It Starts with the ScriptThe writer's journey| 00:00 | (audience chatter)
| | 00:04 | Male Speaker: Good Morning.
Um, wow! This is a nice turnout. Um.
| | 00:11 | First of all, I want to thank our
first-ever presenting sponsor, lynda.com, and
| | 00:21 | I think Lynda is here.
| | 00:22 | Lynda, please stand up.
| | 00:23 | (audience cheering, clapping)
| | 00:29 | Thank you so much for helping the festival.
| | 00:33 | Also, I want to thank the sponsor of
today's panel, Pacifica Graduate Institute.
| | 00:40 | So, this is a pretty exciting
morning, It Starts with the Script,
| | 00:45 | one of my favorite things we do with
the festival. Let's start right away.
| | 00:49 | Let me introduce Aaron Sorkin, The
Social Network; Scott Silver, The Fighter;
| | 01:04 | David Seidler, The King's Speech;
Charlie Mitchell, Get Low; Lisa Cholodenko,
| | 01:16 | The Kids Are All Right; and Michael
Arndt, Toy Story 3; and your moderator,
| | 01:29 | Anne Thompson of Thompson
on Hollywood and indieWIRE.
| | 01:34 | (clapping)
| | 01:40 | Anne Thompson: Well, this is an
incredible lineup, as always.
| | 01:43 | I look forward to this panel every
year because what we do is dig into the
| | 01:46 | process a little bit.
| | 01:47 | It's not just the sound bites that
you've already become familiar with, but more
| | 01:52 | about how these extraordinary
screenplays, which are up for more awards and
| | 01:57 | nominations and have won all sorts of things--
| | 01:58 | I was just listening to David Seidler
and Aaron Sorkin talk about what hotels to
| | 02:03 | stay at in London for the BAFTAs coming up.
| | 02:07 | This is what's really important.
| | 02:10 | But we are going to go down to the
very end there and start with Aaron Sorkin,
| | 02:13 | who of course you know from all the
television shows: The West Wing, Studio
| | 02:19 | 60 on the Sunset Strip, and you have a
new series, I understand, HBO, coming up.
| | 02:24 | Anne: Congratulations.
Aaron Sorkin: Thank you.
| | 02:25 | Anne: Tell us about that,
just for the news of the moment.
| | 02:28 | Aaron: I will. I have to say that it was--
I accidentally announced it when I wasn't
| | 02:36 | supposed to. I was in London last week doing a
program called, is it Breakfast with the
| | 02:41 | BBC? BBC Breakfast?
| | 02:43 | David Seidler: I think it's tea
and crumpets, yes.
| | 02:47 | (laughter)
| | 02:50 | Aaron: I had just stepped off the plane
and gone there, and we weren't supposed to
| | 02:54 | announce it for a couple of weeks,
but I went ahead and talked about it on
| | 02:57 | the show, anyway.
| | 02:58 | It'll be--so I will just say very little
about it now, so I don't get in too much trouble.
| | 03:04 | It'll be a new series for HBO
that takes place behind the scenes, for a
| | 03:09 | change, at a nightly cable news show
where they have made a decision to try to
| | 03:20 | do the news well.
| | 03:22 | (laughter)
| | 03:25 | Anne: A comedy series.
| | 03:29 | David: It's a fantasy.
Aaron: They will win sometimes, and they will lose sometimes.
| | 03:32 | Anne: So Aaron, back to the beginning.
| | 03:33 | You apparently were shown a script,
a treatment, a proposal, a pitch--
| | 03:38 | let's go all the way back--that you were
so thrilled by that you called up your
| | 03:42 | agent and said, "I want to do this right away."
| | 03:44 | What was it that grabbed you, initially?
| | 03:46 | Aaron: The pitch that you're talking
about is Ben Mezrich wrote a 14-page book
| | 03:51 | proposal for his publisher, Random House,
about the origins of Facebook and the
| | 03:56 | friction that took place at the beginning.
| | 03:58 | Random House tried to get a simultaneous
film deal set up so they sent it out to
| | 04:03 | Hollywood, and that's how it got in my hands.
| | 04:05 | And you are right, I did say, right away,
it was fastest I'd ever said "yes" to anything.
| | 04:11 | I am in.
| | 04:13 | What grabbed me wasn't
that it was about Facebook.
| | 04:17 | I really didn't then, nor do I now,
know very much about Facebook at all.
| | 04:23 | What grabbed me was that set
against this very modern backdrop of this
| | 04:27 | very modern invention
| | 04:28 | was a story that was as
old as storytelling itself, of
| | 04:31 | friendship and loyalty and betrayal
and power and class and jealousy, these
| | 04:36 | things that Escalus would have wanted
to write about, Shakespeare would have
| | 04:40 | wanted to write about,
| | 04:41 | a few decades ago Paddy Chayefsky
would have wanted to write about, and it was
| | 04:46 | just lucky for me that none
of those guys were available.
| | 04:48 | So I got to write it.
| | 04:49 | Anne: Scott Silver, you have quite a
few screenwriting credits behind you and
| | 04:56 | The Fighter was one of these
situations where various different people were
| | 05:00 | involved. So give us a little bit of where you
came in and what had already developed at that stage.
| | 05:07 | Scott: I was the fourth writer in I think
on this, and a friend of mine, Darren
| | 05:12 | Aronofsky, who went on and, obviously, did
The Black Swan and I went to film school with
| | 05:17 | came to me and asked if I
would be interested in rewriting this.
| | 05:20 | I am from Worcester, which is two towns
over from Lowell where the movie takes
| | 05:23 | place and I--Wow! Thank you.
| | 05:25 | Someone here from Worcester,
what are the chances of that?
| | 05:30 | Yeah, and I have boxed a
little bit, weirdly enough. Not very well.
| | 05:38 | So it was natural for me to
sort of have some interest in it.
| | 05:41 | So that's sort of how I came on board.
| | 05:44 | There had already been a number of drafts.
| | 05:46 | So I felt sort of different from
sort of how lot of these things work
| | 05:49 | out, especially to get to here, but there were a
lot of people before me that sort, of obviously, did work.
| | 05:53 | Anne: But what would be the main, if you
would have defined that main difference
| | 05:57 | between what you did and
what had previously been done?
| | 06:00 | How would you describe that?
| | 06:05 | Aaron: It's a compliment.
(laughter) (garbled speech)
| | 06:15 | Scott: I went back and sort of having been
from there, I decided to go back and sort
| | 06:18 | of interview. I sort of know
those characters and know those people,
| | 06:21 | so I went back to Lowell myself and
went and did my own interviews and talked
| | 06:26 | to those guys,
| | 06:27 | Micky, and Dicky, and Alice,
and the sisters and stuff, and went there and
| | 06:31 | spent a few weeks in Lowell, and
I think, took a lot of the ideas that were
| | 06:37 | there in the first screenplay and then had to make
it my own, but also make it into what Darren
| | 06:44 | wanted to do as a movie.
| | 06:45 | So it was really--I am trying to
think that that's my answer to that. I did a lot.
| | 06:50 | Anne: And after you, and when David
Russell came in, what was your relationship
| | 06:55 | to the project?
| | 06:57 | Scott: This is also a complicated story.
| | 07:01 | We had a to change what was very
specifically made for Darren, and sort
| | 07:05 | of what his vision was for the movie
and making it a Darren Aronofsky movie in
| | 07:09 | a very short time.
| | 07:10 | I think we had about two
months, or even less I think.
| | 07:13 | We had to make it into a David O. Russell movie.
| | 07:15 | We also had to cut about 50 or 60
millions dollars out of the budget.
| | 07:20 | So it was sort of like this--having
to sort of get it done really fast.
| | 07:25 | So, I think the challenge, and
| | 07:27 | I mean I think, from the movie, you can
see how much it is David's sensibility,
| | 07:33 | and David's rhythms and
his perspective and his sense of humor
| | 07:36 | on things.
| | 07:37 | I think the heart of the story, I
guess, had always been there from the
| | 07:39 | very first draft.
| | 07:41 | I mean I think the strength of the
story is the strength of Micky and Dicky and
| | 07:44 | their relationship and what they did in reality.
| | 07:46 | I mean that's sort of true, and I
think that transcended every script that
| | 07:50 | was there.
| | 07:51 | That story was so powerful. No matter
who did it and how it was interpreted by
| | 07:55 | Scott: whoever, that would have stayed.
Anne: That's why it survived. Yeah.
| | 07:57 | Scott: That was sort of--that heart was there.
| | 08:02 | I think obviously they are
very different filmmakers,
| | 08:04 | so the challenge was to sort of make
it David's movie, which he certainly did,
| | 08:08 | but still keeping those elements that
I think were important to me when I
| | 08:12 | came aboard the project.
| | 08:13 | Anne: Good! David Seidler, you have had a long career.
| | 08:18 | You were born in England.
| | 08:19 | You came to America.
| | 08:20 | You lived and worked in
Hollywood and television for a long time.
| | 08:24 | You wrote Tucker for Francis Ford
Coppola. And this story was something that you
| | 08:30 | were drawn to from the very start of
your life because you were a stutterer.
| | 08:34 | What is the reason that it took so long
for it to actually come to fruition, and
| | 08:40 | what drove you to finally write it?
| | 08:43 | David: I am a very slow writer.
