Being five time XTERRA Champion wasn’t enough for Scottish triathlete Lesley Paterson. Nor was having a very well-received book on sports psychology—The Brave Athlete—cowritten with her husband, Dr. Simon Marshall. Nope. Long before the World Championship titles, Paterson nursed a dream of being in the film world—and now, 16 years after securing the rights to All Quiet on the Western Front, the triathlete-slash-screenwriter has walked the red carpet at the movie’s premiere and has nine Oscar nominations.
You read that right: nine Oscar nominations, including one for Best Adapted Screenplay. And becoming an Oscar nominee hasn’t changed Paterson’s habits and routines at all. She still has all the time in the world to talk cycling with this journalist, pausing only briefly because a call from the studio came in midway through discussing how her training is going.
Here, we’re catching up with Paterson and getting some insight into what life in Hollywood is really like, especially compared to the world of professional endurance sport.
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OK, let’s get this out of the way: How are you feeling about all of this?
Just totally wild and surreal. And everything in between, to be honest.
You spent years developing this screenplay and getting the movie made, and now you have nine Oscar noms. Did you expect it to blow up the way it has?
The thing is, I’m a very ambitious person. It’s similar to how I approached XTERRA. I always dreamed I would be a world champion there, and I worked to make that happen. It’s the same with this.
Have you always wanted to be a screenplay writer? Or was this a later in life decision?
My undergraduate and graduate degrees are in drama and film. So I’ve always been in that world, I just didn’t quite know what I’d end up doing in it. I started off acting and producing, doing film that way, but then got into writing about 16 years ago with my then-writing partner. As I dug into it, learned the craft and taken a lot of classes, I realized that I was actually quite good at it. It's been a crazy journey since then. But we optioned the rights the novel All Quiet on the Western Front 16 years ago without knowing exactly where it would go. [Ed. Note: All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1929 anti-war novel set in Germany. It was released as a film in 1930, but Universal let the rights to it lapse, so Paterson was able to purchase them and create a new adaptation, which was released in October 2022.]
You wrote The Brave Athlete with your husband—does he still work with you on writing projects?
Absolutely. Simon played a large role in helping us with the screenplay for All Quiet as well: he’s an uncredited writer on it. Now, we write and produce films together full-time. After working on The Brave Athlete together, we realized that we work well together. He’s an incredible academic writer, and he’s always wanted to do creative writing. Now, we have a lot of projects we’re working on together.
What are you working on right now? It must be strange having new projects in the works while everyone is focused on All Quiet.
The film business is crazy, you have to have about five to 10 projects on the go all the time! It takes ages to get anything off the ground. So we’re developing a ton of different things with different people, and it’s this ongoing process. We have like a project set in Ireland that’s a gritty father-daughter story. We have a psychological thriller set in Scotland. We have a Braveheart-esque story set in Ghana. We have military TV series that we’re developing.
How do you keep all of these projects organized and moving forward?
Luckily, I still train in the mornings. During that time, I go through everything in my head, thinking about what I need to work on and solving different problems. And to be honest, I’ve always balanced a lot of things all the way through my athletic career, because I’ve always been doing work in film and writing to some extent, whether that was producing smaller projects, or trying to develop material. And we’ve run our coaching business. So I’ve managed a whole other company at the same time as training and racing. I’m pretty used to the multitasking nature of it. I tend to train for three or four hours in the morning, just more to aerobic work either at the gym or on the bike, and I watch a lot of content then. It’s important in our industry to be watching TV shows and movies that are relevant to the projects that we’re currently working on.
You mentioned thinking about some of your best ideas while you’re training in the gym… Do you record them on just hope you keep them in your head?
I usually keep it in my brain and let it percolate. And then when I really need to, I’ll write it down on my phone and just send myself a message. It’s difficult to explain but often, it’s less workshopping a specific idea and more just letting a feeling brew and absorb, and then that comes out as more of a structured idea.
With all these other projects you have going that are telling all these different stories, are you ever tempted to do more of a sport-related project?
Absolutely—I’ve got two big sports projects that we’re pushing at the moment. One of them is the Lopez Lomong story. He was Sudanese refugee, and he ended up being the flagbearer at the 2008 Beijing Olympics as a runner for the USA. It’s the most amazing story. So we’re working with him and we want to develop that. And then we have a thriller that we’re writing that has a sports backdrop. It’s more about the world of sports and what that encapsulates, rather than who wins and who loses. Similar to how Black Swan used ballet dancing as the backdrop for this internal struggle of this woman, but the movie was ultimately a psychological thriller. That’s more in the vein of what we want to write.
Both the Hollywood industry and endurance sport are known as being ‘boys clubs.’ Do you feel like because you spent all this time in triathlon that you felt more equipped to walk into boardrooms and pitch meetings and feel confident?
Absolutely. Though I was also really happy to see that it’s actually it is changing in both areas. We’ve had a lot of meetings where I’m actually pleasantly surprised that the head of development or head of production is a woman who’s relatively young. It’s pretty cool. So we’re definitely seeing that change. But in general, it absolutely doesn’t bother me: For example, I’m developing this military project right now, and it includes the Navy Seals. But I’ve dropped many of them on the bike. I don’t give a f**k.
Do you ever purposely invite them out on rides just to make a point?
Totally.
You’ve won World Championships five times… Which was more exciting, winning Worlds, or walking into the premier of All Quiet?
They’re both different and special for different reasons. I think the film business has a lot more luck involved. Don’t get me wrong, there’s talent and perseverance, but it still feels so random at times. When you’ve got a billboard of your film up on Sunset Boulevard, you’re like, ‘What the f**k just happened?’ That’s pretty bananas. I think there’s a lot more ‘pinch me’ moments on the film side. It’s a huge wish fulfillment for most people. Whereas winning in triathlon, it’s equally rewarding, but not as global of a sentiment.
Molly writes about cycling, nutrition and training, with an emphasis on women in sport. Her new middle-grade series, Shred Girls, debuts with Rodale Kids/Random House in 2019 with "Lindsay's Joyride." Her other books include "Mud, Snow and Cyclocross," "Saddle, Sore" and "Fuel Your Ride." Her work has been published in magazines like Bicycling, Outside and Nylon. She co-hosts The Consummate Athlete Podcast.
