Craig Brewer: And you think it’s my way or the highway, or I’ve got to sit here and really defend my point of view. And I think that there was just something about the quickness of television that it’s almost like there were things that would be out of your control. They’re like, “Oh, hey, the episode before your episode, something didn’t work and actually that woman’s dead. So everything that you just did, you can’t do anymore. She’s dead now.” And you’re like, “Oh, I guess I really have to figure out something right now.” And I think that that’s really what helped me.
And then directorially, I always felt that when you’re making a feature, there’s something that you almost feel like you’re at war with, with all the producers and with the studio and budget, and it should be your way and you just should lose it, you should lose the battle to some extent. “I need 300 extras.” And then they’ll say, “Well, we’re going to try to get you like 150 extras or something like that.” And then in television, they’re like, “We have 30 extras and we don’t care what you need because we’re going to bring in Mario Van Peebles and he can direct it brilliantly for 30 extras and you just got to deal with it.”
David Koepp: By the way, we moved it up to Tuesday.
Craig Brewer: Right, yeah. So suddenly you’re now thinking to yourself, “Okay, I can now make this scene work with 30 extras because I have to.” That made me better. That made me go into situations a lot differently. And to, Kirt, your point, there’s many times that I think that my problem was that I was really coming at these scenes more as a director and not as a writer, even though I’ve written a lot.
I think that what it is, is that in the writer’s room, everybody was very specific about certain plot points and you got to really bang the drum of what is the story we’re telling here, where I was going, “Well, I think that once I get with the actors, something’s going to come together and it’s going to be magical.” Where in television they’re like, “No, you need to really go into this scene knowing what story you’re telling.” And that to me, it informed editorial decisions as a feature director.
Sometimes I’d have these montages that I’d do like on Dolemite Is My Name and I would stop and I’d go, “Look, I know it looks pretty and I know it sounds pretty, but what story are we telling here because something may have to go? And if this story is basically Rudy Ray Moore is going on the road and he’s getting more famous, I don’t know if this scene that I shot, as gorgeous as it looks, is telling that story with everything around it.”
And so that was kind of like the director who’s into nuance and beautiful things that I wanted to shoot would suddenly meet this new writer in me that’s going, “Yeah, but is it really on story?” And that I think was what primarily got beaten into me in network television and I’m better for it.
Kirt Gunn: Yeah. I tend to have a real affinity for those directors and writers who have television experience and just that improvisational dexterity that comes with that, whether it’s Nichols and May or Altman or others who have that ability to go on the fly.
David Koepp: De Palma says something similar to what Craig was saying, but the way he phrases it is you have to say, what is the value? What is the value of this shot, of this scene, of this thing? Is the value we understand that he’s frightened and is it funny? Is it suspenseful? Is it meant to be beautiful? And it can’t be all those things. What is the primary value that this tiny piece of this film has? What’s it meant to be? And then that applies to everything, the sets, the costume, the performances, the shots you choose.
I was directing one movie and I was going through some storyboards with him and he said, “Yeah, but isn’t this all just about this character’s decision to do that?” And I said, “Yes, it is.” And he said, “Then why do you have eight shots?” And I said, “Because I want to see the rest of the people in the room.” And he said, “Why? Just have them talking and dolly in slowly on him and get to his face.”
And it’s one of the best shots in the movie because the other things they were saying, which are all important, of course, to the writer, me, aren’t as important as what is this guy going to decide. And by turning that into just one long shot that arrives at him as he makes the choice, it’s a 10 times better scene because that was the value of the scene.
Craig Brewer: Isn’t that frustrating when somebody comes up with a great idea like that and then you got to live with it being just brilliant the rest of your life.
David Koepp: Yeah. You kind of don’t forget, “Well, yeah, but it’s not really my shot. I’m glad you like it, but it’s not really mine.”
Craig Brewer: And David, are you just now at a point in your career and your success where you can take a spec? I mean, how much hustling do you have to do to get a spec going?
