Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: It's Oscar Night twenty sixteen. The stage of the Adobe
Speaker 2: Theater is set with what looks like a thousand candles.
Speaker 2: Hollywood stars are lined up in the front rows, colorful dresses,
Speaker 2: careful hairstyles, and endless cameras ready to pan from the
Speaker 2: crowd to the presenters. Ah, here comes Russell Crowe and
Speaker 2: Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling has a gold envelope.
Speaker 1: In his hand. Good evening, folks. We're here to present
Speaker 1: the award the Best Adapted Screenplay. And not to get
Speaker 1: too technical, but that's the screenplay that was the best
Speaker 1: at adapting to whatever harsh conditions and obstacles were thrown
Speaker 1: in its way.
Speaker 3: No, it's a screenplay adapted from another source, which is
Speaker 3: a novel play, short story, or a TV show.
Speaker 1: Agree to disagree?
Speaker 2: Okay, well exactly because what are we interested in in
Speaker 2: this series on development? Hell, the maladapted screenplay, the movie
Speaker 2: idea that does not survive the harsh conditions and obstacles
Speaker 2: thrown in its way. Anyway, back to the twenty sixteen Oscars,
Speaker 2: the video montage for Best Adapted Screenplay lists Brooklyn, Carol Room,
Speaker 2: The Martian and The Big Short Gosling opens the envelope
Speaker 2: and the.
Speaker 3: Oscar goes to.
Speaker 1: Charles Randolph and Adam McKay the Big Short.
Speaker 2: Allow me a little bit of name dropping. Charles Randolph,
Speaker 2: winner of that Oscar, is my and my best friend.
Speaker 2: I met him twenty five years ago when he just
Speaker 2: started screenwriting, and since then he's done the life of
Speaker 2: David Gaale, the Interpreter, Love Another, Drugs, Bombshell, and Big Short.
Speaker 2: And when he got the Oscar for Big Short. I
Speaker 2: was at an Oscar watching party in Brooklyn and I
Speaker 2: got so emotional I had to hide in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Mister Randolph, mister Goagwell, how are you, my friend?
Speaker 2: I'm good, I'm good. Normally Charles would just walk over
Speaker 2: to the studio. His office is down the hall, But
Speaker 2: today he's calling me from London, where he and his
Speaker 2: family are living for the school year.
Speaker 1: How's it going now? I haven't seen him forever. I
Speaker 1: miss you, Charles.
Speaker 2: Le just do our thingy we can Okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2: Notice the interaction he says he misses me. I get
Speaker 2: all flustered and try and get on with things. I
Speaker 2: love Charles because I love Charles. There was no question
Speaker 2: I was going to ask Charles for development hell story,
Speaker 2: because I've talked with him at length about every screenplay
Speaker 2: he's worked on for the last twenty five years, and
Speaker 2: I knew instantly which one.
Speaker 1: He would pick.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to episode four of Development Hell. So tell me,
Speaker 2: tell me how that whole thing begins. Start at the beginning.
Speaker 1: So Paula Wagner and Tom Cruise by a book from
Speaker 1: a guy named Stanning Albert called The Birthday Party, which
Speaker 1: is a true story of him in January on January
Speaker 1: twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, walking through the West Village
Speaker 1: and he is approached by a young black man on
Speaker 1: his right who he realized has a gun, and the
Speaker 1: young man leads him to a vehicle that's I think
Speaker 1: they're on thirteenth Street, maybe twelfth eleve them it's right
Speaker 1: off Fifth Avenue. And there's another young black man waiting
Speaker 1: who opens the door, and a third black young black
Speaker 1: man in the car, and they basically kidnap him to
Speaker 1: steal money out of his bank account. And what's interesting
Speaker 1: is they're incredibly young. I think the oldest one is
Speaker 1: maybe just turned eighteen. His name is Lucky. The others
Speaker 1: are sixteen and I think fourteen, and they have no
Speaker 1: clue what they're doing, right, They have no understanding because
Speaker 1: they don't have bank accounts, right, so they have no
Speaker 1: understanding that ATMs have a limit. They don't believe it.
Speaker 1: At first. They see how much money he has in
Speaker 1: his account. I think it's over one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: So they anxiously want to get that money and it
Speaker 1: drives them mad the system that they just can't get
Speaker 1: that money out over the course of a night, right,
Speaker 1: So they decide to hold him in Brooklyn with an
Speaker 1: apartment with three young women. It's basically three young women
Speaker 1: that sort of work for Lucky maybe it's kind of
Speaker 1: hard to tell as prostitutes. And he's held there for
Speaker 1: firs you know, basically almost I think seventy two hours,
Speaker 1: and a relationship develops with these kids, and at some
Speaker 1: point they're offering him pot, they offer him a blowjob
Speaker 1: once they find out that it's birthday. They're holding him
Speaker 1: on his birthday. That's why it's called the birthday party.
Speaker 1: It'll be his thirty ninth birthday. They want to get
Speaker 1: they want to get the money outs. They sort of
Speaker 1: had to plan to go into the bank with him.
Speaker 1: Of course that's not going to work. He sort of
Speaker 1: talks them out of that. To keep him honest. They
Speaker 1: threaten his father and they sort of ask, you know,
Speaker 1: ask for his father's address, and Stanley, knowing that his
Speaker 1: father's business card is in his wallet, can't really lie.
Speaker 1: They end up discussing killing him. So it's a test
Speaker 1: they do at one point. So it's just a really
Speaker 1: tense situation where he's you know, he's afraid for his life.
