WEBVTT - David Koepp on Screenwriting and Walter Murch on Editing 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:05.360 This is Alec Baldwin and you were listening to Here's 0:00:05.440 --> 0:00:10.560 the Thing from My Heart Radio. In filmmaking, there are 0:00:10.640 --> 0:00:13.920 public roles like the actors and directors, and there are 0:00:14.000 --> 0:00:17.920 critical behind the scenes roles filled by people who rarely 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:22.720 become household names. Among them screenwriters who provide dynamic material 0:00:22.800 --> 0:00:26.360 to work with and editors who in the end shape 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:29.600 the film. You see. My guests today are two of 0:00:29.640 --> 0:00:34.160 the most successful people in the film industry. Screenwriter David 0:00:34.240 --> 0:00:38.160 Kepp and film editor Walter Merch have worked with legendary 0:00:38.200 --> 0:00:42.200 directors such as Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, and Brian 0:00:42.280 --> 0:00:46.599 de Palma, just to name a few. Walter Merch started 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.160 his career as a sound editor. He received his first 0:00:50.240 --> 0:00:53.720 Oscar nomination for his work on the nineteen seventy four 0:00:53.800 --> 0:00:58.160 classic The Conversation. He worked on Apocalypse Now, for which 0:00:58.200 --> 0:01:00.880 he won his first Oscar, and he later picked up 0:01:00.880 --> 0:01:04.800 two more Academy Awards for the English Patients, becoming the 0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:08.319 first person to win for both sound mixing and editing 0:01:08.680 --> 0:01:12.520 on the same film. But first, I'm talking to writer 0:01:12.640 --> 0:01:16.560 and director David Kepp. He's written some of the biggest 0:01:16.640 --> 0:01:21.760 blockbusters in movie history films like Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones, 0:01:22.160 --> 0:01:26.080 Spider Man, and Mission Impossible. He's also directed several of 0:01:26.120 --> 0:01:29.160 the films he's written, including last year's You Should Have 0:01:29.280 --> 0:01:33.800 Left with Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried. David kept says 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:36.720 he started writing because, as a boy, he found a 0:01:36.800 --> 0:01:41.560 typewriter in his family's basement in Pewaukee, Wisconsin. He quickly 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:45.360 tapped into the human condition. I thought it would be 0:01:45.360 --> 0:01:47.360 great in my room to have this typewriter on a 0:01:47.400 --> 0:01:51.600 typewriter stand. And then I think I was probably ten 0:01:51.680 --> 0:01:54.040 or eleven, and I thought I should write a story 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:56.400 because I had him. Now I had an office product. 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:59.520 So the next step was writing a story. So I 0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:02.120 would write stories about some kid who didn't want to 0:02:02.120 --> 0:02:04.280 go to camp, but his horrible parents made him go 0:02:04.320 --> 0:02:07.680 to camp, and then something terrible happened to camp, and uh. 0:02:07.880 --> 0:02:11.120 Then in high school I'd write stories about some teenager 0:02:11.200 --> 0:02:14.160 who was misunderstood by young women and one of the 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:16.360 things that were a little close to the bone. I 0:02:16.440 --> 0:02:18.880 just enjoyed it. I mean I had a lot of fun. 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.440 I remember in English class in high school, I had 0:02:21.440 --> 0:02:24.120 a friend who hated writing, so I said, well, I'll 0:02:24.120 --> 0:02:28.400 write your story. So I wrote him a story which 0:02:28.440 --> 0:02:31.280 was sort of blagiarized from John and Mary, the Dustin 0:02:31.320 --> 0:02:33.920 Hoffman movie, which I'd seen on TV a few nights before. 0:02:34.000 --> 0:02:37.680 But his story won a prize, which really made me crazy. 