(laughter)
| | 08:50 | When I first seriously thought
about writing it, which was in 1980,
| | 08:56 | I had just written Tucker:
| | 08:58 | The Man and His Dream for Francis.
I was a very naive 40 years old.
| | 09:03 | I came to Hollywood at 40, an age
when any writer with any sense is thinking
| | 09:08 | of leaving town.
| | 09:11 | When I wrote that script, I was
naive enough to think that it would be
| | 09:15 | made instantly, change my life
forever, and I could write anything I wanted
| | 09:19 | to in Hollywood.
| | 09:20 | I certainly learned better than that.
| | 09:23 | It took ten years to get made, and
didn't change my life, and you can't write
| | 09:26 | everything you want in Hollywood.
| | 09:28 | But I started looking at Bertie
because he had been my childhood hero.
| | 09:34 | I had stuttered from age 3 to 16, my
parents had told me to listen to his
| | 09:38 | speeches, that he was far worse than I,
but look what he can do now. And I knew
| | 09:43 | that as king, he was listened to
syllable by syllable, often critically, and yet
| | 09:48 | he had enough guts to do it.
| | 09:50 | So I thought there was hope for me.
| | 09:52 | So I always wanted to
write something about George.
| | 09:54 | I had no idea what the story was.
| | 09:57 | That's all I knew was George.
| | 09:59 | So I started reading, and there were
these blips on the radar screen called
| | 10:03 | Lionel Logue, his speech therapist.
| | 10:05 | Not much is written about
him, even in the biographies.
| | 10:09 | The royal stutterer is an embarrassment.
| | 10:12 | You must understand that
stuttering was called, until very recently, a
| | 10:16 | speech defect.
| | 10:18 | So if you had a speech defect, you
were a, ipso facto, a defective person.
| | 10:24 | You couldn't have the King of England
being called a defective person, so you
| | 10:28 | don't talk about the stutter.
| | 10:30 | But I could smell a story with Lionel Logue.
| | 10:33 | I don't know if there are any
reporters here, but you just sort of get a
| | 10:37 | whiff of something.
| | 10:39 | So I asked a friend in
London to do a bit of research--
| | 10:42 | I think it was looking in the
telephone directory--and she found a surviving
| | 10:47 | son, Valentine Logue.
| | 10:49 | In the film, he is the young chap with
his nose always buried in the textbooks.
| | 10:53 | And he had become an eminent
brain surgeon in Harley Street,
| | 10:57 | I am sure much to his father's
delight because Lionel always felt so
| | 11:02 | denigrated by the rather
snobby British medical community.
| | 11:07 | I wrote to him, and he wrote back and
said, "Yes, come to London if you wish.
| | 11:11 | I will speak with you, and I have
all the notebooks my father kept while
| | 11:16 | treating the King."
| | 11:18 | I thought it's the motherlode.
Eureka! But he had a small caveat to his letter.
| | 11:25 | He said, "I will do this, but first,
you must get written permission from the
| | 11:29 | Queen Mother," and that's when my
American friends realized, yes, I really am
| | 11:35 | still a Brit at heart.
| | 11:36 | I am an American and proud of
it, but I am a Brit by birth.
| | 11:40 | So I wrote to the Queen Mum, and I got
a lovely crisp cream-colored stationary
| | 11:46 | envelope with a big red stamp of Clarence House.
| | 11:49 | And she said, "Dear Mr.Seidler,
please, not during my lifetime;
| | 11:54 | the memory of these
events are still too painful."
| | 11:57 | Well, I thought, all right, if a Brit
asks the Queen Mum's permission and she
| | 12:03 | says, wait, you wait, or
you go to the Tower of London.
| | 12:08 | But I didn't think I had to wait for very long.
| | 12:10 | She was an elderly lady.
| | 12:12 | I thought, a year.
| | 12:13 | 25 years later, at the age of 100,
almost 102, she finally left this
| | 12:24 | mortal realm.
| | 12:26 | So that's why it took a
little while to get started.
| | 12:29 | (laughter and applause)
| | 12:38 | Anne: So Charlie, you were
working with a partner on Get Low.
| | 12:43 | This is based on a true figure, but how
true? How real is this man that Robert
| | 12:49 | Duvall was playing in Get Low?
| | 12:50 | Anne: Is he a phantom or--? Yeah.
Charlie: Well, there really was a Felix Bush,
| | 12:53 | Charlie: but all we really knew about him is
| | 12:57 | that he had this funeral, he invited
everybody to come, and that's really all we had.
| | 13:04 | There was some mystery about him,
but he never revealed what it was.
| | 13:09 | Supposedly somewhere back in his youth,
he had done something really bad, which
| | 13:16 | had caused him to withdraw completely
from the world, but what that was, we
| | 13:21 | never knew. So we had to invent that.
| | 13:23 | Anne: So you were working away in the
Indie world on what was a modest script.
| | 13:30 | I mean did you have any idea that you
would end up landing the cast that you did,
| | 13:34 | and that it would get the
kind of attention that it got?
| | 13:39 | Charlie: Interesting question!
| | 13:42 | I went to Mr. Duvall's house in Virginia,
went out on the back porch, and we were sitting out
| | 13:51 | there and talking about the
character and talking about the story.
| | 13:59 | Sometime during those two days we
spent on the back porch, something happened.
| | 14:06 | We both decided that this
was the story we had to tell.
| | 14:10 | I think we would have done
anything to make it happen.
| | 14:15 | I know I would have, and
he certainly stepped up and proved that, too.
| | 14:18 | Anne: He sure did.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The writer's journey (cont.)| 00:00 | Anne Thompson: Lisa, you ended up taking a long
time to write The Kids Are All Right as
| | 00:04 | well, some five years, and you got
Julianne Moore attached very, very early on.
| | 00:11 | Can you talk about how the original
idea of the script changed over those five
| | 00:16 | years, and whether the period of time
that it took to actually deliver the movie
| | 00:21 | made it a better movie in the end?
| | 00:23 | Lisa Cholodenko: I'm so glad you didn't ask me how
the original, original idea came about.
| | 00:31 | I feel like everybody in this
room probably has heard that story.
| | 00:35 | I started writing it on my own, based
on experiences that I was going through
| | 00:42 | in my own life with trying to start a family.
| | 00:44 | I ran into my co-writer, Stuart
Blumberg, who I wish was here, but he is on
| | 00:48 | the East Coast.
| | 00:51 | We had a great chance encounter in a
restaurant near my house called the
| | 00:55 | 101 Cafe where I would sit
everyday and kill time and eat French toast.
| | 01:00 | He walked in one day.
| | 01:01 | I hadn't seen him in quite some time.
| | 01:03 | I'd moved to LA about a year or two
earlier from New York, and he was still in
| | 01:08 | New York, and he walked in, and it was
just one of those old acquaintances that
| | 01:12 | you know and admire but you
don't have any real history with.
| | 01:17 | And he sat down, and we started talking
about what we're doing in our careers and
| | 01:23 | next steps and this and that.
| | 01:26 | I told him about this script that I had
just begun, but here I was stalling and
| | 01:31 | eating French toast and I guess
I was hitting a wall early on.
| | 01:34 | And I told him that it was about this
family and these teenage kids, and one of
| | 01:40 | them was coming of age on her own and
kind of in sort of secrecy was
| | 01:46 | digging around to find her sperm-donor father.
| | 01:49 | Stuart just sort of spontaneously said, oh wow!
| | 01:51 | I was a sperm donor in college.
| | 01:54 | And it was like one of those
revelation moments, because I'd been thinking
| | 01:58 | conceptually about sperm donors for a
long time and never had met a real, live,
| | 02:03 | animated, human male sperm donor,
and there he was, right in my face.
| | 02:08 | I actually knew him and liked him and
he is handsome and bright and the rest of it.
| | 02:16 | And based on that and based on kind of
things that we were saying to each other
| | 02:20 | in this conversation, one being,
unsolicited, he said to me, "You know, I think you
| | 02:26 | come up with these great character
studies and stories and stuff, but I would
| | 02:30 | love to see you push out a little
bit and kind of take your stuff in a
| | 02:34 | commercial vein," which I,
of course, took offense to.
| | 02:37 | Lisa: And then I said to him--
Anne: Her first film was called High Art.
| | 02:42 | Lisa: Right--and a cult classic for
those that live in Downtown New York.
| | 02:48 | I said to him, "I think you've got great
comedic chops, and I think that you do
| | 02:55 | structure great, and here you are
writing and rewriting studio films, but I
| | 03:00 | really think it's time for
you to start diggin deeper."
| | 03:02 | So based on the sperm donor and what
I was going through and this and that
| | 03:09 | and trying to start a family and him
needed to dig deeper and me needing to push wider,
| | 03:15 | I just spontaneously said, "Oh wow!
| | 03:18 | This could be an antidote to all
this loneliness of screenwriting.
| | 03:22 | Hey Stu, do you want to write this movie with me?"
| | 03:24 | And I guess he was in this same state
of mind, and he sort of signed up right
| | 03:30 | there in the coffee shop.
| | 03:33 | So part of the reason why it took so
long to write it was that he primarily was
| | 03:39 | still living on the East Coast.
| | 03:40 | So I was on the West Coast, and we
would have to make these appointments.
| | 03:45 | I didn't want to skype it in, and I
didn't-- you know, the point to me of writing
| | 03:49 | with another writer was the synergy,
all the ineffable stuff that you get by
| | 03:54 | sitting next to another human being
and what comes out of that, just you know
| | 03:58 | sort of energetically, beyond the words.
| | 04:01 | So I wanted to wait till when
we could spend time together.
| | 04:04 | So months would go by between these 2- to
3-week periods where we would plot out
| | 04:10 | time to sit and try to push through a draft.
| | 04:14 | So I am going to try to cut to the
chase here, which is we got through a
| | 04:18 | first draft. It was long.
| | 04:21 | It involved a river rafting trip.
