Eric Roth: The Screenwriter Behind Forrest Gump and Dune | How I Write
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Dune, Forrest Gump, Benjamin Button. Eric Roth is the guy who wrote all those screenplays, and he's been nominated for an Oscar seven times, and he won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay with Forrest Gump. I asked him things like, how do you find a theme? What can you do in your writing to really move people? What's it like to work with David Fincher and Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese? What's that like? Let's begin.

The thing I want to start with is you said you were writing today and you're still writing kind of every day from page one. From page one. Well, yes. I mean, sometimes I don't touch page one, but yes, I always start from page one. So tell me about that. Well, I just, it's a way of keeping myself involved with the material where I'm living it, you know, in a way that...

I also sort of, I call it sort of a sense of erosion that if there's things that need to be fixed and backfields like dirt piled back up, um, that I could see that. And I see mistakes and I see, uh, so when I'm done with my first draft, which could take me a while, but, uh, I think I've covered it pretty much, you know? And then of course, after you read it, you hate it. And then you say, why did I bother doing this? But, uh,

Yeah, I start on page one every day. Tell me about erosion. Well, I mean, it's probably not the right word for it, but it's like trying to shore up what is kind of falling down. That's how I look at it. So why is this not quite working? How do I make this as close to...

uh, as imaginative as it can be fresh, something surprising, you know, the things you want to have in anything you write, you know? Um, uh, so, uh, when I see something feels tired, I want to make it feel alive. You know, do you ever find that, uh,

when you're writing it for the first time, you're, you're, you're like sparkling with enthusiasm and then you kind of come back to the end and it, and it loses that life. Or do you feel like you kind of know intuitively now when something has life? I think I've, I've always, I've always felt that I knew what had life. I don't know what that is. I mean, I, I mean, this is an odd thing to say, but I've never had writer's block. I love that I get to write, you know, so every day is kind of an adventure in that sense. It's almost corny, you know, that I can be a journalist one day and

be a prose writer. I think I'm probably a frustrated novelist because I haven't written a novel, but I write a lot of prose in my screenplays. I always tell this kind of cute story that we were doing. I did a movie, Benjamin Button, and they were doing a read through and they're reading the narration, which was the text. And Brad Pitt said, Oh, look at Eric. He's got a prose boner. Yeah.

And I probably did. Yeah, I said, sorry, I've told many times, but I've always got a kick out of it. But I am, I think, a frustrated novelist. So it's a little more difficult now because if you're going to write a lot of prose, the scripts are going to be probably longer than people want to see them. So but to be concise is also difficult, maybe more difficult, you know.

And how do your scripts compare to other screenwriter scripts? Like when you turn something in and people are like, oh, that's an Eric script. What does it have about it? I don't know. You'd have to probably ask somebody else what they find attractive about it or not attractive. Many don't get made to. I think I'm particularly visual. More importantly, I think my scripts are particularly human and very emotional. The characters all...

The characters all are singular to themselves. I mean, I believed a long time ago about you have to be true to the psychology of a character so that the voices are all different. I always tell this story, too, that I did a rewrite for a movie that Michael Cimino made called The Year of the Dragon, which was an OK movie and interesting. And but I saw that he had given Mickey Rourke a wallet.

that had all the stuff about this particular character's life. And I'm sure Mickey Rourke never looked at the wallet, but he knew in his back pocket was a picture of his supposed daughter. I mean, some things obvious, some things less. You know, maybe a saying that he thought was interesting and put in there or an old crumpled phone number. But something that, as an aggregate,

It's a life you form. You know, if you're, if you're trying, I don't novelist poet, anybody you're trying to make something out of nothing, you know, and, or in my case, I do, I do mostly adaptations. And even though I think I'd say good 60, 70% of the adaptations I do become original only because,

Either bad books make good movies. That's the slogan or bad plays make better movies. But adaptations, I think they give you something to look back at. You know, in other words, even if it's not very good. Tell me this. We got a lot to talk about here, but I want to jump back to the psychology. You're talking about true to the psychology of the characters.

Paint that picture for me. What do you mean? Well, I mean, I think that you have to know something about his backstory, something of hers. Uh, what, what makes this person tick? Why are they neurotic or why are they giddy or why are they quiet or what makes them angry? I mean, all those things, uh, you do it as hopefully as, as, uh,

as you can within the thing, but that everybody should be different. In other words, everybody is different, you know, and so that you can find some pretty unique characters within, I hope, my scripts and, you know, obviously in good, really great writers stuff that they're, they come with surprises and,

you know, curiosity, all those things. So if I think of something like Forrest Gump, I think of his voice. I think of his relationship with mom. I think of, you know, how he is dressed, always very simple, the sort of simple wisdom of the character. So what else is it? Is you're building a character and you're kind of beginning to create that thought. Well, with him, with that character, that was from a book. I mean, so it was semi-given, even though the book was

particularly farcical, the guy's supposed to weigh 400 pounds. And so I got to take off and kind of, and it was as much about me looking back on my life from that point, which when I was probably 50, you know, what had passed and that, that started to resonate with people who want to see the movie because it was all these touchstone moments and all of our lives, you know, at that point as to, as to, you know, and I was aware of that. I was aware of that, that they, and I,

Time is very important to me. Time is of the essence in a way, and memories and remembrances. But that character I knew less of, but I somehow could, I heard his voice. And so I knew sort of in this simplistic way, because it's a very simplistic movie. I mean, it's not exactly high sophistication, but he seemed human to people. He had two or three things he loved, like

his mother, his girl, you know, his girl, he loved Jenny and I guess God in America or something. And, um, uh, and also there was, uh, Quentin Tarantino said this about it, that he felt it was most ironic mainstream movie ever made. And whether it is or not, I don't know, but why is that? Well, the ironies of like, you know, uh,

he gets to go to the White House and he meets John Kennedy. And then, you know, Bob added some humor, wonderful humor. Bob Zemeckis is a really terrific guy and terrific artist. And, you know, you have a picture of Mel Monroe in the bathroom, you know, or whatever the, I call them ironies. Maybe they're not quite, maybe they are ironic. Some of it just, you know, how every, everybody got shot, you know, we would do those kinds of runs, you know. With a movie like that,

and even, you know, Benjamin Button, one takes place in Alabama, the other in New Orleans. And how do you...

get that sense of the southern accent the southern way of speaking is that something that you do deliberately research or anything like that i i research a lot yeah i do a lot of research so the best thing that ever happened was the internet i mean i have in the backyard here like sheds filled with research books before there was a uh internet you know uh but um

I don't know. It's just a sound you get. But I think it's also the characters, then the actors, obviously can portray them in a Southern way. I never thought of it that way. I mean, in other words, I just thought that these people are Southerners. And I don't know if I even know that much about the South, you know, particularly. More so on a movie I'm just finishing a script for now.

about the mafia coming to New Orleans in 1890. I'm doing it for Marty. And we'll see what happens with it. But this does kind of embrace the Southern about the sort of the wisteria and the sort of difference in time, the way time kind of moves in the South. I mean, whether it does or not, I don't know. But sort of a Southern way used to be sort of this fake sort of chivalry and gallantry and, you know,

But it's in the details that things come out of. God is in the details. I mean, you can't get, if the details are no good, you're not going to succeed in any way. And that's going to come out of the research. Research, the voice, and then maybe things I've lived even, you know. Like Benjamin Button's a good example because I wanted to do something that was kind of out of the ordinary with it. And I had remembered a scene in P.T. Anderson's movie Magnolia.