0:02:37.760 --> 0:02:39.919 So that was I started. I just I liked that 0:02:40.120 --> 0:02:43.160 I didn't need anybody's permission. I could just go upstairs 0:02:43.160 --> 0:02:46.800 and start typing. So I'm assuming you were a movie 0:02:46.840 --> 0:02:51.520 buff as well while you're starting your writing career. Yeah, absolutely, 0:02:51.600 --> 0:02:54.160 I love movies. Were you watching phonos when you were 0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.040 a kid. Yeah, you watched what was on TV? It 0:02:57.080 --> 0:02:59.960 was Channel four, six, twelve and the uh F Channel 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:04.000 eight teens, and so the ones I really remember vividly 0:03:04.080 --> 0:03:06.560 were the uh F Channel eight teen ones because they 0:03:06.560 --> 0:03:09.080 were the cheapest ones they could get. It was a 0:03:09.160 --> 0:03:12.720 lot of Godzilla movies. I remember for years they ran 0:03:12.919 --> 0:03:16.120 the Basil Rathbone Nigel Bruce Slock Holmes, and I was 0:03:16.160 --> 0:03:19.440 watching one the other day, Terror by Night. There was 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:22.120 one during World War Two which bends with them in 0:03:22.160 --> 0:03:24.920 a car in front of a rear projection of the 0:03:25.120 --> 0:03:27.600 like the Washington Monument and stuff and talking about how 0:03:27.639 --> 0:03:29.680 America is going to come into the war and save 0:03:29.760 --> 0:03:33.520 democratic values. It still makes me kind of misty. But 0:03:34.000 --> 0:03:36.280 I remember my mother telling me when I was about 0:03:36.320 --> 0:03:38.800 ten that I needed to stay up late tonight because 0:03:38.800 --> 0:03:40.600 there was a very special movie on TV and I 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:42.880 had to watch it with her, and it was Notorious 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:46.240 Hitchcock movie. And I it's a great movie, and even 0:03:46.280 --> 0:03:48.160 at ten, I could appreciate it was a great movie. 0:03:48.200 --> 0:03:51.080 But the concept of staying up till midnight on a 0:03:51.120 --> 0:03:54.760 school night for a movie, I think kind of fused 0:03:54.920 --> 0:03:57.680 this idea that movies were fun and you could get 0:03:57.680 --> 0:03:59.520 away with stuff and have a good time. What do 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:00.880 you think it was that your mother wanted you to 0:04:00.880 --> 0:04:03.760 stay up the midnight watching movies. She wanted a movie companion. 0:04:04.120 --> 0:04:06.000 I think she and my dad were not getting along 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.960 very well. I was in the identical situation and my 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:12.960 dad was the movie goer. The very first movie that 0:04:13.040 --> 0:04:17.120 I began that to do with my dad was Sorry, 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:19.960 Wrong Number, which to this day I have an annual 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:24.279 appointment with Burt mine Caster and Barbara Stammick and Ed 0:04:24.320 --> 0:04:27.240 Bigley Senior. Sorry Wrong Number is one of my favorite 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:32.080 because I love a confined space thriller, and it also 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:37.360 contains the classic barbera stand mclin operator. Operator, I'm a 0:04:37.360 --> 0:04:41.800 hopeless invalid, and I just likes the idea of describing 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:44.320 herself as hopeless. I love that actor. What was that 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:46.880 actor who plays the old man? And he says, I 0:04:46.880 --> 0:04:50.520 can be reached the Bowery to one thousand, and then 0:04:50.520 --> 0:04:53.920 she calls back said, no, we can't take no messages. Yeah, man, 0:04:54.120 --> 0:04:57.600 what number am I calling? He says, the city Morgue. Man, 0:04:58.520 --> 0:05:02.200 that's not a music queue. Don't know what now? Where 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:04.120 Where did you go to college? I went to several 0:05:04.600 --> 0:05:07.159 I started at the University of Minnesota. I was born 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:10.000 in Wisconsin, but I didn't get into my first choice 0:05:10.000 --> 0:05:13.120 college and they had the latest application deadline. It wasn't 0:05:13.160 --> 0:05:15.080 a great plan. And then I transferred to went to 0:05:15.080 --> 0:05:17.480 the University of Wisconsin at Madison for a few years, 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.360 which was great. I wanted to be an actor in 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:23.680 those days, and I did tons of theater. But over 0:05:23.720 --> 0:05:26.280 the course of those