David Koepp: Every time. It’s a lot. They’ll read it. I have a certain number of credits and enough success that people will read it, which is great and all. But going out with just a spec is so much harder than it used to be. You really have to have a director and ideally you have to have a star as well. It’s hard. They’re all hard.
Craig Brewer: And then let me ask you a question. There’s a writer I work with, Sascha Penn, and he said something to me one day that just kind of knocked me on my ass. He was just like, “I don’t think you’re a writer unless you’re doing a spec a year.” And I thought, wow. And he’s sold scripts that way. And I’m curious, it’s been a while. I’ll be honest with you. No, I mean, I’m going to be really honest. It’s been more than a decade or so since I’ve written something just on spec. I’ve had to go out and sell and pitch and get somebody to pay me to write it.
David Koepp: Well, I think it’s different because you direct most of them and you can’t underestimate how enormously consuming that is. You’re thinking about nothing else for a year and a half, really nothing else, not the people you love. It’s brutal. It’s a really tough occupation. But to expect yourself to come up with another idea and write it, what? Between prep and shoot? When are you going to do that? I think it’s different. If you were a pure writer, not that you’re impure, Craig, but if you’re only writing or that’s your primary focus, I think it’s different and you do generate more. But directing takes everything away.
Craig Brewer: But what would be a good number, do you feel like? How many specs do you … How many years go by or is it like when the idea hits you?
David Koepp: I’ll do probably one a year. That’s about right, but I’ve had these ideas for a long time. I keep a lot of story note files and I’ll be feeding something and if ideas keep coming, I’ll feed it. And then it just sort of occurs to you now might be a good time to write that one. Black Bag was, we were all on strike. So I thought, “Hey, this is perfect. No one knows I’m doing it. Nobody cares. Nobody’s asking me about it. This is a great time to work.” But it can be years before I pick it up and write it.
I have a thing now I would like to direct, I wouldn’t give this one away, but it’s a family drama. It was an Audible I wrote maybe five years ago, an Audible Story. It’s very nice, but it’s a family drama and the lead is 82 years old. So we’re out there trying to get the money, but it’s a tough world for that. I think we will eventually, but that’s not to your question. How much is enough productivity? What do you think, Kirt?
Kirt Gunn: I don’t have an answer to that question. I was kind of obsessed while you were talking about this notion of the subconscious space away from an idea. So this notion that ideas sit and ruminate and probably change as you change and they are written at the time that they should be written. Is that too woo of an idea for you or do you believe that? Do you believe that that time away from the film is important?
David Koepp: Oh, I think that’s absolutely right. I think you have ideas, they nurture for a while. The Black Bag idea was about a mature marriage, but I was probably 32 years old. I don’t think it’s surprising that it took me 25 years to say, “Oh, I think I’m ready to write that George and Martha as spies, but they get a long movie.” So yeah, I think they have to sit for a while. Do you write things down and keep them somewhere you can find them and go look occasionally?
Kirt Gunn: I do. And it’s funny because I had, and I’m thinking of two things. One is an idea that I have 10 pages of and I can read that idea and I can’t recall what it is. Even with 10 pages of clues, I can’t find the source in my brain to say this is the core of what this is. I have another idea that I wrote probably 15 years ago. It’s on an index card and it’s three bullet points and I can see the entire script just out of those three bullet points. It’s alive and in my mind and ready to go. And it’s very funny that something that makes a lot of sense to you at a certain time might be resonant 10 or 15 years later and something else might not.
Craig Brewer: And Kirt, are you pitching, I mean since you had to get financing? Kind of like Crystal, do you have to do that song and dance a little bit where you have to tell a story to people and get them excited about it? Do you do that a lot or are you finding a different path?
Kirt Gunn: I have to tell a really weird story to answer that question. And ultimately, you remember the film that I made in ’07-ish, Lovely by Surprise. So I made a film in 2007 and it did well at the festivals and I had a couple of other films that were about to be made. I got terribly sick with Lyme disease and I mean, deathly ill to the point that I was in bed for 20 plus hours a day for almost a decade. And so I disappeared and went away and lost this chapter of my life and career.