I think it was the opening where I know a lot about movies and remember movies distinctly. And I think a young man was committing suicide jumping out of a window, a floor above where his parents lived. And his father was testing a shotgun or something, so he shot his son on the way down. So anyhow,

but so i then got about five of these books the darwin awards they're called and that's where i came up with four or five of the characters there was a man who got hit by lightning seven times it was you know whatever some of those characters were so i said if i could humanize them and make them seem real and have whatever problem they really have you know aside from the

sort of extraordinary events that affected them, that'd be interesting. So that's what happened. And I guess the tugboats came out of research. Tugboat, yeah. Because I wanted to put it on a tugboat. I had that captain. And then I had to find out, was there ever a tugboat incident with a submarine? It's, I guess, pretty specific in World War II. And there was. There's a sort of famous...

thing with which is that would happen in the movie where the tugboat rammed the submarine as it was coming up and a number of people had gotten killed but uh there was a tugboat a guy who uh made tugboats for sale at a little shop in i think massachusetts and he told me all this stuff you know he gave me all the information yeah

You know, one of the things also is with voice, like you have this way of bringing the voice out in the characters, like in Button, the mom, like she says, oh, you know, that baby's still a child of God. And like, I really feel like her soul. But I was thinking about what is the one that I remember the most, that I quote the most, and it's Bubba. When he goes, anyway, like I was saying, shrimp is the fruit of the sea. You can barbecue it, boss.

boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Shrimp and potatoes, shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That's, that's about it. And I got to know, like, where is that voice coming from? Cause it's vivid. Like that is the guy. Once I thought about that and there were, it was, it was with them doing two or three things in their duties as soldiers. I think they're cleaning a floor with toothbrushes and whatever, whatever, however we staged it. And, uh,

I was just sitting. So I said, I think I'll give, you know, every possible thing I can think of with shrimps. What you can do is shrimp. And I was sitting with my family. We were in a vacation house that we happened to own in Canada. And everybody's sitting around and I would just yell, give me shrimp dishes. And I would type them, you know, as they as they gave me the dishes, you know. So, you know, so we eventually ran out, I think, you know.

I think what I like about that is not unusual because I'll find other things that happen like that. And then you, you know, not necessarily do it with my family, but you find that, well, that's interesting. How do we then, you know, dramatize that and make it feel interesting?

uh something that uh resonates you know that uh it feels like something that would make the thing more special that will be remembered with movies i always feel like uh there's something primal about them that they stick they stay with these books too i mean in other words when you you visualize a character um but movies at least in particular to some extent uh

when there are things that stay in your soul, I guess you say. It's not that I search for that, but I'd like to have things that have some become memorable in some way that will then start defining the movie, you know?

And how do you think about creating those memorable characters? Is it the voice? Is it the value? I think it's all of them, all of it. In other words, I think you start with, at least I start with what's the theme of the movie? What's the movie literally about? It's not, this isn't a story. This is something else. This is about, you know, uh, what is, uh, what, why are we writing? Why are you doing this all together? You know, sometimes it's just a good story, but

you need more than that. I think you have to have some thematic about what you're trying to say. There's always going to be underneath it. So that when you have a scene that feels inert, that you have to find a way to, uh, to compare somehow utilize it with the theme of the movie. You know, people have different ideas with the themes are, which is okay. If you're sort of somehow oddly on the same page at some point, you know? Um, so, um, yeah, thematics is very important. Uh,

The other thing that's important is to try to, and I'm not sure I've mastered it, the great writers know how to write subtextually. They don't write what's your kind of literal. They'll say it like a metaphor or in some other way, they're saying the exact same thing. But in other words, they're not saying what you sort of,

evidence you know and you get sort of a it's hard and it's very hard to do that and really only the great writers can do it very well some just do it instinctively you know so walk me through something that maybe started off as explicit where you said i gotta bake this into the subtext i'll give you something that somebody else wrote um i'm do i did a play of high noon

And so Carl Foreman wrote the original screenplay. And only because it's on my mind, there's a part of a scene where a judge is telling Gary Cooper, who's Gary Cooper's now, about to leave on his honeymoon and leave this town and what's going to happen. And he's giving an example of what happens from Athens, Greece.

So he's talking about, he's not talking about him on the bench, this judge, he's talking about something that happened in Athens. So it was about, it was about a jurist even maybe, but it was more about what is sort of like going to haunt this whole thing. In other words, they didn't really get justice. You know, I forget what it was exactly, but,

uh, when you don't, when you do it through some other whole story about, uh, someone burned their hand and, or, uh, really good writers can do it, you know, about what memories are for kids or something, but it's not about what the sort of screenwriting one-on-one is that people have set, tell you exposition as about what's going to happen, you know, saying, and they're all they're doing is laying out the story in a certain way. And, uh,

And it's just not very good writing, I don't think. Television does it a lot. It's more traditional shows.

But sophisticated writing, if you can get there, is you talk about things that don't seem that they may even apply. But then when you think about it, they're just great metaphors. I mean, the great writers, David Mamet can do it. I mean, they do it in their sleep almost, you know. And it's just hard to do. And it's the first thing I like to try to teach writers to try to do.

You know, talk about a dream you had rather than tell us that you're upset with your mother. You know what I'm saying? You're telling your brother, I'm upset with my mother. Maybe it's better to do it off, you know, sort of off center.

Yeah, it's very hard to do it, though. And it's also hard so you don't become pretentious with it. It's tricky. It's just tricky. But it's much better than two brothers exchanging information that they both know. You know what I'm saying? Right. I mean, there was a director I worked with. He said the worst line of exposition was, good morning, Mr. Water Commissioner. Now, maybe I could have found a different way to say that, you know.

So go back to the dream thing. So if you're talking about the dream, explain what makes that such better writing. I think you're getting two or three layers of things. You're getting, you're getting whatever the information is you want to give the audience about what's, what's the problem or what's happy or emotional between these two people. Then you get a kind of a,

sort of a fortune cookie aspect of it, some kind of lesson for life if you're able to do without becoming pretentious. And then in the day, you might even find a way that's surprising because it's not exactly what you thought it was going to be, you know? So you get a whole host of possibilities within just a...

uh, just one, you know, it can be monologue or it could be just 10 sentences, but, uh, you have a way of, um, expressing things that are very more sophisticated way. The question I'm getting at here is do you go, uh,

on the emotional journey that we go on as viewers sitting in your, I think I do. You do. I do. And I try to do the dialogue and it's always so, it sounds so bad. Cause I'll, I, first of all, I probably every voice sounds the same coming from me saying it out loud, you know, cause I'm not an actor. I'm self-conscious about it actually acting. And, um,

But I try to think of, will this be emotional? If it's emotional to me, will this be emotional to an audience? And I think I've succeeded a number of times in doing that. Sometimes better than others, you know? I mean, I was on the phone with a friend this morning. He said, there's two movies that just make me weep every time. Gump and Benjamin Button. Oh, yeah. And he said, the same guy wrote both of those. Well, yeah, I think.

you know, they're, they're, they're similar in certain ways. Some people take me to task feeling that they're too similar, but, uh, uh, I always say, well, gee, Marty Scorsese, you don't mind making four movies about the mafia, you know what I'm saying? And even though he's a genius, but, uh, uh, yeah, they're both, uh, I think in all, in the, all in all, I hope that all my, most of my movies are about people and about what people's, how they're dealing with problems and,

what is meaningful to them and where you then start feel tapped into how they're, how emotionally they're handling things, whether, you know, and you're moved by it. You know, I mean, I was, I liked, even though it was melodramatic at some point that the work I did on Star is Born,

I mean, I love the whole audience was just sobbing, you know what I'm saying? Now maybe it's kind of a cheap sob because the guy's committed suicide, but you know, it's a, it's an emotional thing. And that movie's really kind of held its own. It's lasted, you know, which is really nice. I think, you know, everything I write, I try to give some human quality to it that will make people feel something, you know?

If you're trying to feel something, are you a coffee drinker? Because I would imagine that could. So that's a strong. I never, I never, never, never drank coffee in my life. That's a strong. I never liked, I never liked the taste of it. I don't drink liquor either. Huh? Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Drugs. I'll give you too many hallucinogenics. Everyone known to man, except for ayahuasca. I've never tried that. I guess I should. Okay. Interesting. Yeah.

So what, so you're sitting up there and I mean, certainly you're not always trying to get to some of those more emotional moments, but I think that's what stands out. I mean, for me, I was just getting ready for this. And I was, uh, went into YouTube, started watching some clips from button and I just, I couldn't watch them. They just moved me too much. Yeah. I think they were quite emotional. Well, it was, uh, also a personal experience. I lost both my parents while I was writing it. That's right. Yeah. So that it, um,

I was affected by that. And I said, how can I somehow, I don't know, translate this to the audience? And then David Fincher, who I love so much, he really bent over backwards to try to make this work, which I think is not the usual movie David would make. You know what I'm saying? But he tried, I think it had to do with

Maybe the loss of his father, not that year. So there's a humanity in David that's wonderful. And he was willing to go kind of into a different direction. And he's much tougher and colder in a good way. And so he was willing to take the emotional quality of that and make it feel important.

