Writers' Panel - It Starts with the ScriptIntroduction| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:29 | Jason Reitman: I find when adapting, look,
there is part of it that makes it easy, in that you
| | 00:32 | are stealing someone else's genius.
| | 00:35 | And it's the best writing partner on
earth, because they just give, give, give,
| | 00:39 | and never argue with any of your notes.
| | 00:40 | Alex Kurtzman: And we realized that's exactly why we have to do
it, because if we don't protect it and someone
| | 00:44 | else does this, and we go to that
theater and hate it, then the person most
| | 00:47 | culpable will be us.
| | 00:48 | Scott Neustadter: We had
like a 110 page first act.
| | 00:51 | And that's when we realized, I am
like, "Oh, wow, this is going nowhere.
| | 00:56 | Some of it's funny. Some of
it's horrible. Where are we going?"
| | 00:59 | Nancy Meyers: I did want just to challenge
myself to try to write a movie that worked
| | 01:06 | comedically, in sort of a full throttle kind of way.
| | 01:10 | Geoffrey Fletcher: I didn't know if any one would,
if it would be made or seen or even widely seen,
| | 01:14 | but I did know that I was never more
fulfilled to work on anything in my life.
| | 01:21 | (Music playing.)
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Defining genre| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Roger Durling: Let's start with
Jason Reitman, "Up in the Air."
| | 00:10 | (Applause)
| | 00:15 | Scott Neustadter, "500 Days of Summer."
[00:00:18.0]
(Applause)
| | 00:21 | Nancy Meyers, "It's Complicated."
| | 00:24 | Alex Kurtzman, "Star Trek" and "Transformers."
| | 00:29 | Geoffrey Fletcher, "Precious."
| | 00:32 | Pete Docter, "Up."
| | 00:35 | (Applause)
| | 00:37 | Mark Boal, "The Hurt Locker."
| | 00:40 | (Applause)
| | 00:41 | And please welcome an old friend of
the festival, moderator Anne Thompson.
| | 00:47 | She writes for indieWIRE, and
she has a great podcast, Oscar Talk.
| | 00:52 | (Applause)
| | 00:55 | Anne Thompson: Thank you very much.
| | 00:58 | We have an amazing group this year
and they have already all amassed an
| | 01:02 | unbelievable amount of awards and
nominations and wins, and we were not going to
| | 01:07 | go into the long list that
each of them has at this point.
| | 01:11 | Jason Reitman and Nancy
Meyers have been here before.
| | 01:13 | Welcome back, old veterans.
Jason Reitman: We're old pros.
| | 01:18 | My first question for the panel, a rundown,
we'll run down and we'll start with Jason at the other end,
| | 01:25 | all of your films have defied the
rules of what a standard genre would be.
| | 01:32 | You've paid no attention to them,
as far as I can tell, even Star Trek.
| | 01:36 | So go down - explain what genre your
film actually is, if you could define it.
| | 01:42 | Jason Reitman: The genre of my film
is a midlife crisis-comedy-tragedy.
| | 01:51 | Anne: All right. How about you, Scott?
| | 01:54 | Scott Neustadter: We always called ours a - it's a
coming-of-age story masquerading as a romantic comedy.
| | 01:59 | Jason: Hm, nice
Scott: That's how we always talked about it.
| | 02:01 | Anne: And Nancy?
| | 02:05 | You don't own to romantic comedy. Do you?
| | 02:08 | Nancy Meyers: Pardon me?
Anne: On this one, on "It's Complicated."
| | 02:10 | Nancy Meyers: Relationship comedy.
| | 02:12 | Anne: And Star Trek, what is that?
| | 02:15 | Alex Kurtzman: A sci-fi brother story.
| | 02:20 | Anne Thompson: Geoffrey?
| | 02:21 | Geoffrey Fletcher: I have an answer.
| | 02:23 | that's probably annoying, but,
first of all, I don't know.
| | 02:27 | I'm too close to it, and I really don't know.
| | 02:31 | One could say maybe it's a coming-of-
age story, but so many of the films I
| | 02:36 | love, they sort of transcend or defy the genre.
| | 02:39 | It's like I don't consider "The Searchers"
a western or "Star Wars" science fiction.
| | 02:45 | So, I don't know, but perhaps a
coming-of-age? It's a stretch,
| | 02:51 | Geoffrey: but something along those lines.
Anne: Perhaps, perhaps. Pete?
| | 02:54 | Pete Docter: At varying times, we refer to
ours as a coming-of-old-age story,
| | 02:58 | (Laughter)
| | 03:02 | and also an action adventure
starring an old man, so?
| | 03:06 | (Laughter)
| | 03:07 | Anne: Mark?
| | 03:08 | Mark Boal: We really thought of it as a love story
between the two, between Sanborn and James.
| | 03:16 | No. I mean, it's a war film and my brother
described it as an art-cowboy-rock-'n'-roll
| | 03:24 | war movie, and I'll take that.
| | 03:26 | I think that's a good description.
| | 03:29 | Anne: Well, back to
the idea of romantic comedy.
| | 03:33 | Nancy and Scott, why has this genre
fallen into such disarray and disrepute?
| | 03:41 | What's wrong with it?
| | 03:42 | Why is it such a disaster?
| | 03:44 | Why does it need to be reinvented?
| | 03:47 | Nancy: Go ahead.
| | 03:48 | (Laughter)
| | 03:50 | Scott: Well, I think that a lot of
times you can tell that it was made - actor A,
| | 03:57 | actress B, obstacle.
| | 04:00 | How long can we keep that
obstacle going? Throw in some jokes.
| | 04:04 | The romantic comedy,
| | 04:06 | like the comedy wasn't coming from the romance.
| | 04:08 | There wasn't really any
romance in the relationship.
| | 04:10 | It was a lot of packaging.
| | 04:13 | I think audiences can smell that.
| | 04:14 | And they still kind of go, which
always made me scratch my head.
| | 04:19 | Jason: Maybe that's what's wrong
with them, is that people just go anyway.
| | 04:21 | Scott: Yeah. So they make more of them. That's what happens
Jason: The audience isn't teaching us a lesson enough.
| | 04:26 | Scott: Yeah, it's your fault, basically.
| | 04:28 | Jason: Yeah. No, I think it's best to throw
it back on them as much as possible. Don't take--
| | 04:33 | Anne: Well Jason, you're playing
around with a romantic comedy too, in a way, in "Up in
| | 04:40 | the Air." Would you deny that?
| | 04:41 | There is romance in it, of a sort.
| | 04:44 | Jason: I think - I don't know.
| | 04:50 | I made a movie about a guy
who fires people for living.
| | 04:52 | I wouldn't exactly call it a romantic
comedy, but I think, at the end of the
| | 04:55 | day, romance is a technique, and
that it's one of the techniques that we
| | 04:59 | each have in our bag.
| | 05:02 | I think that's the best way to defy genre.
| | 05:04 | If you think of genres as
techniques that you can use, and you can use
| | 05:07 | multiple techniques in the film, you're
bound to make something more original,
| | 05:10 | rather than if you just
follow the genre for where it is.
| | 05:13 | Anne: Nancy, "It's Complicated."
| | 05:18 | Nancy: Yeah. No, I was
thinking about your original question.
| | 05:20 | I think there is something sexist
at play here in a romantic comedy if
| | 05:24 | you're going to star a 28 year old
woman - and I don't think they're going
| | 05:27 | to work that hard on it.
| | 05:28 | I don't think they're
going to attempt to do well.
| | 05:30 | Honestly. Because you don't have
to get George Clooney in this movie.
| | 05:36 | So, I think they toss those movies away
a little bit in the development process.
| | 05:39 | Not saying that the development process leads
to great work, but you know, I think it's
| | 05:45 | kind of like they'll make one,
and it's like over there, and they don't
| | 05:50 | worry about it that much.
| | 05:50 | Anne: When you write "It's Complicated,"
you're not necessarily aiming it just at woman, right?
| | 05:58 | Nancy: Which they? Me?
| | 06:01 | Anne: You. You, Nancy.
| | 06:01 | Nancy: Am I aiming it for women?
| | 06:04 | I'd like them to come, yeah, but no, I'm not.
| | 06:08 | No, because, I mean, I write
pretty big parts for the men.
| | 06:12 | I try to get interesting men in my movies.
| | 06:15 | I think men like to see themselves on
the screen doing things that are other
| | 06:19 | than, bigger than what people really do.
| | 06:21 | Men have relationships. They fall in
love. They get heartbroken... I think.
| | 06:27 | (Laughter)
| | 06:31 | Anne: Well Alex, you produced a
romantic comedy in "The Proposal," which is one of
| | 06:36 | the most successful of the year.