And then while I was sick, Derek and I developed an idea that ultimately started as a documentary. And oddly Craig, it was kind of a Bad News Bears story about a rock band that’s a real rock band called Jucifer. It was a documentary about a husband and wife rock and roll team, but it was a documentary with the back half of that documentary being fictional where the drummer loses his hearing and the wife loses her beauty and it becomes something else.
So Derek and I developed that idea, shot the three quarters of it that was the documentary. And then Derek went off to make another film and our editor ended up coming back and saying, “I want to take that film and turn that film into a fictional film,” which became Sound of Metal. And so Sound of Metal, that Derek and Kirt project that was a documentary with a back half fiction became Sound of Metal. And that was something that at the time I was just well enough to kind of participate in idea development and shaping and things like that. And then as I’ve kind of gotten my strength and feet and brain working again, I’m just sort of now back in things and this is the first project that I’ve done in a really long time.
Now since doing this project, I have old ideas that have come up and new ideas and people who want to help me produce things and a lot of actor relationships that I’ve developed over the years. So I think I’ll make something. But my path is a very twisty one that I wouldn’t suggest to anyone else. So as far as what I’ve been pitching or what I’ve been doing, I’m just sort of reemerging back into the world. So kind of its own strange journey.
Craig Brewer: That’s horrific, man.
Kirt Gunn: Yeah.
David Koepp: I’m sorry.
Kirt Gunn: It was, it was.
David Koepp: Welcome back.
Kirt Gunn: Thank you much. Thank you much. No, I’m happy to be here.
David Koepp: Everybody, when you do a podcast or you go talk to people, people really do want to know how you started. And why don’t we do a quick, how’d you get started? What was the first time you remember receiving money for writing? When did you get paid and what for?
I will go first because it can’t go lower than this. I was working in an internship. I went to film school at UCLA. I was working an internship for a guy who represented foreign distributors, but also independent producers who were trying to place their movies. It was just him and I was his assistant. And this one guy wanted to do a movie, it was a movie about female mud wrestling called Scissors and needed a screenplay and he needed it quickly.
Kirt Gunn: All right.
David Koepp: So that was the first thing I got. I got $3,000, which was, that was a lot of rent. That covered me for a while. And I did it, I don’t know, in four or five days. I did it as quickly as … I gave it a lot of thought. I really tried to go do a good female mud wrestling movie. His girlfriend was going to play the lead. It never went anywhere, but it was my first job.
Craig Brewer: I’m not going to beat that. How can you beat Scissors?
David Koepp: It’s tough.
Craig Brewer: I will tell you, the best money I’ve made in my life was the first money that I made. And I’ve heard that from a lot of people that there’s just nothing better than that first time. So I was working at Barnes & Noble and I had made that movie that Kirt’s band, the Delta Queens, had a song in. And I got an entertainment lawyer that knew that these action movies were being shot up in Vancouver for like a million dollars and they needed someone to read a script and then rewrite it. They wanted to make this, but they didn’t want to make this script and they needed it to be better.
And I’m not going to get the numbers right, but I used to work at this small little coffee shop called The Deliberate Literate here in Memphis, Tennessee when I wasn’t shelving books. And so I’d sit in the corner and write. I was writing Hustle & Flow, I believe at the time. And I got a call from the lawyer and he said, “They’d like you to rewrite this script and they’re going to pay you $10,000 to rewrite the whole thing.” Now, I was making probably about $1,000 a month at Barnes & Noble, and I thought that was just, I couldn’t believe it.
David Koepp: Yeah, fantastic.
Craig Brewer: But I called him back and I called my lawyer back and I said, “Well, I’ll do it, but I’m going to need 20.”
David Koepp: The balls on this guy.
Craig Brewer: The balls on this kid. Well, I had looked up some internet thing that I was supposed to get that for the budget that they were going to do. And he said, “Well, I don’t think they’re going to do that.” So right then and there, I rewrote the first 20 pages. I’ve never done anything like this since. I rewrote the first 20 pages and I sent it to the producers and I said, “This is kind of the direction I was thinking it could go in, but I understand it’s not going to really work out. And I just want you to please consider me for other opportunities and maybe I could write something for you.”