Is it okay if I ask questions about the death of your family? You can ask anything. Okay. Well, I just want to be respectful. Anyone I know sexually. All right. Well, who knows where we'll be in 10 minutes now. No, but does that show up in Daisy's character? Like walk me through Daisy's character. I'm trying to think because it's a combination of,

My ex-wife was a big ballet of Maine, but dancing. Yeah. So I made her a ballet dancer.

So that was really important. It's all about the line. The line, exactly. And then that led to me to the whole, which I think is pretty clever, the sliding doors thing with if the cab hadn't been late and the thing where she ends up getting hit by a car, which then changed her life because she got her legs where she couldn't use them as ballet anymore. But once I could, you know, so that was it. So I look back and my, you know, this is set at a whole different era.

But what was the ballet then? It was Balanchine. And, you know, that was the research I did. And then you start looking at the things that could be so beautiful from it. So one thing sort of starts going on top of another. So.

Like I was writing that I would, I know my wife's name was Deborah and it's still Deborah. But, you know, I would go to the opera, I mean, the ballet with her and it was just so beautiful, you know, and the music's so beautiful. And so who is this person who's a ballet dancer? And, and then how does she meet this guy? You know, and then what does that mean? And when she has a child and the child's going backwards, all that stuff, you know, I mean, it's like at the end of that movie, it's just so gorgeous to me.

When she has that little baby, you know, that's this man she loved, you know. And so. What's my name? What's my name? It's pretty amazing. I love that movie. Yeah. It's I don't think it's perfect by any means. And I think you probably would. Now you could probably make it where it's almost flawless with the prosthetics and everything. They don't need to probably do a lot of that anymore.

I did this little movie called Here that didn't work for anybody except for us. Even though now I think someone told me there's a whole subculture who's kind of embraced this movie as kind of pretty genius. And we'll see. But there again, it was about, that was with Bob Zemeckis and I wrote it together. And he directed Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. It was about time passing, you know, what happens to a family. And it's just the stuff I'm interested in, you know.

So if you're writing something like that, how did you think of the different layering of time? Because there was a lot of work that happened visually to communicate that, but I would imagine that's hard to do as you're writing a script. It was hard to do, yeah. We had to really keep track of, and then I realized how hard it was going to be for Bob with all the art direction they'd have to do, you know, keep what's the lamps look like and everything else, you know. But we were, I mean, it had its, it had a sort of,

logic to it, you know, that was in keeping with what the piece was about. And what happened? You found the comic book and you said, no, no, he, Bob, I was, I called Bob. I wanted to do contact too. I said, is there a big job? I know. I said, is that, is that something we could do, Bob? And he said, well, it's very problematic. The Carl Sagan's estate or the wife or somebody owns the whole thing. And it's a little more probably said, but you

you know what? I have this book. Here's how he talks. I had this book here and, uh, uh, take a look at this, this graphic novel and see if you think this is a movie. And, and I, and I did, you know, I said, this is great. I love the whole idea of, uh, this, you know, that we're, it's all wherever you are in some space and time, this is what the lives are that you lead, you know?

And this happens to be the one, but there had been all sorts of other people lived in the same house. So it reminded me of...

City of God that did a wonderful thing with people who lived in an apartment. I mean, the whole thing of time and place is amazing. I mean, one of the reasons Marty and I, Scorsese, get along so well is we both love Proust. And so this whole idea of what does time mean? I mean, how is it? And you can't stop it, you know? So you have to appreciate it in some way. Yeah.

One is it becomes a big crushing force in your life and to the good too. Well, that's what's so unique about Gump Button here is we see the arc of a life. I mean, here the...

the part that melted me was when it was just when they get divorced and there's been, there's just been so long. I thought it was a beautiful speech when she has that cake and she said, I never, I never went to Paris. I never got to go to Yellowstone in the summer, whatever she gives all the things that we miss out on, you know? And so she finally gets to do them. I was also, I loved a little thing I wrote, which is kind of sappy, but,

We had this kind of Thanksgiving of them together. And he said, he says, they breathed that she was going to bring Chinese food. So I made that up. And then I said, yeah.

Let's see how this works. And I said, let's start. He has a thing where he says, let's start a new tradition. Open the fortune cookies first, which is only so I can get the scene written. And he opens one and it says, an old love will come back to you. And he said, is that true? And she said, no. Yeah. And I actually was then, somebody said, maybe that wasn't even the fortune that was in the fortune. Maybe he just made that up.

I like that. You have so many one-liners that are iconic. And let's go back to Button because you're right. We're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are? Yes. I don't know why these things come. I mean, I'm always nervous about them. They're going to sound completely pretentious, you know, and maybe they are. One of the things that's interesting about Button is that I wrote a speech I'm really proud of that's in there about

uh that brad pitt gives about uh part of a letter he's supposed to be reading aloud to his daughter even though he's all over the world and and he says things like you know i don't there's no rules to this if you find that you're you're not doing it the way you wish you were then you can start all over and all this and so people have made it into like a plaque you know they have it on their walls

but they've attributed to F. Godfrey Sherald. Oh, really? Yeah. Actually, I wrote it because it's from his short story, you know, which was actually a magazine article. But it was always funny. It's like, gee, I know he's a better writer than me. This is pretty good, though, you know. I'm trying to kind of bring all these things together, but it's funny because just your presence for Down to Earth

And you've written so many lines that are very, that are very iconic, sentimental, valuable to people. But then you keep saying, ah, but I don't want it to almost be cheesy or something like that. You kind of draw this very fine line. Yeah. Well, you have to try to be careful. I don't think you also necessarily said how to write these things. You know, you, maybe you hope they'll become something, uh,

I mean, Forrest Gump's a little easier because he would speak with aphorisms, you know, about things. And, you know, sometimes there just aren't enough rocks or, you know, stupid is as stupid does. I mean, all the stuff that he said, you know, if they worked for people, they become memorable, you know.

That was a lucky byproduct, is all I can say, you know? I mean, even in Gump, the classic one is, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. But the book line is, being an idiot is no box of chocolates. Yeah. I don't know why it changed. I just, I don't know. I have no idea. That's just what it felt like to me. I mean, I'm not even sure that makes much sense. Life is like a box of chocolates. Never know what we're going to get, I guess, you know?

That wouldn't be my favorite one, even though that may be the most memorable. I liked the sometimes there just aren't enough rocks, and she's throwing those rocks at that house. You can't undo things that happened and made you traumatized and everything else. But many times I tried to write things that would be, hopefully, would be remembered. Yeah. And for that movie in particular. Yeah.

I'm just trying to think what I'm writing now, whether there's, I think there might be some things that are kind of memorable. Some of the sayings, uh, uh, the early mafia in Sicily had a saying, we do what we must. And I have that a lot. What does that mean? It means that we're going to do what we have to do to sort of protect ourselves, protect, you know, our honor, whatever it is. And then so that, uh, it's, it's used a bunch of times, you know, it's like,

Think of the Godfather, the great things that came out of that, you know, it's like, you know, make him an offer he can't refuse and, you know, take the cannoli, leave the gun. And, you know, I mean, it's just so many great, great lines. And I'm sure they didn't think of it that way. They just, they just came out of.

you know, what was natural to the people's language. When you're writing characters, do you find them saying things that you feel like you would have never said? Or are you like, no, I feel like I got a good grasp of these. I don't think, I mean, honestly, I don't think they're real. The people, I mean, I'm not sure I'm going, I'm going for some authenticity within their characters, but unless I'm doing something that's more like the insider, it's about real people.

I don't know. Otherwise, I see them as fanciful in a way. In other words, even though I try to make them feel like they have a life, they have their issues, they have a whole body of corpus delecti and all that. They're somebody who exists. But I call them the other side of the moon. In other words, these are really good movies last forever.

But it's almost like I say they're other side of the moon because, I mean, it still can feel like Fredo and Michael and the Godfather, you know, where he's saying, you know, when he kisses him, he said, I loved you, you know, and don't you ever, whatever. But it's almost like it's gone going, you know, it's like.

With Forrest Gump, even I, if I see it's on television, if I'm flipping the channels, I'll stop and I'll watch it till the end, you know? So I think great movies kind of last, you know? And I guess great literature does, and music, and all these things that are part of you.

But I always felt, I always liked this idea that these, these, these people are all living these lives while we're going about ours, that they're real to that extent, but it's all fiction, you know? Yeah. You know, it's not nothing real about them. So use the word fanciful. So how do you, where does fanciful kind of end in caricature cartoonish begins? I think you gotta be real careful. Yeah. I think that's, that's what you want to try to avoid.

