Dave Watson: Thanks for taking the time to talk. How did this book, Screenwriting Behind Enemy Lines, come about? How about the title and cover?
John Schimmel: Michael Wiese Productions actually came up with the barbed wire and World War II imagery. After working in the studios, I got my MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College, which is a wonderful but idealized environment, and I thought there needed to be a reality check on the Hollywood environment. So I gave my first lecture there. When I started teaching at UC-Riverside, I posted a lecture every week. I realized I had enough material for a book and Tod Goldberg, who runs the program there, was very supportive.
DW: You ask some fundamental questions in your book, which combined are the basis for what you call the only question that matters: Is it a movie?
JS: That’s the fundamental question posed in the studios’ Monday morning staff meetings in which the fate of screenplays is determined. As an executive, you had to be able to speak to the component parts of that question. For example, when I worked with Steve Reuther at Belair Entertainment, it was in your face. If an executive came into a meeting ready to fight for a script, Steve wouldn’t hesitate. He would ask, “Why? Who’s the audience?” Heaven help the executive who couldn’t answer that question.
DW: You’ve had quite a journey in the movie industry.
JS: I started at Warner Bros. as a reader, then was booted upstairs to become a development and production executive. I started out helping identify scripts we wanted to acquire and then working to develop those we optioned. Later, I became a studio presence on some of the films we were making. At Belair Entertainment and then at Ascendant Pictures I transitioned into the role of creative producer, a role I liken to that of the Little Dutch boy plugging holes in the dike, trying to prevent productions from veering off into scheduling or production or creative hell. The job came with interesting challenges. I flew down to Mexico once while Collateral Damage was shooting to convince Mr. Schwarzenegger to accept a $20 million budget cut the studio was insisting on. He’s not a guy who is used to people telling him he can’t have what he wants.
DW: At one point in your book you discuss Driving Miss Daisy, how the studio that released it as a negative pick-up said they still wouldn’t have made it after it became a huge success, even winning Best Picture. The studio's identity seems to be very important.
JS: That’s right. As with any company, the brand identity is important. A Warner Bros. film will be different than a Fox movie versus a Universal. And of course the studio knows what it is and is not good at selling. Now about Driving Miss Daisy (laughing) before I was hired as a reader I went to an interview with Bruce Berman, who was President of Production at Warner Bros. The film had been a negative pick-up for the studio but it had just won the Best Picture Oscar, it had generated huge box office on a tiny production budget. So I thought I had a clever question when I asked Bruce if it would make it more likely that Warner Bros. would make more small films. But he said, “No, we’d still never make that movie.”
DW: How did you transfer from reading scripts into becoming an executive? Was it easy to switch hats?
JS: It took a lot of work to convince people it was a good idea. I came to Hollywood in a very strange way. I’d been a bass player in New York on the music and theater scene, so I was around musical and stage production and I’d been a part of developing stories out of workshops. At some point I took a hiatus and sold a script to Fox, which is when I really got bitten by the movie bug. Still, it was not so simple to convince people that a bass player would make a great executive.
DW: Then you were a reader. Talk about on the job learning.
JS: I started out hired as a freelance reader to scan the first fifty pages of a script and tell the company if it was worth hiring a more experienced (a.k.a. more expensive) reader to read the whole thing. But eventually I was hired into the story department at Warner Bros. I spent a lot of energy trying to find a need to fill for the executives that went beyond coverage. The executives at the studio at that time – Lucy Fisher, Lisa Henson, Kimberly Brent, Bob Brassel, Courtenay Valenti, Lorenzo di Boneventura – were incredibly generous with their time teaching me how to write script notes. It was all about trying to find a need to fill at the studio.
DW: You were at Warner Bros. during a time when the business really started to change, right?
JS: Yes. It was fascinating. Warner Bros. had already merged with Time, Inc. to become Time–Warner, but the visionary Steve Ross was still CEO when I arrived. Steve died in 1992. I never knew him but of course any corporation’s culture reflects its CEO, and Warner Bros. was a fabulous place to work under his tenure, for all kinds of reasons. And I remember, when Steve died, I did not hear a single word against him, which in a studio environment is unheard of. But his successor at the parent company was to be a guy named Gerald Levin. The change at Warner Bros. was immediate – and it was architectural. When I got there, the production group was housed in the main administration building, along with Bob Daly and Terry Semel. The building had wonderful, serpentine hallways and offices of all sizes and shapes. But once Levin was installed, Bob and Terry re-designed the space. Their suite became much more corporate. And they re-modeled the old wardrobe building and moved the creative/production group into the second floor. Uniform offices, hallways that were parallel or perpendicular – and we were right on top of the Warner Store. The message was clear – someone wanted the studio to run on the Disney model where the films were oftentimes commercials for the insanely lucrative product line. It turned out that no one, including Daly or Semel, really understood the Disney model. But that was the beginning of the corporatization of the studio. A side note, by the way – Levin and his boys thought Ross was a profligate CEO and they were determined to get the studio’s spending under control. But Levin also wanted to be seen as a visionary just like Ross – and with the merger with AOL engineered one of the greatest corporate disasters in history.