And then this lawyer called me back and said, “I don’t know what you just did, but they’re going to pay you the money that you want.” I loved the birth of my children, but I just want to be very real, I can’t tell you the joy that I felt at that moment, getting that first paycheck. I got double what it was and I just thought, “Oh, I can now be a writer this year. I don’t have to work at Barnes & Noble.”
David Koepp: That’s the moment when you can quit and you can use the best hours of your day and the best, most awake time of your brain for writing instead of whatever you’re doing for your day job, it changes everything.
Craig Brewer: And the fact that I got to do that thing that is close to what you all are talking about with specs is that so much of your early life is like, “I swear to God, I can do this.” And you start writing scripts and you’ve got three or four scripts that you don’t even have anybody in the industry to really read it because you’re so outside of it. You’re so outside of the business, but you’ve got this hunger.
And the fact that suddenly I was like, “I’ve got to just write it right now, like 20 pages. I just got to write the first act that gets us to the inciting incident or something like that.” I’m so glad that I had three of those scripts that were just sitting around doing nothing because it taught me to get into it. It taught me how to be economical. It taught me how to be a writer. And I think that was the big lesson of that moment, is that those things that you think aren’t going anywhere, come to your aid, you just don’t know when they’re going to be there for you.
David Koepp: Yeah. Listen, Craig, I’m sure you’ve probably moved on, but I think you should really consider moving it up to page 10 or 12. It’s just 20 feels a little late. Instinctively it feels a little late to me. Yeah, a little bit.
Craig Brewer: You’re right. You’re right. You’re right. Well, luckily it was just a smaller movie filmed in Vancouver and you’ll have to probably go on IMDB to find out which one it was.
Kirt Gunn: I think the version for me was I was a playwright and living in Memphis, Tennessee, apparently in a punk blues band according to Craig. And I had three scripts that I had written. One a friend was producing in New York, another friend was producing another one in London, and then a third one was happening in Austria at a little theater festival. And I really felt very cocky and left Memphis with $3,000 in my pocket, moved to New York and went off to the theater festival in Austria to see my play produced. And I returned and going to the theater festival cost me more money than I had. So I landed back in New York with no money at all and a negative balance.
And at the same time, had a friend who had sort of lured me into working in advertising. And so I did two advertising projects and got two big checks, which kind of gave me the latitude to do creative work. So for me, there was kind of the balance of the playwriting was paying me, but ultimately it was a negative on the balance sheet. And then there was this other thing that could kind of scaffold me into giving me freedom to do other things.
David Koepp: What’s a movie you could watch any day of the week? You could pop it in tonight, you’ll be perfectly happy, more than perfectly happy. And how did it affect you? What leaps immediately to mind? Obviously we all have many movies we love, but what is one? What is one thing you could put in pretty much anytime somebody’s willing to watch it with you?
Craig Brewer: This is always the hard question because you feel the weight of judgment on it, right?
David Koepp: Yeah. Oh, we are going to judge you.
Craig Brewer: You really, really do. But if I’m honest, it’s really The Blues Brothers.
David Koepp: Really? Cool.
Craig Brewer: Yeah, because I think that I’m just kind of 10 for 10 for it. People that haven’t seen it go, “That was really enjoyable.” And I remember it being just a major moment for me where I’d never seen James Brown. I’d never seen John Lee Hooker play. It became this thing that suddenly I felt like I had found my place and my people. And I watch it every year.
And I’m even joyous that my daughter the other day, I called her, 17, and I go, “Hey, I’m hearing Peter Gunn in the background. Are you watching The Blues Brothers right now?” She goes, “Well, I was watching it, but then my boyfriend came over and he’s never seen it. And I knew that you would probably want me to show it to him in Ultra HD so I started it over.” And I just shed a tear.