So that they do feel real, even though you're going in knowing they're not. Forrest Gump to me was Candide, which is a famous play about a guy who's just going through life. And what's coming comes, and what doesn't come doesn't come. It's a little unusual because it always has the same three-act or four-act Shakespearean structure. I don't care.

what, who you are, what you're doing. You can't break that. You know, you're going to, the real simplistic version is you, you state the problem in the first act, complicate the problem in the second act, third act, you resolve it or don't resolve it, whatever you decide to do. And it doesn't matter if,

You can stand it on his head. You can do it backwards and forwards, and it always will have three acts. You'll come to eventually a catharsis or a deus ex machina, a god in a machine. And that's just part and parcel of what it is to dramatize something. I mean, it's always interesting to me. Like, I wrote a version of Cleopatra, which I thought I did a pretty good job, but

I knew the same material that Shakespeare did because they really didn't have anything that was contemporaneous with her, very little bit. So it's like from a historian 150 years later. But he had the same. These were real people, you know, and it's hard to believe because of all the things that, you know, that you think about them. None of that's fanciful, though. I'm talking more about these kind of.

what's the word even, the miasmic kind of quality of a Forrest Gump or something. They're just not real, you know. But they take on a reality for that two and a half hours. And when you see a character in a book, in a movie that you feel like is wooden, that's hollow, what's usually off? I don't like it. I don't like, I'll even start books where if I don't think the names seem accurate to where they feel like they're invented, I sort of stop reading.

Yeah. I mean, I just, I want, I mean, I'm mixed here because I want some authenticity, but on the other hand, I don't mind people being, as you say, almost cartoon to some extent, but I'd rather they were felt as, I mean, people cry not because they're cartoons and far as some people, people embrace them thinking this is somebody worth caring about. Yeah. This from the beginning of the curious case, Benjamin button, you say, as all things do, it begins in the dark.

Eyes blink open, blue eyes. The first thing they see is a woman near 40 standing, looking out a window, watching the wind blowing, rattling a window. So what's going on there? And how are you thinking about? Well, I thought about that, that it begins in the dark because it's like somebody being born. Oh, in other words, that's the darkness. In other words, everything begins in the dark. And then,

uh that for that you know it's a baby being born um then there's the prose that i wrote to put you in the in the situation of uh you know already blue eyes and a woman in her 40s so you already know this woman exists probably his mother i guess and and then i guess it's a good cinema moment just because it's just it's big but that

when she's standing at the window, the windows, winds rattling it. I like that. I use that a lot. Not the wind rattling windows, but I like when people in movies have their clothes are being ruffled by wind or something. It stops time to a certain extent, you know. I did that today. I wrote something actually similar. It's about, it was a church wedding that's going on and there's sort of a,

It's very windy outside, supposed to be in New Orleans, and the windows are rattling in the church. And so then the director has a choice to how much he wants to make them rattle or not rattle at all. He may think it's stupid, you know, but it'll give you a feeling of the time and place, you know what I'm saying? So that even in that, that's pretty good, I think, because that tells you a lot in the space of like two sentences.

I think I always know the beginning scenes and the end scene. And the only one in any movie I've ever written that changed was in Munich. He moved it. It was, I think, just on the street in Brooklyn. But he moved it to be outside the World Trade Center, which is no longer there when he filmed the movie. But otherwise, I think opening scenes are incredibly important.

So you're just bringing the audience in. And then the ending, you have to hopefully get right so that they leave feeling either exalted by what they just saw or moved by it or that there's still lots to do with the theme of it. The forest compass, the feather about the destiny or is it just random?

And then where's it going to go next? Cause everybody has their own life, you know? So those are all the things you think about. And then you have to try to visualize them when you're doing a movie so that they are made clear to an audience, what you're saying, you know? So when Brad Pitt makes the joke about prose, he's talking about what we just read versus just the dialogue. Yeah. No, it's more than that. I mean, many people now will write, uh,

maybe just two lines you know it's it's uh it's it's fall in brooklyn and it'll go exterior brooklyn night it's fall and then they'll go into the scene yeah it may be just a dialogue yeah so that means you're very visual as you're i like to be i like to be very visual i like some directors don't like it they think i'm giving i'm giving too much because i also give tone in it

And sometimes they don't like that, which is a tone I think it should be. Her name is Daisy Fuller. She speaks with a southern lilt. Nice. Yeah. Well, she does. That's exactly what you're saying, right? Like, that's the beginning. But the director may not feel she speaks with a southern lilt. So with the dialogue, what are you looking at, Caroline? The wind mother. They say a hurricane is on its way. You've been asleep. I was waiting to see you. Why start the movie there?

Sometimes it's good to start at the end and then you can go back and tell us why they're there. I don't know. That's a good question. Felt right, I guess. Tell me more about the theme. Themes of...

you find the theme, you bring out the theme and you kind of come back to it over and over again. And once again, the, the, the core tension that has shown up the thread through all of this conversation is making a lot of these things simple and explicit, but not, but teetering at the edge of going too far cartoonish where you're just, you almost pollute the whole thing and cheating it. Well, a lot of people don't like Forrest Gump for instance, they think it's a,

or that's not real emotion, ersatz emotion, which is fine. I mean, it's like just the way the ball bounces, you know. Like, I think Killers of the Flower Moon, which is one of the better movies I think I wrote, is about justice.

inevitably about justice, how these people didn't get any justice. In other words, and you could probably say 14 other things, but that was always on my mind. Justice. Justice, yeah. I mean, in other words, what do we do to them? Never mind man's inhumanity and all that, which is, I mean, I think it's just almost complicit with the whole thing. But what about just one moment of justice? I mean, it ended originally...

Maybe it's still there where somebody says, you got justice. And he said, there's no justice. He said, a jury is just as likely to find a man to, to sentence a man for kicking a dog more than he will for killing an Indian, you know? So you get a sense of the, it's a, it's a long history in America. It's tend to gone through a lot of stuff, you know, and this, this, this,

I'm very interested right now because of High Noon in vengeance. Is that a male characteristic? I'm sure there are females who also want vengeance, but what does that mean? What does that mean about anger and everything? So I'm interested in that. And this thing I'm writing for Marty right now is about kind of what we...

were brought up to be, we end up being in a way. Not necessarily, but these people were brought up in 1860, 1870 in Sicily and they went uncertain, but they were part of a mafia and they believe in what this is and they're not going to really ever get out of it. And they do what they have to do or we will do what we do. We must. Yeah.

there's a discipline about the questions, a discipline about the themes, you know, like you could take, Oh, we're just going to do a simple theme and, and, and somehow it feels shallow or flat, but it seems like, like my brain doesn't work like this. I can't take a very simple theme and just keep going. Like, I think you can, it's like, you have like a faith in the theme and just the ability to kind of a stick with it. That's what the movie is eventually about. Yeah.

And that so if I get in trouble with the scene, I'll say, how does this apply to the theme of the movie? And I can go far afield or be close to home with it. But to find it interesting as to what are you saying relating to what this movie is supposed to be about so that you don't try not to go too far afield. What is it that I read about?

If you do get stuck, change the weather. Change the weather. Tell me about that. I like that one. It's very simple. I mean, it's like if you, that's as close as I get to writer's block is that

You're stuck. And I just think, well, I think I'll make it rain. And all of a sudden you look at it differently. You know, it feels like a Sunday afternoon in the rain or you make a snow, whatever you want to do. I always go to the rain, it seems. But all of a sudden you have people acting slightly differently. And it sort of unlocks to me or always unlocked me as to where I can go with this now. You know, you know, they're putting on coats, they're going out, they're putting on a hat, whatever it is, you know.

I do. I'm trying to think what I wrote recently. I really liked about, Oh, I was very windy. It's supposed to be very windy. I got in trouble with the scene. I was writing this thing for Marty and I decided I'd make it really windy where they are and people's hats are all coming off. So you have a whole, I mean, I would like to have 50 hats. Like a swirl. Yeah. They're all swirling around. I think they look like pretty good. You know? So the weather, there are other ones that you can.