| | 06:38 | A lot of people don't know that.
| | 06:42 | Why did that one work so well?
| | 06:44 | What did you do right there?
| | 06:45 | Alex: I am admittedly very limited
in my experience on this, because that was the
| | 06:51 | first romantic comedy I had ever worked on.
| | 06:55 | I think that it started with 'everybody hates
their boss,' before it became - the romantic comedy
| | 07:02 | element was second. It was 'everybody really
wants to get their boss on their knees,'
| | 07:06 | and that was, I think, the fire
that started the development of that.
| | 07:13 | We actually developed that with
someone who was running our company, who then
| | 07:15 | went on to become a great
screenwriter, and that was really exciting.
| | 07:19 | But because I'm not an authority, I
don't think I could speak to it in the way
| | 07:23 | that these guys could.
| | 07:24 | Anne: So Geoffrey and
Jason, you both adapted books for this.
| | 07:30 | How, was that a helpful
thing, or was it really difficult?
| | 07:35 | I mean having something to work from.
| | 07:36 | Talk about that, Geoffrey.
| | 07:38 | Geoffrey: Well, this particular
book, it was both very tough and very fun.
| | 07:51 | It's tough because we've got the
voice of a semi-literate character and there are
| | 07:56 | some very difficult moments that are happening.
| | 08:02 | To make that into something that's
cinematic and accessible, but still retains
| | 08:07 | the impact of that powerful, powerful
book, was a bit of a journey for me as
| | 08:15 | well, difficult every day,
but fulfilling every day.
| | 08:21 | I think the way in for difficult
material is, some kind of identification, and I
| | 08:29 | fell in love with
Precious, probably in page one or two.
| | 08:33 | And I suspect it's like parents who
struggle for their children, where they
| | 08:39 | might look back one day and wonder how
they did it, but if you feel so much for
| | 08:45 | them, you figure it out.
| | 08:48 | Anne: Thank you. Jason?
| | 08:50 | Jason: Yeah, well first, I'm
really impressed by the adaptation that you did.
| | 08:58 | I can only imagine how tricky it was
in addition, because you had a beloved book
| | 09:03 | that you're adapting, and
that must be terrifying
| | 09:06 | when you know that people are really
waiting for this movie, and they're going
| | 09:08 | to be looking to you to see
what they did, what you did.
| | 09:12 | In my case, I had a book that was about
flying, that literally came out the week
| | 09:17 | of September 11th and was immediately buried.
| | 09:20 | No one ever read "Up in the Air."
| | 09:22 | Jason: So I did not have
Mark: I read "Up in the Air."
| | 09:23 | Jason: Sorry?
Mark: I read "Up in the Air."
| | 09:25 | Jason: Well, yes, but you are a literary.
Mark: It was a best-seller.
| | 09:30 | (Laughter)
| | 09:32 | Jason: I was worried about you Mark and you alone.
Mark: But point taken, point well-taken.
| | 09:34 | (Laughter)
| | 09:39 | Jason: Frankly, I find when adapting,
look, there is part of it that makes it easy, in
| | 09:43 | that you are stealing someone else's genius.
| | 09:46 | And it's the best writing partner on
earth, because they just give, give, give,
| | 09:50 | and never argue with any of your notes.
| | 09:54 | However, the tricky part is trying
to figure out what is the difference
| | 09:58 | between a book and a movie.
| | 10:01 | In the case of "Up in the Air," there was things
that were very cinematic that I wanted to use.
| | 10:04 | There was a main character, whose
philosophy I found really intriguing,
| | 10:09 | not only his attitude towards firing
people, but his attitude towards living
| | 10:13 | alone, living seamlessly.
| | 10:15 | I loved his obsession with air miles
seeing that I'm obsessed with them myself,
| | 10:22 | but there was a lot that needed
to be added to make it a movie.
| | 10:29 | The tricky part is finding new stuff
that works with these characters that exists
| | 10:32 | in the book, and then deleting
stuff and not feeling guilty about it.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Personal writing process| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:09 | Anne Thompson: I am going to get in to the
whole question of how you wrote, you know, what your
| | 00:13 | process is, which is, to me, the
most fascinating part of all of this.
| | 00:17 | And Mark, I am going to start
with you. You were embedded in Iraq and you
| | 00:23 | communicated with Katherine Bigelow
during that period and then how did that
| | 00:26 | become a screenplay? And what was your
process? And how did you work with her on that?
| | 00:30 | Mark Boal: Yeah, I was in Baghdad in 2004,
as a reporter and somewhere - I didn't quite
| | 00:39 | really know what I was getting into,
although I should have, in retrospect
| | 00:42 | but, you know, it was very
dangerous and there were sort of like bodies
| | 00:48 | all over the place and people blowing
up and, at some point, it occurred to me
| | 00:51 | that I should find a safer line of work.
| | 00:54 | And I had had some experience working with
Paul Haggis on a different project and -
| | 01:03 | Anne: "In the Valley of Elah."
| | 01:05 | Mark: Yeah. So sort of had this crazy idea maybe
I could turn some of my experiences into a screenplay.
| | 01:11 | And I knew Katherine
from a couple of years before.
| | 01:14 | We had done something for Fox, a TV show
that sort of didn't go anywhere, but yeah.
| | 01:22 | So then when I came back, I called her
up and I proposed this idea of me as
| | 01:26 | a screenwriter and she said - she was
very encouraging and I kind of gave her a
| | 01:32 | sense of what I wanted to do, even
though I didn't really know, and that's how
| | 01:38 | it all started.
| | 01:39 | And a year later we had, or 8 months
later, we had a script and nobody wanted
| | 01:47 | it except for her.
| | 01:50 | And so there was then sort of a process
of realizing that getting a movie made
| | 01:55 | was a bit of an art in itself, and
but that's kind of how it started.
| | 02:00 | Anne: How did you figure out what
your story was and what you narrative was and how
| | 02:03 | did you, literally, sit down?
| | 02:05 | I mean, were you were at a computer?
Were at home? Were you sharing drafts?
| | 02:09 | Mark: I was at a computer, yeah.
| | 02:12 | Well it was really the idea was to
try to - I was terrified when I was over
| | 02:17 | there and it was, by far, the scariest
experience of my life and I wanted to
| | 02:24 | share that feeling with the world.
| | 02:27 | And so it's really a way - the idea was
to try to capture the tension of being
| | 02:31 | in Baghdad and tell the story
through the eyes of these guys
| | 02:35 | that have this very unusual job, gutsy job, very
dangerous job. And that was kind of the frame.
| | 02:42 | And then, I don't know, through the
process of writing, I kind of found the
| | 02:48 | story and found a main character and
two other characters to be foils for him.
| | 02:52 | I am not really sure I could unpack
how it all happened, but it was
| | 02:58 | definitely a process.
| | 02:59 | Anne: Pete, the Pixar process
is a very different one, very collegial,
| | 03:06 | very collaborative.
| | 03:08 | We had Tom McCarthy up here.
| | 03:10 | We've had Andrew Stanton up here,
but it isn't the same for all of you.
| | 03:14 | So how would you, how would you
describe your version of the Pixar process?
| | 03:18 | Pete Docter: Yeah, we all have
slightly different working methods.
| | 03:21 | I guess, for me, writing a film is a
little bit like dream analysis.
| | 03:25 | You'll have those dreams where you're
being chased by lions holding a bunch of
| | 03:29 | bananas and you wake up going "Whoa!"
| | 03:30 | You are in sweats and what was that
all about and you don't really know
| | 03:35 | until you start writing and diving more in.
| | 03:38 | And so the film is the same way where you
just kind of start with something that
| | 03:41 | intrigues you, and you don't really
know why and it's somewhere along the way
| | 03:45 | you find out what it is you are actually doing.
| | 03:50 | And for us, we also had this extra step
that I don't think many of you guys go
| | 03:54 | through, I don't know,
which we call story reels.
| | 03:57 | And we will, basically, with a small team
of artists, 3 or 4, up to 6 or 7 I guess,
| | 04:03 | artists will storyboard the whole
thing, almost like a comic book.
| | 04:06 | And then we'll do our own dialogue and
music and sound effects and that's kind
| | 04:09 | of our version of a table read.
| | 04:10 | But in that way, we can sit in the
theater and project the movie that we haven't
| | 04:14 | shot yet and get a sense for
whether it's working or not.
| | 04:17 | Most of the time it's not.
| | 04:19 | So we go back and we rewrite things,
and rip stuff out, and change things.
| | 04:22 | And there is some parts that come together
very quickly and other parts that you
| | 04:26 | just struggle through.
| | 04:28 | We had one part on "Up" that we
rewrote no fewer than 50 times, so...
