Scripteach

PREFACE

In my screenwriting classes at the New School, I often refer to the screenplay THE FISHER KING, written by Richard LaGravense. While not an absolutely perfect script, it is a damn good one (it was nominated for an Oscar, ultimately losing to THELMA AND LOUISE, which is no slouch of a script itself!) and is a great example of the difference between an active protagonist and a merely flashy leading character. Since THE FISHER KING, Mr. LaGravenese has worked on such scripts as THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, UNSTRUNG HEROES, THE LITTLE PRINCESS, THE REF, THE MIRROR HAS TWO FACES and others, including an uncredited revision of ERIN BROCKIVICH and gone on to also direct LIVING OUT LOUD, P.S. I LOVE YOU, plus a wonderful documentary on the 1970′s film scene, A DECADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE.

I was fortunate enough to meet Mr. LaGravenese (rhymes with “mayonnaise” he told me) and ask him to come and talk to my New School screenwriting classes. Being a very nice man, (his reputation is that of one of the few genuine “real” people in Hollywood), he gave several hours of his time to do a Q & A session in front of several combined classes. I recorded the whole thing for posterity … but because I was nervous interviewing my first big Hollywood writer, I forgot to turn hit the “Record” button until after we got started, so lost the first ten or so minutes of the conversation.

Oops, sorry.

To be honest, I don’t remember what those initial minutes contained, aside from basic introductory comments and a few inanities by me, I’m sure. We started right in with questions about THE FISHER KING because I had used it extensively in my classes. The first recorded answer appears to be in response to me asking what it was like working with Terry Gilliam, a director known for having said at one time he could never imagine directing anything he himself had not written (THE FISHER KING was the first movie he made based on someone else’s script.) and the “waltzing” scene in THE FISHER KING that takes place in Grand Central station.

The rest should be self-explanatory. I hope you find it informative and fun, incomplete as it is. If there was one over-riding “thing” I came away with after meeting and questioning Mr. LaGravenese, it was believe in yourself and write what you really want to write. Even in Hollywood there are people who are interested in material that does not fit the cookie-cutter mode.

Richard LaGravenese: …[TFK director Terry Gilliam] up to this point was trying to tell all of us that he didn’t want to make this a “Gilliam” movie. He wanted us to stick to the script. But he couldn’t help himself, so he was standing there going…we were above the rotunda [in Grand Central Station], and he went “Gee, wouldn’t it be like amazing if like, all of the sudden, everyone just stopped and started dancing?” We were like, “Wow what a great idea.” And he was like “No, no,no–I don’t want another Gilliam movie! I was just saying that.” And we were like, “No, no, no …We gotta do it.” And that’s where that image came from. And so that was a perfect end, a director just taking what I had [written] and making it just better. I mean he just enhanced the whole idea of it.

William Pace: It was set up nicely.

RL: It was. But I think he, he made it better, because in my original draft I realized what I was trying to go for was happening too early. By the woman singing, Jack was sitting there with all these homeless people and suddenly all these people from business and going home to their lives, all stopped to listen to this woman sing this beautiful song. And for a moment Jack felt a part of a community and he didn’t feel ashamed and he didn’t feel all those things and he didn’t feel tense and he felt part of this world and it was a nice moment for him. But it was too early, in a way, and what Terry did instead was he had the audience enter Parry’s world which I thought was better, because you didn’t really get a sense of what Parry’s world was like. And Jack had further to go to get to that awareness. I found, again because I didn’t know what I was doing as much, that as I was writing, sometimes I would make the character too self aware, because I wanted to figure the character out, so I would have the character know too much about himself and then there was nowhere to go. He was already solved, he was already too conscious and so that’s another thing you got to look out for.

WP: It was by telling people or having a character know there was nowhere for them to follow, right?

RL Right. I’m still learning on how to reveal a story and not give it all away at the first (laughs), in the first half.

WP: Talking about that, there was a nice moment where Jack has found out who Parry is and his connection in his life. And he comes home and there’s a scene where Ann takes him on the table, and there he’s playing his tapes, going through his files and he says ” I just want to pay the fine and go home.” And, you know, he states a general objective, a general goal, and then we see him, the next day pursue that. Without saying, ‘this is how I’m going to accomplish this.” We know what he’s about, but now he’s going to start to find how to do it. And then you set up another; you know, talk about the structure in terms of obstacles, a character has something, they want it but what stops them? Well, first, literally he tries to pay the fine, he tries to give him money.

RL: Right.

WP: Money is no good for Parry.

RL: Right.