Speaker 1: And it turns out they you know, there's no way
Speaker 1: they can making making get the money out, and so
Speaker 1: they decide to let him go. With their adolescence to
Speaker 1: their adolescents, and it's also it's adolescence, yes, right, it's right.
Speaker 2: It's three teenage boys.
Speaker 1: Absolutely correct. I mean three and three teenage girls as well,
Speaker 1: who are also quite young. I think their youngest one
Speaker 1: is fourteen even, and they just they just do teenage stuff.
Speaker 1: They have teenage perspectives, they have you know, you know,
Speaker 1: yet they're very worldly, you know what I mean, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, And so it's you know, there's there's young
Speaker 1: one you know, one woman you know, talking about one
Speaker 1: sexual practice she won't do because she's saving it for marriage.
Speaker 1: You can imagine what that is. And it's just it's
Speaker 1: just it's a heartbreaking that that's her, that's the thing
Speaker 1: she's keeping, that's the thing that she has to offer, right,
Speaker 1: and so it's just it's it's just yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's it's it's that youth, you know. But it's also moving.
Speaker 1: It's also sort of I mean, the book's quite good
Speaker 1: in that sense. It's like you get a sense of Wow,
Speaker 1: these you know, there's a real community amongst these kids, right,
Speaker 1: they are wholly relying on each other, you know, and
Speaker 1: this is the only family they've got, and they're and
Speaker 1: they're they're they're down for that family. They'll do what
Speaker 1: it takes for their families. Yeah, it just is one
Speaker 1: of those books where in reading it, it has a
Speaker 1: wrongness to it and a an authenticity to it. It's
Speaker 1: just very hard to find right as a story.
Speaker 2: Why was Why do you think Tom Cruise's people were
Speaker 2: attracted to this, to this book in the first place.
Speaker 1: Well, I think Stanley's a remarkable guy. He you know,
Speaker 1: what he does over the course of those three days
Speaker 1: is he pays attention to these little clues which you
Speaker 1: don't sort of see coming, uh, you see him noticing things,
Speaker 1: and then when he's being interviewed by the police, he
Speaker 1: just repeats them back and they are there. They manage
Speaker 1: to find these six people very quickly, I mean extreme.
Speaker 1: You know, he did a remarkable job. He remembered little
Speaker 1: bits of numbers that he heard repeated, He remembered the
Speaker 1: patterns on the floor, He identified the bus schedule going
Speaker 1: outside the building. He could sort of identified the flight
Speaker 1: patterns to JFK going over the building. He knew that
Speaker 1: it was a relative, relatively big boulevard in Queens. He
Speaker 1: knew kind of he could kind of guess by the
Speaker 1: sequels how far the ocean was away. And so he
Speaker 1: not only managed to save himself by building a relationship
Speaker 1: with these young people, but he also managed to put
Speaker 1: the police onto them very quickly.
Speaker 2: So that version, there's a slender version of the story
Speaker 2: which is just simply Sherla colmbs absolutely.
Speaker 1: And that's why I think I think that's in fairness
Speaker 1: to stand. I think that's what he thought he was getting.
Speaker 1: He thought he was going to get. You know, Tom
Speaker 1: Cruise's going to play this guy who you know, heroically
Speaker 1: saves himself, you know, and then bonds a little bit
Speaker 1: with these with these young people, but but then you know,
Speaker 1: it has to put them away. And I'm presented with
Speaker 1: this thing, and it's just it's a fantastic story, but
Speaker 1: it has the obvious problem. Right, It's a story of
Speaker 1: three black, young black men holding a white guy, a lawyer,
Speaker 1: a federal attorney, as a matter of fact, hostage, and
Speaker 1: it's just it's hard to describe. It has an ethnocentrism
Speaker 1: to it because it rooted in the perspective of the
Speaker 1: white guy. It just feels a little untoward. It's just
Speaker 1: one of the stories that we in Hollywood can't tell.
Speaker 1: You simply cannot tell that story right. And you know,
Speaker 1: if the film were being made, and you know, in
Speaker 1: fifteen years earlier than nineteen ninety eight, he could have
Speaker 1: gotten away with that. But by that period it was
Speaker 1: already too late to tell this story without fully honoring
Speaker 1: the humanity of the perpetrators. And so the thinking is,
Speaker 1: how can we take this and make it work? And
Speaker 1: what I end up doing is I turn up everyone's
Speaker 1: racism for lack of better phrase, right, I make Stanley
Speaker 1: a guy who thinks he's a liberal, but he's trapped
Speaker 1: by his own categories in the world. I make these kids,
Speaker 1: these kids who have very few opportunities and are trapped
Speaker 1: in their own kind of perspective of the other. So
Speaker 1: there these are a group of people who, even though
Speaker 1: Stanley's being held in this apartment, blindfolded and basically in
Speaker 1: a big room with six kids, six young people, he
Speaker 1: can't see them really literally and metaphorically, and they can't
Speaker 1: see him, right. Uh. And then what happens is, you know,
Speaker 1: in the script, you know, he starts to rebel against
Speaker 1: this situation. He gets he gets angry, and they start
Speaker 1: to work through their own prejudices, prejudices against one another,
Speaker 1: and it sort of culminates in a in a in
Speaker 1: a scene where basically he unloads on them and he
Speaker 1: gives voice. I think a little bit of that old
Speaker 1: essay from Poete Hertz, is it? Norman? Can you remember
Speaker 1: the Norman.
Speaker 2: R your Nego problem in mind?