| | 04:32 | Anne: Talk about that.
| | 04:33 | You talked about that in Cannes a little bit.
| | 04:35 | There was this one thing you could not
solve, a problem that you could not fix.
| | 04:40 | Pete: Well this film was particularly
odd because we had all these strange elements of
| | 04:45 | you know, a man, a floating house, a talking
dogs, a thirteen-foot tall flightless bird,
| | 04:49 | just all stuff that, initially,
to be frank, I just thought was cool.
| | 04:53 | So we started putting it in, and then we had
the tough job of connecting them all together.
| | 04:58 | And that's really why the rewriting
took so long was we had to figure out how does
| | 05:03 | an old man who floats his house come
into direct opposition with this aging
| | 05:08 | adventurer who is off after - what is
he after? And so there was a lot of
| | 05:14 | rewriting in that to try to get those two
elements to kind of vibrate in the same frequency,
| | 05:19 | if that make sense.
| | 05:20 | Anne: Absolutely. And Bob Peterson
and you worked together. How did that work?
| | 05:26 | Pete Docter: We would usually just start out
in his office talking and we'd outline and
| | 05:32 | then, at some point, we'd split up and
he'd would write a part and I'd write a part.
| | 05:35 | And we swap pages.
| | 05:36 | And yeah, it's kind of messy,
but we don't know any better way.
| | 05:43 | Anne: And then when you figure out
that something isn't working, you can go back and
| | 05:47 | do the sound over again.
Is that right?
| | 05:49 | Anne: And do it over?
Pete: Yes, because at that point,
| | 05:51 | when we are doing story
reels, it's all just us.
| | 05:53 | We're doing our own temporary,
you know, doing my best Ed Asner
| | 05:56 | impersonation or whatever.
| | 05:57 | And that way we are not bothering
the actors as we rewrite, and rewrite,
| | 06:01 | and rewrite.
| | 06:02 | So by the time they come in, its,
well, it's closer to what we want.
| | 06:07 | Anne: And you show this stuff to a group of
people who are critiquing it, so you are
| | 06:11 | actually taking some pretty hard knocks,
| | 06:13 | like "this really sucks" and,
you know, "it's bad"
| | 06:17 | Pete: Yeah, I mean,
Anne: and you have to fix it.
| | 06:20 | Pete Docter: We have a pretty unique
situation because we've got these other
| | 06:24 | amazing filmmakers, Brad Bird and Andrew
Stanton and John Lasseter, and they are
| | 06:28 | all on-staff. And so while I am working
on my movie, we have this sort of cycle
| | 06:32 | where we close off and we work
just by ourselves, a very small group.
| | 06:36 | And then when we feel fairly strong
about it, we'll put it up on the screen,
| | 06:39 | invite all these other guys in,
and then we go up and have very frank
| | 06:43 | discussions about the parts
that work and the parts that don't.
| | 06:47 | And the cool thing is they
will all throw out ideas.
| | 06:51 | They poke at stuff and even with John,
who is our Creative Executive, there is
| | 06:57 | no mandate like "You have to do this."
| | 07:00 | It's always "Just make it better."
| | 07:02 | We can take their suggestion or not.
| | 07:04 | All we have to do is make it better,
which is hard enough as it is, but
| | 07:08 | it's pretty unique.
| | 07:10 | Anne: Geoffrey, what's your - you
have written many, many screen-
| | 07:14 | people keep saying "This is his first screenplay" and
I go "I think he has written a few before." Explain that.
| | 07:20 | Geoffrey Fletcher: Yeah, well I wrote a lot -
"Out In The Wilderness" of original material without -
| | 07:29 | between film school and Precious
and I didn't have an agent and I just
| | 07:33 | wrote, and wrote, and wrote.
| | 07:36 | To this day, I am still not sure why.
Almost looking back "you're a crazy man."
| | 07:40 | Anne: You were holding down temp jobs,
| | 07:42 | Anne: in New York.
Geoffrey: Yep. That's right.
| | 07:44 | Geoffrey: Working all sorts of jobs and it was
tough, but I wouldn't trade it because the
| | 07:51 | things I learned on thing those jobs,
| | 07:54 | those were real jobs with the real
people, and it really helped a lot with
| | 07:58 | writing this, but also the persistence
to keep writing with very little positive
| | 08:04 | reinforcement really helped me
understand who Precious was on a deeper level.
| | 08:09 | I mean, every day she had to
muster the strength to get through.
| | 08:15 | So this, as my first adaptation -
| | 08:22 | the original material helped a lot,
when sort of straying away from what was
| | 08:28 | there and reinventing.
| | 08:31 | And people would come up to me, even in
production team, they'll confuse
| | 08:36 | things that were in the book and things that
were added, and that, to me, was one of the
| | 08:40 | great compliments they would give,
to sort of slip organically into her,
| | 08:44 | Sapphire's universe.
| | 08:47 | But during the writing, I had filters on.
| | 08:50 | Well, actually, during the
reading of the book, I had filters on.
| | 08:53 | I am trained as a director, and so
I would look for everything in that
| | 08:57 | book that could be dramatized cinematically,
or visually, and things that didn't belong.
| | 09:08 | So a lot of it was what didn't belong
there and then there are other departures
| | 09:16 | that I took based on studying
psychology as an undergrad.
| | 09:20 | Some of these flights of fantasy from
trauma, creating some new characters and -
| | 09:27 | Anne: So the fantasy sequences,
for example, were not on the book?
| | 09:30 | Geoffrey: At one moment, early on, Precious
mentions the idea of being in a music video.
| | 09:35 | And I thought "Okay, well when she is
struggling, I mean when she is undergoing
| | 09:41 | these terribly - these terrible moments, great.
That's the escape she has created for her."
| | 09:46 | And then I thought, secondly, "It'll be a
great escape for the audience," and then
| | 09:51 | on a third level, I thought, "Well here
is a way to organically incorporate a
| | 09:54 | visual cinematic element to this film."
| | 09:58 | So, you know, throughout, also I had a
mindset, like yes this is a very specific person in a
| | 10:06 | specific place, but like a lot of art
that's effective, it can be both really
| | 10:12 | specific and ultra universal.
| | 10:14 | I thought of her as Odysseus, or Huck
Finn, or Celie from The Color Purple and
| | 10:19 | in part, this is a story about a young
women who is going through a tough, tough
| | 10:26 | time, but it only happens to be set in Harlem,
| | 10:30 | so I felt resurrected, just to be
working on something I cared about and
| | 10:37 | something that might get made. I didn't
know if anyone - if it would be made, or seen, or
| | 10:42 | even widely seen, but I did know that
I was never more fulfilled to work on
| | 10:47 | anything in my life.
| | 10:49 | Anne: Alex, your task with your partner,
Roberto Orci, who you have been working with,
| | 10:55 | I mean you've known him since you are
in high school, and you have done all of
| | 10:59 | your movies together,
| | 11:00 | the Transformers and "Mission Impossible 3."
| | 11:06 | This one was a challenge, in terms of
resurrecting, the genre term in our
| | 11:11 | industry is "rebooting" a
very, very, very familiar universe.
| | 11:17 | And it seemed like what you were able to
do was go back and find those characters
| | 11:21 | and figure out how to make them work again.
| | 11:24 | Would you talk about that?
| | 11:25 | Alex Kurtzman: Sure.
| | 11:28 | I think that there were five of us in
the process of determining where we were
| | 11:36 | going to find the rhythm and the
emotion and the balance of Star Trek.
| | 11:39 | and that Bob and I have been partners
since we were in high school and when I
| | 11:44 | first met him, he had an Enterprise
phone that would ring in his room.
| | 11:50 | So that was his level of fandom.
| | 11:51 | He knew every show, every quote, every
character from the original series on
| | 11:57 | through with the films.
| | 11:59 | I was very struck by "The Wrath of Khan"
when I saw it, just at the exact right
| | 12:03 | time, and up to that point in my life,
I did not think that anybody could beat
| | 12:07 | Darth Vader as a villain.
| | 12:09 | And then Khan came along and
put that thing in Chekov's ear
| | 12:12 | and it was like, okay.
| | 12:15 | (Laughter)
| | 12:17 | And then JJ was very kind of not -
he was like, "I am Star Wars guy."
| | 12:24 | I was like, "I am Star Wars guy, too!
| | 12:25 | Great, let's put some of that in there."
| | 12:27 | And I don't know that's sacrilege, but it's true.
| | 12:29 | Alex: And then Damon was equally loud, vocal
Anne: Lindelof
| | 12:36 | Alex: Damon Lindelof was equally loud, vocal and
| | 12:37 | passionate about protecting canon
and then Berkey really was a wonderful
| | 12:43 | objective outsider who had
no connection to Trek really.
