Scott Frank is one of Hollywood's most respected scriptwriters, and now one of its most promising directors. Frank's first produced script was high school comedy thriller Plain Clothes (1988), but his breakthrough came in 1991 when his original scripts for both Dead Again and Little Man Tate came to the screen. Since then, he has shown great talent at adapting novels: he was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Out of Sight (1998), having already turned another Elmore Leonard novel, Get Shorty (1995), into a big hit. Frank also co-wrote Malice (1993) and adapted James Lee Burke's Heaven's Prisoners for his brother-in-law Phil Joanou, while his more recent credits include Minority Report (2002), The Flight of the Phoenix (2004) and The Interpreter (2005).

Like much of his best work, Frank's directorial debut The Lookout uses many of the components of the thriller genre but is much more driven by character than by plot. The hero of The Lookout is Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), a high school sports star whose world implodes when he causes a traffic accident which kills two of his friends, and leaves him with severe brain damage. He ends up working at a small-town bank in the Kansas wastes, where he is noticed by Gary (Matthew Goode), someone from his old school who is planning to rob the bank Chris works in. The film's dialogue — particularly from Chris' blind roommate Lewis (Jeff Daniels) — is deliciously sharp, and from the film's memorable opening sequence, Frank shows himself to be a confident and assured director.

Filmmaker spoke to Scott Frank about his roots in the film industry, the challenges of screenwriting in Hollywood, and The Lookout's long road from page to screen.

Filmmaker : I believe you got your start in the business working on documentaries.

Frank: Yeah, I worked for Alan Landsburg Productions right out of college for about six months. Alan's wife, Linda Otto, was making a series of documentaries for Showtime, and I got hired on to do research, to find stuff that supported her point of view.

Filmmaker: How did that work affect you as a writer?

Frank: It didn't really change me at all. I was miserable: I had no time to work, all I could think about was how much time I was wasting in this job, and I really wanted to write. I was working on a version of Little Man Tate, which badly needed a rewrite, and I was so upset that I couldn't work on that. It was really frustrating to me. This was back in 1982, and it was only in 1991 that Little Man Tate got made. No one wanted to make it for the longest time. They all said, “We love this, but we hope someone else makes it.” I never expected it to get made. It languished for a long time, but it was a great calling card for me. By 1984, I had an agent, and by the start of 1985 I was moving onto the lot at Paramount, where I had my own office. They had a writer's floor there, which was one of the last things Jeffrey Katzenberg did before he moved from Paramount to Disney. It was all these writers together, and we had a great time. I worked with Lindsay Doran, who's now a great producer and was then an executive at Paramount. She essentially taught me how to write scripts: Plain Clothes was like my undergraduate degree, and Dead Again was graduate school. I probably had an office at Paramount for four years, longer than any other writer that was on the floor. But I was just working on those two projects. Plain Clothes was about a year or two to write, and Dead Again was two or three years to write. I'm very, very slow. I can rewrite other people's scripts quickly, but my own stuff takes a long time.

Filmmaker: Is it difficult for you to see directors changing your scripts?

Frank: I have a thing about my personality that is both a good thing and a bad thing for me artistically. I have this desire to always be the good boy, so I'm a real people-pleaser. That's great for my relationships with directors, producers and the studios, but not so great in terms of my own artistic satisfaction. There's a shotgun marriage that happens frequently when you bring a director on. You've been working with the producers for a very long time, but when the director comes on you're beginning again at this new relationship, which is frequently very difficult. Letting go of the material is less of a problem for me than starting up again. Screenwriters have to accept that they'll never have their vision on film — that's not our job. The collaborative nature of films means that nobody gets their vision on film, not even the director! Unless you have supreme power and are a certain kind of director who's trying to control everything (of which there are maybe three), you really have no control. It's about trying to compromise, and you're always making compromises every day. Everyone is contributing, so it's pretty much your vision, but it's changing as it goes through other people's interpretation of things. You hope that the story stays intact, that the narrative integrity remains the same — that's what you really fight to protect more than anything. For me, in the 22 years that I've been doing this, the most satisfying part of it has never been the finished film, even though I admire the work of all the directors I've worked for. The actual writing of it — that's where the juice is!