couple of years, I realized writing 0:05:26.360 --> 0:05:28.400 was the thing I wanted to do. Had you been 0:05:28.480 --> 0:05:31.960 writing while you were in college or you and I 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:35.720 had a playwriting teacher who was directing me in Arsenic 0:05:35.760 --> 0:05:37.760 and hold Lace at the time, and I asked him 0:05:37.760 --> 0:05:40.720 how I was doing, and he started complimenting my my 0:05:40.800 --> 0:05:42.760 play that I was writing, and I said, no, no, no, 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:44.880 I mean in the show. I I know what you mean, 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:48.680 Mr kapp I, and he encouraged me to get out. 0:05:48.920 --> 0:05:50.800 He said, if you want to make movies, which I 0:05:50.800 --> 0:05:52.839 did by then go west or go east. But we 0:05:52.880 --> 0:05:55.240 don't really do them here. So I applied to u 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:57.240 c l A's Film School and got in there for 0:05:57.279 --> 0:06:00.359 graduate school. No still undergrad. I stretched it out to 0:06:00.400 --> 0:06:04.640 a healthy eleven years. Junior year was three of the 0:06:04.640 --> 0:06:07.359 best years of my turn thirty in my film class 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:10.840 and was the focus when you were at UC on screenwriting. Yeah, 0:06:10.880 --> 0:06:13.880 but then I knew that's I want to write scripts. 0:06:13.920 --> 0:06:17.320 And whether it distinguished moms or whether they distinguished mentors 0:06:17.320 --> 0:06:20.240 that come in guest teach or none of them. They 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:23.159 didn't then, I mean you'd get the occasional person coming 0:06:23.160 --> 0:06:25.359 and showing you their movie and doing a Q and A. 0:06:25.480 --> 0:06:28.560 But in terms of faculty, the guy like best was 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:32.640 a professor named Richard Walter who was there for probably 0:06:32.640 --> 0:06:36.120 forty years, and he was very good and very imitatable 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.239 and very quotable, but he was also very brass tacks, 0:06:39.240 --> 0:06:44.479 which was great because he would interrupt someone midstream when 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:46.680 talking about when they're trying to tell their idea, and 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:48.800 he'd say, do you know what kind of movies I like? 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:53.599 I like films that are not boring films and force 0:06:53.720 --> 0:06:57.920 you into move it, move it. Things must happen early 0:06:58.000 --> 0:07:01.359 and often, and that's how character revealed. And I like 0:07:01.480 --> 0:07:05.520 that when you're there and you're in a prestigious program, 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.880 a teacher in a classic that what does he or 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:11.239 she have to offer you? There are two things. First, 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:15.840 you start taking yourself seriously, which if you're from a 0:07:15.840 --> 0:07:19.720 small town in Wisconsin, is an important step because everyone 0:07:19.760 --> 0:07:22.280 thinks you're, you know, an asshole for wanting to do 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.760 what you do or in Midwestern terms, making kind of 0:07:24.760 --> 0:07:27.680 a production out of yourself. So to want to go 0:07:27.760 --> 0:07:31.400 off and work in Hollywood is absurd. And when you 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:34.680 get to a place where people start to accept that 0:07:34.760 --> 0:07:36.640 as the norm and most other people want to do 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:40.000 that too, it's a really important step. But the most 0:07:40.000 --> 0:07:41.560 important thing I think I got out of u c 0:07:41.680 --> 0:07:47.320 l A. Was relationships with other students, because everyone there 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.240 it's a kind of writing where you really need community 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:53.640 because especially because it's going to be so relentlessly collaborative 0:07:53.680 --> 0:07:57.080 as your career goes on, if all goes well, And 0:07:57.600 --> 0:07:59.880 to be surrounded by other people who want to write, 0:08:00.040 --> 0:08:01.880 who want to do what you want to do, and 0:08:01.920 --> 0:08:03.920 who are nowhere in their career so you don't have 0:08:03.960 --> 0:08:07.240 to worry about jealousy is huge. And you learn from them, 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:09.040 and you see some who are better than you, and 0:08:09.080 --> 0:08:12.680 you see ideally some who are worse than you, and 0:08:12.880 --> 0:08:16.520 those were really important relationships. Remember Alexander Payne was he 0:08:16.560 --> 0:08:18.480 was getting his masters when I was getting my undergrad 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:20.680 But we you know, y'all work on each other's films, 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:23.160 and you just kind of you can spot the winners 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:25.080 out of the gate. You can tell who's good. And 0:08:25.120 --> 0:08:29.240 Alexander was always supremely confident and his stuff was really good. 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:31.520 There's a guy named Don Payne who since passed away, 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:33.640 who went on to write a lot of the Simpsons 0:08:33.640 --> 0:08:36.000 in a number of films. Don and I were great friends. 0:08:36.040 --> 0:08:38.840 But you find those people who will read your work 0:08:38.840 --> 0:08:43.000 and be critical without devastating you, and those are essential relationships. 0:08:44.360 --> 0:08:47.679 When you finished U c l A. What happens next? 0:08:49.040 --> 0:08:52.240 I had an internship working for a guy who was 0:08:52.559 --> 0:08:56.240 a distributor's rap in the US, and so if there's 0:08:56.280 --> 0:09:00.360 a video distributor in Australia and they wanted horror to idols, 0:09:00.559 --> 0:09:04.840 we would buy horror titles like Sorority House, Massacre three 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:08.600 and then get the deliverable elements to them in their 0:09:08.640 --> 0:09:11.120 home country. A certain amount of porn, but you know, 0:09:11.120 --> 0:09:12.800 a lot of slasher movies and a lot of stuff 0:09:12.840 --> 0:09:15.400 like that. So I would go to film markets, which 0:09:15.480 --> 0:09:17.439 was eye opening to see what they were like. I 0:09:17.480 --> 0:09:19.880 actually went to can when I was twenty four years old. 0:09:20.080 --> 0:09:22.560 He paid for it because we were picking up all 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:25.680 these titles for foreign distributors and it was the Can 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:28.439 Film Festival, but we weren't going to the festival. It 0:09:28.520 --> 0:09:29.880 was just at the same time we were going to 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:33.840 the can Film Market, which is in the basement of 0:09:33.880 --> 0:09:37.880 the Pale. It is truly a horror show. But you know, 0:09:37.920 --> 0:09:39.840 I was making money to work in the movie business, 0:09:39.960 --> 0:09:42.960 and again I learned an enormous amount because I I 0:09:43.000 --> 0:09:44.880 saw a ton of movies and I read a lot 0:09:44.920 --> 0:09:47.520 of scripts and I felt like I can do better 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:51.880 than this. And through that I met an Argentine director 0:09:51.960 --> 0:09:55.280 named Martin Donovan, not the actor Martin Donovan and he 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:57.880 had an idea for a movie which we wrote together, 0:09:58.240 --> 0:10:01.160 and then just sort of a point at ourselves producers 0:10:01.200 --> 0:10:04.240 of and went out and raised money by hooker crook 0:10:04.320 --> 0:10:07.160 and credit cards and made our first movie, which was 0:10:07.280 --> 0:10:11.000 Apartment Zero. And then from there I started working. And 0:10:11.280 --> 0:10:12.960 how much money was the budget of the film here 0:10:13.040 --> 0:10:15.960 we call it was a million two, of which we'd 0:10:16.000 --> 0:10:20.240 raised about five hundred thousand when we started shooting it was. 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:22.959 It was terribly planned, and I was twenty four years old, 0:10:22.960 --> 0:10:25.160 so I had no idea what I was doing. You 0:10:25.200 --> 0:10:27.199 didn't know how stupid it was what you were doing, 0:10:27.240 --> 0:10:29.559 so you just kept going no. And I was also 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:33.000 for some reason we were comfortable lying to people. We 0:10:33.120 --> 0:10:36.400 tricked Colin Firth and Hart Bochner into being in the film, 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:39.000 both of whom were you working actors at the time, 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:41.000 and assumed that we would be able to pay our bills. 