| | 12:45 | So between the 5 of us, we all, I
think, represented a pretty of good cross
| | 12:49 | section of the audience.
| | 12:50 | And then talking about story, Bob and I
would go off and we would break story
| | 12:53 | together. We'd come back
and we'd present our ideas.
| | 12:56 | And we'd actually write an act and
then we'd find some new turn and then
| | 12:59 | present a new idea.
| | 13:01 | And we got to have that checks and
balances, which was wonderful because, as a
| | 13:07 | writer who was, I think, very fortunate
to have been trained and mentored by
| | 13:15 | writing producers, it was
an incredible safety net,
| | 13:17 | especially when it came to a
franchise that was very divisive.
| | 13:23 | I mean, hardcore Trekkers or Trekkies,
or however you would want to classify
| | 13:28 | yourself, were angry that we would
even take - the Transformers guys.
| | 13:33 | They are going to turn it into a Michael Bay
film and I think that we, initially, said
| | 13:39 | "There is no way we are going to do this.
| | 13:40 | We can't take this job." And we passed for
about 8 months. Collectively, we passed.
| | 13:45 | And then we thought about it and we
thought, "The reason that we are passing
| | 13:49 | is because we so desperately want to protect
this thing that we love that - it was too scary.
| | 13:57 | But then we realized that's exactly why
we have to do it, because if we don't
| | 14:00 | protect it and someone else does this
and we go to that theater and hate it,
| | 14:03 | then the person most culpable will be us.
| | 14:05 | So we said, "Okay. Let's do this."
| | 14:08 | Jason: If not us, then who?
If not now, then when?
| | 14:15 | (Laughter)
| | 14:16 | Alex: True, true.
| | 14:18 | By the way, I am jealous of your hair.
| | 14:19 | I just want to go on record and say that.
| | 14:23 | Anne: Between you and Bob, you are
the character man, as I understand it, and he is
| | 14:30 | the science geek.
| | 14:32 | Alex: Well, the funny thing is, Bob
has always been very sort of logical
| | 14:37 | Anne: He's Spock and you're...
| | 14:38 | Alex: The great irony of this was
| | 14:40 | we were about halfway though the script and
| | 14:42 | we got to the point where Kirk and
Spock argue about what to do after Vulcan
| | 14:45 | has been destroyed and we knew that
this was going to be the axis, in some ways,
| | 14:51 | around which the whole movie spun, because it
was going to all come down due to this argument.
| | 14:54 | And they we are going to have to
separate and come back together and we
| | 14:58 | were debating. Sometimes what we
will do is we will go to a hotel room and
| | 15:04 | we will order room service.
| | 15:05 | We will lock in and we will spend our
days writing - take the phone out of the wall.
| | 15:09 | And so we were in the middle of that
process and we were having this huge
| | 15:12 | argument about what the scene should be
and then we were like, "Jesus, This is the scene!"
| | 15:16 | Type!
| | 15:17 | (Laughter)
| | 15:18 | So we started typing as fast as
possible and that became the scene and really,
| | 15:22 | it never changed.
| | 15:24 | So we were very lucky that way and I
think that we didn't really know it,
| | 15:27 | but now 20 years that Bob and I've
been writing together, in many ways, were
| | 15:32 | building up to the moment of getting to
inherit something that we loved so much
| | 15:37 | as kids so that we could give to our
kids and that's kind of why it ended up
| | 15:42 | being, I think, something that we love doing.
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Personal writing process (cont.)| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Anne Thompson: So Nancy, with "It's Complicated,"
as I recall, you were setting out to make a
| | 00:13 | movie that was absolutely as
funny as it could possibly be.
| | 00:17 | And what's your writing process
in trying to make that happen?
| | 00:23 | You shut yourself up at home?
| | 00:25 | Nancy Meyers: It's funny that you say that.
I must have said that to you, but, actually, I always
| | 00:30 | think of my movies as being really
tragic when I'm coming up with them.
| | 00:33 | Well, because sometimes if you - when I
describe them to myself, as I'm writing,
| | 00:38 | I see nothing funny in them at all.
| | 00:40 | So the challenge is, yeah, I think in any
scene the character could cry or could laugh.
| | 00:46 | So I did want just to challenge
myself to try to write a movie that worked
| | 00:53 | comedically in sort of a full throttle
kind of way, for me, for what I do.
| | 00:58 | So when I listen to you, Pete, I'm sort
of jealous when I think that you could
| | 01:02 | leave your room and go talk to people,
or have a book or have some direction.
| | 01:10 | Because it's a long and lonely
process when you're - which is why I tend to see it
| | 01:15 | tragically I think, at times.
| | 01:16 | So you do want a little pat
on the back once in a while.
| | 01:22 | So on a rare, rare, rare occasion, I'll
send a page off to somebody and I'll say,
| | 01:27 | Does this work? Do you think this could be funny?
| | 01:30 | But basically, for me, I wanted to
write a movie about divorce, but none of
| | 01:36 | the getting a divorce stuff, none of the
custody stuff, none of that stuff that you've seen,
| | 01:40 | but sort of being a divorced person is
never really talked about in movies and
| | 01:47 | a lot of people are divorced and we
have really oddball relationships with
| | 01:51 | people as a result, one of them being the ex.
| | 01:54 | And so my brain went into the what-if
possibility of what if 10 years later you
| | 02:02 | had an affair with this person.
| | 02:05 | (Laughter)
| | 02:08 | And it then started to get pretty funny
to me, and then I started to see a lot
| | 02:15 | of very comic possibilities.
| | 02:17 | So the process was - I do a
really, really long outline.
| | 02:23 | I spent months and months outlining, and I
put everything in the outline I can think of.
| | 02:28 | It's the conversations
you have in the hotel room.
| | 02:30 | You just go back and forth with
yourself and sometimes I, in an argument scene,
| | 02:36 | I'll take out a legal pad and
draw a line down in the middle -
| | 02:38 | he thinks, she thinks.
| | 02:42 | And I always tried to make the scenes
really valid when Alec and Meryl work together.
| | 02:47 | I wanted that relationship to work.
| | 02:49 | I rooted for them.
| | 02:51 | I tried to write the best I could in
ways they could get back together, but then
| | 02:55 | true character things would come out
that would make that impossible and then
| | 03:00 | it turns into a script.
| | 03:01 | And then, on this movie, I actually
thought "I think I'm going to bring in a
| | 03:05 | producer because I write and direct and
produce" and I went to Scott Rudin and I
| | 03:10 | said, "Would you produce this movie with
me?" because I really wanted somebody just
| | 03:13 | to - and then he would call me everyday
and I would never tell him anything.
| | 03:16 | Anne: You were withholding.
Nancy: He called me every single day with "How'd it go?"
| | 03:22 | Nancy: Good. Pretty good. I don't know, maybe bad.
| | 03:26 | I just, I never really could have
any answer for how it was going.
| | 03:31 | I don't think we know.
I don't think we know, really.
| | 03:32 | Anne: And I know you and
Jason, I had a question for both of you.
| | 03:37 | I mean, were you writing with
particular people in mind as to play the roles?
| | 03:42 | Nancy: I always do.
| | 03:43 | Otherwise I see myself.
| | 03:45 | So it's really essential.
| | 03:47 | So I glommed on to Meryl Streep, who I
didn't know, but when I could picture her
| | 03:54 | I could picture her doing things
I would never do, couldn't do.
| | 03:57 | She is much braver, stronger, smarter.
| | 04:00 | She would figure out a way to pull it
off and yes, that helped me enormously.
| | 04:05 | It really helped me enormously
and I thought of Alec a lot, too.
| | 04:10 | I find when you have - I don't know about
you, or any of you, but when you have an actor in mind,
| | 04:14 | it pushes you a little bit, just pushes you.
| | 04:16 | You get braver or you can get
funnier or you know they can make it work.
| | 04:23 | It helps me a lot.
| | 04:24 | Then you have to actually get them, or
you have spent year being an idiot.
| | 04:30 | Anne: So we will go to Scott first and
then Jason, if you want to address that issue as well.
| | 04:38 | So you work with a partner, Michael,
and you have worked together before?
| | 04:44 | Scott Neustadter: This is the
second script we ever wrote, yeah, we -
| | 04:47 | Anne: So Pink Panther 2 being -
Scott: No, no, no, no, no, no.
| | 04:49 | Anne: or that was you alone?
Scott: No, that was us together.
| | 04:52 | Scott: That was all him.
