UK, April 3, 2009 - Sam Raimi told SCI FI Wire that the script for Spider-Man 4 should be completed by summer.

He said: “Right now, [screenwriter] David Lindsay-Abaire is working on a draft of the new picture, and he’s hard at work, and hopefully we’ll see something in about three months.” This places the film on track for its May 6, 2011 release.

Scott Frank will be joining us on ScreenTalk Radio in the coming weeks and after finding this “video” interview with Scott when he had written and directed his screenplay, THE LOOKOUT. I have interviewed Scott for Creative Screenwriting Magazine and several times for this website (click here). So anyway, this is great interview and worth 8 minutes of your time!

David Benioff’s Epic Adaptation, TROY

Interview by: Daniel Robert Epstein

I couldn’t imagine the daunting task of adapting a work like The Iliad to the movie screen, but at the age of 34, David Benioff has already adapted Homer’s The Iliad and is now working on the screenplay for Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. It’s a good thing all those writers are dead. Otherwise, Benioff might feel some pressure.

Benioff’s work first hit theatres when Spike Lee had him adapt his own novel, The 25th Hour, for him to film. The film received wide critical praise. But already, Benioff was in the weeds with writing his multiple drafts of Troy. It’s unusual for a $200 million production to only use one writer, but Benioff worked closely with director/producer Wolfgang Peterson and even worked with Brad Pitt on making his character of Achilles more human.

Besides The Iliad what sources did you draw on?
Of course there are more source texts than just The Iliad. I mean The Iliad was the pivotal one in the telling of the Trojan War, but it starts from the ninth year of the war and ends in the ninth year of the war. We wanted to tell the entire story from before the beginning when Paris seduces Helen and triggers the entire war through to the fall of Troy, and you don’t get all of that in The Iliad, so some of it comes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and some of it comes from The Odyssey, actually. There are little bits from Eneid. There are bits of things from Bulfinch’s Mythology, and some of it was just imagined.

Was there a tendency not to write too contemporary?
Yeah, that’s one of the big challenges in screenplays. You don’t want the characters to sound contemporary. You don’t want them to sound like California boys in 2004, but at the same time it won’t work effectively if they sound exactly as they do in Homer because Homer is not really dialogue. It’s more of these dueling monologues, which are beautiful, but they are at least ten minutes long.

Agamemnon will launch into this long speech, and Achilles will respond with his very articulate rebuttal, and it just goes on. I don’t really want to sit there watching one character make a speech for 15 minutes and then have the next one do the same. It’s trying to find some kind of happy medium between contemporary lingo and the Homeric, ultra-exalted dialogue.

How many writers had their fingers in the screenplay?
I was the only writer the whole time. It started with the pitch that I made, and I was lucky enough to not be replaced, which I’m incredibly happy about; I would’ve been heartbroken, and it happens most of the time. So it’s partly luck and I think partly because [director] Wolfgang [Peterson] and I work well together.

When I started the screenplay, I had no idea it was going to be a $200 million movie. I think that would’ve been incredibly intimidating because this was only the second script I wrote. I was kind of dumb about the whole thing. I mean I didn’t really get nervous until after I had written it. I didn’t really understand how intimidating it was until I actually went on set and saw the size of these sets and saw the thousands of extras running around. It was a massive undertaking.

How do you pitch a faithful retelling?
Well, I didn’t pitch a faithful retelling. I pitched kind of a ruthless retelling where I really wanted to concentrate on the human story. For me, what I’ve always loved about The Iliad is the story of Hector, Achilles, Paris and Helen but particularly Hector and Achilles. These are the two great heroes on either side, and inevitably, they are going to fight, but it’s not a good-guys-and-bad-guys story. It’s not the epic battle of good versus evil. It’s not humans versus orcs. It’s humans fighting humans, and that’s why I think it’s the great tragic war story. Every time you see a soldier fall, it’s not some villain falling. It’s a human. It’s some mother’s son, and that’s what’s brilliant about Homer’s telling of the story. Each time, he always gives you one moment with that character, even very minor characters you’ve never met before, at the moment of their death. It’s a very humanistic way of telling a war story.