It was very expensive.
| | 04:26 | We liked it, but nobody wanted to
make it, and we had to go back to the
| | 04:30 | drawing board.
| | 04:32 | The next detour was I had a child.
| | 04:35 | I had to take some time out to do that project.
| | 04:42 | In terms of Anne's question, that was
a great time out, because it really
| | 04:46 | fortified my commitment to the subject
and to the kind of machinations of what
| | 04:54 | this couple was going through.
| | 04:56 | It was my girlfriend and I, and we'd
had this child with an anonymous sperm donor.
| | 05:01 | So here I was finally living
my part of the arrangement.
| | 05:05 | He'd already been a sperm donor, but I
had to kind of fulfill my end of it.
| | 05:11 | So you go on and on and you keep writing
drafts and you keep trying to make them
| | 05:16 | tight, and meanwhile, you're waiting for
your partner to come to the next coast,
| | 05:21 | or be able to travel, and things
marinate and start the truth and the falsity of
| | 05:27 | what you've written, the authenticity,
the level of understanding of your
| | 05:31 | characters, and of your plot,
| | 05:33 | I think that's something that
really time is the thing that brings that in to focus.
| | 05:39 | So while I was wringing my hands it
was taking so much time, in the end, in
| | 05:44 | retrospect that was kind of the biggest,
biggest gift of it all that we had all
| | 05:48 | that time to reflect on each draft.
| | 05:50 | Anne: Yes, I am very aware that what I do
as a blogger is very different from what
| | 05:54 | you all do as to taking a very
long time to hone and polish.
| | 05:58 | And Michael, you're yet another
example of this, after you did Little Miss
| | 06:04 | Sunshine and won the Oscar for
your first produced screenplay.
| | 06:08 | (clapping)
| | 06:10 | Lisa: No big deal.
Anne: For which he was on this panel once before.
| | 06:14 | You then went up to Pixar, you went
north and joined this sort of hive mind, and
| | 06:20 | yet you still have a single
screenplay credit for Toy Story 3.
| | 06:24 | So what was the biggest-- you
had these beloved characters that
| | 06:31 | everybody really loved.
| | 06:32 | You were writing a sequel, and you had to
take this sort of pitch that they gave
| | 06:38 | you and turn it into something real.
| | 06:40 | What would be the biggest difference
between what that initial hive-mind
| | 06:45 | creation was and what you
ended up with at the end?
| | 06:48 | Michael Arndt: Just to sort of correct the
chronology, I actually was first contacted by
| | 06:55 | Pixar in the summer of 2005 when
Little Miss Sunshine was still being shot.
| | 06:59 | So they called me up when I
was an un-produced screenwriter.
| | 07:04 | I first went up and interviewed and
got hired by them in September of 2005.
| | 07:10 | So that was before we'd
even been accepted at Sundance.
| | 07:14 | So I just felt very lucky to be there.
| | 07:16 | It wasn't as though I won--
Little Miss Sunshine came out and then I
| | 07:20 | joined Pixar.
| | 07:21 | It was, I joined Pixar and then
Little Miss Sunshine came out.
| | 07:24 | I was just happy to be there.
| | 07:26 | I mean I was so happy.
| | 07:27 | I mean I sort of spent ten years
sitting alone in my apartment in Brooklyn
| | 07:31 | writing, and so to be invited to come up
aboard this incredible company and
| | 07:37 | just work collaboratively with other writers,
| | 07:40 | I just thought, "I have to do this."
| | 07:42 | And just to answer your question very
briefly, they went away and they came
| | 07:46 | back--the guys who had written the
original Toy Story movies went away for two
| | 07:50 | days and they had sort of a retreat.
| | 07:52 | And they came up with sort of the
real strong foundation of the movie, which
| | 07:56 | was at the beginning.
| | 07:57 | I think that the smartest decision
they made was the first decision, which was
| | 08:01 | that they were going to let screen time
elapse in real time, so that it would've
| | 08:04 | been 11 years since the last movie, and
basically, 11 years would have gone by,
| | 08:07 | so that Andy is grown up and the
toys are now facing a real problem.
| | 08:11 | John Lasseter said that if you're a toy
and you get broken, you can get fixed,
| | 08:15 | and if you get lost, you can be found.
But if your a kid that grows up, there is no
| | 08:17 | sort of solution to that.
| | 08:19 | And it's a great, great thing, because
I think as a storyteller, you're always
| | 08:23 | looking for a problem to give to your
character that the audience doesn't see a
| | 08:27 | clear, easy solution to.
| | 08:29 | And then they came back and
they gave me--the middle was that they donate
| | 08:32 | themselves to daycare, and then
initially it looks great and then it turns
| | 08:36 | out it's not so great.
| | 08:37 | And then the end was--and this was
also a really, really crucial--was to make
| | 08:44 | this decision that the end of the story
Andy was going to give all his toys away,
| | 08:48 | sort of one by one, to this
little girl named Bonnie.
| | 08:51 | And that I just felt like I was so, so
lucky at the beginning of the process, and
| | 08:55 | we were all so lucky to have those three
building blocks, and especially the ending,
| | 09:00 | especially something that you always
had a flagged point on the horizon, you
| | 09:03 | always knew that you were going there.
| | 09:07 | However the detours we took, we
always knew exactly where we were going.
| | 09:11 | Just in a nutshell, like for example,
the third act of the film, now, in the film
| | 09:16 | they go to the landfill.
| | 09:18 | That wasn't in the original conception;
| | 09:20 | it was a scramble to get home in the
third act, which we ended up throwing away.
| | 09:23 | The hardest thing there was just
figuring out what the arc of your hero's story
| | 09:29 | is. I mean, Woody is essentially
the hero of the movie. What does he learn
| | 09:33 | in the course of the story?
| | 09:34 | And it's really tricky if you're
doing a third film of a character who is
| | 09:38 | already sort of as
well-defined as sort Buzz or Woody.
| | 09:41 | In the first film, Woody has to realize
that he is sort of an only child or he
| | 09:46 | is a favorite, he is Andy's favorite,
and then he has to realize that he has to
| | 09:49 | share the spotlight.
| | 09:50 | And developmentally, that tracks
with someone, a kid who is five or
| | 09:54 | six years old.
| | 09:55 | And then in the second film, he
actually has to come in terms with his mortality;
| | 09:59 | he has to realize, someday
I'm going to get worn out.
| | 10:01 | I'm going to get thrown away.
| | 10:03 | And that developmentally tracks with
the kid who is eight or nine years old.
| | 10:07 | So it was really hard thinking, okay, what
new lesson can this character learn in
| | 10:11 | the course of the third story,
because it has to feel like a real story.
| | 10:13 | It has to feel like you've really
solved something, or he's really gotten a new
| | 10:17 | perspective on life.
| | 10:19 | And that, it took a long, long, long
time and a lot of like conversations around
| | 10:23 | in the story room to
figure out he has always said--
| | 10:27 | It's funny.
