter.

How did you first become interested in writing?
I wasn’t interested in pursuing screenwriting as a career until I got a job doing something else. I thought of writing as a hobby, something I would always do in addition to a career. One that preferably paid the bills. I majored in psychology. Maybe I’d be a therapist? I spent a summer in DC. Maybe I’d work for a non-profit? I got a job developing video games. What a dream, right? Wrong. All of these were dream gigs to some, but not to me. What I enjoyed most about them was adding the details I observed at work to my stories at the end of each day. So to answer your question: When I realized my hobby was the only career that would bring me joy, that’s when I first became interested in a career in screenwriting.

Who or what inspired you to write this particular story?
I love to travel. Whenever I spend time in a hotel, I find myself looking at other patrons and thinking about the series of moments and decisions that brought them to the same place as me. So I decided to set the story inside a hotel – it provided the perfect context to have characters from vastly different worlds interact.

What movies or filmmakers would you consider your greatest influences as a screenwriter?
With the necessary caveat that it would be impossible to choose the most influential or to list everyone who has influenced me, I will simply say: any writer who seamlessly blends comedy into other genres. Nora Ephron, the Coen Brothers, and Jordan Peele to name a few.

How much planning and outlining went into your process of writing this script?
Both a lot and a little. A lot of planning, a little outlining, and a lot of rewriting.

What advice would you give to aspiring screenwriters who are working their first script?
Be curious. Watch, read, and listen to everything you can. Not just the good stuff, you often learn just as much (if not more) from the bad stuff.

A big thanks to Ben Miller for his time and congratulations to him on his winning screenplay!