No, I don't think, I don't think I ever did it too much, you know? Um, but I'm big at, I will say that that is a corollary that I'm big on what time of day it is. So I like if you're doing something that kind of feels melancholic, maybe have it late in the day, not right before evening or maybe something at dawn, you know, or dusk, you know, it's like, uh, he used to put in the scripts, uh,

This is a saying from Between the Dark and the Daylight, when the lights begin to lower, comes a pause in the day's occupation, which is known as the children's hour, as Lillian Hellman. So you get a sense of five o'clock on a street in Brooklyn, and about people, mothers are about to call their kids in for dinner. And there's this pause that kind of everybody, everybody's doing, no one's doing anything that may be of any importance.

But it's like something that you can almost touch, you know? I love that. Well, what's cool about your movies is that the moments that really move us as viewers are just kind of everyday moments, which means that I would imagine there's got to be a sensitivity to life that you have. Yeah, I think I do, but I don't think I'm as good as, there's a writer now, Jack Thorne. Okay. He wrote Adolescence along with this, that other writer-actor.

And he's done five or six things and he's quite extraordinary at doing the most, uh, basic things within dramatic situations. Um, and I'm not sure I'm as good as him that way. It's kind of a very moving, uh, thing he did about, uh, he's big on disabled rights and, uh, he has a, uh, a thing that was on like Brit box or acorn TV, the, about a girl, a little, a girl is like 15, I think who has, uh,

I think muscular dystrophy and she's doomed and becomes a battle between her parents about one parent wants to do everything to keep her alive. And he thinks she's in a coma now.

And the father wants to pull the plug basically. But he then does such normal human things within that. That's really quite amazing where it's not always about what the drama is. And, you know, like I just, I just liked one little moment where he got in a car and someone got in with him. He's driving to work, I think. And the guy offers him a stick of gum.

and he says no thanks he said yeah you need this you know so it's just like you know he had bad breath you know i'm saying it's like so it's like he was able to put this humanity in there it makes you like the characters more and understand them better you feel like it's important for every character to be likable or no no no i think no i think it's well look villains make great movies you know um if you can find a great villain you you're in good shape uh no i don't think they should be likable i think you should

potentially understand why they are what makes them tick. Even if you may not always understand it. I mean, I'm not sure I understand psychopaths or something, but you can get close to figuring something out. It gets a little more complicated when people have kind of normal lives where no one's putting their hand in an oven or something, you know, where you're getting hurt, where you're traumatized so bad that you want to lash out and kill somebody.

You wonder, for instance, about those... A smarter person than me would have to tell me those two boys at Columbine who had seemingly a pretty normal life and decent parents. They worked at a pizza parlor and this and that. Why did they decide to go shoot all these people? And I don't know the answer. You said that a few times. What makes them tick? Yeah, what makes them tick? Why are they who they are? Yeah. I mean, you're going to start understanding...

when you read enough about a sociopath, right? What's, what's, what's caused it possibly. And who are they? What psychopaths, but when somebody does something surprising, that's not within what you expect, you know, so that it, that makes fairly interesting characters, you know I brought in, I'm not, I'm not sure how this is going to work, but

In this same Marty movie, I'm writing that the lawyer who takes charge of things for our hero or, in quotes, our main character is a small person. And he's like a great Southern character. And so we'll see how. You got all these Southern characters. Well, this is a Southern. You got New Orleans two movies. I got this other one's New Orleans. Yeah, it's nothing. This was just.

There was just a great historical interest in 1890 that happened. And that's just where it was, you know. You know, the killers of the flower moons in Oklahoma, you know. You go where it takes you. I don't think you have a choice about it, you know. And then people...

act how they're you know they were brought up then you know why did the native americans were sent to all these catholic schools you know and had their hair cut and all this stuff i mean so you start building up with the details what these people might become yeah you know so you got the beginning of the movie planned out you got the end of it planned out now in the middle how much middle seems like a great big blob i have no clue and i then i get me you know it's like

what's the next three scenes. And I always want to, um, leave the day of writing with the scene I've basically licked. So I don't have to go fight with it the next day. I can make it something hopefully that'll, you know, sore or not, but at least you'll feel like this is something that's great or good. And I, I'm going to go approach that the next morning when I woke up. So you're not afraid of, you know, what am I facing here? Um,

And so I always outline just with one word, like five scenes in a row, you know, wedding shootout, whatever, you know what I'm saying? So that's it. And then it starts taking hold.

of the story you know you want to tell and where you're going and as you get to the last act as to what you know where you're going to end this thing so you have to try to start building on what is the tension what is the movement what do you want to say about the people what happens to them how do they feel you know so uh in the beginning you start to you start exploring who they are and they may surprise you or may not and then the middle they you want to

sort of do things to me that you're not as sure as you were in the beginning as to they were. And maybe they're doing things that are even, you know, exceptional or something that confuses you in a way. And then you're back to try and now finish that, finish the whole tale, you know?

As a writer's thinking through scripts, what I'm seeing is there's the character dimension, there's the theme dimension, there's the plot dimension. Yeah. For me. And dialogue, you have to say what you're saying. And then you also have what it's going to look like visually and sound like. You have to also get back into what the music of the piece is and what is the dialogue like. I mean, there's all the degrees. Most of it. And then you can be just very simplistic and write a story.

that has maybe even a great theme and you don't have to have all the stuff that I go into, but that's part of what I enjoy, you know? And some people do it almost effortlessly. They don't have to fight, fight it at all. You talk about what it's going to look like. How have you expanded, refined, honed your visual palette? I don't know. I always had a pretty great visual mind as to what I think would make a good scene. You know, in other words, what,

What would be memorable about New Orleans, for instance? And what would be great? I'm not going to tell you what I did, but it's pretty great. Yeah, it's really great. I mean, I think it's something that's almost expected, but unexpected. So that I think is something that's be very special that people say, oh, yeah, I remember the scene when they did X, Y and Z, you know. And then there's things you learn that you didn't know. I didn't realize they had a streetcar already there in 1890.

Actually, it was, I think, found in 1840. And so how do I use a streetcar? Do you go to New Orleans? I've been there. I mean, it was on Benjamin Button. I've been there a few times. Yeah. And other things. I went. One of my first jobs was to rewrite a Paul Newman movie. I was very young. And they sent me down to Louisiana.

And I always tell this story, but I bought a new pair of corduroys and had a faux leather briefcase and walked on the set. And Paul said, our savior's here. I was like literally 19 years old. It's like a kid. And it's always exciting, you know. And it's exciting to hear what people, you know, it's exciting to hear.

see the movie, hear what the characters are saying, how they interpreted what you wrote. What these genius directors, I've been lucky enough to work with how they envision these things and make them much more, I think in most cases, more interesting than you imagine it's going to be. Not all cases, but in many, many, many.

And then it becomes this whole thing that's an entertainment, you know. And I don't have a, I mean, I think you can do the same thing on a streamer, you know. This show Adolescence, just because it's contemporary right now, is amazing. The writing, the acting. So that it just makes you think about things that all of a sudden you hadn't thought about and care about things you might not have cared about. So a place like New Orleans, are you a note taker in terms of

A little bit. Not crazy. I'll write what I think is the highlights of something that will remind me what I need to do. I'll just write tension. Somebody will say they think we need more tension. I'll write tension so I'll know where it's coming from. All right. So let's talk about the beginning of Forrest Gump. There's nothing but blue sky. A legend appears. A lot of this is true.

And we see a feather lighter than air floating like time passing slowly floating by. It's interesting how you wrote that. Lots of commas. The cadence of that sentence really matches the cadence of that scene.

And we see it's over a city. A breeze catches it, moving it here and there above the city. Now, I saw another version of this intro, I swear, that said Savannah explicitly. Maybe that was a later one. Probably later because then when they decided where they're going to shoot it. Yeah, because that's now the feather is the beginning of the movie, the end of the movie. So that's explicit, deliberate, huh? Why a feather? Because I think you can decide that somebody put it there or it's just floating around in a breeze.