Filmmaker: Do you go on set a lot as a writer?

Frank: It just depends. On some of my films, I've been there every single day; some, I've only been there a couple of days. For one thing, it's excruciatingly boring to be on set as a writer. You have nothing to do, you're the only person sitting there without a job, and what you're really doing down deep is policing the script, but pretending not to. As a writer you have a voice, but no say. It can be a humiliating experience to know that you can't make anything happen, you can just suggest. Now having directed, I understand how it's so annoying to have people making suggestions. Even when the script person comes up and says to you that you have a continuity issue, they're right and they're just doing their job — but you're still mad at them! You're under so much pressure, you don't want any bad news.

Filmmaker: From what I've read, The Lookout is a project that developed slowly.

Frank: I pitched The Lookout to Steven Spielberg in the mid-90s, but I didn't write it immediately because two things happened. First, I'd had three kids in a very short period of time and I needed to move, so I bought a house in Pasadena that I couldn't afford. Secondly, Elmore Leonard had just finished Out of Sight. I swore I'd never adapt another one of his books, because Get Shorty came out so well for me and was such a good experience. But when I bought this house, I panicked and I took the job. I loved the book, but I took it for purely mercenary reasons, and it turned out to be the most satisfying experience I've had as a writer. It was truly gratifying.

Filmmaker: Were you always going to direct the film? I've read that Sam Mendes, Michael Mann and David Fincher were all interested in the project.

Frank: Michael was never attached; I talked to him about it, but I don't think he was ever really interested. I think he admired it, but didn't want to delve into it. Sam was attached right before American Beauty came out. We were working on it for quite some time, but he ultimately left the project to go and do The Road to Perdition. The movie languished for a period while I worked on other things, and then David Fincher came along. When I was working with David, we had several meetings with Leonardo DiCaprio, and we were really hoping that he would be in the movie. I can't say he was fully committed, but he was seriously thinking about it. The movie was at DreamWorks at the time, and they balked at the budget because it was a bit high, so they weren't showing David a lot of enthusiasm. By and large, the script I shot was very close to the one David and I developed. We had a great time, and I was really sad when he left to go do Zodiac. And that's when I said, “I really want to do it, I don't want to rewrite for another director.”

Filmmaker: Did you have to convince the moneymen to let you do it?

Frank: What's funny is that Larry Marks, my producer, had said to me even before Sam came on board, “You should direct this movie.” And Walter Parkes, my other producer, had said, “If you want to direct this movie, and you tell me that you really want to do this, I'll support you.” The issue was never my directing, but with DreamWorks it was that they didn't want to make this kind of movie — that was the stumbling block.

Filmmaker: It feels like it's consciously an old-fashioned movie, and not one that seems overly concerned about the box office.

Frank: Well, I love movies like Charley Varrick, but audiences don't flock to them like they once did, and studios are nervous about them because they're 'small time' and not necessarily very conceptual. But I love those movies because they're all about character. There's also a British film called Bellman and True that I really love, and that had a huge, huge, huge impact on me, because it was a character piece. In Bellman and True, there's a very long set-up where you really get to know the characters and care about them. But it had a much more technical heist, and I knew I wasn't going to do a very technical heist in The Lookout because I was less interested in the mechanics of how they cut through a wall than the repercussions of getting caught. Also I really admire Dog Day Afternoon because it's ostensibly a bank robbery movie, but it really wasn't.

Filmmaker: What have you gained from knowing director Phil Joanou? And did you watch him, and other directors you worked with, in order to learn how to direct yourself?

Frank: Phil and I have known each other over 20 years, and we're very close. I would ask him all sorts of things. He's a brother, and my best friend, and I called him frequently from Canada [The Lookout was shot in Manitoba] to get advice. He was really helpful to me. With other directors, I would watch and ask a lot of questions. I was sitting there with some other pretty great directors, like Barry Sonnenfeld, Steven Soderbergh and Steven Spielberg, and it was really informative for me. All of them were very, very helpful.

