This week’s special guest is screenwriter and former Director of Motion Pictures for TV Mini-Series for NBC, Lew Hunter. Credits include “The Execution of Private Slovak,” “Born Innocent,” “The Law,” “The Red Badge of Courage” and “Centennial,” as well as his classic book “The Secrets of Screenwriting”. His book, Screenwriting 434 is consider to be one of the best books ever written about screenwriting. Please join us for the show:

Also, get Script Sales and Development news from Script Girl!

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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.

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Complete list of 81st annual Academy Award nominations announced Thursday:

1. Best Picture: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “The Reader,” “Slumdog Millionaire.”

2. Actor: Richard Jenkins, “The Visitor”; Frank Langella, “Frost/Nixon”; Sean Penn, “Milk”; Brad Pitt, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”; Mickey Rourke, “The Wrestler.”

3. Actress: Anne Hathaway, “Rachel Getting Married”; Angelina Jolie, “Changeling”; Melissa Leo, “Frozen River”; Meryl Streep, “Doubt”; Kate Winslet, “The Reader.”

4. Supporting Actor: Josh Brolin, “Milk”; Robert Downey Jr., “Tropic Thunder”; Philip Seymour Hoffman, “Doubt”; Heath Ledger, “The Dark Knight”; Michael Shannon, “Revolutionary Road.”

5. Supporting Actress: Amy Adams, “Doubt”; Penelope Cruz, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona”; Viola Davis, “Doubt”; Taraji P. Henson, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”; Marisa Tomei, “The Wrestler.”

6. Director: David Fincher, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”; Ron Howard, “Frost/Nixon”; Gus Van Sant, “Milk”; Stephen Daldry, “The Reader”; Danny Boyle, “Slumdog Millionaire.”

7. Foreign Film: “The Baader Meinhof Complex,” Germany; “The Class,” France; “Departures,” Japan; “Revanche,” Austria; “Waltz With Bashir,” Israel.

8. Adapted Screenplay: Eric Roth and Robin Swicord, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”; John Patrick Shanley, “Doubt”; Peter Morgan, “Frost/Nixon”; David Hare, “The Reader”; Simon Beaufoy, “Slumdog Millionaire.”

9. Original Screenplay: Courtney Hunt, “Frozen River”; Mike Leigh, “Happy-Go-Lucky”; Martin McDonagh, “In Bruges”; Dustin Lance Black, “Milk”; Andrew Stanton, Jim Reardon and Pete Docter, “WALL-E.”

10. Animated Feature Film: “Bolt”; “Kung Fu Panda”; “WALL-E.”

11. Art Direction: “Changeling,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “The Duchess,” “Revolutionary Road.”

12. Cinematography: “Changeling,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “The Reader,” “Slumdog Millionaire.”

13. Sound Mixing: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “WALL-E,” “Wanted.”

14. Sound Editing: “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man,” “Slumdog Millionaire,” “WALL-E,” “Wanted.”

15. Original Score: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” Alexandre Desplat; “Defiance,” James Newton Howard; “Milk,” Danny Elfman; “Slumdog Millionaire,” A.R. Rahman; “WALL-E,” Thomas Newman.

16. Original Song: “Down to Earth” from “WALL-E,” Peter Gabriel and Thomas Newman; “Jai Ho” from “Slumdog Millionaire,” A.R. Rahman and Gulzar; “O Saya” from “Slumdog Millionaire,” A.R. Rahman and Maya Arulpragasam.

17. Costume: “Australia,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Duchess,” “Milk,” “Revolutionary Road.”

18. Documentary Feature: “The Betrayal (Nerakhoon),” “Encounters at the End of the World,” “The Garden,” “Man on Wire,” “Trouble the Water.”

19. Documentary (short subject): “The Conscience of Nhem En,” “The Final Inch,” “Smile Pinki,” “The Witness — From the Balcony of Room 306.”

20. Film Editing: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Frost/Nixon,” “Milk,” “Slumdog Millionaire.”

21. Makeup: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Hellboy II: The Golden Army.”

22. Animated Short Film: “La Maison en Petits Cubes,” “Lavatory — Lovestory,” “Oktapodi,” “Presto,” “This Way Up.”

23. Live Action Short Film: “Auf der Strecke (On the Line),” “Manon on the Asphalt,” “New Boy,” “The Pig,” “Spielzeugland (Toyland).”

24. Visual Effects: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “The Dark Knight,” “Iron Man.”

ScreenwritersUtopia is proud to announce with the coming year a new feature, “SU’s ScreenTalk” radio program broadcast via BlogTalkRadio with a potential audience of millions! Er, yeah right.

Devin (M.) Watson and myself (Chris) will be the show’s hosts, we will cover all sorts of topics related to screenwriting, movies, and Hollywood.

For those of you who do not know, Devin Martin Watson is a professional screenwriter with his first film TENEBROUS a.k.a “The Cursed” (the scum sucking producers changed the name) due to be released by Spring 2009.

As for myself, I am Chris Wehner and I am an author and professional screenwriter. Currently my screenplay, EL CAMINO, is in pre-production. Also my book, Screenwriting on the Internet: Researching, Writing & Selling Your Script on the Web was a Top Seller at The Writer’s Store.

Anyway, we will feature How To Tips, Marketing Advice, Share our Knowledge, and hold interviews with other professional screenwriters.

Our first show: 9pm MST (8pm LA time), January 14, 2009 will feature an Academy Award Nominee and much more!.

You can access the show via this link or by listening below >

READY TO BE A PAID WRITER?

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