Yeah, that had to do with the theme of the movie. Yeah, so that... And where is it going to go next and all that? Yeah, that was smart. I think so. So what makes for good intros? If I'm sitting down and I'm ready to write a movie, what should I be focused on in a good intro? Oh, gee, I don't know. I think it depends on how you want to get the audience into the book. Same thing with writing a book. What's going to compel people to want to read past page two? You know, why...

you know, it's like, uh, the great ones are, it's the best, you know, worst of times, the best of times, you know, you say, Oh, or, you know, call me Ahab, you know, all these great moments that start things that you say, gee, I want to find out more about this. And so that's what I try to do in a kind of literary way, uh, try to, um, bring people into the environment, you know, sight, sound, et cetera. And, um,

have you start feeling also that you've found a home found a home yeah that you want to that you feel comfortable where this is it might be uncomfortable to you but you feel like this is somewhere you want to try to you'd be willing to live for two hours you know i'm saying or it might be something that's frightening to you that you'll say i want to see what this does to me for a couple hours yeah yeah i think it's important in some of these movies when i say find a home is that

you feel comfortable that you're in with, with, with Forrest Gump. You know, you find that he's, he's comfortable to you, that he, he, he's compassionate in his own way. And Benjamin Button, they actually, it is a home and they have borders and people and there's noise and light going on. You know, we, we almost, we, we almost did this, which I found was kind of lovely. And David decided eventually not to do it, but,

we were going to end the first benjamin button with um with the end credits were going to be um supposedly by obituaries from various newspapers of all the characters ha it's spectacular what he had drawn up and everything you know from wherever they didn't you know the times picky eun i think was the new orleans newspaper or if they'd moved you know like

A man killed by hit by lightning seven times, you know, right. That kind of thing. And it's kind of great. So you have these kind of whole lives that you feel like you've now experienced. Yeah. When you're teaching the writer's workshop, what do you feel like the writers don't get that you really need to impart on people? I think part of it's just somebody's, I don't know, ability to just tell a story and try to,

encourage you to join it and be as a benefit and everything. I mean, it's like, I was thinking of a script that I didn't like one of the writers had, and I think it was, it made you feel like you're not going to ever, you're not going to be part of this. It's somehow you're, it pushes you away. And if you can get people to come in and be a party to it and, you know, they don't have to like it even in a way. I mean, you want them to love it, obviously, and want them to be charmed by it and moved and all those things. But, uh,

You have to make it so that, I think that's why I say they feel like they're home.

Well, here, I mean, I'm just looking at this now. You can see there's a lot of pros here. Yeah, that's true. They would never let that happen again. How many pages is that script? Well, this is just one page. No, I'm just saying, how many pages is the whole script? Oh, yeah. Let's see. This is 260-something pages. It says cherry revision, so maybe this is a compilation. Yeah, so you're going to have half scenes. There's no way in hell. Yeah.

266 is, you know, it's a minute a page. So 60 into 260 is a four and a half hour movie or something. Right. That's not happening. No, that's a compilation. No, that's a compilation of stuff. Yeah. How'd you improve your ability to write dialogue? Well, I don't know if I ever was good or bad at it. I mean, I just, I just write what I think I want them to say. And, you know, and also, yeah,

The director will change a lot of it. I mean, the most impactful one for me was on the movie The Insider. I had written like a page and a half monologue that I thought was pretty damn good. Pacino called me that morning before he was going to shoot it. And he said, I can do this with one look. And I said, really? He said, let's call Michael Mann.

see what michael says and michael said let's shoot it both ways and in the movies one look so he didn't need all the other words you know but sometimes i'm trying to find ways to describe things that maybe i go overboard or something you know or maybe an actor can then take it make it their own make it their own way of speaking and as long as they're able to impart what you're trying to say i don't have any big feeling about it right what are the things that you're thinking about sort of the axioms the principles as you're writing dialogue

Well, I mean, I think you have to carry the scene. You want to present issues in the scene that they're trying to work out or they're romancing about or whatever. So that it becomes, I mean, so it becomes valuable. You don't want to just kill time or what they call shoe leather, you know? Why is it called that? Because it's just wasting time walking around, you know? Yeah. You want to have something. It doesn't have to,

be you know gigantic revelation but you also want to have the move the story along so you know like if you have a character say will you marry me all of a sudden you're into something that could be way larger than what you had anticipated you know right like this thing i'm writing is uh

the woman he's in love with is the daughter of his rival, like Romeo and Juliet in a way. And it's dangerous, you know. So, as they get closer and closer, it becomes more fraught. And eventually, the father says, "You're dead to me." So, eventually, he may even kill her, you know. So, anyway, so it becomes just more dramatic, I hope.

So simple, your stories, right? Like I can just hear that and I could see it. And I, there's a discipline to simplicity. I think that. Yeah. I wish I had more of it in a way. I mean, some people can really write simply and with such sparse prose and sparse language, but says the same things with so, so many less words than I use, you know?

I'm not as sophisticated at using language as I wish I was. Some people, I'll say, I'm mixed about some of his works, but like Jonathan, what's his name? Saffron Fowler? No, him I know quite well. We did Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. No, he's a good writer, very good. I was thinking more about who wrote Crossroads and Connections, Jonathan Saffron.

What the hell is his name? It's ridiculous. But he probably writes the best sentences. I mean, I don't know if he spends time looking up words because he uses words I've never heard of. But they seem to come naturally to him. Jonathan Franzen. Jonathan Franzen. Yeah. But it's natural to him. And when you read his, you sort of gush because you go, oh, my God, how did he write this sentence? And then here comes another one. You know, they're unbelievable. Unbelievable.

You know, the big deal is with a writer is that you have to put one word in front of another. And you hope you're putting the right words in the right way. And that's the best lesson you could get. And those who are really good at it are simple. They're Hemingway or they're, you know, some of those writers have just come second nature to them. I don't know what makes it bubble up inside of them. And what is it about rewriting that feels laborious to you?

Well, you've had the adventure of trying to create something new. So now you're just trying to improve what you've already written, which is fine, but it doesn't feel so adventurous and it's a little more, it feels more like work. I think that's revealing that you just said the adventure of creating something new. I think that that tells me a lot about how you write. Yeah, I think it's true. I think I've lived my life that way. Yeah. I've had a lot of children. I've had more than one wife and things and

And I think a great adventure. And sometimes I haven't behaved the way I should have. And I've learned what I've learned and decided not to take lessons from what I've learned and all that, you know. But that's what's writing to. In other words, trying to create something that will

People say, wow, you know, this is really it might be too big, might be too expensive, might be all sorts of things. But they'll never say they're not interesting or a good story. I don't know why I had that. Maybe it's because we're in Santa Monica. I just had the image of someone who's just like surfing a giant wave. And you're kind of like, I don't know, I'm going to go. And you kind of like come back up and you're just on this wave. And the entire time you're like, we're just going to stay on this wave. And I know that if I can stay up, the whole thing's going to go.

But the fact that you're calling it the adventure of trying to figure out something new, I think just says so much about what it is that you're going for and the kind of unfolding. But then you do also know what your destination is because you start with that end in mind. Well, yeah, but also I'm helped along by since, as I said, I do a lot of adaptations. I know what the material is to unless I'm creating something. I mean, I think a lot of the things I've written are strict adaptations to some extent, even though I.

I play with them in major ways or they're almost all original writing. Like Benjamin Button was just a bad short story that Scott Gisell wrote for, he needed some money for Collier's Magazine. But what it was, obviously, I didn't come up with was the idea of someone aging backwards, which is profound. Yeah, it's profound.

The closest I came to that in my own writing was I had someone else write it. We'll see if it ever gets made, but I had someone write it about 10, 15 years ago. So I woke up and I said to my wife, I had this idea. I said, what if I died? You woke up and you found I'm dead.

And you happen to like me and you're grieving and you are with a priest or a rabbi or somebody who could give you some consolation. And you say, and he says to you, or she says to you, what could I do to make your grief feel easier to you? And she says, I would like to spend just one more day with him. So I had a thing written about a 24 hour. It was, it comes true that this guy,

who was dead all of a sudden came back to life and they had 24 hours left to live and what was their relationship and what did they get to solve and what did they get it's pretty great that's beautiful yeah it's really beautiful and as the time compressed you know as you in your last hour and she knows that he doesn't know it and you know things that she wants to accomplish in that those moments it's pretty beautiful

I don't think it's as profound as aging backwards, but there's something to it that I think was quite touching. You know, when you win your Oscar at the very end, you say, I may not be the smartest man around, but I know what love is. I sure do. Thank you.

Forrest Gump says, I'm not a smart man, but I know what love is. Yeah, well, I did that because of that. And I do. I do know what love is. For me, I mean, as I say, I have a lot of children, so I know when they love me and I love them. And I have many, many, many people in my life, so I'm surrounded by love as best as possible. So, yeah, he was saying it quite differently because he's saying that he's not intelligent, but that he knows what love is.