(Laughter)
| | 04:55 | We wrote that after this.
| | 05:02 | This was really the first thing that
we - I moved here and we'd given up
| | 05:08 | working in movies.
| | 05:10 | I used to work in development in New York.
| | 05:12 | I hired him as my intern, like ten years
ago, and we just sort of had the same taste,
| | 05:16 | so we always would write scenes together
and make jokes and that's how that started.
| | 05:22 | We were friends first.
| | 05:23 | And I quit the business and I went to
business school in Europe and was done with this.
| | 05:28 | And I met this girl.
| | 05:30 | If you saw the movie.
| | 05:31 | I had to write about it and so I
would email him back in New York and say
| | 05:36 | "Can you believe this?"
| | 05:37 | And he'd be like, "This is good. This is juicy."
| | 05:39 | And so we were, do you think
about an actor when you write?
| | 05:44 | We were just thinking about me.
| | 05:46 | I was writing about myself.
| | 05:49 | He was writing about me.
| | 05:50 | I'm sure he even loved that and we
just didn't think it was a movie.
| | 05:55 | We didn't think it was something
that anyone was going to ever read.
| | 06:00 | I had to do it and I hated my job in
LA so much when I moved here, that I
| | 06:06 | finally said, "You know what? If I don't
show people this script and they like it,
| | 06:11 | I will probably end up moving back East."
| | 06:14 | So we kind of got lucky and they liked
the script and this is what happened.
| | 06:19 | Anne: Now you were writing the parts
about the guy who was being miserable and he was
| | 06:25 | Anne: writing about the good parts, the romantic parts?
Scott: No,
| | 06:26 | Scott: he loved the miserable parts too.
| | 06:29 | Jason Reitman: It's more fun to write that stuff.
| | 06:31 | Scott Neustadter: Yes, it's the anger. The first -
| | 06:33 | I mean it really started when things
were fresh and I was really pissed off.
| | 06:37 | And the more we would work on it, the
more distance there was and we would
| | 06:42 | be able to separate kind of fresh pain from
little bit of a maturation that was going on.
| | 06:50 | And the tone of the entire movie and
the script shifts halfway through when
| | 06:54 | the character starts to think back on things a
little differently, which is what we were doing.
| | 07:00 | The whole thing is non-fiction and it's
kind of amazing because when we watch it now,
| | 07:05 | we're like, "Oh remember, we were
going through that." And it's pretty -
| | 07:07 | Anne: Were you
going though musical numbers?
| | 07:10 | Scott: Yes, absolutely.
| | 07:12 | It's a story of someone who is really
influenced by pop-culture and when he
| | 07:16 | thinks about stuff, it always is
filtered through like the movies that he
| | 07:21 | watches and the music that he listens
to and all those things, and that's me.
| | 07:24 | The night that you finally get the girl,
the next morning is the greatest day ever.
| | 07:33 | So we said what would that entail?
| | 07:35 | And it would be a big fat musical
number and we had Hall and Oates themselves
| | 07:38 | walking down the - singing to them.
| | 07:41 | It's funny, Joe, the actor, he
said, "I felt like this and this is just
| | 07:47 | sort of, who doesn't feel like that
when something great is going on?"
| | 07:52 | Anne: But you were going
to cut out the ninja numbers?
| | 07:54 | Scott: We did have a ninja
battle at one point. Yeah, that is true.
| | 07:59 | I don't remember even what
that was to do with anything.
| | 08:02 | (Laughter)
| | 08:03 | "Anything goes," that was our sort of attitude
and yeah, thankfully, there is no ninja battle.
| | 08:08 | Jason: Is that when things are
good or when things are bad, you fight ninjas?
| | 08:11 | Scott: I think yeah, no, he died in the scene.
Things were bad. Things were bad. Wasn't so good.
| | 08:18 | Anne Thompson: How did you
figure out the fracturing of time?
| | 08:20 | Scott: The only way in which I thought it
was a screenplay versus an extended diary rant
| | 08:29 | was when I came up with the idea of
like, "What if we told it this way?"
| | 08:32 | One of the first thoughts that I had
was like you could show what ended up being
| | 08:37 | the IKEA scene.
| | 08:38 | If you've seen the movie, he makes a
joke and we show it when things are
| | 08:43 | terrible and you're like, what is up?
| | 08:45 | Then you see hundreds of days earlier
when things are fantastic because they
| | 08:49 | are new and exciting.
| | 08:50 | He makes the exact same
joke and it goes fantastic.
| | 08:53 | So the fracturing of the narrative and
the way you tell the story, you could only
| | 08:57 | do that - because of the
way that we were telling it,
| | 09:02 | we can get away with stuff like that.
| | 09:03 | You could see the juxtaposition in it
and we have a little bit more meaning,
| | 09:07 | than if you saw it an hour apart.
| | 09:08 | So we love the freedom of
being able to do stuff like that.
| | 09:12 | Anne: Jason, what's your writing
method on a day to day? -
| | 09:18 | this one had a strange sort of
trajectory because you kept going back to it.
| | 09:23 | Jason: It's like
being lost in the desert.
| | 09:25 | I honestly think that's often how writing
feels, even when you're adapting.
| | 09:33 | I started writing this seven years ago.
| | 09:34 | I wanted to write a movie
about a bunch of things.
| | 09:37 | It was funny to hear you kind of
talk about knowing that you wanted to have
| | 09:41 | a guy in an house and you know you
wanted to have this bird and like - because
| | 09:44 | I think a lot of writing comes in that way.
| | 09:47 | You know you want to write about
five or six different things and you're
| | 09:50 | wondering if they're going to end
up fitting all into the same movie.
| | 09:54 | I wanted to write about the idea of being alone.
| | 09:59 | I wanted to actually defend the
idea of being alone, and see if I
| | 10:02 | could accomplish that.
| | 10:04 | I wanted to write about the idea
of collecting things, collecting the
| | 10:07 | meaningless things that we seem to do
just to fill our life to make us think
| | 10:11 | that our life is complete and
airline miles seemed perfect for that.
| | 10:16 | I wanted to write about female midlife
crisis in a way that I thought I'd seen a
| | 10:22 | lot of male midlife crisis on screen,
but not a lot of female midlife crisis.
| | 10:25 | I wanted to write about particularly
the kind of identity crisis that I saw my
| | 10:34 | wife go through as a woman with a
business degree who was career woman who
| | 10:40 | became a wife and mom
| | 10:42 | and is trying to balance these ideas of
what was going to be the focus for our life.
| | 10:45 | I wanted to write a movie about a guy who
experienced the need for romance through loss,
| | 10:53 | that somehow, this was going to be the movie
where instead of feeling like this guy
| | 10:57 | wanted to be in love when you see him
dancing at a wedding, the most important
| | 11:01 | moment is actually when he realizes
this love is actually not available to him.
| | 11:06 | It is at that moment that we know he
wants something more and perhaps we, as an
| | 11:09 | audience, want something more as well.
| | 11:13 | I found this book that spoke to a lot
of these ideas and I find that's how
| | 11:18 | adapting works for me
| | 11:19 | is that I have stuff that's kind
going through my head and then I find an
| | 11:24 | author who speaks to it in a very
articulate way, who has language that I did
| | 11:27 | not have and we become collaborators,
whether the author knows it or not.
| | 11:34 | It becomes this exchange of ideas.
| | 11:37 | In this movie, it was strange
because over seven years,
| | 11:39 | I mean, I was writing a movie about
loneliness, but over these seven years, I met
| | 11:44 | my wife and I fell in love and I had a
daughter, and I began to learn, for me at
| | 11:50 | least, what was important in
life, and it had an enormous influence.
| | 11:53 | I started writing this movie and then
I stopped. And I made Thank You for
| | 11:56 | Smoking, then I went back to writing it
and I stopped and I made Juno.
| | 11:59 | And then I finally came back, and each
time I went back to write, my life had
| | 12:03 | made these kind of enormous jumps.
| | 12:06 | As far as writing for
actors, I completely agree.
| | 12:13 | It just changes the way
you think of the characters.
| | 12:15 | It gives them a voice in a
way that otherwise cannot be.
| | 12:19 | I wrote "Up in the Air" for
eight or nine of the actors
| | 12:22 | that ended up playing characters, and
not only George Clooney and Vera Farmiga
| | 12:27 | and Anna Kendrick, but Zach
Galifianakis and J.K. Simmons and Amy Morton, who I
| | 12:32 | saw in August: Osage County on Broadway,
| | 12:34 | and just went, "Oh my god,
that's Ryan's sister."
| | 12:37 | As soon as you identify that voice, it
really brings the character to life and all
| | 12:40 | of sudden, you really know
they would respond to anything.
| | 12:43 | It really defines them.
| | 12:44 | Anne: Have you ever done that and not
gotten the part filled with the right person?
