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Audiences, in particular, are a tough lot for the screenwriter to like.
Take too few chances and youre viewed as a boring, uncreative, cash-grabbing hack.
.Michael Green,Blade Runner 2049(2017)
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You cant fuck that up.
I had an advantage in that I was developing it with and for Ridley Scott.
He gave me permission, by virtue of liking the idea, to see it through.
I felt the mistake would be to subvert any of my intentions out of fear of it being rejected.
Dont bleed before youre cut, as the expression goes.
The thing is, the rabid fans are going to show up to be disappointed.
The word they use isnormalize.
To be honest, Imnot a fanof Tim Burtons firstBatman.
We didnt have any loyalty to past histories of the Catwoman or Penguin character either.
We did absolutely our own thing.
So I cut them.
Then when I finally saw Christopher NolansBatman, he did not play by that rule.
When Christian Bale is wearing the Batman suit, hes giving these long speeches.
I am the darkness in the light.
I accept that criticism.
Im always stepping into a franchise once a film has established a fanbase.
The biggest challenge was getting the voice for John McClaneright.
It was very hard to speak with authority to him about what I thought was best for the story.
And thats a very good trump card to play when youre trying to figure stuff out.
Ill decide whether to put exclamation points in my work.
I had one produced credit, and that film was not particularly good.
Ron Moore and I wrote it, and it was incredibly challenging because wed never written a movie before.
We were servicing a lot of things: two captains, the fans, ourselves, the studio.
We were getting notes from Patrick Stewart, from William Shatner.
Shatner wanted to check that that he had enough action and that the emotional journey made sense.
And then Stewart, he wanted something he could really sink his teeth into worthy of the big screen.
Kirks death was originally somewhat unceremonious.
We tested the movie, and the audience didnt respond to the ending at all.
Youre always, in the back of your mind, thinking about the fans.
WithStar Trek, you realize theres just no satisfying everybody.
The movie did really well.
1 at the box office when it opened.
It got some positive reviews, it got some negative reviews, it received some valid criticisms.
And we had the benefit of only dealing with one captain.
And once youre into production, its,Oh, shit.
It was a gun that we put to all of our heads.
It was hard to know where to focus.
We love the character, and ultimately, when it comes down to it, we love Keanu.
Then when you return to your lead, its like,Oh, fuck yeah, John Wick!
And we wanted to make it like a road comedy.
We couldnt get excited about it.
I flew up to Vancouver, where Channing was at the time.
I was just like, It all feels too generic.
What were these things like?
What happened to you when you went to these stripper conventions?
He was like, Dude, it was dumb.
And I was like,Oh my God.
That was when I fell in love with the movie.
And Jamie ended up not being able to do it pretty close to shooting.
Would she do it?We sort of cast Jada sight unseen.
She just looked at a script written for a guy and was like, I trust you.
It transformed the energy of the movie.
Theres a meta element.
Desiree Akhavan is playing this video artist whos at a point of creative block in her life.
That came fromMark Duplassand I banging our heads against the wall.
Why is this person putting themselves in harms way?
Landing on this idea was a big aha moment for us.
I always referred to him asZeligif he was a serial killer.
Hes a pathological liar.
You dont know what his real name is at any given time.
But you know now hes a serial killer.
With the second film, we had to create another level of tension.
We leaned on this character playing this game of trust.
That was a decision made out of instinct.
Im watching a movie about you.
Then I started thinking about doing this epic postapocalyptic movie.
It would have picked up where the first movie ended.
So I kept trying to flesh it out.
I kind of forgot about it until I ran into some producer friends.
They were interested in me making a sequel, and so I started thinking about it again.
But I couldnt use that original idea because it would have been too expensive.
One night, we smoked it.
I crawled back to my tent, and I was so high I couldnt sleep.
Ill write until I stop being high.
The tagline was, You didnt have to see the first one, because you really dont.
This guys friend made a movie about him, and now hes trying to make a second movie.
.Larry Gross,Another 48 Hrs.
It was a reason to make the film as well as the difficulty with the film.
We had to service theinstitution that Eddie had become.
But I felt that we came up with a fun way toredothecountry-western bar scene from the original.
I had a pretty big hand in conceiving that in the first film.
She loved the idea, and I kept meeting higher and higher levels of executives.
Finally, Im sitting with the three guys who were running Artisan.
We actually want to talk to you about the sequel toThe Blair Witch Project.
I had a difficult relationship withBlair Witch.
The Artisan guys said, Well, here are three different scripts for a movie.
Why dont you take them home?
All three of them were continuations of the found-footage technique.
So they said, Well, what would you do?
I said, Lets not do a sequel to the underlying story.
I, as a documentarian, observed this fascination of how this film became this cultural phenomenon.
Lets make a sequel that talks about that phenomenon.
They bought it, much to my surprise.
The funny thing about it is I basically had no oversight on set.
They ordered a bunch of reshoots and changed the structure of the film.
My film didnt have any of the bloody reenactments.
Artisan took that scene, broke it up, and sprinkled it throughout the movie.
They gave Jeffrey Donovan this big backstory with a straightjacket like he came from a mental institution.
None of it made any sense to me.
I was director in name, but I had lost control.
I just gulped and went along with the changes.
It was a very painful experience.
Theres a happy ending to the story, though.
When the movie came out, it put me into a profound funk.
Literally, for months, I curled up in a ball of depression.
I remember my wife came into my office and said, Come on, snap out of it.
WatchParadise Lostand remind yourself youre a good filmmaker.
That was the start of2004sSome Kind of Monster.
We were following up a sequel that had gone in a completely opposite direction.
When youre second-guessing the desires of a viewer, youre frequently on the wrong track.
We knew that Lionsgate was going to give us a lot of creative freedom.
So we were like,We want to have a go at make this more mainstream.
But thats completely untrue.
Im not interested in relitigating the tepid response to a sequel that has been, justifiably, mostly forgotten.
The truth is, were talking about like a $6 million movie here, so it was profitable.
It just didnt do what we hoped it would on a critical and fan level.
Im still very proud of it.
We set out to make a scary film.
Most people didnt see it, and thats fine.
And when you get it wrong, attempt to learn the lessons and move on.
In my case, I havent written any more horror sequels; lets put it that way.