Speaker 1: Exactly? My Negro problem yours? Yeah? Exactly?
Speaker 2: From Yeah, Actually both Charles and I got it a
Speaker 2: little wrong. It's My Negro Problem and Ours by Norman
Speaker 2: pod Horitz, published in nineteen sixty three. It's a famous
Speaker 2: in the you read it today, really unsettling essay where
Speaker 2: pod Hortz confesses to quote the hatred I still feel
Speaker 2: for Negroes quote based on his experiences growing up as
Speaker 2: a working class Jewish kid in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: And the way you know a Gibstanley and basically that perspective,
Speaker 1: he is someone who's both understanding of where they come from,
Speaker 1: but angry that they still act as though the door
Speaker 1: is closed to them, you know. And and I can
Speaker 1: actually read it for you because I had it on
Speaker 1: the script I have. I can read the scene to
Speaker 1: you if you want it. I do want you to
Speaker 1: do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you'll see.
Speaker 1: I mean the piece is you know, it's quite raw. Really,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's you know, it's in an area
Speaker 1: era prior to current sensibilities. I think I wrote it
Speaker 1: in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, And
Speaker 1: you kind of get a feeling for, uh, for the
Speaker 1: script in terms of it's you know, it's taking some risk.
Speaker 1: Let me put it that way. He's been held for
Speaker 1: a few days, right, So the kids are in the room,
Speaker 1: Stanley's there, he's looking away from them. He let him
Speaker 1: take his blind fall off but he's face in the wall. Lucky, Stanley,
Speaker 1: let me ask you something. If you had a chance
Speaker 1: to put me away for life, would you do it?
Speaker 1: Stanley considers, Stanley, you know where I live, you know
Speaker 1: where my father lives. I don't know who you are.
Speaker 1: I don't know where we are. I don't care. I
Speaker 1: just want this whole thing to be over. Lucky contemplates
Speaker 1: the flat sincerity of Stan's answer. Then he laughs. Everyone looks.
Speaker 1: It's a strained laugh. That's right, Lucky says, Make the
Speaker 1: negro think he's got a chance. Open that door wide.
Speaker 1: Then boom. He slaps his hands together and stands the
Speaker 1: ear stan flinches as Lucky stands and turns away from him.
Speaker 1: Stanley mutters, grow up, pardon I said, grow up? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I heard you shoot me or let me go. Either way,
Speaker 1: Stop pretending that you're the victim here. Stop whining. There's
Speaker 1: no anger in his voice. The door's open, Lucky, Okay,
Speaker 1: not always, not everywhere, but after thirty years of people
Speaker 1: like me, it's pretty much fucking open. If you'd stop
Speaker 1: worrying about being a negro, maybe you could just walk
Speaker 1: through it. And if you don't, don't blame the rest
Speaker 1: of us. White man's keeping you down, white man's put
Speaker 1: crack in the hood, white man's giving you aids. Please
Speaker 1: grow the fuck up a stun silence, Lucky steps back
Speaker 1: over to him, looks down on the back of Stan's
Speaker 1: head with confused menace. Stanley's not done. The door's open,
Speaker 1: he says, deal with it. You're just too proud to
Speaker 1: walk through or afraid. It's either that or you're just
Speaker 1: playing lazy. Lucky grabs Wren's Tech nine. He yanks Stan
Speaker 1: backwards by the scarfing, rams the muzzle into his mouth.
Speaker 1: Stand wretches mystic scream. Stand forces himself to keep his
Speaker 1: eyes shut. Stand, Lucky says, grabbing the stand by the
Speaker 1: tie gun still in his mouth. Lucky drags him too
Speaker 1: the hallway. Sin and Wren push through. Stay here, Lucky yells.
Speaker 1: Lucky forces Stand down the hall hall. He thinks he's
Speaker 1: taking him to his to the bathroom, to his execution. Instead,
Speaker 1: he pushes Stand hard against the front door. There's your door,
Speaker 1: Lucky says. He pulls Stand back, opens it wide, gets
Speaker 1: behind him. Open your fucking eyes, he says. Stands pov
Speaker 1: on the building landing, framed by the open front door.
Speaker 1: Dark and dangerous freedom. Lucky presses the gun to stands back.
Speaker 1: Door's open, Lucky says, go on, bounce, walk through, walk through.
Speaker 1: He's angry. Now Stan doesn't move, can't move a decisive.
Speaker 3: Beat, yeah, Lucky says, ain't that easy.
Speaker 1: Lucky slams the door or he turns to see Stan
Speaker 1: has his eyes still closed, as always refusing to see him.
Speaker 1: He gets right in the white man's face and whispers,
Speaker 1: negro Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Wait, so in the book that doesn't happen at all,
Speaker 3: So is it the problem?
Speaker 1: Right? The problem is, you know, to earn the right
Speaker 1: to tell this story, you have to sort of reframe
Speaker 1: it and you have to take its underlying racist complexity
Speaker 1: and you have to make it the theme. You have
Speaker 1: to thematize that complexity, right, And that's what we do.
Speaker 2: When we get back, Charles talks about adaptation. We're back
Speaker 2: with Charles ran talking about his adaptation of the Birthday
Speaker 2: Party and how tricky it can be to adapt a
Speaker 2: true story for a screenplay.
Speaker 1: I'll give you another not related to me, but a
Speaker 1: very good example. I ran into Robbie Robinson, who is
Speaker 1: Michael Keaton character in Spotlight, who's the editor on the
Speaker 1: Spotlight Team.