| | 12:48 | Jason: Oh, I offered Thank
You for Smoking to George Clooney.
| | 12:53 | He had no interest in playing that role.
| | 12:58 | No, certainly. I think when I wrote
Thank You for Smoking, originally, I wrote it
| | 13:02 | as the anti-Jerry Maguire.
| | 13:04 | So for me, the perfect guy was Tom
Cruise, who is - I thought Nick Naylor and
| | 13:09 | Jerry Maguire are like
two sides of the same coin.
| | 13:13 | So, no. Certainly, that's often the case.
| | 13:17 | I'm not presumptuous enough to think that
George Clooney was going to say yes to me.
| | 13:20 | I'm just lucky that he did.
| | 13:21 | Anne: You trucked out to Italy
to his house to get him to read the script.
| | 13:26 | Jason: Well, I went to his house under
the idea that he had read the script, and then I
| | 13:29 | showed up and he said,
"What are you working on these days?"
| | 13:32 | (Laughter)
| | 13:37 | Anne: There was a happy ending.
| | 13:38 | Jason: Yeah, two days later, wondering
like- well, I'm in Como with my wife and this
| | 13:44 | is wonderful, but what
the hell is going on here?
| | 13:47 | He walked up to me,
| | 13:48 | out of nowhere, and just said,
"I've just read it. It's great. I'm in."
| | Collapse this transcript |
| Overcoming challenges| 00:00 | (Music playing.)
| | 00:07 | Anne Thompson: Often, there comes a
point when you are writing a screenplay where
| | 00:10 | something really isn't working and
it's messing you up and you go into
| | 00:15 | some kind of tailspin.
| | 00:17 | I am assuming this has happened to all of you.
| | 00:19 | Mark, on "The Hurt Locker," did you find
there is this sort of strategic disaster
| | 00:25 | in the writing of it that you had to solve?
| | 00:29 | Mark Boal: Well, I don't know about a disaster,
but I had somebody that we were trying to
| | 00:35 | get in the movie, in Hurt
Locker, and that was Ralph Fiennes.
| | 00:39 | And he and Kathryn had worked together
and it was important that he be in the
| | 00:43 | movie to trigger the financing.
| | 00:45 | And so, you know, being somewhat
familiar with his work, I wrote this part for
| | 00:50 | him as an ambassador, the British ambassador,
| | 00:54 | this long complicated scene where he
would get this really talky part and
| | 00:58 | really rip apart these American
soldiers and show their naivety about foreign
| | 01:01 | policy and all of this stuff.
| | 01:02 | Now I thought, "This is right up his alley."
| | 01:04 | So he read it and we had lunch.
| | 01:06 | And he said, "This is just awful and terrible.
| | 01:09 | "And you know, I love the
screenplay, but this terrible.
| | 01:14 | "I would never do this and, you know, I
have family that has personal experience
| | 01:20 | "with this kind of job and nothing
could be further from the truth and no
| | 01:23 | "representative of the UK would
ever speak like this," and so.
| | 01:26 | That was kind of a disastrous moment in
the development process and somehow it
| | 01:34 | came out, over the course of the lunch,
that what he would be interested in would
| | 01:37 | be something where he didn't have to
wear a suit and he had this idea that maybe
| | 01:42 | he could be a mercenary.
| | 01:44 | And so really in desperation to get
that actor on board, I created this scene
| | 01:53 | which people often, this sort of desert
sequence in the movie, and people will
| | 01:56 | sometimes say like "Why is there this
mercenary sequence in the middle of a bomb movie?"
| | 02:03 | And I have never really told the truth
about this before, but...
| | 02:06 | (Laughter)
| | 02:08 | that's the reason.
| | 02:10 | Anne: It's so interesting that
in this movie that the stars are killed off very
| | 02:15 | quickly and you cast the rest of
the movie with relative unknowns.
| | 02:18 | Mark: Well yeah, that was, you know,
Kathryn really wanted to cast it that way in
| | 02:24 | order to emphasize the realism of the
script and the shooting style and the whole
| | 02:29 | idea was to make it sort of feel as
naturalistic as possible and if you don't have--
| | 02:34 | if you don't, you know, have Tom Cruise.
| | 02:37 | If you have Tom Cruise, you are
going to assume that he is going to live
| | 02:39 | through most of the film, given that you have
probably spent some money on getting him there.
| | 02:43 | And so with unknown actors that would
be more tense and then we had Ralph, and we
| | 02:50 | had him for a couple of days,
| | 02:51 | so the easiest way to get
rid of him was to kill him.
| | 02:54 | (Laughter)
| | 02:56 | And that was true with a lot of them,
| | 02:58 | (Laughter)
Mark: but it also, I don't know,
| | 03:01 | but it also, I think, just the
| | 03:04 | inverting the normal values that you
place, as an audience member, on cast.
| | 03:09 | And when she cast Jeremy, that was
another sort of nearly - well, it was just a
| | 03:14 | difficult moment for me because I had
seen Jeremy in Dahmer and I was kind of
| | 03:21 | shocked that he had become William
James, who I always thought of this like
| | 03:24 | classic sort of, you know,
charismatic American loner type and Dahmer is,
| | 03:31 | Geoffrey, he plays Geoffrey Dahmer, and he
is extremely convincing as like the most
| | 03:34 | evil repressed man, you know,
on the universe, on the planet.
| | 03:40 | But so I did rewrite the character a
little bit when after I met Jeremy and
| | 03:42 | realized that he was actually a
nice guy and a very funny guy.
| | 03:48 | I rewrote that James character a little
bit to have - to sort of, in some ways,
| | 03:53 | accommodate his range and so he became
a somewhat more jocular character than he
| | 03:59 | was in first conception.
| | 04:02 | Anne: Geoffrey, did you have a real
sticking point in the writing process that sort
| | 04:08 | of stymied you?
| | 04:09 | Geoffrey Fletcher: Well, I am going
to just start off by saying there's
| | 04:12 | something Jason touched upon earlier
about the book in that it has such a
| | 04:17 | huge following, religious, but I
wasn't fully aware of the following, which
| | 04:26 | helped a great deal,
| | 04:29 | a great deal.
| | 04:30 | So I thought, "Well, I can do whatever I want."
| | 04:32 | This is just a cool book and
it inspired so many things.
| | 04:36 | I am not afraid to jump here and jump
there and only towards the end of the
| | 04:39 | process did I realize how
much it meant to so many people.
| | 04:43 | But I think one of the big things was
this book has a sort of a force behind it.
| | 04:50 | So it's brutal, graphic at times.
| | 04:55 | So how do we keep its impact,
but really make it accessible?
| | 05:00 | So I thought, "Well, this is cinema."
| | 05:03 | So if we show a glimpse here, a
glimpse there, a glimpse there, the audience
| | 05:07 | will connect the dots and they will
do so in a way that we could never do.
| | 05:12 | I guess like a lot of the old horror
films, where you would scare yourself.
| | 05:16 | Here is just that little drips and drabs.
| | 05:19 | Also to add dimension to the villain,
the main villain, really both the mother
| | 05:28 | and the father, but there is scene
for the father that was ultimately, it
| | 05:32 | doesn't appear in the final film, but
can we give a little bit of understanding
| | 05:39 | or dimension to this mother.
| | 05:41 | Yes, she is a monster, but, here and
there, she touches upon an interesting point.
| | 05:49 | At one point in the script, which may or
may not be in the film - I don't think it is,
| | 05:53 | Precious points out her
mother is crazy but not stupid.
| | 05:56 | And then at the very end, people tell me
"You know, I almost felt sorry for her,"
| | 06:05 | and that's okay to have - I think
Harrison Ford once said he picks his scripts
| | 06:13 | based on the quality of the villain
and so beyond that, the other difficulties
| | 06:21 | I think everyone up here maybe
can relate to the Death Valley that the
| | 06:26 | second act is or can be. So...
| | 06:28 | Anne: And Alex, what was your biggest issue?
| | 06:34 | Alex Kurtzman: Well, actually jumping in off
second act, I think there was - the choice to
| | 06:45 | destroy Vulcan was a major choice for
us and it was something that we had to
| | 06:48 | really keep quiet because we knew
that if fans heard we were destroying
| | 06:52 | Vulcan, it was over.
| | 06:56 | And the other thing was that we had to
get Leonard Nimoy on board and we knew
| | 07:01 | that the movie could not exist.
| | 07:02 | So we had to endeavor to write the
screenplay as a giant act of faith that
| | 07:07 | he would do it.
| | 07:09 | We sat down with him early in the process,
after we kind of had this story in general.
| | 07:13 | We didn't have where it was all going to
lay out, but we kind of knew what it was going to be.