I always feel like--probably same with you guys;
| | 10:30 | your answer is already almost
always already there in a story.
| | 10:34 | So in the original movies, Woody
keeps insisting our job is to be there for
| | 10:38 | Andy, our job is to be there for Andy,
and he is equating love with always
| | 10:41 | being there.
| | 10:43 | So to make a long story short, we got
to the end and Woody has to overhear his
| | 10:47 | mom saying to Andy, "I wish I could
always be there with you," and Andy
| | 10:51 | saying, "You will be, Mom."
| | 10:52 | And that way, you shift from sort of a
literal sense of always being there for
| | 10:57 | somebody to a figurative sense.
| | 11:01 | Woody finally learns that he
can love somebody and let them go.
| | 11:04 | He learns about the impermanence of
things. He learns about moving on.
| | 11:07 | But it took a long, long, long time and
a lot of meetings to really figure out.
| | 11:11 | The nice thing is that it
developmentally tracks with someone who is older, who
| | 11:15 | is essentially a teenager.
| | 11:16 | So that now if you look at the arc of
all three stories, it really feels like
| | 11:19 | Woody has gone from being a very
immature, sort of five-year-old, to being
| | 11:23 | sort of a grownup.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Research and inspiration| 00:00 | Anne Thompson: Aaron, your movie has obviously
taken off in all sorts of crazy ways since
| | 00:06 | you wrote it, in terms of the debate,
the media, discussion of it, and the Mark
| | 00:11 | Zuckerberg of it all.
| | 00:13 | The idea that you were taking some
license with him has always been something of
| | 00:18 | an issue, and it almost feels, on the one
hand, some people read this movie that
| | 00:25 | he is a hero, some people hate him.
| | 00:27 | I mean there is Rorschach test of how
people react to him, and you've also had to
| | 00:31 | deal with his own reaction and the
kind of media counter-fight that he waged.
| | 00:37 | But in some ways your movie is
responsible for him being on the cover of Time.
| | 00:41 | Could you articulate for me a
little bit how you have responded to this
| | 00:47 | extraordinary arc that has emerged
since you wrote this script, presumably you
| | 00:52 | know thinking about what might
happen and not sure how it would play out?
| | 00:55 | Aaron Sorkin: Sure. I'll do my best.
| | 01:00 | First of all, I think that the
movie is fictionalized less than you'd
| | 01:09 | probably think.
| | 01:15 | When you're writing nonfiction,
particularly nonfiction about people who are
| | 01:18 | still alive, and in this
case they are young people,
| | 01:22 | you have your own moral
compass that says, "First, do no harm."
| | 01:26 | You're not going to play it fast and
loose with the lives of real people. And if
| | 01:31 | your own moral compass is broken,
there is the Sony Legal Department to help you out.
| | 01:36 | (laughter)
| | 01:41 | You're simply not allowed to say
something that is untrue and defamatory at
| | 01:46 | the same time. And if I had, you would
know it, because Mark Zuckerberg would
| | 01:50 | own Sony right now.
(laughter)
| | 01:56 | The Social Network doesn't fall very
easily into any particular genre, but for
| | 02:01 | me, the one that it comes closest to is a
courtroom drama. And after doing all the
| | 02:07 | research, and that research included
available research, like the kind of thing
| | 02:12 | you could, anything you could find
on the Internet; for instance--and very
| | 02:16 | importantly--Mark's own blog post from
that Tuesday night in October 2003 that
| | 02:23 | we hear in voiceover at the beginning of
the movie when Mark in a revenge stunt
| | 02:28 | against a woman whose name I changed.
| | 02:30 | The character was real; the name is different.
| | 02:33 | There were three names I changed in that thing.
| | 02:36 | It's a revenge done first against
this one woman and then against the entire
| | 02:40 | female population of Harvard.
| | 02:43 | Facemash, which goes viral in one night
and crashes the Harvard computer system,
| | 02:47 | you can find that yourself.
| | 02:48 | I then had cartons and cartons of legal
documents that I was walked through by two
| | 02:52 | lawyers--an intellectual property
lawyer and a corporate lawyer--and finally,
| | 02:56 | the first-person research, speaking to
the people who were right there at the
| | 03:03 | events that were taking place. And just
the one last point that I'll make about
| | 03:08 | fictionalizing it, before I answer the
real substance of your question, is this.
| | 03:14 | In that blog post that we hear at the
beginning of the movie, Mark tells us
| | 03:18 | that he's drunk.
| | 03:19 | Okay? He says I won't lie to you.
I'm pretty inebriated right now.
| | 03:23 | So what if it's Tuesday
night, and it's only 09:30.
| | 03:25 | We hear Jesse saying that in
voiceover as he's typing it; it is there in
| | 03:30 | the blog post.
| | 03:31 | What I had written in the script was
that Mark walks into his dorm room,
| | 03:35 | walks past his laptop, turns it on,
walks out of the frame, comes back in,
| | 03:39 | puts a glass down.
| | 03:40 | We see ice go into the glass, vodka go
into the glass, orange juice get poured
| | 03:44 | over the glass, and he begins drinking.
| | 03:46 | But a few weeks before photography
began, we found out that it was beer that
| | 03:51 | that he was drinking that
night, specifically Beck's.
| | 03:54 | And so David Fincher said, "All right, Aaron.
We have got to change it to a beer.
| | 03:59 | Let's have him go over to his mini
fridge and get a beer out." And I pleaded with
| | 04:03 | him, "David, come on. Drunk is drunk.
| | 04:06 | It doesn't really matter how he got there.
| | 04:09 | We're not changing the fundamental
truth, and making a screwdriver is just
| | 04:13 | visually more interesting than
opening a bottle of beer, and it also reads
| | 04:18 | immediately as 'I'm drinking to get
drunk,' rather than 'I am drinking because I
| | 04:21 | am college student, or on I'm thirsty.'"
| | 04:24 | But he said, "No, when we know a fact,
that is the fact that we're going to
| | 04:29 | use." And I just have to say that it
should tell you something about how close
| | 04:37 | our research sources were to the event
that we know what brand of beer he was
| | 04:41 | drinking on a Tuesday night in October
2003 when there were only four other
| | 04:45 | people in the room.
(laughter)
| | 04:51 | In terms of the takeaway, I'm
delighted by the fact that it is, as you put it,
| | 04:55 | Anne, a Rorschach test, that while
the movie seems to be enjoyed by pretty
| | 05:05 | much every demographic,
| | 05:06 | it doesn't seem to have a demographical
sweet spot, that the takeaways are
| | 05:14 | remarkably different, that there are
people who see it as a cautionary tale
| | 05:20 | about technology replacing humanity,
and that it doesn't matter how many friends
| | 05:28 | you can count on your page.
| | 05:30 | What matters is the depth of the
friendship that you have with one person.
| | 05:36 | And there are people who see Mark as
a rock star, who kind of overthrew the
| | 05:44 | establishment and built his own thing,
and there are plenty of other takeaways as
| | 05:50 | well, and none of them are invalid.
| | 05:53 | I like that the movie doesn't take a
position on who was right and who was
| | 05:58 | wrong, who was lying, who is telling
the truth, who's good, who's bad, or
| | 06:03 | what you're supposed to
think the movie is about.
| | 06:08 | So I feel very good about that.
| | 06:09 | Anne: And yet in some of your
acceptance speeches you seemed to be reaching out to Mr.
| | 06:13 | Zuckerberg, as if you want to say, "thank you,"
or you are trying to ameliorate it a little bit.
| | 06:18 | Aaron: I do, and that's because, you
know what, he, in the week that the movie
| | 06:24 | opened, we opened in the U.S. on
October 1st, and just a few days before we opened,
| | 06:31 | he donated $100 billion to the Newark
Public School System. That gift was met
| | 06:36 | with some skepticism and cynicism in
the press because it was felt that it was
| | 06:40 | done to deflect the negative criticism
that would surely be coming his way when
| | 06:45 | the movie opened. And I felt like
neither the kids in Newark, nor their
| | 06:50 | parents, nor their teachers, gave a damn
how the money got there, that it was an
| | 06:56 | extraordinary gift, and I was
trying to tell him that on television.
| | 07:04 | You know, one of the reasons I really
got jazzed about writing the movie was
| | 07:08 | because when I would--the first
thing I did was just see a couple of tapes of him.
| | 07:17 | Lesley Stahl had done an
interview with him two years ago.
| | 07:20 | She also did one very recently.
But she did one with him two years ago, around
| | 07:25 | the time that I first started working
on the movie, and there was some more
| | 07:31 | footage of him at a conference
of some kind in Silicon Valley.
| | 07:36 | I watched this footage with a couple of
friends of mine and a couple of people I
| | 07:41 | work with who were women, and they
had a very negative reaction to Mark.
| | 07:47 | They recoiled. They thought, "Ugh"
He's--they didn't like him, and I did.
| | 07:55 | I saw what they were seeing, but I also
saw a kid who is socially awkward, and I
| | 08:06 | was able to identify with that, a kid
who's in way over his head, and I'm able to
| | 08:12 | identify with that, too.
| | 08:14 | He was 26 years old at the time of
his Lesley Stahl interview, running a
| | 08:19 | company the size of General Motors
or CBS, and being interviewed on 60
| | 08:23 | Minutes, and I didn't believe that I
would have been able to handle that as
| | 08:27 | well as he had.
| | 08:29 | So, honest to God, what you're
referring to, the couple of acceptance speeches
| | 08:35 | I've been delighted to be able to
give, when I've reached out to Mark, I've
| | 08:40 | really been talking to that kid who got
shoved into his locker his whole life,
| | 08:47 | Aaron: saying, "You did all right."