When you sat down to write this story, did you have the talent in mind?
I did not, and actually I’m glad of that because it would be hard for me. It is harder for me to write knowing the face in some ways because then you tend to write for the actor, and I really wanted to just let the characters exist in my imagination or the characters from the original text. I’m not writing lines for Peter O’Toole or for Brad Pitt or Eric Bana but for Priam, Achilles and Hector. Why did you change the way Agamemnon died? The ruthlessness is there. In the myths, Agamemnon can’t get the right winds to get to Troy, so he sacrifices his daughter, and this irritates his wife. So at the end of the war, when he sails home, his wife ends up killing him. We didn’t have time to tell all the different stories. My first draft of the script came in at 180 pages, which is a monster script, and there still wasn’t a way to tell all the different strands. Eventually, it was cut to 140 pages, and there was a certain ruthlessness involved. We had to pick the stories that we could follow all the way through. If we weren’t going to have the whole story of Agamemnon and his daughter and his wife, we had to figure out a way we could allude to his death the way that it’s depicted in the myth. He was knifed by a woman, so that was the way it was handled there, but there were certain changes made, sometimes for efficiency and sometimes because I had to choose what I thought was best for the movie. As for being absolutely faithful to the source material, I’m always going to pick the project.

Were there any other endings?
Yeah, from the original pitch, it was meant to be the story of Achilles and Hector, these two great heroes. Hector is killed 25 or 30 minutes before the end, and then Achilles is killed. Once your two main guys are dead, there’s not much more story to tell there. I think we could have an eight-hour miniseries that goes through all the different phases of the characters, but if you’re going to try to do it as a feature, you really have to cut many different things. The ending we have now was pretty much always the ending, and we are lucky in that we have Sean Bean doing that final voiceover with his magnificent voice. This is a tragic story in many ways, and I love the image of the ending with the smoke rising to the skies. I don’t know if that was originally in the script or if it was Wolfgang’s idea.

Was it a coincidence that Brian Cox was in two films you wrote, The 25th Hour and now Troy?
Total coincidence. I mean, when they were looking for Agamemnon, I remember talking to Wolfgang about what a marvelous actor I thought he was, and Wolfgang was already aware of him. It ended up being a happy coincidence for me because I just thought he was terrific and loved him as James Brogan in The 25th Hour.

Read more…

This interview took place 6 years ago and we wanted to share it in honor of his passing recently!

(Interview first appeared in Screenwriter’s Monthly in December 2002)

Rear Window is considered to be Hitchcock’s most “cinematic” picture. At times it had to communicate a lot to the audience without a word ever being spoken. This isn’t surprising as Hitchcock started directing in 1922, during the silent era, making several silent films. By 1954, the year Rear Window was released he had clearly mastered the art of directing. However, before he could unleash his visual brilliance there had to be a great script from which to allow such a great movie to be made.

Think of the drawbacks to the story. First, the protagonist is bound to a wheelchair and is most of the time a reactive participant who is essentially isolated. Second, the antagonist doesn’t say more than a dozen words (at least that we hear), and isn’t confrontational with the protagonist until the very end. Hitchcock often said, “the better the villain, the better the picture.” The obstacles placed in the protagonist’s way were rooted in circumstance and happenstance-nothing placed by the antagonist. Thirdly, the entire movie takes place in an apartment and what is seen from the window. What might at first be seen as limitations were most likely viewed as cinematic possibilities and challenges that Hitchcock could not refuse.

John Michael Hayes’ screenplay was based on Cornell Woolrich’s original 1942 short story “It Had to Be Murder”. He was assigned to write the script after one meeting with Hitchcock.

Hitchcock didn’t sign on to direct the picture until after reading a thirteen page treatment by playwright Joshua Logan. Logan’s work laid the foundation from which Hayes wrote his treatment.

The short story lacked several important details which were added to the screenplay. It did not have a strong female character, or love interest, and Logan keenly injected that into the narrative. But, for the most part, it stuck closely to the source material. Logan’s treatment opens with New York City and Jefferies (the name is spelled “Jeffries” in Woolrich’s story and Logan’s treatment), who’s isolated in his apartment due to a broken leg in a cast. Logan created Trink, a love interest for Jeff, who is later renamed Lisa by Hayes. Also, in Logan’s treatment, Jeff is a sports writer, which is later changed to a photographer by Hayes. As in the final movie, Logan’s treatment has Jeff’s love interest go into the killer’s (Thorwald) apartment where she is discovered. The killer later comes after Jefferies when he is alone. But before he can kill Jefferies he is himself killed. Which, of course, was changed by Hayes.