Speaker 2: So Spotlight is the movie about the Boston Globes investigation
Speaker 2: of Catholic priests suspected of pedophilia, among other things. And
Speaker 2: in that movie, Michael Keaton plays the editor of the
Speaker 2: Boston Globe.
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 3: Remembering correctly?
Speaker 2: And there is a scene so you run into the
Speaker 2: guy who was the real editor of the Boston Globe.
Speaker 1: Correct. Robbie says, you know, love the film, and there
Speaker 1: says one part I don't love, which is the part
Speaker 1: where it turns out that the Spotlight team was given
Speaker 1: the information about what the Catholic priests were doing earlier,
Speaker 1: and I was the editor at the time a newspaper
Speaker 1: was given it and I nothing, And he says, the
Speaker 1: truth be told. When that story came in, it was
Speaker 1: one of forty stories that on the tip line for
Speaker 1: that week. It was the second week that I was
Speaker 1: on the job, and I wasn't even there that week.
Speaker 1: I was actually had taken a vacation week in the transition.
Speaker 1: And so you know, I've always been a little uncomfortable
Speaker 1: with that scene because it's not really quite my culpability
Speaker 1: is really not quite what you know, what the film portrays.
Speaker 1: And of course I'm saying to Robbie, You're not winning
Speaker 1: an Oscar without that scene, right. That scene is what
Speaker 1: makes that movie right because in that moment we see
Speaker 1: the people in the Spotlight Team, like all of society,
Speaker 1: like us as viewers, are culpable on some level right
Speaker 1: of ignoring this problem for many years. And that's what
Speaker 1: makes it interesting. And so this is the problem of
Speaker 1: this that you face, right.
Speaker 2: In order to understand to earn the right to have
Speaker 2: to to make heroes out of the Spotlight Team, to
Speaker 2: be a moment of resistance in the beginning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, I mean it's not in the beginning. It's
Speaker 1: towards the end of the film. But they have to
Speaker 1: be not just people who uncover, right, some horrible truth
Speaker 1: about society. They have to face their own culpabilities in
Speaker 1: relationship to that right. And that's necessary. And so when
Speaker 1: taking a true story and building a film out of it,
Speaker 1: you have to find those moments. How can we take
Speaker 1: this thing and make it something's you know, more dramatic
Speaker 1: and more you know, politically compelling, let's say, than what
Speaker 1: it and then what it is. And the first problem
Speaker 1: is easy to solve, the second problems hard. And in
Speaker 1: this case, the choice was In my case, the choice
Speaker 1: is to make Stanley Alpert different than the real Stanley Alpert.
Speaker 1: And the fact is right because the real Stanley Appert
Speaker 1: doesn't have those qualities. And obviously the person who hates
Speaker 1: this version more than anyone is Stanley Alpert. Right, He's
Speaker 1: always making jokes, he's always you know, he's he's always
Speaker 1: referencing things, you know, he's he's he thinks of himself
Speaker 1: as a liberal, you know. And it allows me to,
Speaker 1: as in the section I read to you, it allows
Speaker 1: me to focus on that critique of African American culture
Speaker 1: that at the time was something that went a little
Speaker 1: bit unspoken, but was in a lot of people's hearts,
Speaker 1: right like in like in the and the Poet's essay.
Speaker 1: But you know, but but you know, was not was
Speaker 1: not never sort of portrayed, right, And of course that
Speaker 1: didn't that did not end very well.
Speaker 2: We're gonna get to that in a second. But I
Speaker 2: wanted to this. This is a really, really crucial thing,
Speaker 2: and I want to kind of spend a little more
Speaker 2: time on it. This goes to something you have often
Speaker 2: said to me about screenwriting, which is that the important
Speaker 2: conflict is not the external conflict, but the internal conflict, right.
Speaker 2: So it is not enough, in other words, for us
Speaker 2: to have a movie about a an obvious conflict between
Speaker 2: three black men and a white guy they're just kidnapped.
Speaker 2: There must be an internal conflict within the white guy's
Speaker 2: heart and the black guys, yeah parts right for us
Speaker 2: to kind of for the movie to come alive. Right,
Speaker 2: So what you're saying is that you had to construct
Speaker 2: an internal conflict for Stanley.
Speaker 1: Correct, And that means I have to move away from
Speaker 1: the victim narrative because victims inherently aren't generally speaking, people
Speaker 1: who are facing that kind of internal conflict. They're facing,
Speaker 1: generally speaking, an exterior conflict. And then will you stay
Speaker 1: up away from from that narrative. It becomes a problem
Speaker 1: obviously for them for someone who sort of feels like
Speaker 1: we're a victim, right, But it also it also makes
Speaker 1: a better story, right, And this is part of the
Speaker 1: part of the problem with the moment you know in
Speaker 1: which we're recording this podcast, is that there is such
Speaker 1: a an attempt to to elevate victim stories to to
Speaker 1: to platform people without often the sort of constituent internal
Speaker 1: conflict that's going to make them fully human and fully engaging. Right.
Speaker 1: And that's why so many of those films fail to
Speaker 1: work or fail to make money, is because they don't
Speaker 1: they don't solicit our attention fully, right, because you could.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a reason Schindler's List is focused on
Speaker 1: Schindler and not the people in the camps, right, because
Speaker 1: Schindler has a strong internal conflict, right, which is much
Speaker 1: harder to do if you're you know, a victim of
Speaker 1: a holocaust. Right, It's just you know, it's much harder
Speaker 1: to do.
Speaker 2: And he's he is criticizes and he for the centrality
Speaker 2: that he that the movie, uh, for the fact that
Speaker 2: Schindler's at the center of the movie.