| | 07:17 | And the title, I don't know if anyone
of you has ever read this, but the title
| | 07:22 | of his autobiography is "I am not Spock."
| | 07:24 | So he had said, "I am not going to
do this anymore. This is done."
| | 07:30 | And we were like, "Okay, well the only
way we can do this is with -" so we brought
| | 07:33 | him in and we sat down and
there were few pleasantries.
| | 07:38 | It was like, "Okay, so what you have got?"
| | 07:40 | Okay, so we pitched him and like "and
then you blow up your planet and then all
| | 07:46 | the Vulcans are basically wiped out."
| | 07:48 | And then he was sort of listening and
when we talked him through it and everyone
| | 07:51 | was chiming in and jumping
in and going through the pitch.
| | 07:53 | And dead silence after we were done,
and we were like, "Oh man, it's over.
| | 07:58 | We can't do this movie."
| | 07:59 | And he started to cry and we were
like, "Oh my God, what's happening?"
| | 08:04 | He said, "You have to understand how
emotional this is for me," because we
| | 08:08 | realized we f**king had him.
| | 08:09 | And he was in, but we had to write the
script now and we realized in that moment
| | 08:16 | that we were asking the gunslinger
to slap on his pistols one last time.
| | 08:21 | So the destruction of Vulcan and where
it landed in our minds was the sort of
| | 08:28 | the end of act two.
| | 08:30 | The end of act two low point was
Vulcan is destroyed and then they have to go
| | 08:33 | after Nero and take him back.
| | 08:35 | And we were really stuck,
| | 08:37 | for some reason. We didn't understand
why we are so stuck, but the story was not
| | 08:40 | laying out in the way we needed it to.
| | 08:42 | We couldn't get the emotional beats.
| | 08:43 | We couldn't hit the emotional beats.
| | 08:44 | Everything was wrong.
| | 08:45 | And we realized that the problem was that
that needed to be the midpoint of the movie.
| | 08:50 | Because it was such a huge event to
recover from, there was not enough time to
| | 08:55 | get to where everybody
need to get too emotionally.
| | 08:57 | You needed an hour for the audience to
accept it, for the characters to accept
| | 09:01 | it and for the upswing to be possible,
because it was such a down point.
| | 09:04 | So that was a weird one because, you
know, usually, if you are looking at a
| | 09:07 | typical three-act structure for these
kinds of movies, which have very little
| | 09:12 | room for deviation, your
low point has to be there.
| | 09:15 | And our high point actually begins at
the end of act two because the story low
| | 09:21 | point is there, but it actually lead
us to the scene where Kirk has to jump
| | 09:27 | Spoke off the bridge and take over as Captain.
| | 09:29 | So while that was the low point, it was
also a high point because the audience
| | 09:32 | was hoping and waiting for that moment to come.
| | 09:34 | So that was our biggest hurdle to get past.
| | 09:38 | Anne: But you were also were fooling
around with time in a very ladder and theme way.
| | 09:42 | So that's sort of how you
dealt with it in a way, right?
| | 09:44 | Alex: Yeah, I mean the time travel
element was obviously an old staple of Star Trek,
| | 09:50 | so we knew that we had to pay -
but it's also a cheat, you know.
| | 09:53 | Like we had to be very careful that we
did not use it as a cheat and trying to
| | 09:57 | stay true to canon and honoring canon,
we realized that creating an alternate
| | 10:04 | time-line would allow us to be able to say that
everything that you have seen on Star Trek existed.
| | 10:08 | We didn't want to do a reinvention.
| | 10:11 | We didn't really want - it's a prequel and it's
a sequel in that it - half of the movie takes...
| | 10:15 | So it's a "sprequel."
| | 10:16 | That's what we used to call it.
| | 10:18 | And it ended up we had to find the
balance there and the way to use time travel
| | 10:23 | in a way that people wouldn't be
offended by and that ended up giving us amazing
| | 10:26 | story possibilities we just
didn't know we were going to have.
| | 10:29 | Anne: And Nancy, did you have a real
sticking point in the process of writing this?
| | 10:34 | Nancy Meyers: Well, you know, I wrote
about an affair, which, if you read the
| | 10:40 | newspaper, people don't like.
| | 10:42 | People don't like people that have -
people don't like people who have affairs.
| | 10:47 | My lead character was going to have an
affair with the married man who she had
| | 10:53 | been married to, but still he is married to
somebody else, and he is a new father to her child.
| | 10:59 | So, it was risky, you know.
| | 11:02 | I think the whole time I was writing, I
was aware that they are having an affair
| | 11:08 | and I had to keep balancing that and
keep - the way I dealt with it was I had
| | 11:15 | the character talk about it -
| | 11:18 | how wrong it was and she
talked to her friends about it.
| | 11:20 | She talked to her psychiatrist about it.
| | 11:23 | She talked to him about it.
| | 11:25 | And I felt by balancing that and keep
talking about it kept it - because you
| | 11:30 | know, as soon as the audience is
thinking something and you are up on the
| | 11:33 | screen, you know, you have to sort
of get that they are thinking that.
| | 11:37 | So if you put it up there and you deal
with it, then I think they can enjoy the
| | 11:40 | movie and get on with it.
| | 11:42 | And then after going through all
that, she doesn't end up with him.
| | 11:46 | And in classic romantic comedies, when
they were wonderful, and there were exes
| | 11:52 | involved, like "The Philadelphia Story"
or "The Awful Truth" or any of the great
| | 11:55 | ones, you always end up with the ex
because he makes his case, you realize
| | 11:59 | you've made a mistake and you get back together.
| | 12:02 | And she also doesn't end up with him
| | 12:04 | after putting the audience through it and
at a certain point, they are rooting for them.
| | 12:07 | Kids are involved, you know, and so I
found that challenging too, you know, to
| | 12:12 | make that okay that she doesn't end up
with him and not to make him a villain.
| | 12:16 | Anne: And did you think when you
were writing about pot smoking that this would
| | 12:19 | earn you an R-rating?
| | 12:20 | Nancy: No! I had no idea.
| | 12:23 | I had no - I mean I was actually stunned.
| | 12:26 | Jason Reitman: Did you get an R for pot smoking -
Anne: Yes
| | 12:28 | Jason: and pot smoking alone?
Nancy: No, no.
| | 12:30 | I got an R because there were no
bad repercussions from smoking pot,
| | 12:36 | In other words, there was not a moment
where they said "Let's never do that again!"
| | 12:40 | (Laughter)
| | 12:43 | But you know, the point I made to the
up to the MPA was, on the other hand,
| | 12:47 | no one brings it up.
| | 12:48 | Nobody says "Hey where did you
get it? Can I have some more?"
| | 12:50 | I mean, it was so clearly a one-time thing.
| | 12:52 | It was like getting drunk once.
| | 12:54 | You are not going to get drunk every day.
| | 12:56 | You know, it was - and they both
said they hadn't done it in 27 years.
| | 13:01 | These are not potheads.
| | 13:02 | Mark: Did they propose, by the way,
a consequence that would have been -
| | 13:04 | Nancy: Well it was too late.
| | 13:06 | Nancy: The movie was made, done.
Mark: The movie was cut.
| | 13:07 | You know, I couldn't write in a consequence,
| | 13:10 | even though Steve Martin said to me,
"Should I come in and loop? 'Ooh, That was something.'"
| | 13:14 | I said, "Where am I going to put that?"
| | 13:15 | Mark: Right after the baking
of the croissant. Oh God!
| | 13:18 | Nancy: Right as I'm about to kiss you.
Anne: This is so wrong.
| | 13:21 | Nancy: This is so wrong. Yes!
(Laughter)
| | 13:23 | That is what I think he is going to say
'because that was not a good thing to do.'
| | 13:27 | Nancy: But that's - yeah. No, I thought that was wild.