Logan’s treatment clearly laid the foundation for Hayes to build on, but it had several problems and lacked numerous elements that Hitchcock and Hayes would add to strengthen the story: story elements, richer characters, more conflict, and better visuals.

Hayes constructed a convincing narrative with richly drawn characters and keenly raised the emotion and drama by injecting well placed conflict. Hayes knew that everything hinged on Jefferies’ character. He had to build a sympathetic protagonist the audience would absolutely love spending time with in order for the movie to work. He fleshed out Jefferies’ background, his relationship with Lisa, and his own internal conflict and emotional resolve. The result is a classic Thriller.

To read the Interview

Forrest J. Ackerman, or Forry to most people that knew him, was a powerful and formative part of not only Hollywood’s early years but also to the burgeoning science fiction and fantasy literature market.  Mr. Ackerman passed away at the age of 92 yesterday.

His razor-sharp intellect, even up to the time of his death, gave us the term sci-fi, coined in 1954 while listening to the radio with his wife in the car.  His collection of horror, science fiction, and fantasy memorabilia and books, numbering in the tens of thousands, was one of the most complete anywhere.

The founder of Famous Monsters of Filmland carried the magazine for more than 49 years, a testament not only to its longevity and to his.  It is through his time there that he discovered Ray Bradbury, among other fledgling writers who have gone on to become amazing and prolific writers in their own right.

I won’t say much more excpet that he was an inspiration to me about how to stay afloat in the business.  Even during the lean times he never gave up that which he loved so well.  He was a veritable fountain of information for young writers and historians alike, and always took the time to talk and answer questions from anybody.

I only spoke to him once on the phone asking for some advice for my horror screenwriting book.  Even from that conversation (just 2 months ago) left my head spinning with more information than I could even digest.  The man was a dynamo with a photographic memory.  He will be missed.

John Michael Hayes, who wrote the script for “Rear Window” and was a frequent Hitchcock collaborater, has died. He was 89.

The screenwriter who was nominated for two Academy Awards died of natural causes on Wednesday Nov. 19 at a Hanover, New Hampshire retirement community.

John Michael Hayes Jr. was born on May 11, 1919 in Worcester, Mass., to John Michael Hayes Sr. and Ellen Mabel Hayes. As an avid reader, young Hayes also discovered a love of writing and wrote for his school newspapers, his high school yearbook and his Boy Scout weekly, which earned him a job writing about Boy Scout activities for Worcester’s Evening Gazette.

His writing career continued with the Worcester Telegram and the Associated Press. At Massachusetts State College, he won a contest to write radio stories. After a stint in the Army during WWII, Hayes continued his radio career, writing for radio dramas “The Adventures of Sam Spade,” “Inner Sanctum” and Lucille Ball’s “My Favorite Husband” in Hollywood.

On the strength of Hayes’ radio work, Universal-International Pictures hired him as a screenwriter.

His original screenplay for “Rear Window,” which starred Jimmy Stewart as a wheelchair-bound photographer whose voyeurism leads him to think one of his neighbors is a killer, earned Hayes his first Oscar nomination. Hayes worked with director Alfred Hitchcock on three other films: the stylish “To Catch a Thief” starring Cary Grant and Grace Kelly, “The Trouble With Harry” starring Shirley MacLaine and the Stewart/Doris Day remake of “The Man Who Knew Too Much.”

Hayes’ career also included successful melodramas like his adaptation of “Peyton Place,” which earned him his second Academy Award nomination, “Butterfield 8″ with Elizabeth Taylor, “Torch Song” with Joan Crawford, “The Carpetbaggers” with Carroll Baker and “Where Love Has Gone” with Susan Hayward and Bette Davis.

Also notable in his career were the Audrey Hepburn/MacLaine pairing for “The Children’s Hour,” which was set in a private school and revolved the supposed lesbian relationship between two women, and “The Chalk Garden,” starring Hayley Mills and Deborah Kerr.

Hayes retired from writing, but then came back to co-write the family adventure film “Iron Will” starring Mackenzie Astin and Kevin Spacey.

Hayes taught film writing at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire until he retired in 2000. He donated his collection of scripts, photographs, letters and clippings from his Hollywood career to the college.