Speaker 1: And yes, and but by putting by putting Schindler, you
Speaker 1: can actually tell the other stories better better. Right. It's
Speaker 1: the interesting contradiction here, right, because it gives us a
Speaker 1: sort of an emotional perspective where we do not know
Speaker 1: is character going to choose Option A or Option B.
Speaker 1: That's what you kind of want to be, and all
Speaker 1: my films strive for that, right. So we have it
Speaker 1: here with these three kids, in the sense they're having
Speaker 1: to make the choice. How bad at gangsters do they
Speaker 1: want to be do they want to kill someone? Right?
Speaker 1: And we watch them in the film discuss that amongst
Speaker 1: themselves try and make an effort, and they're not up
Speaker 1: to it. Each try at some point to try and
Speaker 1: be the guy, and they just can't. These kids just
Speaker 1: can't do it right. Whereas you know, Stanley needed the
Speaker 1: same thing in the story and and for me, that
Speaker 1: was him basically fighting his own desire because he's a
Speaker 1: talker and he's a man who wants to own truth.
Speaker 1: He said, you know, he gets up in front of court.
Speaker 1: He's a litigator, right, he's a federal attorney and speaks
Speaker 1: truth to people who do im moral things, and so
Speaker 1: he wants to be that guy. In the course of that,
Speaker 1: he really starts to realize as they express themselves in
Speaker 1: their background, as their humanity becomes more fully realized over
Speaker 1: the course of the film, he you know, he realizes
Speaker 1: that he does see them as in the scene that
Speaker 1: I just read to you.
Speaker 2: So his wait, so that just to go a little
Speaker 2: bit more over his conflict. He believes himself to be
Speaker 2: a liberal who can see the broader context in which
Speaker 2: disadvantaged people act. And yet when he is in this situation.
Speaker 2: He struggles to maintain.
Speaker 1: That absolutely yeah, yeah, well, and bookends with the fact
Speaker 1: that he has to go at the end of the
Speaker 1: film to a you know, to a lineup and and
Speaker 1: basically pick the young man out of the line which
Speaker 1: was essentially you know, assuring that justice will be served.
Speaker 1: So he's met making this choice, right, He's come to
Speaker 1: see their humanity. He knows that the system is going
Speaker 1: to be incredibly harsh on the man. It was they
Speaker 1: all got anywhere from I think fifteen to twenty years
Speaker 1: and essentially sort of ruining their lives. And yeah, he's
Speaker 1: you know, he still does it, but he doesn't like
Speaker 1: it in the film, so.
Speaker 2: He described that describe that an so he in the
Speaker 2: movie version, are you now back? So does the ending
Speaker 2: go the way the ending when in real life?
Speaker 1: Yes and no. I think one thing that that it
Speaker 1: does is it makes him more empathetic to their plight. Right.
Speaker 1: I won't say that the film sees their their their
Speaker 1: backgrounds as exculpatory, but it does. The film does suggest
Speaker 1: that they deserve greater understanding than the system will give
Speaker 1: them because of the back the harsh backgrounds they come from.
Speaker 1: All of them I think are potentially, you know, fatherless
Speaker 1: and have problematic backgrounds. We hear a little bit about that,
Speaker 1: and of course the film in the real story, No,
Speaker 1: and the real story, you know, Stan Albert, a victim
Speaker 1: of crime, wanted to see justice served, and justice was served.
Speaker 1: And I don't think he felt particularly ambivalent about it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, in my discussions with him
Speaker 1: after he read the script, you know, it's it seemed
Speaker 1: to offend him that he owed them, he owed them
Speaker 1: more than, you know, more than what was given to
Speaker 1: them in terms of how he portrayed them in the book,
Speaker 1: you know. And he may not be wrong, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I'm using his story for my
Speaker 1: own purposes.
Speaker 2: Right when we get back, Charles and I talk about
Speaker 2: who gets to tell whose stories. So in the movie version,
Speaker 2: he gets they let him go. The young men are arrested,
Speaker 2: and does is the climax of the movie him picking
Speaker 2: him out.
Speaker 1: Of the No, it's them being sentenced in there and
Speaker 1: they remember they haven't been able to look at each other.
Speaker 1: Really the course of the film. It's sort of an
Speaker 1: interesting thing, is you know, he's got the scarf which
Speaker 1: they've blindfolded with, so s for covers most of his
Speaker 1: face and then they turn him away. They never really
Speaker 1: get a chance to look at each other. And at
Speaker 1: the end of the film, uh, he basically in the
Speaker 1: in the courtroom has a chance to walk eyes with
Speaker 1: It's lucky, the sort of the their leader and the
Speaker 1: first time these two people can actually see each other.
Speaker 1: But he sort of comes to a place where, you know,
Speaker 1: he can see the other violently, and that's that's the
Speaker 1: best we can hope for for that stuff.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a beautiful metaphors they're running throughout this that
Speaker 2: we've two people who literally and figuratively cannot see each other.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And then by the end the occupy, Yeah, occupy
Speaker 1: the same space.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even as he occupied the same space. By the
Speaker 2: end of the movie, even as these young men are
Speaker 2: being sent off to jail, we have we the audience
Speaker 2: have some feeling that they're seeing each other for the
Speaker 2: first time, right, which is necessary because, as you said,
Speaker 2: if it's simply slam bam, if it's a law and
Speaker 2: order episode, it's not interesting.
