SCREEN PLAYS HOW 25 SCRIPTS MADE IT TO A THEAT ER NEAR YOU—FOR BETTER OR WORSE David S. Cohen For Esther, who left too soon, and for Sue Ellen and Miranda, who arrived just in time CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 1 1. “GET A LIFE” 19 GLADIATOR • DAVID FRANZONI 2. SCRIPTER: LONG ISLAND LOLITA WAS MY MUSE! 37 AMERICAN BEAUTY • ALAN BALL 3. “I DIDN’T THINK THIS WAS REALLY GOING TO HAPPEN” 53 RANDOM HEARTS • KURT LUEDTKE 4. “IT’S TWO PEOPLE; NOTHING HAPPENS” 67 LOST IN TRANSLATION • SOFIA COPPOLA 5. “GOTTA STAY ON THIS JOB” 79 BLACK HAWK DOWN • KEN NOLAN 6. “LET’S SHOOT BIG” 91 TROY • DAVID BENIOFF 7. THE ANTI-TROY 103 HERO • ZHANG YIMOU 8. “CAN I WRITE MIDNIGHT COWBOY?” 113 PAY IT FORWARD • LESLIE DIXON 9. “EVERY GOOD STORY IS A LOVE STORY” 127 ERIN BROCKOVICH • SUSANNAH GRANT 10. SITH, SCHMITH. THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH 141 THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY • KAREY KIRKPATRICK iv CONTENTS 11. ROLL OVER, CARY GRANT 151 MY BEST FRIEND’S WEDDING • RON BASS 12. LIFE’S TWO TRAGEDIES 163 MONA LISA SMILE • LAWRENCE KONNER & MARK ROSENTHAL 13. “IT’S DIFFICULT TALKING TO IDIOTS” 177 BOUNCE • DON ROOS 14. GREAT SCIENCE FICTION—BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE 191 ETERNAL SUNSHINE OF THE SPOTLESS MIND • CHARLIE KAUFMAN 15. SLAVES TO DESIRE 201 HAPPINESS • TODD SOLONDZ 16. SEX AIN’T WHAT IT USED TO BE 213 A DIRTY SHAME • JOHN WATERS 17. “IF YOU TALK TO EARL, TELL HIM TO CALL ME” 223 WITNESS • BILL KELLEY & EARL W. WALLACE 18. THE BEST SCRIPT THAT COULDN’T GET MADE 235 MONSTER’S BALL • MILO ADDICA & WILL ROKOS 19. THE GOLDEN LION, SURE. BUT DID SHE GET AN “A”? 245 MONSOON WEDDING • SABRINA DHAWAN 20. PROTECTING HOWARD 257 THE AVIATOR • JOHN LOGAN 21. CHANCE, FATE, AND HOMEWORK 269 A SIMPLE PLAN • SCOTT SMITH 22. NO SIMILAR MOVIES 281 THE HOURS • DAVID HARE 23. GOOD WORK FAILS SOMETIMES 295 EVENING. SUSAN MINOT & MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM 24. THE RETURN OF THE (SPEC) KING 309 KISS KISS, BANG BANG • SHANE BLACK 25. “ALL YOU NEED IS ONE PERSON TO BELIEVE IN YOU” 319 THE CAVEMAN’S VALENTINE • GEORGE DAWES GREEN ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 333 INDEX 335 About the Author Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher INTRODUCTION W hat’s the best thing you ever wrote? It’s not a trick question. Pretty much everybody, at some point in life, puts pen to paper, or fingers to keys, to express something important. A poem. A business proposal. Song lyrics. A joke. Maybe a love letter. If you’re not a writer by trade, that’s probably where it ended. You wrote it, someone read it. But did you show it to anyone before you sent it? Did someone change it without permission? If it was a class project, did your teacher suggest im- provements? Did you take those suggestions? If so, how did you feel after- ward? Did the suggestions really help? Even if they did, did it mean as much to you as it did before? Complicated, isn’t it? WHE N I was maybe twelve years old, I was in an art class, and I was making a candleholder in the shape of a sperm whale. I wasn’t trying to make some- thing particularly creative, just a candleholder. The tail was the handle, and the candle went in where the whale’s blowhole would be. My art teacher told me it would be more interesting if the tail were bent. Then he bent the tail—just a little, but enough to make it different. That’s how it was fired and that’s how it came back to me for posterity. My parents still have it in their house. Sometimes I come across it when I’m visiting them. I still get irritated, thirty-five years later, every time I see that bent tail. Maybe it is more interesting that way, but it isn’t what I wanted it to be, and it never will be. 2 SCREEN PLAYS I could bury it someplace where I won’t have to look at it anymore, but I’m convinced that if I do, in five thousand years, some future archaeologist will unearth it, look at my signature in the clay, and say, “Pretty good candle- holder, except for that bent handle. Bad choice by David Cohen, that. Why would he have done such a thing?” Well, Mr. Future Archaeologist, he did it because he was twelve and he had a hard time standing up to his teacher. Because he thought maybe it would be more interesting if the tail were bent. Because he hadn’t learned yet that people who want to help you, no matter how well-meaning, don’t necessarily share your taste, or that other people make changes to suit their needs, even though it’s your candleholder, with your name on it, and you’re the one who’s going to have to live with the results. Yeah, that tail still bugs me. What may bug me more is how hard it was to learn the lesson of that ex- perience. If I could go back in time and visit myself on the day I brought that candleholder home, I think I’d put my arm around the boy’s shoulders and say: “Young David, if that candleholder bothers you, never, never, never try to be a screenwriter.” Guess it’s just as well I can’t do that. I probably wouldn’t have listened to me anyway. THIS is a book about twenty-five movies and how their tales, so to speak, got bent. Many of these movies are good; some of them are bad. Some are good because a lot of people bent their tale. Others are good because nobody did. Some are bad for the same reasons. This is not a book about how to write a hit movie. If I knew how to do that, I’d be doing it. For that matter, there’s no reason to think that anybody knows how to write a hit movie. Nobody cranks out hit after hit without a break. Pixar Animation Studios, collectively, managed to do that for its first twenty years or more, but that was not the work of a single screenwriter. Be- sides which, there probably isn’t any single strategy that works in every situa- tion. What worked for Todd Solondz when he was writing Happiness or Sofia Coppola when she was putting together Lost in Translation would never have worked for Ken Nolan trying to adapt Black Hawk Down, for Jerry Bruck- heimer or David Franzoni trying to keep Gladiator on track for Steven Spiel- berg and DreamWorks. Writing a spec script is different from adapting a novel is different from writing from a pitch. Instead of being about “how to do it,” this book is about “how I did it”