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‘Only the Brave’ screenwriter has local ties

Ken Nolan at the premiere of 'Only the Brave.'

By Bill Moss, Published: March 1, 2018

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Ken Nolan, the son of Don Nolan of Hendersonville, at the premiere of ‘Only the Brave’

Ken Nolan realized he had drawn a tough assignment after he signed on to write the screenplay for a movie about the Granite Mountain Hot Shots, the Arizona wildfire crew memorialized in “Only the Brave.”

The Hot Shots lost 19 of the 20-man crew when the Yarnell Hill wildfire roared over the firefighters in June 2013.
“It was a two-year process,” Nolan said of the screenwriting job. The first hurdle was winning the support and cooperation of the firefighters’ families. “People were not very willing to talk about it.”
Nolan grew up in Buffalo, New York, and Portland, Oregon, but has a connection to North Carolina because his father, Don and his wife, Ann, had retired to Flat Rock. Ken has visited many times. He enjoys touring the Carl Sandburg home and hiking Big Glassy.
Back in Arizona, the key was his first meeting with Amanda Marsh, the widow of Eric Marsh, crew leader of the Granite Mountain Hot Shots.
Over time, “I got people to trust me, especially Eric’s wife, Amanda,” he said. “I told her, I don’t want to do this if you don’t want to do this. She really pointedly asked me, ‘Why are you doing this?’”
A movie, far more than the GQ story that had first chronicled the Yarnell Hill fire in depth, would reach far more people.
“A movie would be a testament to the guys like your husband,” Nolan told Amanda. “The world would see what they did.”
With Amanda’s blessing, Nolan got widener access to surviving family members and friends. Whenever he wrote, he had 19 obituaries spread out before him — mini-biographies of young men who left wives, mothers and fathers, siblings, children and babies.
He wrote the script without a commitment from a studio to buy it.
“The idea is that on spec you gamble on yourself that when we finish a script we’re going to send it to a studio and they’re going to buy it,” he said. “Black Label said, ‘OK, we want to make it and we’ll pay you.’”

‘Blackhawk Down,’ the big break

Nolan moved to Los Angeles in 1990 to pursue acting and screenwriting. When he was approached about writing the script for “Blackhawk Down,” based on the book by Mark Bowden, Nolan had never heard of the dramatic mission of 160 elite U.S. soldiers surrounded by a large force of heavily armed Somalis. Once he read the book, he immediately signed on. That led to a 2½-year education in “how to tell this super complex story.”
“It was a great learning experience for me. Rewriting over and over again is a brutal teacher but a really good one I think,” he said. “I thought, ‘Yay, I made it. I’m going to get so many movies made.’”
He has had numerous movies made, including “The Company” and “Transformers: The Last Knight.” “Only the Brave” was co-written by Eric Singer, who came into the project when Nolan’s commitment to “Transformers” pulled him away.
When he’s not writing, Nolan reads nonfiction, mining for stories that would translate into gripping cinematic drama.
“Scenes typically last no more than three pages,” he said. “Anything longer and the audience just gets really restless. It’s a very arcane writing style and profession. I think of it like making little cabinets or watches. It’s very precise. Writing a novel is like building a house, you can go anywhere. (Movie) audiences are savvy and they’ll throw fruit at the screen if they don’t get what they’re used to.”

Dad is ‘Bushed’

Nolan enjoys visiting his dad and his stepmother, who recently moved from Flat Rock to a smaller townhome in Hendersonville. Asked if he had been exposed to the reaction his dad got for his uncanny likeness to former President George W. Bush, Ken recalled it immediately.
“He used to call it getting Bushed,” Nolan said. “People would stare at him in restaurants and he’d say ‘I’m being Bushed.’”
Ken saw it first-hand once when he walked through an airport with his dad.
“People were stopping and turning around and whispering, ‘Is that him?’ Dad is a performer, he wishes he were a performer.”
Ken, 50, and his two brothers turned that DNA into professions. Older brother Dave played guitar and brother Matt is a Hollywood actor (“Argo,” “Jersey Boys” and numerous television roles).
“Dad really instilled in me my love of movies,” Ken said. “He took us to movies when we were little kids. He took us to things he probably shouldn’t have taken us to, like ‘Jaws.’ His favorite movie was ‘Giant.’ He loved James Dean. He had a James Dean jacket he would wear around as a teenager.”
Nolan regrets that “Only the Brave” failed to harvest any nominations.
“No, it was completely overlooked and it was very sad,” he said. “These awards are really given to movies that have really run a campaign like a political campaign.”
If “Only the Brave” fell short of a box office smash every producer (and screenwriter) hopes for, it has the advantage of a second, perpetual life through streaming.
“Last week so I got a flurry of emails” from people who had just watched it at home and were thrilled, Nolan said.
In the early 2000s, screenwriters made good money on DVD sales and rentals.
“I made much more on DVD sales than I did for writing ‘Blackhawk Down,’” he said.
Now that his movie can be seen by millions of streaming subscribers, Nolan said he’s not even sure how much he’ll make. He and his screenwriting friends have talked about it.
“None of us have had a movie since this whole streaming thing,” he said.

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