Speaker 1: And you can't do it right. I mean, there is
Speaker 1: a history of obviously you know, the victim in TV
Speaker 1: shows and movies, you know, being white and the perpetrator
Speaker 1: being black. But it's something that we've been uncomfortable with
Speaker 1: for a long time now, right And certainly the idea
Speaker 1: of three black three black men rang on a white
Speaker 1: guys has always been I mean not always, but it
Speaker 1: has been complicated in recent years, in the last twenty
Speaker 1: thirty years, it has been a complicated idea, right And
Speaker 1: and really it's why this thing was sort of in
Speaker 1: development hell, because nobody ever got comfortable with it.
Speaker 2: So you finished the script and tell me what happens next?
Speaker 1: Who do you take it to? First? It goes immediately
Speaker 1: to a few directors. In fact, one director that first
Speaker 1: weekend calls me on a Sunday night, which never happens
Speaker 1: based on the weekend read, incredibly excited about it and saying,
Speaker 1: I'm all in, I love this, this is fantastic. Come Monday,
Speaker 1: he goes in the office. He has two interns who
Speaker 1: are graduate students from NYU who are both black, who say, now,
Speaker 1: you can't do this, this is not this is not
Speaker 1: going to work, you know, and you know he backs
Speaker 1: out immediately. So he backs out twenty four hours later.
Speaker 1: But there are a lot of directors who came on
Speaker 1: board Unfortunately, there were no black directors available. I think,
Speaker 1: you know, I think we a couple were approached. It
Speaker 1: was a slight It was two thousand and eight, so
Speaker 1: there weren't quite as many as we have now obviously,
Speaker 1: but no one, No one was around. I think what
Speaker 1: we tried to do is we tried to tone it down.
Speaker 1: We tried to sort of tone down, you know. I
Speaker 1: remember sort of sitting in the office with going through
Speaker 1: and counting all the inwards and seeing how many we
Speaker 1: could take out, just to sort of make it a
Speaker 1: little bit more palatable to be because it's raw, it's
Speaker 1: very raw. Then what happens, well, what happens is a
Speaker 1: couple directors go away and nobody really works until the
Speaker 1: great Milosh Foreman.
Speaker 2: Milosh Foreman, famous for directing One Flew over the Cuckoo's
Speaker 2: Nest in nineteen seventy five. In two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: he's well into his seventies, and.
Speaker 1: Milosh has a remarkable ability to do dramedy and comedy
Speaker 1: and drama at the same time. And Milosh says to me,
Speaker 1: when we first sort of start unpacking the history of
Speaker 1: the project, he says, stop, stop. It doesn't matter if
Speaker 1: the characters are real. If the actors find in them
Speaker 1: real humanity, and the actors bring their own truth to it,
Speaker 1: it will work right, and all that other stuff will
Speaker 1: go away. And if it's problematic, we get rid of
Speaker 1: it in the editing room. Don't we have the time?
Speaker 1: We called it political correctness, right, so don't worry about
Speaker 1: the politically well, it's polity correct not if it's real
Speaker 1: and if it's human, and we will be totally fine.
Speaker 1: And he had another thing he would talk about, which
Speaker 1: was that, you know, anytime you nestle up against censorship,
Speaker 1: you know you're in the zone when you're making something interesting.
Speaker 1: In fact, he talked about he would talk about how
Speaker 1: and he's from Czechoslovakia, how you know the great thing
Speaker 1: about having our actual sensor is they tell you exactly
Speaker 1: where the line is, so everybody knows exactly where the
Speaker 1: line is, and so that you can you can you
Speaker 1: can approach the line with great subtlety, right because because
Speaker 1: everyone knows where it is. And that's the thing that
Speaker 1: American culture does not have, is that sort of that
Speaker 1: sort of you know, clear sense, no line until we,
Speaker 1: of course do it a line. In recent years, we've
Speaker 1: kind of created some lines for ourselves. But yes, there's
Speaker 1: no line, right, And so he said, and so he said,
Speaker 1: it's good that we make people uncomfortable. It's good that
Speaker 1: it's raw. It's good that some of it's incredibly provocative,
Speaker 1: because that's what's going to make it real. And and
Speaker 1: and he fully owned it. And you know, I get
Speaker 1: I get emotional thinking about it, but he he was
Speaker 1: just so open to what the thing was, right. And
Speaker 1: then you know, I get a series of notes from him,
Speaker 1: and I realized their notes on a scene he's already done.
Speaker 1: And I get another series and I realized their notes
Speaker 1: on something entirely different. And I call his wife and
Speaker 1: she's like, yeah, you know, he's not been feeling well,
Speaker 1: give me a couple of weeks. And then he never
Speaker 1: came back to it. At that point, I think she
Speaker 1: had realized that he just wasn't up to it. You know,
Speaker 1: he was quite old. Yeah, And and so you know,
Speaker 1: I finally find the guy that I think can bring
Speaker 1: it home and and he's just not. He's just can't.
Speaker 1: He's just not gonna be able to do it. You know,
Speaker 1: I think she worried that he wouldn't even have the
Speaker 1: stamina to do it right, you know, because directing takes
Speaker 1: two years, takes two and a half years. So if
Speaker 1: you see problems at the beginning, you know, you got
Speaker 1: to remember, what where's this person going to be in
Speaker 1: two years?
Speaker 2: When does he die?
Speaker 1: How he dies about three years later? You know, And
Speaker 1: I do not know what shape he was in in
Speaker 1: the end. He may have been fully cognizant all the
Speaker 1: way to the end, but but you know, he died
Speaker 1: a bit later.
