'Rent' was a special project for me. It was my first notable screenplay job. I worked with two wonderful directors on it, starting with Spike Lee in the summer of 2001. I wrote a draft for Spike and he was really good to me.
I'd love to work on a script in collaboration.
Unfortunately scripts don't chase me. I chase them. I struggle, battle, discard, pick it back, struggle further, plead with it, curse it, cajole and try to be clever. But it is invariably the script that rules.
I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.
The first draft of 'Ex Machina' is extremely different than the finished film. That would be like 10% of the original draft stayed into the shooting script.
I often have scripts sent to me with allegedly Scottish characters where I end up telling them, 'You're going to have to rethink this whole thing!'
Sometimes I want to go into Saturday Night Live and rewrite some of the sketches because they're really not that good.
You hate to see yourself do one draft of a script and then have somebody else come back in and change what you've done.
Like, every couple of months you read, they rewrite, you come back in, they've animated more stuff - they usually videotape you while you're reading it - so they'll incorporate some gestures and some facial expressions into it.
I think film and television - particularly film - you are very isolated as a writer. If you're lucky, you have a good relationship with the director. Then you do make that development and come on set and be part of something. But ultimately, your work is kind of done by the time you come on set.
Writing screenplays is not my business. I've written half a dozen, and maybe half of those were made. But it was never a satisfying experience. It was just work. You're an employee. You would be told what to do. Studio execs would cross out my dialogue and put in their dialogue.
There were guys in 'The State' who would take one script and rewrite it and rewrite it and rewrite it and fight for it for a whole season, and after a couple of seasons, you realized that doesn't work. You have to just be willing to throw something away, no matter how good it is, and write a better joke.
I very rarely read a script that I don't feel I want to change a lot.
I've worked on so many films where the script is one thing and then, somewhere down the line - on set, sometimes - it changes, and there's zero I can do about it.
Good scripts have always been, I think, hard to find. Good storytelling, good writing - it's just not easy. I have made it a point that - if I'm going to put the energy into doing this work - I will wait until I find something I'm really happy with.
Not every script that rolls in is ready to shoot. Few are, actually. So you go back and work on the thing.
Developing films with directors, developing films with actors, is a poor percentage play for a screenwriter.
With my first book, I was hired to write a draft of the script. I was so young and less confident. They put me through seven or eight drafts and it was just getting worse and worse, and then the film was never made.
Quite often, I'll be sent a script for a movie. And I find that I like it, so I say I'll do it. But then they rewrite it for me. They make it quirky. Odd. I find that rather annoying. I call it Walkenising.
My creative team filters the scripts before they reach me and a few others. We evaluate them, ponder over the budget, and think of various possibilities to get the viewer excited.
Musicals are written and then rewritten. Those things used to happen on the road. Now they are done in New York during preview performances.
I've worked on movies that are being rewritten as you go, but you take so long and so much time doing it, that it's not really an issue knowing what's going to happen or how the movie is going to end.
You were taught how to do the things you needed to do. Dance, speech, fencing. They groomed people. If you were in a film, and the script wasn't working for you, they brought in screenwriters and fixed the scripts.
I didn't understand that TV writing wasn't writing; it was pitching.
After 'Divergent,' I got a job rewriting a sci-fi script at Paramount. I think they really liked what I did, so I got a call saying, 'We're about to shoot 'Ninja Turtles' in three or four months; do you wanna come in and do a little work on the script?' That was the beginning of a many-month 'Ninja Turtle' odyssey.