0:10:41.080 --> 0:10:44.880 And then we using that cast and a budget which 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:47.480 we turns out had were in no way able to meet. 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:51.240 We banked it with our c A Columbia home video 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:53.960 with some help from this guy was working for and 0:10:54.200 --> 0:10:57.439 UH borrowed against the contract and and then there was 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:01.360 an unscrupulous real estate guy from the Man who Died 0:11:01.559 --> 0:11:05.559 and it was really as a classic indie movie story. 0:11:05.600 --> 0:11:08.360 But we got our movie done, and then when we 0:11:08.400 --> 0:11:11.480 got to post and had no money to finish, I 0:11:11.600 --> 0:11:14.960 managed to sell a script which became this movie Bad 0:11:15.000 --> 0:11:18.120 Influence that Curtis Hansen directed, and so I just took 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:21.120 everything from that script and put it into finishing Apartment Zero. 0:11:21.559 --> 0:11:23.920 And what was it like working with Donovan? What did 0:11:23.920 --> 0:11:27.160 you learn in your first experience about that relationship between 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:30.120 the director and the writer. Martin was somebody who took 0:11:30.160 --> 0:11:34.000 me seriously I think mentors because he was a mentor figure. 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:36.920 He told me I was good and valued the stuff 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:40.280 I wrote. He was fourteen years older than me, which 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:43.840 helped because I also took him seriously, and he had 0:11:43.840 --> 0:11:47.839 directed one indie movie before, very low budget like fifty 0:11:47.920 --> 0:11:51.520 sixty I think. And he also had a reverence for 0:11:51.600 --> 0:11:55.640 old Hollywood, so we watched everything. I mean, the look 0:11:55.640 --> 0:11:56.959 on his face when he would ask me if I 0:11:57.000 --> 0:11:58.720 had seen a film like a Place in the Sun 0:11:58.760 --> 0:12:03.600 and I'd say no, was one of joy. He wasn't 0:12:03.679 --> 0:12:06.320 looking down on me for what a terrible hole in 0:12:06.320 --> 0:12:09.920 your film vocabulary. It was what an exciting opportunity. We're 0:12:09.960 --> 0:12:12.320 going to rent it now and watch it tonight, and 0:12:13.000 --> 0:12:17.000 that kind of unbridled enthusiasm. You can't find any just everywhere, 0:12:17.120 --> 0:12:19.400 So that was that was important. He took me very seriously, 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.200 and we wrote one or two other scripts together, another 0:12:22.240 --> 0:12:24.319 one of which was made. But then I was feeling 0:12:24.360 --> 0:12:27.040 more comfortable writing on my own and Altarphew points were 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.240 wildly different when you worked with him when the film 0:12:30.280 --> 0:12:34.839 was being made. What was your initial experience with someone 0:12:35.240 --> 0:12:38.360 shooting your material? Because he was also the writer we 0:12:39.000 --> 0:12:42.080 wrote it together. He was more collegial about it. He was, 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.720 but it was an unusual experience also because I was 0:12:45.760 --> 0:12:49.160 also the producer with him, and even at that age, 0:12:49.240 --> 0:12:51.680 was far more realistic about what we had and what 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:54.800 we didn't have. And Martin would do things like come 0:12:54.880 --> 0:12:57.160 up with a tango scene in the street and call 0:12:57.200 --> 0:12:59.080 all his friends on the way to the set that 0:12:59.160 --> 0:13:02.200 day and then one of shoot at that night, and 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:05.800 I would have to say maybe one or two answers 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:08.360 in the background. Absolutely, I think no, there would be 0:13:08.400 --> 0:13:11.760 a hundred of them, would be