Speaker 2: But it was Can we just pause on meals about this?
Speaker 2: So Milish is a person who comes out from under
Speaker 2: the iron curtain. He grows up in toutalitarianism. You know,
Speaker 2: he he has a kind of I mean, if you're
Speaker 2: looking so what this project, what you're saying is what
Speaker 2: this project needed was an authenticity in its interpretation, you
Speaker 2: would something, it needed fearlessness, It needed fear and one
Speaker 2: way to do this is to find a black director
Speaker 2: with you know, That's what That's the solution we would
Speaker 2: do today. Correct, Correct, for whatever reason, there wasn't someone avel.
Speaker 2: But the other version is to find someone like Milosh.
Speaker 2: He started his career thumbing his nose at one of
Speaker 2: the history's most brutal authoritarian totalitarian regimes. So it's like
Speaker 2: he's like, if anyone's going.
Speaker 1: To say f it, and he did, and he and
Speaker 1: it was and it was it was just I can't
Speaker 1: tell you how liberating it was. It was just shockingly
Speaker 1: liberating after I think it had been three maybe four
Speaker 1: years at that point, you know, and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: let's we will get this. Do not worry. This is
Speaker 1: not our this will not be our problem.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And you think he's you think he's right, his interpretation
Speaker 2: is right.
Speaker 1: I do think he's right. Yeah, I do think. I
Speaker 1: think what happens is if you hire actors who you
Speaker 1: know who can bring something to it, if you listen
Speaker 1: to other people from other cultures, if you gets a
Speaker 1: communal effort a film, right and and if you do that,
Speaker 1: you will find authenticity, you know, if you're looking for it.
Speaker 2: Because I know you well, if you permit me a
Speaker 2: little bit of of of psychoanalyzing for those who don't
Speaker 2: know you. You are you're the son of an evangelical
Speaker 2: preacher from Texas. You grew up all over the world
Speaker 2: because your dad was smuggling bibles into Eastern Europe. You're
Speaker 2: you're you're so out in certain ways, you're such an
Speaker 2: outsider to Hollywood. It's it's phenomenal, and the outsider has
Speaker 2: you know, in some ways, you you and Milo c
Speaker 2: I I on this because you're because you're both outsiders, right, right, right.
Speaker 2: It's one thing that this was written by the standard
Speaker 2: Hollywood screenwriter, who is the privileged white guy who went
Speaker 2: to Harvard and then you know, did a graduate degree
Speaker 2: at NYU and then interned for a famous director and
Speaker 2: blah blah blah. Right, that's not you. Though there is
Speaker 2: a privilege in writing something like this, there is great
Speaker 2: advantage and privilege in not having a dog in the fight,
Speaker 2: in not being part of the worlds that you're portraying.
Speaker 2: So we understand the privilege that comes from belonging. The
Speaker 2: person who belongs can tell a certain kind of story
Speaker 2: with a degree of confidence and accuracy and verve that
Speaker 2: the outsider can't. But then, but we're forgetting that there's
Speaker 2: a there is a separate set of advantages that come
Speaker 2: from being someone who doesn't belong to either of these worlds.
Speaker 2: And my point about you was that in this context,
Speaker 2: you're not part of Stanley's world, right, That's that you're
Speaker 2: Charles from Texas. You're not part of his world, and
Speaker 2: you're not part of the Lucky's world. You're you're off
Speaker 2: on your own little island, and that there's so so
Speaker 2: much that's an incredibly liberating moment to be the outside,
Speaker 2: you know, to be so I feel like we're overprivileging
Speaker 2: the set of advantages that come from belonging, and we're
Speaker 2: under we have underestimated the set of storytelling advantages that
Speaker 2: come from being the fly on the wall who's just like,
Speaker 2: you know, you don't know anything to Stanley. That's why
Speaker 2: you're able to do that. You're not if you were
Speaker 2: part of his world, you would have been constrained in
Speaker 2: your portrayal of him. Similarly, Lucky, if you were part
Speaker 2: of his world, you would have been coned. You're on.
Speaker 2: You were unconstrained because you weren't. This wasn't And that's
Speaker 2: like why it's so important for all of us at
Speaker 2: storytelling to defend the right of the storyteller to describe
Speaker 2: worlds of which they are not a part. That is
Speaker 2: it's so essential that we defend that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and particularly for writers, right, there's something about
Speaker 1: you know, there's something about the screenwriter which is different
Speaker 1: from the other other jobs on the set, which then
Speaker 1: you're required to give voice to to dozens of different people, right,
Speaker 1: you know, and and to be good at that, you
Speaker 1: you know, you need to be able to to to
Speaker 1: understand different types and embrace different worlds. And I do
Speaker 1: think you're right. We've undervalued in a way what it
Speaker 1: means to be, you know, to be someone who lurks
Speaker 1: above it a little bit, right, Uh, certainly in my field,
Speaker 1: now maybe in maybe in other fields, to be different, right,
Speaker 1: I think what the end that people want is they
Speaker 1: want everyone from different backgrounds to be able to tell
Speaker 1: their story, to be in the position to sort of
Speaker 1: sit in the director's chair if they want, or to
Speaker 1: sell screenplays that they want, and that is that is
Speaker 1: the goal. Right. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that we
Speaker 1: should silo off our industry in that way, you know,
Speaker 1: and silo off our subjects, because we do. We do
Speaker 1: lose something when we are no longer communicating across you know,
Speaker 1: not just cultural or racial lines, but ideological lines. You know.