I mean, I think that's, that's, that's, that's what we see in, in, in a lot of your movies is, is, is that feeling of love. I mean, to go to extremely loud and incredibly close, you know, it's losing your father. Oh my goodness. You know, it's like a sense of just like aching grief and separation and really feel the pain of that. And there's something about the way that your movies. Well, you know, I was, uh,

I think it was Elvis Mitchell. You know who that is? No. He was a New York Times film critic. And then he's been a, he does like, he does for NPR, he has radio interviews with a lot of entertainment film people. And he, when I, and he's a friend. And he said, your movies are all about loneliness. Yeah. And I think it's true. Yeah.

about when you really think about us as people being, and you know, I'm not sure I'm that lonely, but I don't like being alone. I'm not great with that. But the loneliness is probably a driving force. So it might be a driving force for my characters. What was wild is after I finished a rewatch button and after I finished it last week,

I wept about things in my own life like I hadn't wept in so long. I mean, I cried out to God. I love that. It just fully, I was on my bed.

And I mean, I practically had to wash the dang pillow case because I just you made me feel certain pains that I've had around loneliness and sadness and feelings of just emptiness in my life. And I just something about that movie just brought it up. And I just I just wept. I wept so hard.

Like, you know, that's good. Was it cathartic? You're not. Well, that's the thing, you know, when you're just weeping and you're just like you're completely out of yourself like afterwards. It is really nice. And there's something about the shedding of tears is a kind of catharsis. And you know what's strange is it feels really good to cry that much because there's no resistance. Yes. There's no resistance. Yeah. Once you can do that, it's important, I think, you know.

Oh, wow. Wow. Well, I'm glad that it affected you that way. Yeah. I love that. Well, what's wild is that first the movie affected me and then it influenced, it showed me something about my own life. Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. Well then maybe there's some truth to it. Maybe I hit on the truth. I don't know, but he's not a truth to you anyway. I'm sure there's other people say it's ridiculous, you know?

Yeah, I just can't even imagine what you experience writing these movies emotionally. I move by them and a lot of them come out of my own life. Things that are painful to me or how I can experience them. I mean, it's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. I was at a panel discussion at the Writers Guild and

I think I had been nominated for a writer's guild award. Anyway, that was who the people were. And the moderator said, started by saying, I want to be Eric Roth. I said, okay, well,

you've had to have had cancer three times. You have to have been divorced a few times. You have to have had some other tragedies and children and things. And so it was like, after a while, I started being, it was laughable. You know, everybody's like laughing because everybody's, you know, has their own stuff. So you may want to be successful in some way, which I am, but, uh,

It's not, I'm still me. Do you feel like going through those things makes the grief, the suffering so much more real in your, in your film? I don't know if that, I don't know. I don't, I can't speak to that. I mean, you'd have to, I mean, we have this thing I'm doing with Ben Affleck, which is really interesting. He wanted me to, he calls me, he says, I want to do a mank room. I said, what are you talking about?

He says, you know, that movie Mankey wrote. Well, actually, David Fincher's father wrote, but we helped it out. Anyhow, and I was a producer on it. And I said, yeah, that's how they did writers rooms. And they did. That's how they did movies in the 30s and 40s, whatever they would. You know, they'd bring in great writers and they pay overpaid everybody and they'd sit around in the studio. So we want a movie about a vampire.

So they'd figure out a vampire movie, go away and write. Anyway, he says, yeah, that's what I want to do. I want you to find me. If you're willing to do this, find me like four or five writers and you be Yoda and let's put together a room. And I'm probably going to pay just basically minimum. So which, which made me then my ability to get all the writers I would have maybe liked, even though I ended up great writers, they were all TV writers because they hadn't,

you know, they were, they're pretty well, they're pretty successful like showrunners and stuff. So we had a room of four and I think we got maybe three really good scripts out of the four, which was great. And now he wanted to do it again. So now we have eight more writers. And so I'm like Yoda to them. And I like doing that, but everybody's different, you know? Yeah. So you learn from everybody else. And on Fridays every week for the duration of our first room, anyway,

We had a salon and I'd have Fincher came in and Michael Mann and David O. Russell and Bradley Cooper and Rob Reiner and spectacular. But there was no cameras, no nothing, just them talking to the writers and then some guests we had. But the thing that was most consistent about everybody, authenticity. So they wanted authentic. You could be in the most sort of unauthentic,

Marvel movie and they wanted that to be authentic within that realm, you know? And so that was the, that's almost everybody is sort of amazing that that was the key thing for everybody. So whether that's true or not, I don't know, but that's what it might be right. What is it about collaborations that you've really been drawn to? I mean, you've collaborated with the most insane people.

Group of people. Scorsese, Spielberg, Fincher. You're talking about Bradley Cooper. We've talked about, um, I know it's, it's, it's insane. Michael Mann. Like, I think I learned I'm not stupid. And I learned that directors for me were the key to get movies made. So that I, I linked up with directors. They haven't liked my material. So I was a leg up on that. Um, I wrote a movie for Kurosawa. Yeah. Called Rhapsody in August. Yeah. I've worked with, uh,

the best actors and best directors in my, for the 60 years I've been at it, you know, there's a bunch of people I wish I had worked with, you know, probably, but, uh, um, yeah. Um, and each one's different, you know, it's a marriage though. You have to be willing to get married. What'd you learn from Spielberg? Some things I won't say, but I'll say he has a, uh, incredible sense of, um, entertainment. Also, um, being able to, um, portray things, you know, with, uh,

that are childlike in some ways. And the entertainment value of his work is incredible. He can do what I call Rube Goldberg. He can do like a maze of things, you know. He can have, I think his Saving Private Ryan had a thing in,

where someone got shot and thermos and blood was dripping and something else. I don't know. He can do that. In other words, something you can reach for a box of cereal and 12 other things happen. Right. Yeah. He's a, he's very talented that way. He's very quiet. He's a, he's a lonely sort of man in a way. Nice man, you know, but, uh, um, he lives in his own world to some extent, but they're all different. You know, everybody's, um, some are more generous, some are less generous. Um,

But it's a marriage you have to find a way to negotiate in a way because as strong as you may feel about something, eventually it's the director who's going to make a decision. And so I like to find what I say is like the third rail or the third way where we then both can agree on what we'd like it to look like, you know. And that doesn't always happen. Sometimes I'm disappointed and sometimes I'm thrilled and, you know.

So I continue to work with directors as much as I can. I'll work with Denis Villeneuve again. That's right, yeah. Yeah, I'll work with Marty again, I hope. We're just getting pretty old, both of us, so we'll see. And I'd like to, there's a few new directors I'd like maybe to work with. But they're all there.

You said to me in the kitchen, I always enjoy the writing. I always enjoy it. I love the writing. Yeah. I like every day. I enjoy it. And is that because of the topics that you choose? Like part of it? Yeah. I go into worlds that I love, love trying to negotiate. And what do you do? You just wait for the pitch, wait for the pitch. And then you kind of like find the fat pitch and you just kind of go for it or like, I have an idea of what I want to write. What this, what's the gold in the thing. And then it is true. What you said though, I,

As you know, going back to page one, and I know the first time I go and write it, it's not right. And what is the story I'm telling? Why is it going this way? Why is it stopping? How can I do this better? Then all these details start filling in. And I say, I like this, you know. Okay. Tell me more about the details. Well, the details just pop up when you're doing, you know, like 1860 Sicily.

you know, and, and then you start reading about, well, they were fighting for citrus, who was going to control the citrus crop. And the, the winner was eventually this one family. And as I love this detail as a, as a sign of their victory, they put a lemon on top of their, uh, their gate. I mean, it was a high tall gate, but, uh, a lemon on top. And that was, that made them the victors. And, uh,

I don't know. And so I had a scene where in this thing, I have a scene where our hero or I'm not sure he's so heroic. But anyway, the lead in the movie is is wants vengeance on a rival Don. And he he comes sneaking into an opera. And while the opera is going, I have slid his throat.

And the guy who's throaty slitting is a guy who pasts himself as kind of a singer. So he's doing a baritone with the opera singer. Yeah. So that was pretty good. Wait, so how in the world, like 1860s Italy, like I wouldn't even know how to think through character. I mean, I guess you can read a lot, but there's... I read some, but also I just envision well.

let's say it's an amphitheater. So it was outdoors. I did it because they had outdoor amphitheater. It's supposed to be a small kind of town. And he sneaks behind this guy, this kind of rotund guy who's sort of full of himself and unscrupulous guy. He probably deserves to get killed if you believe in that stuff. And, and he has, and I haven't cut his throat. So what I did then was because that wasn't enough for me,

I have that the opera singer is the only person who saw him cut his throat. So he has this for the rest of our movie. And he becomes a slightly instrumental character because the whole group of them are come to New Orleans because they, for various reasons, they brought all these Sicilians to New Orleans. And that's where the mafia started in America. But yeah, but this guy knows that he cut this guy's throat and he has that on him in a certain way. Yeah.