DW: You consult for Cloud Imperium Games and teach screenwriting.
JS: I teach screenwriting at the University of California at Riverside’s Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, and creative producing at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Film School. And I was a story consultant for Cloud Imperium Games but I’m now there full time. Cloud Imperium Games was founded by Chris Roberts. Chris is best known for having created the hugely successful Wing Commander game, which was the first to integrate live action film elements into a game. Chris took a hiatus from the game business to found Ascendant Pictures, where I was President of Production. That company went away, though we made some great films like Lord of War and Lucky Number Slevin, and Chris decided to go back into the game business. His business model is like nothing I have ever seen. He has so far raised a stunning $36 million through crowd funding, all from the community he lovingly tends on the company web site. I am still working on the story and writing for the game, but my new charge is to help build out the linear content on the site. It’s incredibly exciting.
DW: At one point in your book you cite “Ceding control to your own subconscious.” Is this about the writing process itself?
JS: Most books on screenwriting emphasize the craft over the art in writing. My book of course presents the elements of craft as they are so important in screenwriting. But in the book – and as a teacher and a consultant – I encourage writers to really dig and find the heart of what they are writing. It is remarkable how many screenplays reach my desk that have really universal and sometimes even profound centers of which the writer is utterly unaware. It is really gratifying to help writers uncover their own invisible hearts. Writing for games is a whole different challenge. You have a protagonist you have no control over at all. At the same time, game intelligence is now such that the games can react to a player’s character, to the decisions they make and the actions they take. Which implies the possibility of building a real morality into the game. If in a game you’re on the battlefield and your buddy gets shot, you may have to decide, “Do I leave him behind?” Then you have to think about how your battalion will react.
DW: With film you’re doing similar things, creating worlds and morality, thinking of The Wolf of Wall Street.
JS: With that movie I think they started with both, showing you the world of penny stocks and a completely amoral character.
DW: Finally, what would you say is your favorite cinematic moment?
JS: I'm thinking the bus/train crash in The Fugitive at the first screening. I talk about that in the book - our first screening was very soon after the end of principal photography and we had no idea what to expect - and that crash stopped the show, people stood and cheered. And that was my own crash with the power of action defining character.
Clip: The Fugitive
Dave Watson is an educator and editor of the web site “Movies Matter,” http://www.davesaysmoviesmatter.com. He lives in Madison, WI.
John Schimmel: Michael Wiese Productions actually came up with the barbed wire and World War II imagery. After working in the studios, I got my MFA in Creative Writing at Goddard College, which is a wonderful but idealized environment, and I thought there needed to be a reality check on the Hollywood environment. So I gave my first lecture there. When I started teaching at UC-Riverside, I posted a lecture every week. I realized I had enough material for a book and Tod Goldberg, who runs the program there, was very supportive.
DW: You ask some fundamental questions in your book, which combined are the basis for what you call the only question that matters: Is it a movie?
JS: That’s the fundamental question posed in the studios’ Monday morning staff meetings in which the fate of screenplays is determined. As an executive, you had to be able to speak to the component parts of that question. For example, when I worked with Steve Reuther at Belair Entertainment, it was in your face. If an executive came into a meeting ready to fight for a script, Steve wouldn’t hesitate. He would ask, “Why? Who’s the audience?” Heaven help the executive who couldn’t answer that question.
DW: You’ve had quite a journey in the movie industry.
JS: I started at Warner Bros. as a reader, then was booted upstairs to become a development and production executive. I started out helping identify scripts we wanted to acquire and then working to develop those we optioned. Later, I became a studio presence on some of the films we were making. At Belair Entertainment and then at Ascendant Pictures I transitioned into the role of creative producer, a role I liken to that of the Little Dutch boy plugging holes in the dike, trying to prevent productions from veering off into scheduling or production or creative hell. The job came with interesting challenges. I flew down to Mexico once while Collateral Damage was shooting to convince Mr. Schwarzenegger to accept a $20 million budget cut the studio was insisting on. He’s not a guy who is used to people telling him he can’t have what he wants.
DW: At one point in your book you discuss Driving Miss Daisy, how the studio that released it as a negative pick-up said they still wouldn’t have made it after it became a huge success, even winning Best Picture. The studio's identity seems to be very important.
JS: That’s right. As with any company, the brand identity is important. A Warner Bros. film will be different than a Fox movie versus a Universal. And of course the studio knows what it is and is not good at selling. Now about Driving Miss Daisy (laughing) before I was hired as a reader I went to an interview with Bruce Berman, who was President of Production at Warner Bros. The film had been a negative pick-up for the studio but it had just won the Best Picture Oscar, it had generated huge box office on a tiny production budget. So I thought I had a clever question when I asked Bruce if it would make it more likely that Warner Bros. would make more small films. But he said, “No, we’d still never make that movie.”