Anne: Yeah.
| | 13:32 | Jason: Would you have gone further
if you knew you were getting an R?
| | 13:35 | Jason: Would you have started to like, uh
Nancy Meyers: No.
| | 13:37 | Anne Thompson: You could
have shown us all of Alec Baldwin.
| | 13:38 | Jason: There is a scene
where they are doing meth.
| | 13:42 | Jason: I mean, it just gets out of control.
| | 13:44 | (Laughter)
Nancy Meyers: No!
| | 13:45 | Scott Neustadter: That'd be a consequence.
| | 13:47 | Nancy: Well there is a little thing where, you know
Scott: It's a gateway drug.
| | 13:49 | Alec and John Krasinski,
| | 13:51 | he's shot gun - it's a little, you know,
there is a little moment that the boys
| | 13:55 | improvise, which I thought was
hilarious and I thought, "I will take it out."
| | 13:58 | I know I can never keep it.
| | 13:59 | So I said - I offered that up, but
they said, "It's the whole 11 minutes,
| | 14:04 | that's the problem."
| | 14:05 | I said, "Oh good, then that stays!"
| | 14:06 | because I thought that was really funny, but no.
| | 14:10 | Anne Thompson: So Scott, how about you?
| | 14:14 | Scott Neustadter: Ay, I don't even like to think about it.
| | 14:17 | We had nothing but roadblocks.
| | 14:19 | I mean we had all these ideas,
but we really didn't have a story.
| | 14:25 | We were just - it was one
person's whiny rant for awhile.
| | 14:30 | And we had like a 110 page first act and
that's where we realized,
| | 14:35 | (Laughter)
"Wow. This is going nowhere."
| | 14:40 | Some of it is funny, some of it is horrible.
| | 14:42 | Where are we going?
| | 14:43 | And we didn't know!
| | 14:45 | And one day, I am going to ruin the
movie for everybody, but one day this
| | 14:49 | thing happened in real life, which
is this girl got married and that was
| | 14:54 | impossible. That could not be.
| | 14:57 | And so for me, who is still kind of
reeling from the breakup and had been
| | 15:01 | convinced that you know, love, there
is no such thing, it's all whatever.
| | 15:07 | This person who helped me get to that
place found love and got married and lived
| | 15:11 | happily ever after, and there was no way.
| | 15:13 | And we realized when that happened,
that's the story we are telling.
| | 15:16 | We are telling the story of really
the minute when you say there is no such
| | 15:20 | thing, then there is no such thing as
there is not such thing and that was the
| | 15:24 | theme and we worked towards that and
we went back and looked at, you know is
| | 15:28 | that what was story we were telling and
it was always the story we were telling,
| | 15:30 | we just didn't know it
and that was the revelation.
| | 15:35 | Anne Thompson: Jason?
| | 15:36 | Jason: The most important thing for me
was authenticity and that was the - it's not really
| | 15:46 | a roadblock, but that's what I faced on a daily
basis and that's what I wanted to accomplish.
| | 15:50 | I mean, I look down at everyone on
this panel and that's one of the great
| | 15:54 | elements of every screenplay here is
how authentic and relatable they are,
| | 16:00 | no matter what they are about.
| | 16:01 | I mean, even in the case of "Up," which is
about a man in a house with balloons,
| | 16:04 | flying to a fictional place in South America,
| | 16:08 | it's not about the authenticity of
would, you know, the house actually fly?
| | 16:11 | It's about the authenticity of, do we
believe in the idea of wondering if we
| | 16:19 | have had enough adventure in our life and
looking back and having those kind of regrets?
| | 16:23 | And that's a thing that everybody
understands and for that reason, it has to be
| | 16:25 | authentic or we're going to call it BS.
| | 16:28 | And every movie here has that,
and I certainly wanted that for my own
| | 16:33 | film and I knew I was dealing with elements
that were outside of my personal experience.
| | 16:38 | Two strong examples.
| | 16:39 | One was these feelings I knew my wife
was having, again, as a career woman who
| | 16:49 | was still trying to kind of figure herself out.
| | 16:52 | And I remember one night we sat down
and I said, "Honey I have to write this
| | 16:56 | "scene and I need your help with it.
And I want you to have a conversation with
| | 17:00 | "yourself, of you now and your 16 year
old self, and I want you to talk about what
| | 17:05 | you look for in a man."
| | 17:07 | And first she described what
she looks for in a man now.
| | 17:12 | Thankfully, there was some resemblance
to me and then she described this man
| | 17:19 | that she was in love with at
16, who had no resemblance to me.
| | 17:22 | He was just, you know, he was as
tall as Pete, and golden hair and had a
| | 17:28 | golden retriever and loved to go outdoors
on the weekend and had a Land Rover
| | 17:33 | and worked in finance,
| | 17:35 | had a college degree, unlike me!
I mean, you know and --
| | 17:39 | Mark: But wait. This is seriously your
dinner table conversation with your wife?
| | 17:41 | (Laughter)
| | 17:42 | Jason Reitman: Now, the
scarier version of this was on Juno.
| | 17:46 | On Juno, there was an argument that had
to happen between a husband and wife and I
| | 17:51 | talked to Diablo about it.
| | 17:52 | I said, "I think we need to have a scene
here at the end where they get into an
| | 17:55 | argument and I have some suggestions for it."
| | 17:57 | So I went to my wife and I said,
"I would like to have an argument with you.
| | 18:03 | "And this is for the script and we
know going in this is for the script,
| | 18:09 | but if I were to say this, what would you say?"
| | 18:13 | She said "I would say this," and I said, "Okay.
| | 18:15 | Now if I responded by saying this,"
and it was actually a very scary scene.
| | 18:20 | We kind of went through it and then
we hugged and made up at the end and so
| | 18:27 | that was one part of it.
| | 18:28 | That was very important to me.
| | 18:31 | It's honestly my favorite scene I have
ever written and favorite scene I have
| | 18:34 | ever directed and it is
in large part to my wife.
| | 18:38 | It's from me, just writing
down everything she said.
| | 18:40 | The other part was the experience of
being laid off in this economy and as I was
| | 18:44 | scouting this film, and I was in St. Louis
and Detroit, two cities that just
| | 18:47 | got pummeled this year, I would go to
locations, office locations, that were
| | 18:53 | available for shooting primarily
because their departments had been laid off.
| | 18:57 | And I would walk into an empty floor
and there would just be telephones sitting
| | 19:00 | on the ground, 15 feet apart where
desks used to be, and there would be a room
| | 19:05 | filled with abandoned chairs.
| | 19:07 | You know, each one of these used to
belong to a person that was no longer there.
| | 19:11 | And I would talk to my father every
night on the phone and he would say,
| | 19:13 | "Look. You know, you are making one of the
few documents of 2009 that says what
| | 19:20 | "happened, that if you watch this movie
10-20 years from now, this will speak to
| | 19:25 | "the economy of this year.
| | 19:27 | "You have to get this right.
| | 19:29 | "You have to capture this.
| | 19:30 | This has to be in the details."
| | 19:32 | And every night he would talk to me
about what I needed to be keeping track of.
| | 19:38 | He said, you know, take photos,
take note of these things.
| | 19:40 | These need to find a way into the film.
| | 19:41 | And one night, during this conversation,
I said, "What if we used people as well?"
| | 19:45 | I kind of recognized that the weakest
scenes in my screenplay were the firing scenes,
| | 19:50 | that I don't know what it's like to
be in the middle of my life and to be
| | 19:55 | searching for opportunity when
there really is none available.
| | 19:59 | And I went to my casting director and
said, "How can we find real people here
| | 20:04 | who have lost their jobs, who'd be
wiling to come and be in the film?"
| | 20:08 | And she said, "Well why don't we put
an ad out in the Help Wanted section."
| | 20:12 | I thought, God that's frighteningly smart, and we did that.
(Laughter)
| | 20:18 | We got an enormous amount of responses.
| | 20:20 | We said we were make a documentary so
there wouldn't be any actors who were
| | 20:25 | trying to kind of slip through.
| | 20:27 | I wanted all non-actors and we narrowed
it down to 25 people who are all in the
| | 20:32 | film and they would start to say the
kinds of things I would never think to
| | 20:36 | write as a writer and they would say it
in a way I would never think to direct
| | 20:39 | them as a director and they - it's
funny because you know, we sit here alone
| | 20:44 | here, but we have co-writers throughout
our life, whether they are our spouses or
| | 20:50 | our bosses or, you know, the bully that
beat us up as a kid or, in this case, these
| | 20:55 | 25 people who wrote some of
the best dialog in the film.
| | 20:59 | And there was one guy in particular.
| | 21:01 | He said, he is in the movie, he goes,
"What are you going to do this weekend?
| | 21:05 | "You got gas in your tank. You got
money in your wallet. You are going to take
| | 21:09 | your kid to Chuck E. Cheese?"
| | 21:10 | I just remember him
saying that and I thought, wow!
| | 21:14 | Well first of all, I have never
thought of Chuck E. Cheese as a luxury, but
| | 21:18 | more importantly, if I tried to write this, if I
wrote this down, I would think I was being cute.
| | 21:26 | And what he said it, it was 100% real.
| | 21:30 | And it was really in capturing them that I
really kind of found the soul of this movie.
| | 21:38 | It happened on day four of our shoot
and it just kind of carried with us
| | 21:41 | throughout the rest.
| | 21:42 | Anne: Well, I want to
thank this extraordinary panel.
| | 21:47 | You were great!
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