How deliberate are you about cultivating inspiration? I mean, we've talked a lot about, you mentioned Proust, read a lot of novels, you watch a lot of movies. There's thousands of references you can pull from. Is that something that's deliberate or is that sort of a... That's deliberate. I mean, but it's also, I'm so, I like to even quote things that, because I'm just so moved by them. So I like to use them like that Lillian Hellman thing I said to you. You know, I think I'd use that in a couple of scripts, but because I just love it. It's just so...

textual and everything else and uh and uh i mean i've quoted other things or use them where i'll give i mean i don't plagiarize them i'll say and so and so said you know um or describe something and i just think it makes it more i think it makes a richer reading experience for the for the reader you know because most people now just read the dialogue they avoid the question

The reader. So as you're trying to shop the phone. Yeah, you have that also. So you have to do, you have to make a script for a reader or somebody to say, oh boy, I see this. I can see why I would want to make it aside from whatever their judgment is about the commerciality of it with expenses and how long is it going to be all those things, you know. Earlier, you were talking about things standing the test of time. How do you think about making something perennial? Well, I think you can't know, but I think certain things like

I think Forrest Gump survived and continues because I think parents show it to their 11-year-old. That's what happened to me. Yeah, so their 11-year-olds love it. And you censor out the little bit of sexuality in it, right? Right. Or just say... I actually didn't realize until I was preparing for this that Forrest Gump's mom had sex with the principal. That's right. So I learned that this morning. And I was like, I've seen that movie like five times. I know, yeah. I somehow had no idea. We laughed. Bob and I laughed. Wow.

we can do something for you mrs gump anyhow i had no idea yeah so but anyway i think that's why that's persisted you know benjamin button we'll see i think maybe maybe the loveliness of it will make it persist but i don't think you can now um and certain things last and certain things don't i mean i could tell you that i think star is born has really lasted and it's outlasted the movies that

like the movie that won best picture, the green book, I'd say I defy anybody to have the same feeling about, they may like green book or whatever they like. But, uh, I think star is born though, because the music and Lady Gaga and all that makes it still feel very fresh. You know? Um, I don't know. I'm not sure about Dune, whether it'll last the way, same way. I don't know.

dune one and two i don't know do you write dune two no no i i told him i had other worlds to conquer which was funny i thought how do you think about the premise like is that something that you're looking for a lot because that's what you found with benjamin button we've been talking about characters yeah the premise i think uh the premise comes along with uh when you're adapting something right so there's something in it that i'm about i'm going to do a uh

sydney sweeney movie oh wow yeah she found this wonderful short story called i pretended to be a missing girl so the premise is of a sort of down and out 20 year old sleeps around and drug but like drugs or alcohol and sees a motel uh lobby uh

poster for a missing girl amongst other posters and the girl kind of looks like her and she says i think i'll go sort of scam this family and get some money from them and get the hell out of there so she goes to the family and knows enough about the girl and learns enough about her to where the parents want her back so bad that they're convinced it is her um and she's going in to meet her

younger brother who's like nine years old and the younger brother says to her run run as fast as you can and it's spectacular what happens so when you hear a premise like that what is your thought is it like that i love this is was it juicy is it that you can do something yeah it's juicy it's um

Also, I was interested in doing something that I could get made rather quickly. I'm 80 years old, so I'm running out of time here. So I thought with her being a big movie star and this kind of idea, which I think I could build on, I already said, well, it shouldn't be just this girl's missing photograph there. It should be hers too.

So, in other words, we know that she's a missing person. And have her. Then maybe I'll do it. That's probably how I'll start the movie. And they'll have her go park out in front of her home. And you'll see her mother and father. And she'll eventually leave, you know. Now, as you think about themes for that movie, based on what you said. I'm not sure what that is yet. Because I don't know. Okay.

That may just be a potboiler. You know, some things are just Hitchcock movies or something, you know? So I'm not sure. I'll probably find something. I want the, I know I want the villain, which is the father, because he actually has his daughter in the basement. But I want him to be so evil that, but he's intelligently evil, like Silence of the Lambs. So he's a great kind of,

you have this dynamic between these two people, you know, I know that that's, that's what I know. And is your writing, you're still writing on that program that gives you no access to the internet that was invented by the Egyptians, right? Yeah. It's a DOS program. Yeah. That, um, the worst part about it is it runs out of memory. Like 40 pages or something. Yeah. So, you know, at least you've got an act written. So, but you better, you better, uh,

you better print it out or it's going to go away there's a problem because once it all of a sudden i'll say too much memory or something overloaded memory and it'll make pages disappear so you don't want to get there you know yeah uh but i'm just i'm this is superstitious i'm probably just i should probably learn how to use final draft and follow the day but

And then what do you do? You print and you just. I print it and then my assistant retypes it. Based on your edits. Yeah, well, I have edits and then we'll edit together and I'll keep going through it till I'm going to turn it in and she'll retype it. Because I do, I do the, my movie program is the bulk of the writing, but I'll also, because it's, you know, when you're a writer, I say most or 24 hours a day, it's on your mind.

And so I'll, I'll, I'll like put an email, write a scene in email or in text and just on scrap paper or something, you know? So it's always,

uh it's always evolving in some way you hope you know or you think of something oh my god i gotta put that in i i realized they had left out something in the script it was a little tiny thing but that so i had to run back and i wrote myself a note so i didn't forget it you know yeah and how much of what you write comes out of your own life conversations that you have not that much i don't think i mean it depends probably if

Depends on the milieu. You know, in other words, it's something that's more, I wrote not a very successful movie called Lucky You, which is a poker player. I know a lot about gambling and so I could put a lot of stuff I knew in there, but that was because of the subject matter. You know, I also had a television show on called Luck with David, my lovely David Milch and

That was about horse racing, which I know a lot about. So I could put all sorts of stuff in that. You feel like you learn more from the successes or the failures? I don't know. I think it's a different question you'd have to ask a different writer because I've had so many movies made. I mean, and a lot of things that were not successful that it becomes, I don't want to say less important, but not as important in a certain way.

The writing is equally important to me, or maybe even more important, that I can create something that's new and different, explores areas and all that that I love about it. And if it doesn't work, then I probably missed something, which is fine. And I don't have the same ego that way anymore.

Now I just love to do the work without questioning what's going to happen with it, even though I still care. And it's sort of meaningless to have a screenplay that's not going to be filmed. You know, it's just going to go on a drawer.

So I don't know. That's a great question. What you learn from when you made mistakes. I'm not sure if you don't try to start attributing those mistakes to others. It's a good cheap way out, you know, to an, to a director or the actors didn't do the right, or they didn't cast the right people. And I don't know. Do you feel like the market for movie popularity, the Oscars is efficient. And what I mean by that is,

If you were to take your most popular movies, how much does that correlate with what you feel are the best movies? Oh, my movies? Yeah. I think each year is different as to what I would say is a movie maybe I would have rather have written. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. But that's something that's not in my... But do you feel like the...

the movies that you're known for that are the most popular? Are those your best movies? Or do you feel like there's these other movies that either didn't get picked up, they didn't do well, where you're like, dang, that was a darn good script? I have a few of those. I have a pretty ridiculous batting average for getting movies made. So I don't have that many scripts that haven't been made. So I can't harken back to that. I mean, I'm batting, I don't know what, pretty high. It's gone a little less as they've

make less and less movies, you know? Yeah. So, um, it's harder to get. I love the line from button or at the funeral. She taught me to play the piano and what it meant to miss somebody very you line. Yeah, that is. I like that line. Um, I think one of the lines I remember from that movie is I don't remember exactly what he said was, um, when the tugboat captain was dying, he says, you can rail at God and something like that. And,

He says when it comes to the end, you have to make peace. And basically that one I like. Yeah. Yeah. Thanks for doing that. Thanks for doing it. Thank you. Lovely questions. Really good job. Thank you. Yeah. This is better than the normal one.