Anne: Thank you.
| | 08:50 | (applause)
| | 08:55 | Anne: So Scott and David, both of you are
dealing, as Aaron has been, with real, live
| | 09:02 | people who you want to do, do right by.
| | 09:06 | Talk a little bit about the ways that
you have had to jump away from reality to
| | 09:12 | form the narrative and dramas of
The King's Speech and The Fighter.
| | 09:17 | Scott Silver: You know, we had to
change a lot and condense a lot.
| | 09:20 | I think it's a different level with
sort of Micky and Dicky that are this--
| | 09:24 | Anne: Do speak into the microphone, yeah.
| | 09:25 | Scott: Like that. I think it's a
different level for Micky and Dicky.
| | 09:29 | I think we wanted to stay as close as we
could to the truth of who they were as
| | 09:32 | people, and try to be authentic as we
can to the characters, but we had to
| | 09:36 | change a lot for the time period.
| | 09:37 | In real life, Dicky went to
prison for eight years. Micky had three
| | 09:41 | different comebacks, which makes it a
far less interesting story.
| | 09:45 | So we changed obviously enough to
make it into a movie, and it's not
| | 09:48 | a documentary.
| | 09:49 | As far as the reaction, I
think it was harder for Dicky,
| | 09:52 | I mean to see himself up there
smoking crack, and Christian is sort of
| | 09:56 | convincing. I mean it was really
difficult for him to watch the movie.
| | 09:59 | Micky, I couldn't ever imagine someone
making him--not that anybody would want
| | 10:03 | to, but make a movie about my life.
| | 10:04 | I mean it's such a--I just couldn't
imagine someone up there playing me,
| | 10:08 | going through some experience that I had had.
| | 10:10 | So I think how someone reacts is
obviously personal. The weird thing for Micky
| | 10:13 | is that one part he hated is that in
real life he never got knocked down in the
| | 10:18 | fight against Shea Neary.
| | 10:19 | And he hated Shea Neary.
| | 10:20 | Micky is the sweetest, nicest
guy, but he hated Shea Neary.
| | 10:23 | He was really rude to him.
| | 10:25 | And so Micky was really upset
that it showed him being knocked down.
| | 10:28 | He was like, "I never got *!@#$ knocked down."
That really--it took him to get over.
| | 10:32 | That was the only thing that bugged him.
| | 10:34 | It was like that sort of drove him crazy,
but we took the movie to Lowell, and I
| | 10:40 | was most concerned with Alice,
because these are real people.
| | 10:43 | I mean it's easy for us to sort of,
especially in our case, they are
| | 10:46 | Steve: alive, but you know--
Anne: And they're on your set, right?
| | 10:49 | Scott: Yeah. There are a lot of them, and
obviously it was shot in Lowell. But these are still
| | 10:58 | real people who have kids and ex-
husbands and husbands and boyfriends, and they
| | 11:03 | go to school, and you know it's sort
of--I don't think anybody sees themselves
| | 11:07 | in the way that sort of the movie portrays them.
| | 11:09 | It's sort of--that's who they are as people.
| | 11:13 | So I was sort of, especially for Alice,
who is really frail, she is 80 now,
| | 11:17 | she is actually in the hospital.
But she hadn't been out of her house
| | 11:20 | literally for like months.
| | 11:21 | When she was younger, she was, no joke,
| | 11:24 | I mean she was tough, but now she is
really frail, and I thought the movie
| | 11:29 | would kill her.
| | 11:30 | I mean, it was sort of like, I was
terrified, because there is some stuff in
| | 11:33 | there that I knew that was true
but that would embarrass her about the number
| | 11:37 | of husbands--well, husbands?--the
number of different fathers of her kids. There
| | 11:40 | were only two husbands.
| | 11:42 | So there are some stuff that you go, "I
don't know," and so she watched the movie
| | 11:45 | with one of the producers,
Dorothy Aufiero, and I was terrified.
| | 11:48 | And David, to his credit, sort of stood
there, because if anybody, they were going
| | 11:51 | to point at him, not at me for that.
| | 11:54 | So he stood there, and Alice started
watching it, and she's like literally like 80 pounds.
| | 12:00 | I mean she is tiny and thin, and she
sat there watching it, and the one thing
| | 12:04 | in real life that I also think is
in the movie, Alice loved to get dressed
| | 12:07 | up for events.
| | 12:08 | One of the things for her that was
great when Dicky started boxing, she would
| | 12:11 | always go get her hair done.
She would always get an outfit for it.
| | 12:14 | I mean that was sort of part of the experience.
| | 12:16 | So of course, Alice had already gone
and got an outfit and she had her hair
| | 12:20 | teased up, she was frail, frail,
frail, and thin, thin, thin. And she started
| | 12:24 | watching the movie, and she had a bag of
popcorn, and her hand just froze for the
| | 12:28 | first ten minutes of the movie and it didn't move.
| | 12:30 | I literally thought it was going to kill her.
| | 12:31 | It was like, she just stood there.
And the first scenes are the toughest,
| | 12:35 | because Melissa Leo, who did a great
job, comes in and shows a scrapbook.
| | 12:40 | Then there is the scene in the bar
where you find out that there is a bunch of
| | 12:43 | different fathers, and there are nine
kids, and it's like they are givin' her a
| | 12:46 | hard time, but it's the
truth. And I was just like, ah!
| | 12:50 | And she froze, and then as the
movie got started along, she started eating
| | 12:55 | the popcorn.
(laughter)
| | 12:57 | And once she started eating the
popcorn, I was like, "Phew, we are okay."
| | 13:03 | We're going to make it through, she
is going to be okay. And I walked with her
| | 13:07 | out afterwards, and she said, "It wasn't
as bad as I thought it was going to be."
| | 13:11 | And she was okay. Then during the
screening, two of the sisters, Red Dog and
| | 13:17 | Beaver--no, it was Red Dog.
| | 13:18 | I am going to get this wrong.
| | 13:20 | I think it was Red Dog and Beaver
walked out. They were not happy.
| | 13:24 | They screamed at David,
but one of them came back.
| | 13:27 | So given how what the reaction could have been,
| | 13:32 | I think that was an overwhelming
success for the-- I literally thought that
| | 13:37 | someone would get killed in the screening.
| | 13:41 | So that was sort of--they're doin' okay.
| | 13:49 | Anne: David.
David Arndt: Well, I have not had the
| | 13:51 | pleasure of seeing the Queen eat popcorn,
| | 13:56 | nor is she liable to make the
commercial saying, "If you are only going to see
| | 13:59 | one Royal film this year, see The
King's Speech." We do know it has shown
| | 14:07 | at Buckingham Palace to the
household--that is to say the private
| | 14:11 | secretaries, the equerries, the
courtiers, and they loved it. And I was not
| | 14:15 | there, but I was told that Prince
Charles' private secretary at the end of the
| | 14:20 | screening said, "Bloody good show."
(laughter)
| | 14:24 | When you are writing about a recently
reigning monarch of England, you've got to
| | 14:30 | be a little careful.
| | 14:32 | So obviously, I felt there was a
great burden upon me to be as historically
| | 14:39 | accurate as humanly possible.
| | 14:41 | Sure, liberties have to be taken;
| | 14:44 | we are making a film, not a documentary.
| | 14:47 | The greatest liberty I took was,
similar to yours, the compression of time.
| | 14:54 | The relationship between Logue and
Bertie was over a very extended period, which
| | 14:59 | makes for kind of a flabby movie.
| | 15:01 | I've noticed, doing a lot of biopics,
that people don't have the grace to live
| | 15:06 | their life in a good three-act scenario.
(laughter)
| | 15:09 | They are very messy.
| | 15:12 | But I tried to--you would be
surprised how many lines in the film are
| | 15:18 | actually direct quotes, a great deal of them.
| | 15:22 | We get sometimes criticized for
things that seem too good to be true.
| | 15:28 | Some critics have said, "Well, it's
absolutely nonsense that the Queen was sitting
| | 15:33 | on the King's stomach
during his breathing exercises."
| | 15:36 | I've got to tell you folks,
that's exactly what she did.
| | 15:41 | The scene where right at the eve of the
coronation, Cosmo Lang, the Archbishop
| | 15:46 | of Canterbury discovers that Logue is
not a doctor, has no credentials, had no
| | 15:52 | formal training, and wants to
replace him, and Bertie stands up to him.
| | 15:56 | That really did take place.
| | 15:59 | It was probably--it was not the last
night before the coronation, but it was
| | 16:03 | during the rehearsal period.
| | 16:05 | It did take place.
| | 16:08 | The techniques, I mean the greatest, the
biggest challenge I faced was, of course,
| | 16:16 | the gut of the film:
| | 16:17 | it's two men in a room and nobody else
was in the room with them, and they're
| | 16:22 | both gone, so I can't interview them.
| | 16:24 | So it had to be educated surmise,
but it wasn't a terribly difficult
| | 16:30 | problem really.
| | 16:32 | Although I could never prove that
Lionel Logue read Sigmund Freud, I knew
| | 16:37 | intuitively he to be using the
talking cure, and surprisingly I got to
| | 16:42 | prove that in an extraordinary way.
| | 16:46 | I have a very elderly and eccentric uncle in
England, also named David, also a former
| | 16:51 | stutterer. And in the early stages of
this project when I was trying to do it on
| | 16:55 | my own nickel, he would let me use his
flat in St. John Wood as a pied-a-terre,
| | 17:01 | and he became familiar with the project. He asked
| | 17:03 | to read the screenplay, which I gave him.
And one day he said to me, "You know,
| | 17:08 | that fellow in your
project, Logue, isn't his name?"
| | 17:11 | I said, "Yes, uncle. You've read
the screenplay. His name is Logue."
| | 17:15 | "Australian, wasn't he?"
| | 17:16 | I said, "Yes, he is Australian."