Filmmaker: Are you now planning on being a writer-director, or will you go back to just writing? Will you only be able to direct again if the film succeeds financially?

Frank: The numbers mean nothing to me. I think if the movie were universally disliked and failed, that would be a problem, but people seem to like it enough so that there's some sort of prophylactic between me and failure now. So even if the movie doesn't do well financially, I think I'll be able to do it again. I had three goals for this movie: one, I didn't want to be embarrassed; two, I wanted to have a really different creative experience; and three, I wanted to be able to do it again should I like doing it. And I really loved doing it — when I finished shooting, I wanted to start again the next day! I think what made it so satisfying and fulfilling is that I wrote the script, and so I think I need to write something, and who knows how long that could take.

Filmmaker: When was the last time you cried in a film, and which one was it?

Frank: It's easy to make me cry, I cried at The Omega Man when Charlton Heston died! The Best Years of Our Lives wrecks me every time I see it. I showed it to a bunch of the actors from The Lookout, and all of us were reduced to tears, just sniffling idiots. William Wyler is my hero.

Filmmaker: What was the first film you ever saw?

Frank: Probably Mary Poppins. But I was just bored by it, it wasn't an epiphany for me. That was much later. There were two movies, a one-two punch, that made me want to write. Harold and Maude, because I have never been as happy in a movie as I was in Harold and Maude. Hal Ashby is my other hero. I just got a great message from my daughter yesterday telling me she saw it and loved it. And the other movie was Dog Day Afternoon. I remember sitting in the movie theater watching it and seeing how the movie affected the audience. And then watching them go completely still when they find out why Al Pacino is robbing the bank was completely awesome. Hal Ashby is probably my favorite contemporary director, and my favorite three directors are Hal Ashby, Michael Powell and William Wyler.

Filmmaker: If you had an unlimited budget and could cast whoever you wanted (alive or dead), what film would you make?

Frank: I would make the western I wrote, Godless, with Steve McQueen.

Filmmaker: And finally, do you always try and get into the movie theater early enough to watch the previews?

Frank: Yes, I am obsessive about getting there early enough to watch the previews. And getting the right seat!

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/30/2007 11:40:00 AM Comments (0)

Color Me Kubrick: A True...ish Story is the fascinating story of English conman Alan Conway (flamboyantly portrayed by John Malkovich) who made his career out of impersonating Stanley Kubrick. Conway found out that hardly anyone actually knew what Kubrick looked like, a discovery which led him to take his deception to extravagant, and often ridiculous, extremes. He used his borrowed identity to obtain huge amounts of money and seduce the young and impressionable, and got so immersed in the activities of his affluent alter ego that he began almost believing he was Kubrick.

The film is the directorial debut of Brian Cook, a veteran of the movie industry who is known as one of the best assistant directors in the business. The Brit cut his teeth on cult classics like Alfie (1966) and The Wicker Man (1973), and has since worked with everybody from Brian De Palma to Mel Brooks. Cook was such an ideal choice to helm Color Me Kubrick because he himself was a long-time collaborator of Kubrick's. The real Kubrick, that is.

Filmmaker talked to Cook about Kubrick, working with John Malkovich, and his memories of over forty years in films.

Filmmaker: Tell me about what it was like working with Stanley Kubrick?

Cook: It was always a long journey with Stanley, because the films always took a long time prepare and then to shoot. So it was always an endurance test as much as anything. On most movies you know when you're going to start and finish, but with Stanley you were always going off at a tangent so you could never see the light at the end of the tunnel. I worked two and a half years on Eyes Wide Shut, probably a year and three quarters on The Shining, and a year and a bit on Barry Lyndon. I didn't do Full Metal Jacket because I'd just bought a house in Australia, and my kids were very young and had just started school. So I ducked out of a year at Beckton gasworks!

Filmmaker: What's your favorite Kubrick story?

Cook: I reserve those more for after two or three bottles of wine about two o'clock in the morning! There are so many stories with Stanley, and I'll save most of them for my memoirs if I get around to writing them, but Stanley was a lot of fun. He was terrific, and the only times he was difficult was when he was shooting. Stanley was much more fun and relaxed in the preparation and the editing, and at weekends when you weren't actually shooting but talking about the picture. I remember on The Shining he used to say to me, "What we should really have is some guy that we could send out to direct this during the week. And we can sit up here, look at the rushes, and send him back to do it again."