My dad, I’ve only seen my dad just collapse on the ground laughing to where I thought he was going to die in front of me during the nun scene in The Blues Brothers where she’s beating the hell out of Jake and Elwood. But I watch it every year and I’m still kind of amazed by it. I’m amazed by the comedic tone, the action in it, but the mere drive of its narrative being just so outlandish at times of just like, “We got to save the orphanage.”
I could sit here and say it should be The Godfather or movies that are really like something that I try to show to people over and over again, like Claudine, which I feel like is this movie that really helped me on this last movie. And I’m surprised how many people have not seen Claudine. And I put it in as a seminal American movie that’s about real working class poor and the issues of starting a family or being in a family and in poverty. But if you really ask me if you could just pop one thing in, I can’t help it, it’s always going to be The Blues Brothers.
David Koepp: Well, it makes a lot of sense because movies about music and not necessarily biopics, as you say, are everything to you. So there’s so much joy of music in that. It’s music, it’s all about music. It’s not about real people. It’s about joy and intensity. I get it. I’m going to pick one. This is just because I had another recent experience with it. So it was Thanksgiving weekend, my son’s home from college, his girlfriend’s here, our 14-year-old daughter, her friend, her friend’s dad, and my wife and I. There was like seven or eight of us, right? So good luck if you’re going to find a movie that seven or eight people are going to agree on and agree to sit there and throw your phone across the room and actually watch this movie.
And so we ended up on Social Network, which I love. And I think it’s my 18-year-old son’s favorite movie. I know it is. I’ve seen it seven or eight times and it’s a fantastic movie. It’s a perfect screenplay. It’s beautifully performed. It’s impeccably directed. It’s got everything going for it, but I’m just talking about the first scene. Those first, what is it, six minutes, maybe seven minutes.
They’re sitting in a bar, it’s two actors, great actors. Fincher just sits there in a two shot or a closeup and he doesn’t feel the need to impose himself on this great material. He just lets them play the great material and he saves the closeup until the very last line on her where she says, “You’re going to wonder if people don’t like you because you’re a nerd. And it’s not, it’s because you’re an asshole.” And he sat back and waited for the closeup till then.
So the director, while having complete control of the whole thing, absented his personality from it, except for the part of his personality that’s obsessive and perfectionist. And it’s just a flawless scene. There’s nothing wrong with anybody anybody did in that scene. It’s perfect. So I could watch that.
Craig Brewer: It sets up the tone, it sets up the stakes, it sets up the ending, it’s a perfect scene in a perfect movie.
Kirt Gunn: Agreed. Agreed. I think for me, the film that I’ve probably watched the most is Goodfellas. I just love the grand scale of it and the narrator as protagonist and all of those things. But lately, if I were to sort of be on a desert island, I really love McCabe and Mrs. Miller. I think I’ve watched that movie 10 times in the last two years. And in a lot of ways, it’s anti-structure and anti-screenwriting perfection in the sense that it is not really quite a Western. It’s not quite a relationship film. It’s not quite a love story. It’s not quite a comedy. It’s not quite a tragedy. But just some of the textural elements in there and the realness of the people and the moody lighting and the snow and the mud and all those things just make me pull back into that one.
David Koepp: Yeah, I’m going to pop that in again. I haven’t seen it in a while. Well, guys, great talking to you.
Kirt Gunn: Yeah.
David Koepp: This was really fun.
Kirt Gunn: Yeah.
David Koepp: I think we did great work here, and I really don’t have any notes.
Kirt Gunn: Again, I’m going to say that we can print it.
Craig Brewer: Yeah. I think we nailed this all. Yeah.
Outro: OnWriting is a production of the Writers Guild of America East. The series is produced by WGA East staff members, Jason Gordon, Tiana Timmerberg, and Molly Beer. Production editing and mix by Giulia Hjort, original music by Taylor Bradshaw, artwork design by Molly Beer. To learn more about the Writers Guild of America East, visit us online at wgaeast.org or follow the guild on all social media platforms, @WGAEast. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe to the podcast and give us a five-star rating. Thanks for listening. Until next time, write on.