there will be elephants. Yeah, 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:16.000 I remember. I was horribly spoiled. Colin Firth, who was 0:13:16.440 --> 0:13:18.720 probably twenty eight at the time and was just getting 0:13:18.800 --> 0:13:22.120 some renown in England, came to me on one of 0:13:22.160 --> 0:13:24.280 the first nights and there was a line he wanted 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:26.680 to change and he felt that the thing he wanted 0:13:26.720 --> 0:13:29.160 to say, but that I had at the beginning. He 0:13:29.160 --> 0:13:30.679 thought it would be easier at the end. And what 0:13:30.840 --> 0:13:33.960 I mind terribly if if he moved that a line 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:36.800 to the end of the thing, And I said, no, 0:13:36.840 --> 0:13:38.800 that'd be great, go ahead, And I sort of assumed 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:42.679 that's how it would always be in Hollywood. A request, 0:13:43.679 --> 0:13:45.600 I have a request, I'd like to fill out a 0:13:45.640 --> 0:13:49.960 form No. After the Martin Donovic experience, what was next? Well, 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:51.840 this bad influence was the script I had written on 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:55.400 my own. How was Hanson different from Donovan? Curtis was 0:13:55.720 --> 0:13:59.120 far more tethered in what can really be accomplished, what 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:02.320 can be done? Martin is a brilliant but impractical dreamer, 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:05.640 and Curtis it had been in Hollywood for a very 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:08.800 long time. So we went and I rewrote the whole 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:13.080 script with him in his garage office, and it was 0:14:13.160 --> 0:14:17.079 a tutorial specifically about screenwriting. I felt like I knew 0:14:17.080 --> 0:14:21.200 a lot about writing, but about screenwriting for movies that 0:14:21.240 --> 0:14:24.080 are about to go get shot. That's where I learned 0:14:24.120 --> 0:14:27.000 a ton. For example, there was a scene in Bad 0:14:27.040 --> 0:14:30.760 Influence where Roblow comes to be at a bad guy 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:34.280 and we're worried about James Spader and James Spader's brother 0:14:34.360 --> 0:14:37.320 played by Christian Clementson, and we're going to Christian Clemenson's 0:14:37.320 --> 0:14:40.720 apartment and to make us worried, you know, I had 0:14:40.720 --> 0:14:42.800 a scene with Rob Blows two pages long. He was 0:14:42.840 --> 0:14:44.960 menacing somebody on the street and then he goes into 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:48.600 the building and Curtis said, I'd rather lose track of him, 0:14:48.640 --> 0:14:51.360 and also, I don't have time to shoot that. There's 0:14:51.360 --> 0:14:53.800 a fence and it's got vertical spiky bars in it, 0:14:54.120 --> 0:14:56.600 and as we panned down, as we tracked down the 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:59.000 line of vertical spiky bars, we see that one of 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:01.280 them is missing and he pushed is in slightly the 0:15:01.320 --> 0:15:04.200 implication in the viewer's mind being somebody took the scary 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:07.400 spiky bar out. And it was just brilliant screenwriting. It 0:15:07.600 --> 0:15:11.160 used an image to convey menace instead of a two 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:14.040 page dialogue scene, which is again like the old Billy 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:17.480 Wilder person of if you use the visual to show something, 0:15:17.480 --> 0:15:20.360 the audience will love you forever because they draw the 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:22.960 conclusion in their own mind and their participants in your 0:15:22.960 --> 0:15:28.800 movie instead of just watching screenwriter and director David Kepp. 