"Mm! Yes, I saw him for years as a lad."
| | 17:21 | I said, "What!?"
| | 17:25 | He said, "Yes, your grandfather, my
father, wanted me to be treated by the King's
| | 17:30 | speech therapist, so I went."
| | 17:31 | I said, "What? Uncle, why didn't you tell me?
| | 17:36 | What went on? What were the consultations like?
| | 17:39 | What was the treatment like?"
| | 17:40 | He said, "Well, I didn't mention it
because it was rubbish. Absolute nonsense.
| | 17:46 | The man didn't know anything.
| | 17:50 | He was an Australian
gangster, just taking money.
| | 17:53 | All he wanted to do was talk about his
childhood and his parents, and get me to
| | 17:58 | talk about my childhood and my parents."
| | 18:02 | I said, "Yes, but David,
you don't stutter anymore."
| | 18:06 | He said, "Yes, but I would
have outgrown it wouldn't I?"
| | 18:10 | So if you know that one of the people
in the room is using the talking cure,
| | 18:17 | and if you've read everything
conceivably written about the patient--which I
| | 18:22 | had done, obviously--
| | 18:24 | it's pretty easy to figure out what
they're going to be talking about.
| | 18:28 | So I feel confident that, can I say
that those were the exact words they used?
| | 18:34 | Absolutely not.
| | 18:35 | But is that probably what
we they were talking about?
| | 18:37 | Yeah, I think it's a pretty good guess.
| | 18:40 | So that was how I was dealing with that.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Plot and character development| 00:00 | Anne Thompson: Charlie, you were basically making
up the real story behind that myth, your
| | 00:04 | version of what really happened there,
his motivations for throwing that party.
| | 00:10 | Charlie Mitchell: Well, it's sort of
the basic writer's tenant, right?
| | 00:13 | You're coming from mystery, complete
mystery in this case of what actually
| | 00:17 | happened. But something happened.
Something made this man of promise, everybody
| | 00:24 | said that he was very bright, had a
brilliant future ahead of him, and he
| | 00:30 | withdrew completely from the world.
| | 00:33 | And of course, the stories grew
around him of why and how and "who is
| | 00:38 | he really," after a while. Nobody--the connections
with people who knew him as a young man
| | 00:45 | started to go away. Everybody moved off, or
| | 00:48 | they died, and pretty soon there was
very few people around who remembered
| | 00:51 | what he was.
| | 00:53 | And so, the whole idea was that we're
going to start with this mystery and
| | 01:00 | where are we going to go?
| | 01:02 | What would make this happen?
| | 01:05 | And that's sort of where
we began the whole journey.
| | 01:09 | Then when I was talking about being on
Bobby's back porch in Virginia, that's
| | 01:13 | where we started, and that's where the
conversation started, and that's where
| | 01:17 | we journeyed into.
| | 01:19 | Anne: So your star was very integral
in the actual writing of the screenplay?
| | 01:24 | Charlie: Bobby is--and I call him
Bobby by the way, because he told me to.
| | 01:33 | Mr. Duval tells you to call him Bobby,
you call him Bobby. But if--Bobby was
| | 01:41 | really concerned about, how do we get
inside this person, because that's where he
| | 01:48 | is going to come from.
| | 01:49 | I am sure you've watched his career
over the years. He is amazing at that.
| | 01:57 | He goes deep. He starts, let's clear
everything away, and let's start here.
| | 02:03 | And so he took me to that place.
| | 02:08 | That was basically what he was telling
me on the porch was, look, we have to get
| | 02:13 | down to who this guy really is,
because that's the only way I can do this.
| | 02:17 | I feel like there is something here.
| | 02:21 | That's why I was there, because I felt
all my senses were telling me, there
| | 02:24 | is something here.
| | 02:25 | This mystery is something you need to
go into, and he felt the same thing, the
| | 02:31 | director felt the same thing, and we all
went into it together, and what you see
| | 02:36 | on screen is what we found there.
| | 02:38 | Anne: Excellent!
| | 02:41 | Lisa, Annette Bening last night
at her tribute said something very
| | 02:45 | interesting about the difference
between words and visual, that screenwriting
| | 02:53 | is one thing, dense dialog is one
thing, but then as an actor, a lot of the
| | 02:57 | time you want silence.
| | 03:00 | And I wondered if you could talk a
little bit about that process in The Kids
| | 03:03 | Are All Right, of
simplifying and making it work?
| | 03:06 | Lisa: Yeah, it's an interesting process.
| | 03:12 | I think I am the only person on this
| | 03:14 | Anne: Who is a director, in this case.
Lisa: panel--well, who directed what they wrote.
| | 03:17 | Lisa: So it's interesting to write for
yourself and think one step ahead to that, and
| | 03:24 | then get into as well, with an actor and
go through yet another phase of looking
| | 03:28 | at the screenplay. Annette Bening was
an extraordinary person to work with
| | 03:32 | because she really loves the text.
| | 03:35 | She really loves to get in there and
talk about what's going on and how to
| | 03:40 | modify maybe the script
before we get in and shoot.
| | 03:43 | So there was stuff that we've
looked at, that we, as she spoke about last
| | 03:48 | night, kept paring back at dialogue
and text to really get to the essence of
| | 03:53 | what was happening in the moments in the scenes.
| | 03:58 | But again, back to the original
question, one of the great things about
| | 04:02 | spending so much time and letting all
this material marinate and really asking
| | 04:05 | hard questions of it over the years
was that we could distill it down to what
| | 04:11 | the essence of it was. And while I knew
that we had to be concerned with plot,
| | 04:16 | and how do we make five main
characters have quick but complete arcs and
| | 04:24 | intersect in a way that isn't episodic
but is integrated into one complete
| | 04:28 | whole, and then in that way become
a bigger idea than itself, than the
| | 04:33 | constituent parts, and have a theme and whatnot,
| | 04:36 | I mean these things become
like kind of bad math problems.
| | 04:40 | They are very difficult, and so at a
certain point you hope that you kind of
| | 04:46 | crack that to transcend that and get
to something that's richer, that is
| | 04:51 | thematic and transcendent, and I'm sure
that's what we all kind of like are just
| | 04:57 | praying for it at out altars of whatever we do.
| | 05:02 | So that was the process, and then
finally you're digging deeper and you're
| | 05:07 | pushing away all the stuff that's
superfluous and not necessary, and you're kind
| | 05:12 | of cracking each the character
and the arc and how it intersects and the
| | 05:17 | causality of each person's issue
and dilemma and plot and whatnot.
| | 05:23 | Then you get into that stuff, and all
of a sudden you are kind of liberated,
| | 05:27 | because you realize, I don't need to say this.
| | 05:29 | The story is saying it already, and
indeed less is more, and the audience is
| | 05:39 | going to get it, and they're going to
really appreciate not being told it, but being
| | 05:44 | shown it through the actor,
| | 05:47 | and in that way, I think, have a more
visceral and identified experience of it.
| | 05:53 | So for me as a writer-director that's
like the real joy of working a script to
| | 05:57 | that core and then handing it over to
these consummate actors and letting them
| | 06:04 | transform it to this higher level.
| | 06:10 | It's hard *&@#$ work, but once you get
there and the pleasures are few and far
| | 06:14 | between, but the pleasures are big,
and I guess we're all kind of addicted
| | 06:17 | to those pleasures.
| | 06:18 | Because when they come, they are transcendent.
| | 06:20 | They are beautiful moments.
| | 06:22 | Anne: Well, Tarantino talks about the
whole process of making a movie, that the
| | 06:27 | editing is part of the writing as well.
And you showed the movie at Sundance, and
| | 06:32 | I enjoyed it and got a big kick out of it.
| | 06:34 | And then I saw it again at the Los
Angeles Film Festival, and it was funnier.
| | 06:39 | What did you do?
| | 06:40 | Lisa: Yeah, that was a big misery.