DW: How did you transfer from reading scripts into becoming an executive? Was it easy to switch hats?
JS: It took a lot of work to convince people it was a good idea. I came to Hollywood in a very strange way. I’d been a bass player in New York on the music and theater scene, so I was around musical and stage production and I’d been a part of developing stories out of workshops. At some point I took a hiatus and sold a script to Fox, which is when I really got bitten by the movie bug. Still, it was not so simple to convince people that a bass player would make a great executive.
DW: Then you were a reader. Talk about on the job learning.
JS: I started out hired as a freelance reader to scan the first fifty pages of a script and tell the company if it was worth hiring a more experienced (a.k.a. more expensive) reader to read the whole thing. But eventually I was hired into the story department at Warner Bros. I spent a lot of energy trying to find a need to fill for the executives that went beyond coverage. The executives at the studio at that time – Lucy Fisher, Lisa Henson, Kimberly Brent, Bob Brassel, Courtenay Valenti, Lorenzo di Boneventura – were incredibly generous with their time teaching me how to write script notes. It was all about trying to find a need to fill at the studio.
DW: You were at Warner Bros. during a time when the business really started to change, right?
JS: Yes. It was fascinating. Warner Bros. had already merged with Time, Inc. to become Time–Warner, but the visionary Steve Ross was still CEO when I arrived. Steve died in 1992. I never knew him but of course any corporation’s culture reflects its CEO, and Warner Bros. was a fabulous place to work under his tenure, for all kinds of reasons. And I remember, when Steve died, I did not hear a single word against him, which in a studio environment is unheard of. But his successor at the parent company was to be a guy named Gerald Levin. The change at Warner Bros. was immediate – and it was architectural. When I got there, the production group was housed in the main administration building, along with Bob Daly and Terry Semel. The building had wonderful, serpentine hallways and offices of all sizes and shapes. But once Levin was installed, Bob and Terry re-designed the space. Their suite became much more corporate. And they re-modeled the old wardrobe building and moved the creative/production group into the second floor. Uniform offices, hallways that were parallel or perpendicular – and we were right on top of the Warner Store. The message was clear – someone wanted the studio to run on the Disney model where the films were oftentimes commercials for the insanely lucrative product line. It turned out that no one, including Daly or Semel, really understood the Disney model. But that was the beginning of the corporatization of the studio. A side note, by the way – Levin and his boys thought Ross was a profligate CEO and they were determined to get the studio’s spending under control. But Levin also wanted to be seen as a visionary just like Ross – and with the merger with AOL engineered one of the greatest corporate disasters in history.
DW: You consult for Cloud Imperium Games and teach screenwriting.
JS: I teach screenwriting at the University of California at Riverside’s Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing and Writing for the Performing Arts, and creative producing at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts Film School. And I was a story consultant for Cloud Imperium Games but I’m now there full time. Cloud Imperium Games was founded by Chris Roberts. Chris is best known for having created the hugely successful Wing Commander game, which was the first to integrate live action film elements into a game. Chris took a hiatus from the game business to found Ascendant Pictures, where I was President of Production. That company went away, though we made some great films like Lord of War and Lucky Number Slevin, and Chris decided to go back into the game business. His business model is like nothing I have ever seen. He has so far raised a stunning $36 million through crowd funding, all from the community he lovingly tends on the company web site. I am still working on the story and writing for the game, but my new charge is to help build out the linear content on the site. It’s incredibly exciting.
DW: At one point in your book you cite “Ceding control to your own subconscious.” Is this about the writing process itself?
JS: Most books on screenwriting emphasize the craft over the art in writing. My book of course presents the elements of craft as they are so important in screenwriting. But in the book – and as a teacher and a consultant – I encourage writers to really dig and find the heart of what they are writing. It is remarkable how many screenplays reach my desk that have really universal and sometimes even profound centers of which the writer is utterly unaware. It is really gratifying to help writers uncover their own invisible hearts. Writing for games is a whole different challenge. You have a protagonist you have no control over at all. At the same time, game intelligence is now such that the games can react to a player’s character, to the decisions they make and the actions they take. Which implies the possibility of building a real morality into the game. If in a game you’re on the battlefield and your buddy gets shot, you may have to decide, “Do I leave him behind?” Then you have to think about how your battalion will react.
DW: With film you’re doing similar things, creating worlds and morality, thinking of The Wolf of Wall Street.
JS: With that movie I think they started with both, showing you the world of penny stocks and a completely amoral character.
DW: Finally, what would you say is your favorite cinematic moment?
JS: I'm thinking the bus/train crash in The Fugitive at the first screening. I talk about that in the book - our first screening was very soon after the end of principal photography and we had no idea what to expect - and that crash stopped the show, people stood and cheered. And that was my own crash with the power of action defining character.
Clip: The Fugitive
Dave Watson is an educator and editor of the web site “Movies Matter,” http://www.davesaysmoviesmatter.com. He lives in Madison, WI.