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:33.280 In the annals of great film partnerships, few have been 0:15:33.320 --> 0:15:37.480 as long lasting and celebrated as Martin Scorsese's with his 0:15:37.640 --> 0:15:41.880 editor Thelma Schoonmaker. She's worked on every movie of his 0:15:42.280 --> 0:15:46.600 since Raging Bull. She told me their collaboration begins when 0:15:46.640 --> 0:15:49.760 she watches the daily footage. He wants me to look 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:52.080 at it cold and tell him if it works. So 0:15:52.200 --> 0:15:54.640 that is my part of my job. So I tell 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:56.440 him what I think. He tells me what he thinks 0:15:56.520 --> 0:16:01.440 them from those incredibly rich where actions of him. I 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:04.520 then begin to create selection. Then I do the first 0:16:04.560 --> 0:16:07.640 cut before he comes in, when he's through shooting, and 0:16:07.680 --> 0:16:09.680 then from that point on we do all the rest 0:16:09.720 --> 0:16:14.280 of the twelve different edits of the movie together, very 0:16:14.320 --> 0:16:17.400 twelve different edits of the movie. That's what we prefer 0:16:17.520 --> 0:16:21.359 to do. If we can hear more of my conversation 0:16:21.400 --> 0:16:25.040 with film a Schoonmaker at Here's the Thing dot Org. 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:29.040 After the break, David kept talks about a time he 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:33.280 disagreed with Steven Spielberg over a scene in the sequel 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:47.880 to Jurassic Park. I'm Alec Baldwin and this is here's 0:16:47.920 --> 0:16:51.480 the thing. David kept as quick to admit he got 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:55.040 very lucky early in his career. A turning point came 0:16:55.080 --> 0:16:57.400 when his script for a film he thought would be 0:16:57.440 --> 0:17:00.320 a small one caught a big name director as I 0:17:01.320 --> 0:17:05.000 Death Becomes Her a script I'd written with Martin that 0:17:05.040 --> 0:17:08.240 we had imagined would be another indie movie, maybe a 0:17:08.280 --> 0:17:11.320 five million dollar budget this time. But I was starting 0:17:11.320 --> 0:17:13.720 to get some notice at the time for bad influence, 0:17:13.920 --> 0:17:17.560 and so I managed to sell it to Universal. And 0:17:17.680 --> 0:17:19.880 I remember Casey Silver, who was the head of Universal. 0:17:19.960 --> 0:17:21.720 Universal thought it was sort of a lark and it 0:17:21.800 --> 0:17:24.119 was this strange black comedy that maybe they'd make or 0:17:24.160 --> 0:17:27.399 maybe they wouldn't, but it barely cost anything. And I 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:31.200 remember Casey Silver, who was a great supporter of mine, 0:17:31.520 --> 0:17:33.200 who was the head of production at the time, called 0:17:33.240 --> 0:17:35.720 me one day and said, so I sent your script 0:17:35.720 --> 0:17:37.960 to a few directors and I said, oh good, and 0:17:38.080 --> 0:17:40.959 he had to go and he said, Bob's a mechis 0:17:41.040 --> 0:17:44.840 wants to direct it. And he sounded he sounded disappointed 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:49.400 because Bob at the time for Universal had just finished 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.760 the Back to the Future trilogy. No doubt they wanted 0:17:52.920 --> 0:17:55.240 something a little more surefire commercial out of him, but 0:17:55.280 --> 0:17:58.600 he took an interest in this bizarre black comedy which 0:17:58.640 --> 0:18:00.920 then he cast with In an Inch of Its Life 0:18:00.960 --> 0:18:04.680 with Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn and Bruce Willis and 0:18:05.160 --> 0:18:07.600 made the delightfully bizarre movie he made, and then I 0:18:07.680 --> 0:18:11.600 was sort of off and running. Then that got Spielberg's attention, 0:18:11.800 --> 0:18:14.360 who wanted to meet and read some of the other 0:18:14.359 --> 0:18:16.679 things I've done for Universal, because I was writing for 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.679 them at the time and was looking for somebody to 0:18:19.680 --> 0:18:23.040 help him with the Jurassic Park. It's a loathsome story 0:18:23.160 --> 0:18:27.400 mine from twenty four to nine years old. Really, it's 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:29.720 a miracle I have any friends at all. Sad It's 0:18:29.800 --> 0:18:34.400 it's tough to tell because it went so riotously well 0:18:34.560 --> 0:18:37.280 for me, and it's just not emblematic of what you 0:18:37.320 --> 0:18:40.200 need to do really in the movie business. You gotta 0:18:40.240 --> 0:18:42.480 hang around and keep writing and keep writing and keep writing. 