Without going into the back story of how this
| | 06:48 | film actually got made,
| | 06:50 | I was given a "You are now a serf.
| | 06:54 | You have no voice. Get this thing to Sundance.
| | 06:57 | This is where we have to sell it." by a
person who is not even in this country.
| | 07:02 | So I spent the holidays of that year
cutting away, and I said, "I am not going to
| | 07:10 | be able to finish it, but I will get
it into shape that you can show it and
| | 07:13 | buyer beware, and I'll do my best."
| | 07:16 | We had a temp score and we just cut to--
the last minute when I had to send
| | 07:22 | it off and get it digitally
reproduced to show it. And it was mortifying for
| | 07:28 | me, because of course you want to put
a big fat disclaimer on your movie and
| | 07:31 | say, "This is not finished! Don't hold
me accountable!" And as anybody knows, and
| | 07:39 | writers know from drafts and
working closely with directors and being
| | 07:42 | involved, I am sure everybody here was
really intimate with the whole project
| | 07:45 | till the end,
| | 07:47 | in the cutting room every little beat
and every little rhythm and everything
| | 07:51 | that you know, whether it's--they talk
about, "Oh, you need to lose two minutes."
| | 07:55 | Two minutes could be huge.
| | 07:57 | It can make you dig the film or feel
like what, something was weird with
| | 08:01 | that film.
| | 08:02 | I mean it's a very odd thing.
| | 08:05 | And so, I felt like we
didn't do our last pass.
| | 08:07 | We did not finish the final part of
this film where that rhythm is dead on and
| | 08:12 | everything is working right.
| | 08:14 | Anne: The good news is that you did sell
it, and you were able to take the time to
| | 08:19 | finesse it, and it seems to
have been a happy ending.
| | 08:21 | Lisa: It was a happy ending, and that
night was a happy ending, but I have to say
| | 08:25 | it was surreal.
| | 08:26 | I had one of those Annette Bening
experiences where everything sort of stopped
| | 08:30 | and I am watching this movie with a
Sundance crowd for the first time and
| | 08:33 | everything is riding on this "sale," or
if the film is working, and people are
| | 08:37 | laughing, and I had this horrified
feeling like that the joke was on me
| | 08:41 | somehow and...weird.
| | 08:45 | Anne: David, you apparently you showed
The King's Speech at Toronto in one of
| | 08:50 | those huge halls, and there was an
extraordinary reaction. What was that like for you?
| | 08:55 | David Arndt: Yeah, that was--well, I disgraced myself.
| | 09:01 | What had happened was we had shown
it at Telluride, and it had been an
| | 09:06 | extraordinary reaction,
but these are very small venues.
| | 09:10 | So yeah, it was great. Certainly
immediately got a sense that we had the wind
| | 09:16 | to our back.
| | 09:17 | But in Toronto for the first time,
this huge auditorium, 2,000 seats,
| | 09:23 | I was up in the first row of the
balcony with Tom Hooper and Colin and
| | 09:27 | Jeffrey and Helena and everyone.
It's great, but it's in the dark, you see.
| | 09:31 | And at the end, I realized
something extraordinary is happening.
| | 09:35 | First of all, before the end of the
movie, at the end of the King's speech, the
| | 09:40 | audience started applauding,
and that was quite amazing.
| | 09:44 | And then film ended, and 2,000 people
just stood up, and I was quite overwhelmed,
| | 09:52 | because--I'll probably disgrace
myself again just remembering it.
| | 09:58 | I was so overwhelmed with the fact that
I realized for the first time in my life
| | 10:04 | as a stutterer, my voice had truly been heard,
| | 10:08 | and it was a great emotional experience.
| | 10:11 | So there I am blubbering with a lot of
mucus and tears coming down, and they show
| | 10:16 | the spotlights on us.
(laughter)
| | 10:20 | Anne: They knew what they were doing.
(applause)
| | 10:25 | All right, from the sublime to the
ridiculous, Michael, how did you come up
| | 10:30 | with Spanish Buzz?
| | 10:35 | Michael: Spanish Buzz was, it's a
great example of why I just feel like the
| | 10:41 | collaborative processes at Pixar
are so great and so wonderful.
| | 10:44 | I'll just--I am going to try and make
it a short answer, but I think I wrote
| | 10:49 | the first draft of Toy Story 3 and
then wrote maybe a second draft, and then it
| | 10:54 | was decided that all the people who
had worked on the other Toy Story films,
| | 10:58 | we are going to take another two-day
retreat, and everybody was going to go
| | 11:01 | for two days. And this is me as a writer.
| | 11:03 | I have 20-25 other people sitting
around in an inn in Napa Valley for two days
| | 11:09 | helping me make my script
better, which is unbelievable.
| | 11:12 | I don't think. It's like nirvana.
| | 11:16 | It's really like writer-nirvana.
| | 11:18 | Anne: Not fair.
Lisa: That's not fair. Damn!
| | 11:22 | Michael: Well, and the amazing thing is
that these are--they are not studio executives
| | 11:25 | or development executives;
these are other writer and directors.
| | 11:29 | These are Brad Bird, it's Andrew Stanton,
it's John Lasseter, it's Pete Doctor,
| | 11:32 | and they are all sitting around,
because they all worked on the--with the
| | 11:36 | exception of Brad--worked on
the initial Toy Story films.
| | 11:38 | So they are trying to make it great.
And it's just, until you get up to
| | 11:42 | Pixar and see and how labor-
intensive it is and how many people contribute,
| | 11:46 | it's hard to even grasp. But to
answer your question, I remember Andrew had
| | 11:51 | written the--Andrew Stanton had
written the treatment, and it was that Lotso
| | 11:55 | switched Buzz into Delusional mode, and
Buzz became a prison guard. And that was a
| | 11:59 | good sort of obstacle, because you want
your closest ally, or your most capable
| | 12:04 | person, to suddenly become an antagonist, or
to become an obstacle. But we're sitting
| | 12:08 | there in the middle of like the second
day, and I remember John Lasseter saying,
| | 12:11 | you know, we've already seen Deluded Buzz.
| | 12:13 | We've already seen him
switch back to Deluded mode.
| | 12:16 | I just wished there was something else.
| | 12:17 | And that's like the smartest, I mean
that's the most important part of solving a
| | 12:21 | problem, is just identifying it,
and saying, "We've done this before.
| | 12:25 | There needs to something else."
| | 12:27 | So then everyone around the room--again,
it's like 25 people--start throwing out
| | 12:30 | suggestions: a fast-motion Buzz, a
slow-motion Buzz, a vibrating Buzz, or
| | 12:34 | whatever, and I remember I was
sitting--Andrew was right next to me, and I
| | 12:37 | said, "Spanish Buzz," to him.
| | 12:39 | I just sort of whispered it to
him and Andrew went, "Spanish Buzz!"
| | 12:42 | And the whole room just erupted, and
everyone started like--ideas and jokes were
| | 12:47 | like flying around the room, and you
just knew at that moment that that was
| | 12:50 | going to go into the movie. And what's
interesting though, is that it takes three
| | 12:56 | people to come up with the idea.
| | 12:57 | It takes John to say that there's
something missing here that we need to
| | 13:00 | fill in. It's me like having an idea which is
sort of the least important part of the
| | 13:05 | whole process and then somebody else
saying, out of a hundred ideas, that's the
| | 13:09 | idea that we're going to do.
| | 13:10 | So that was how Spanish Buzz came about.
(applause)
| | Collapse this transcript |
| The writing process| 00:00 | Anne Thompson: So this is the question I always enjoy.
| | 00:02 | I love to know how you
write, literally, physically.
| | 00:07 | Aaron, is it a legal pad like Tarantino in
some isolated place. Is it a computer?
| | 00:15 | I mean how do you
construct a screenplay literally?
| | 00:17 | Aaron Sorkin: It used to be when I moved to New
York after college, I had a whole bunch of
| | 00:24 | survival jobs, and one of them was
bartending in Broadway theaters.
| | 00:29 | So I wrote most of--my first play was
A Few Good Men--and I wrote most of it
| | 00:34 | on cocktail napkins during the
first act of La Cage Aux Folles.
| | 00:36 | Anne: How do you do it now?
| | 00:41 | Aaron: I miss those days,
which is why I told that story.
| | 00:50 | There is a long while that
doesn't look like writing.
| | 00:55 | To a casual observer, it would
look a lot like lying on my couch and
| | 01:01 | watching ESPN.
(laughter)
| | 01:11 | I also drive around.
I listen to music.
| | 01:15 | The most important thing
for me is getting started.
| | 01:18 | The difference between being on page
two and page nothing is life and death.
| | 01:21 | So I am looking for a way to get started,
and once I do do that, then I write
| | 01:30 | at a computer, either--I have an
office at Warner Brothers and I have an
| | 01:34 | office at home, so I am in one of those
two places. And I need to know what I am
| | 01:44 | going to write before I write anything.
| | 01:45 | I need to--I have got index
cards on the board, and I try to write.
| | 01:52 | Once I am loaded up, once I know what
I am doing, I write with as much speed
| | 01:56 | as I can. I feel like that speed and energy
will translate itself onto the page.
| | 02:02 | When it's coming in little dribs and drabs,
I know to stop because I don't know what I am doing.
| | 02:06 | So I don't stop, stop trying to find a
way around in the dark. But, speaking of
| | 02:11 | finding a way around in the dark, I
don't know everything about what I am going
| | 02:17 | to write when I am writing.
| | 02:18 | It's a little like walking
forward in the dark with a flashlight.
| | 02:21 | You can only see as far
ahead as the beam will go.
| | 02:25 | When I know how it's going to end--
and in this case, once I'd come up with how
| | 02:30 | it was starting, I knew how it was going to end--
| | 02:34 | that's a big victory for me, and I
feel good about it. But I think all you
| | 02:41 | wanted to know was how I write,
and I do it at my desk at a computer.
| | 02:44 | (laughter and applause)
| | 02:49 | Anne: Scott?
| | 02:50 | Scott Silver: Yeah. I wished I had
as good a story about the cocktail napkins.
| | 02:54 | I write at my desk, at my computer.
| | 02:57 | It's like a job.
| | 02:58 | It's like going to the office.
| | 02:59 | And I think having that discipline and
setting a schedule is tough for a writer,
| | 03:02 | because if not, everyone's like,
"You are not doing anything."
| | 03:03 | "You are sitting around" mostly watching
ESPN, or they say, "Can you come help me
| | 03:07 | move a couch," or something.