Speaker 2: You know, what's interesting about this story told today is
Speaker 2: obviously it's sort of it fits a project conceived in
Speaker 2: two thousand and seven, feels makes us a little honey
Speaker 2: of this nature makes us a little uneasy in twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four, nearly twenty years later. The other thing is
Speaker 2: that it was interesting about it is that I feel
Speaker 2: like our uh, our attitude towards projects like this on
Speaker 2: the on the kind of racial periphery have become a binary.
Speaker 2: We think of white projects and black projects, and a
Speaker 2: white project is done by a white person, and a
Speaker 2: black person project gets done by a black person. But
Speaker 2: this movie isn't black or white. It's about black beating
Speaker 2: white and white meeting black and like so it's like
Speaker 2: it's not clear each side has a right to tell
Speaker 2: the story right, and a lot of what's what's going
Speaker 2: on in this kind of like like when you talked
Speaker 2: about the one director loves it and then the interns
Speaker 2: read it the black and say you can't do it,
Speaker 2: is that it's a dispute about they're obviously understandably reading
Speaker 2: this through their eyes as black beats white. Stanley's reading
Speaker 2: this as white beats black, right, and like it's it irresolvable,
Speaker 2: it's not. What makes it fascinating is that I can't
Speaker 2: think of a movie that a contemporary movie. I mean
Speaker 2: this movie today would give us fits. I mean, you'll
Speaker 2: give us fits today because no one can decide what
Speaker 2: it is exactly.
Speaker 1: It would it would, it would aggravate an unresolved tension
Speaker 1: in our society. And I think the mistake I made
Speaker 1: is I assumed that I knew where society was going.
Speaker 1: I assumed that I knew that what's going to happen
Speaker 1: is that we're all going to be better at working
Speaker 1: through our residual racist attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, and we're going
Speaker 1: to get closer and closer. In fact, the film ends
Speaker 1: with Stanley listening to a bit of rap, and this was,
Speaker 1: of course, after Obama had been elected, So the sort
Speaker 1: of message of the film was actually, we're we're on
Speaker 1: the road. We're not there yet, but we're on the road.
Speaker 1: And of course that didn't happen. Where I thought society
Speaker 1: was going is not where we went. We were trenched
Speaker 1: back into, you know, even stronger understandings of the importance
Speaker 1: of race and not to some you know, idealized version
Speaker 1: of all. It's going to learn to ignore our differences
Speaker 1: more and more and embrace, you know, in these these
Speaker 1: things that won't matter, and you know, you couldn't. I mean,
Speaker 1: you couldn't do the film today even reading it today.
Speaker 1: I read it today in a restaurant and I just
Speaker 1: try myself wincing, you know, every other page, because it's
Speaker 1: you know, I you know, I really went for it.
Speaker 1: I really am. It's very provocative in places, in people
Speaker 1: saying the things that they're not supposed to say. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm always interested in things that feel uncomfortable and awkward
Speaker 1: for me, like like I don't know, I want to
Speaker 1: go there, because what that gives you, if you will
Speaker 1: sort of take on those subjects, is the texture of
Speaker 1: the world starts to become really interesting. I mean, because
Speaker 1: suddenly every little choice matters, you know, And and that's why,
Speaker 1: you know, it's one of the one of the scripts
Speaker 1: that I enjoyed writing the most, because every little choice
Speaker 1: starts to matter, right, because all kick comes laden with meaning.
Speaker 1: Part of it is just a professional habit of Okay,
Speaker 1: it's awkward, it's uncomfortable. That's whe I'm going to go, right,
Speaker 1: But also part of it is, you know, I do
Speaker 1: feel like, you know, this is not writing in the novel.
Speaker 1: This is a collective endeavor, and we get to check
Speaker 1: our work with people of all sorts, of all stripes,
Speaker 1: and you know, if we're open and if we're all
Speaker 1: working hard, you know we can we can get to
Speaker 1: something that feels very true. If you try things and
Speaker 1: that they work, they work, and if they don't, they don't.
Speaker 1: That's what this is. That's what this is why we
Speaker 1: do why I do this business, and it allows us
Speaker 1: to take greater risk, I think, instead of less right
Speaker 1: because you know we're working together.
Speaker 2: There is no movie version of the Birthday Party. When
Speaker 2: Milos Forman drops out, it's the end. The adaptation does
Speaker 2: not survive the harsh conditions and obstacles thrown in its way,
Speaker 2: which is a shame. This episode was produced by Nina
Speaker 2: Bird Lawrence with Tali Emlin and Bena daph Haffrey. Editing
Speaker 2: by Sarah Nix, original scoring by Luis Quira, Engineering by
Speaker 2: Echo Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
Speaker 2: Next time on Development Hell, Patty Jenkins talks about her
Speaker 2: R rated Dog movie.
Speaker 1: This is.
Speaker 2: This sort of on one level is super bleak. It's
Speaker 2: not it's.
Speaker 3: Magical, no, it is it is.
Speaker 1: The journey is bleak, and it seems like it's going
Speaker 1: to be, but it ends up being magical.
Speaker 2: It heads up that our friends over at the Happiness
Speaker 2: Lab have a special episode I'm in Your Way soon
Speaker 2: to celebrate World Happiness Day. I'm in it talking about
Speaker 2: running and the journey versus a destination Spoiler alert, I'm
Speaker 2: a destination guy, not a journey guy. It'll be dropping
Speaker 2: into this feed on March twentieth, but you can find
Speaker 2: happiness tips from doctor Lori Santo's any Day over at
Speaker 2: the Happiness Lab