0:18:42.520 --> 0:18:44.480 I like to think those days came from me later, 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:47.000 because you can't all go like that all the time, 0:18:47.040 --> 0:18:49.840 and it didn't. When you're working with the director who's 0:18:49.840 --> 0:18:53.120 a big director, and they say to you, I'm gonna 0:18:53.119 --> 0:18:56.399 cut the first two pages whatever their edict is, and 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:58.119 then I'm talking about you earlier in your career. You 0:18:58.240 --> 0:19:00.760 just differ. What do you use it? And do you 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.080 kind of push back? I would push back and I 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:07.160 would invariably lose. I remember one of the first things 0:19:07.160 --> 0:19:10.800 I asked Bob was what do we do when we disagree? 0:19:11.359 --> 0:19:14.280 And he said, one of we talk about it endlessly, 0:19:14.440 --> 0:19:16.800 and one of us will persuade the other through logic, 0:19:19.240 --> 0:19:23.080 which sounds good, and I'm absolutely sure that he intended 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:25.440 that to be the case, but that's not the case. 0:19:25.600 --> 0:19:30.080 A director will and must do what they see. And 0:19:30.200 --> 0:19:32.440 so I think that if you can get in their 0:19:32.440 --> 0:19:34.920 head enough to create doubt about something that you think 0:19:35.000 --> 0:19:37.280 is a mistake, did you do that? Did you did 0:19:37.320 --> 0:19:39.280 you succeed it that? From time to time I would try, 0:19:39.359 --> 0:19:42.440 and I would occasionally succeed, but not often. Now it went, 0:19:43.119 --> 0:19:45.640 it went very well. I liked our collaboration on death 0:19:45.640 --> 0:19:49.480 becomes or our sensibilities were a little different his, perhaps 0:19:50.080 --> 0:19:53.680 broader and more visual mind, a bit drier. There's a 0:19:53.720 --> 0:19:57.160 scene in which in an emergency room, when Sydney Pollock 0:19:57.240 --> 0:19:59.719 comes in and has to tell her she's dead, and 0:19:59.760 --> 0:20:01.800 I think that that's the tone I would have liked 0:20:01.840 --> 0:20:04.119 for the whole movie. It's a sort of masterpiece of dry, 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:07.919 understated comedy. But Bob had different ideas and was thinking 0:20:08.160 --> 0:20:11.199 more in terms of the emerging CG and how to 0:20:11.320 --> 0:20:13.879 use it, and that's fine. The only one that really 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:16.200 kind of bothered me and I could never get over. 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:19.040 I felt there was a note that caused our structure 0:20:19.080 --> 0:20:23.360 to partially collapse in a later draft to meet Movies 0:20:23.440 --> 0:20:27.120 are structure, and that structural idea, to me, was sort 0:20:27.160 --> 0:20:29.239 of central to making the whole thing work. But in 0:20:29.320 --> 0:20:33.080 general it was great, and I was working with big, 0:20:33.320 --> 0:20:35.520 accomplished to Hollywood movie stars at the peak of their 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:39.360 crafts as the writer, at what point did you discover 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:42.600 that you had to process the notes of the star 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:48.120 as well? What movie bad influence? Because Rob Lowe, who 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:51.360 was very hot at the time, was attached to play 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:54.800 the lead, and I thought that was a mistake because 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:57.200 he's a sympathetical lead who we have to imagine it 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:00.920 doesn't do very well with women, and I didn't see 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:04.159 anybody believing that. But there was a sort of seductive 0:21:04.320 --> 0:21:06.600 bad guy character, and I felt he'd be much better 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:09.600 off playing Nobody really agreed with me, so I got 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:12.800 robbed to have lunch with me. I remember talking about 0:21:12.840 --> 0:21:18.359 Donna Reid and from Here to Eternity and saying, you've 0:21:18.440 --> 0:21:21.439 never done this, they won't see it coming. Of course 0:21:21.520 --> 0:21:23.879