I am like, "I am writing."
| | 03:09 | So it's sort of, I try to--so I have
set hours now that sort of over the years
| | 03:16 | sort of I try to get at the desk at a
certain time, and I think the same way for
| | 03:20 | me. I think you even
knowing where you are going--
| | 03:23 | I don't know how I am going to get there always--
| | 03:24 | but I think in the same way
as sort of what Michael said,
| | 03:26 | I think if you know where you are going
and you have that sense, I mean that's
| | 03:29 | sort of where you have to begin.
| | 03:30 | But for me, I am sort of a very slow writer.
| | 03:33 | So I sort of--and will procrastinate,
so I think I just sort of get as much
| | 03:36 | research, sort of do as much *&^$#% as I can,
until it gets to a point where it
| | 03:39 | just becomes ridiculous.
| | 03:40 | It looks like you haven't started writing yet?
| | 03:42 | You are kidding.
| | 03:43 | So I think sort of getting all of
that stuff and sort of like getting
| | 03:49 | everything that you sort of need,
that's sort of when I'll sort of start--
| | 03:51 | start the process.
| | 03:53 | Anne: David?
| | 03:55 | David Seidler: I write in bed, at least the
first couple of hours. I am very lucky.
| | 03:59 | I have an apartment with a bit of an
ocean view, and I have the bed facing it.
| | 04:04 | So I get up, I make myself coffee,
and I sit there with my laptop like King
| | 04:09 | Canute ordering the waves in and out,
and they obey me, and that gives me a
| | 04:18 | sense of entitlement and power, you see.
| | 04:22 | For me, the longest process on any
project is the beginning, the research
| | 04:29 | and doing a treatment.
| | 04:31 | I worked for years with a partner.
Now I don't, but I still keep the same
| | 04:35 | technique of doing a very detailed
treatment, so I know exactly where I
| | 04:40 | am going.
| | 04:43 | Early on, when I did Tucker and
was working with Francis, we had a
| | 04:47 | conversation once that
has held me in good stead.
| | 04:51 | He was explaining how the first thing
that he did on any project was know a big scene
| | 05:00 | at the end, the penultimate scene as it were,
and everything was then aimed towards
| | 05:05 | that, and that's been a really good,
helpful hint, and I've always use that.
| | 05:10 | So I make 3x5 cards. If I have a
large home, which I don't anymore, with a
| | 05:17 | corkboard, I put it all on there.
| | 05:19 | Now, I put it on the living room
carpet, and I can't open the windows for two
| | 05:23 | weeks because if the wind blows,
my structure is absolutely shot.
| | 05:30 | In terms of the actual working day, as I
say, I will start the first hour or so in
| | 05:35 | bed, if I can get away
with it, which I usually can.
| | 05:37 | I am sure that eBay was invented
for my benefit, too, so I could do
| | 05:42 | something other than write.
| | 05:45 | I will work from say 9:00 or 9:30
until about 2:30-3:00, when I hit that
| | 05:51 | metabolic low that most people have.
And when I find my forehead is resting on
| | 05:56 | the Spacebar, I know that
I have done it for the day.
| | 05:59 | I will do some exercise, go for a 90-
minute walk, go for a run. That may be
| | 06:03 | the day. But if I am under pressure for a
deadline or heading down the homestretch and
| | 06:09 | have build up a real head of steam, I
will then start again, maybe when the sun
| | 06:14 | is just going down the yard, I work
another whole stretch. I can do a double
| | 06:19 | day that way. And that's the way I do it.
| | 06:23 | Anne: Charlie?
| | 06:24 | Charlie Mitchell: Yeah, a lot of things get
done besides writing when you are writing.
| | 06:30 | Lisa Cholodenko: But you are still writing.
Charlie: Yeah, of course. Yeah, it's all right.
| | 06:37 | I think for me, how I am writing
depends on what's happening in the story.
| | 06:44 | I can't sort of enforce
some sort of pattern on that.
| | 06:51 | I will tell you something
that happened just the other day.
| | 06:56 | My character was about to do something
that was going to really impact her life
| | 07:01 | in a big way, and I could see
it coming, and I couldn't do it.
| | 07:10 | I just could not do it.
| | 07:12 | I couldn't sit down.
| | 07:13 | I couldn't make myself sit down to do it.
| | 07:15 | I just couldn't do it;
I couldn't do it to her.
| | 07:18 | She couldn't see it coming.
| | 07:20 | You know what I am saying? She couldn't see it
coming and I could, and I just got the glimpse before
| | 07:24 | I got up from the desk of
what was about to happen.
| | 07:27 | I didn't know what was going to happen
till that moment, and then I saw that,
| | 07:29 | and I couldn't sit down for two days.
| | 07:34 | And finally, I got my courage up to go back.
| | 07:37 | So a lot of my process is determined
by what's happening inside the story.
| | 07:41 | Anne: How do you all deal with writer's block?
| | 07:45 | I mean what are your
techniques for getting around it?
| | 07:48 | Michael Arndt: I will jump in.
| | 07:50 | I think one of the reasons you get
writer's block is because you are trying to
| | 07:54 | find the perfect answer right off the
bat; you are trying to hit the bull's eye
| | 07:56 | right off the bat. And that you just
stop dead in your tracks, and just what you
| | 08:01 | can do is say, okay, there is like I
am just going to make a list of ideas.
| | 08:05 | I don't care if they are
good, bad, or indifferent.
| | 08:06 | I am just going to list everything.
| | 08:08 | Here's an example, which was how to get
out of the scene when the cop pulls them
| | 08:13 | over in Little Miss Sunshine. It ended
up being grandpa's magazines basically,
| | 08:20 | But I didn't really have an ending of
that scene, and you just go, okay, well
| | 08:23 | what's there in the--what do they
have at their disposal, or it's the claw
| | 08:29 | rescuing them at the dump.
| | 08:30 | You go, okay, well what's the--
their needs to be a life-or-death
| | 08:33 | jeopardy situation.
| | 08:34 | They need to get rescued at the last second.
| | 08:36 | What do we have?
| | 08:37 | And instead of trying to find the
perfect answer, you just list everything
| | 08:41 | that's at a dump, just every possible
thing you can think of, and then you try.
| | 08:44 | You can start doing things in the
right chronology or just picking which one is best.
| | 08:48 | But I think that if you are blocked,
I think just start making lists.
| | 08:51 | I mean, that's like step
one for me is just make a list.
| | 08:55 | Anne: Lisa, your method,
and whatever you want to say.
| | 08:59 | Lisa: God! This is-- well, I could
have a whole seminar just on this.
| | 09:06 | I would say I employ many of these techniques.
| | 09:10 | This script was a really
interesting learning curve for me.
| | 09:13 | Two huge things that came out of it
were, carding, because you can see your
| | 09:19 | whole film in front of your face and
see what's redundant and see what's
| | 09:23 | not--has no causality, and really
look structurally at where you're going.
| | 09:31 | And it's just something for some
reason, I don't know, I think I got bad
| | 09:34 | advice at graduate school.
| | 09:36 | I had this teacher that was really, like,
you have got to go with your sort of
| | 09:40 | instinct and blurts, and just like let it ride.
| | 09:43 | It's going to come out of you. And it
was very freeform, but there is something
| | 09:47 | incredibly anxiety producing about
just hoping that having no sort of roadmap
| | 09:53 | and hoping it will just emerge as
a complete idea and/or screenplay.
| | 09:58 | Anyway, so carding. I found like that
structured stuff is really helpful, and I
| | 10:05 | also agree that in the one screenplay
that I wrote early on where I kind of knew
| | 10:09 | where the story was going and where it
ended and what that ultimate scene was--
| | 10:13 | I actually had a final scene--
| | 10:17 | I found much more pleasure in the process
| | 10:19 | I think than groping around in the
dark for where things are headed.
| | 10:23 | Especially with something that's invented,
| | 10:24 | I am sure there is more comfort when
you have some basic facts that you can
| | 10:28 | adhere to or something that came before it.
| | 10:31 | The other thing I'd say, I could say a
lot about writing with a partner and
| | 10:35 | whatnot, and the differences between
men and women, because he thought I gabbed
| | 10:40 | too much in between little bursts of writing.
| | 10:44 | I found that's where some of our
juiciest stuff came from. And I am like, I want
| | 10:48 | to process, and then we'd grab ideas
that came up in these kind of random
| | 10:52 | conversations and throw them into the script.
| | 10:54 | I would say that Virginia Woolf was
right. She wrote a little book long time
| | 10:59 | ago called A Room of One's Own.
| | 11:02 | I did not have my own office
| | 11:03 | when I began The Kids Are All Right,
and now there is just no way I could
| | 11:07 | ever return to not having my own office.
| | 11:10 | You just have to wall yourself off
completely and have that space to imagine.
| | 11:15 | Anne: I am afraid we have to stop.
| | 11:17 | I am having a wonderful time, but we
have lost track of the time unfortunately.
| | 11:22 | We have a big panel, and
let's give them a big round.
| | Collapse this transcript |
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