Filmmaker: How aware was Kubrick that Alan Conway was impersonating him?

Cook: When we were doing Eyes Wide Shut, it really came to the fore. Tony Frewin, who was Stanley's personal assistant and was always on his payroll, was inundated with these odd calls from people saying, "Stanley owes me money," or "Stanley's promised me a part in a film," or some bullshit. Tony would take their names, go and see Stanley, who he would say, "I've never heard of this bloke. Find out who he is." Then Tony checked him out with the police, but the problem was that you could never bring him to court because none of the people he had conned would come forward and admit that they'd been fooled. It got difficult when he signed Stanley's name on a bank loan for a gay club in Soho... Tony kept a file on all these incidents, and he'd written novels and screenplays before, so he wrote a screenplay. I liked it a lot, and said, "We should make this."

Filmmaker: How close to the facts is the film?

Cook: It's all true, basically. The only reason we couldn't call it a true story was for legal reasons - so that's why we called it a 'true-ish' story. It's amazing how many people didn't know what he looked like, especially when I first worked with Stanley in the early 70s. He was a very private person. He wasn't a social person, and he hardly ever went out. It was very rare for him to get forced into going to a restaurant by his wife.

Filmmaker: Was it a daunting prospect directing your first film?

Cook: I found it very easy. I've directed loads of second unit stuff, and carried a lot of bad directors through the years. One or two supposedly good ones as well! I could never afford to be a director, because once you become a top-class technician and you've got financial responsibilities, you need to work 53 weeks a year to break even. So you can't afford to take two or three years out to make a movie.

Filmmaker: What was it like directing John Malkovich's performance? Did he already have a fully-formed idea of the character?

Cook: We talked about it beforehand, and I wanted to make it very over-the-top to try and make it a bit more fun. John's fabulous, the perfect professional. I'd worked with him before, and I wanted to use an actor I knew – he was the only actor I sent the script to. I also sent the script to my old friend David Hemmings for his opinion, and also I wanted him to play one of the supporting roles, but he unfortunately died before we started shooting.

Filmmaker: There are nice musical nods to Kubrick in the movie, but did you ever consider directing it in a Kubrickian style?

Cook: Not really – I didn't really think about Stanley too much. I always wanted to use his music, because one of the things about Stanley was his superb choice of music, because he listened to so much. I thought it would be ridiculous not to use some of that stuff, and I also thought it would be amusing. I've obviously learned a lot from the good directors – whether I've learned how to sort out a script is another story.

Filmmaker: What was your dream job as a kid?

Cook: I only ever thought I would go into the film industry, because my father [sound technician John Cook] was in the film industry. When I was a kid, I used to be around when my father was making films like Moby Dick, and watched all of that stuff going on. I didn't know what exactly I was going to do in the industry, because it's very difficult to work out which area interests you most of all. What my father said to me was, "Listen, you don't want to be a technician because you might not be good enough for that, so if you're going to come into the film industry join the production department, because even a moron makes a living there!"

Filmmaker: When was the last time you wished you had a different job?

Cook: Oh, never. I've had a fantastic life in the film industry and I've been very, very lucky to work with some fantastic directors, technicians and actors. I've traveled the world and I'm so used to never having paid the hotel bill, that when I go on holiday I'm astonished how expensive it is!

Filmmaker: What's the strangest thing you've seen during your time in the film industry?

Cook: I think it was probably on Barry Lyndon , when we had to leave Ireland and Warner Bros didn't know, or anybody else, and I had to call Stanley's lawyer to tell him. That was a strange moment, I must say. We'd had a scare – there was a phone call made to one of the hairdressers on the set where we were shooting in Dublin Castle - and we moved very quickly. In fact, Stanley was out of town that night. It was supposedly to do with the IRA, but it was never proven.

# posted by Nick Dawson @ 3/23/2007 11:40:00 AM Comments (0)