WP: So he throws it away. Then that proceeds the whole obstacles he has to overcome.

RL: Right.

WP: You give yourself a little disservice. I think you…you know a little more than you were aware of and now you’re just trying to incorporate it.

RL: These were in earlier drafts actually. These were in when Jack was in the limousine in the first act. I had a little monologue for him that was just to self aware.

WP: Okay.

RL: He was too super-conscious of what his own problems were. And it was reduced to him simply saying, “I’m not opening this window.” Which said more about who he was than the monologue, which would of made him too verbose.

WP: Showed us instead of…

RL: Exactly.

AUDIENCE: (inaudible question about adapting books)

RL: …Adaptation. Yeah, that you have to find. I think there are universal themes. I mean, here I did this children’s story A LITTLE PRINCESS, which is about a girl, a little ten year-old girl, who’s father is killed. And for me it was about magic and spirituality. I found, I found a core of why I wanted to tell this particular story. I think, you got to see when you’re offered things and books, you have to see what resonates in you and what you want to be a part of. Find your question in there. I think it’s there.

AUDIENCE: Yeah that’s exactly the question I was going to ask…(inaudible question about adapting BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY)

RL: Well, to tell you the truth about that, I did not like the book, which is going to sound like back pedaling but it was true. They offered me this job, they had had people who had adapted the book before, other writers, good writers who made the mistake of adapting the book. And it was unfilmable. Ahhm, which is easy. So I went back and forth on this because, here, let’s face it, part of my ego was going “wow, you know this is high profile, famous people, da, da,da…” And the other side of me was going “you’re a whore…

AUDIENCE: (laughs)

RL: Don’t let this book…what’s going on with this?” So, I did a lot of soul searching and the reason I ultimately said yes was because I called my sister. I have a sister who is ten years older. She’s been in, ahh, a difficult marriage for over twenty years, both her children are grown, she has a boy and a son. I said “Patty? Did you read this book?” She was like, “It’s my life.” I said “why?” She says “Welp, nobody understands. You don’t really understand when you’re married for so many years and your children are grown, that you can have these feelings again. That something like that can happen to you.” And when she said that to me, I thought that I was being a bit of an artistic snob, that this is trash. But it is speaking to people, it’s speaking to people who are lonely or who are in lives that they are not satisfied with. And I thought that there was something valuable there, that needed to be explored and if it was done well it actually could make a nice love story, that isn’t about washboard stomachs or nudity, or anything like that. it’s about this middle aged couple who find each other. Because it was about two people who more or less get swept up in the feeling of love. Not because they don’t fall in love because they’re so unhappy in their marriages or all that kind of stuff. They just sort of get swept up in this feeling of it. And when I went to the studio and said this is how I’ll do it, I said “I don’t like the book, I think it needs to be changed. And I think that it must be just from her point of view. This is a woman’s story. I don’t give a shit about this guy. He’s like this esoteric Marlboro man , this kind of like…Jonathan livingston segal meets Eric Segal, it was like “LOVE STORY” meets “ILLUSIONS”. Oh, all that stuff about hormones, I don’t know what the hell he was talking about. I said it has got to be her story because those are the people who are reading this book. Women are reading this book it is touching something in them. And I love writing for actresses. So those are the, for me it was exploring loneliness exploring, ahh … a love story.

AUDIENCE. Did Meryl Streep sign on after she read your script?

RL: Her quote was “How can such a great script come from such an awful book?” Which made me feel great because she will not sentimentalize it, she will … I worked off of the book. I remember at one point I was a little lost for a scene or something. I thought, gee what does he say in the scene? I was like (claps his hands twice) I like put the book away and never opened it again

AUDIENCE (laughs)

RL: It was, it would just take me down the wrong road. You know, uhm, there are still things in it, there are a couple of things from the book that they put back. I went into fantasy. What I did was my first draft, which I actually liked. It was like “Diary Of A Mad Housewife” meets “Bridges Of Madison County”. I had her so insane with her life that she had all of these fantasies. Like you know … getting so fed up with her kids that she stabs them and stuff. And I mean like going really off, but funny because I think it needed a lot of humor. And that got the movie green lit and it got every thing going. But, once it got going they cut all that out and said part of their awareness was that people love this book and if you fuck up too much with it they’re going to be angry. So we went back to the bare bones of it more. But it’s still different … hopefully it will be different. I also developed the daughter and the son. Umm, there is a whole through line in the script that is not in the book because to me I wanted them to read the diary and have it affect their lives somehow. There is a reason she’s doing this. Otherwise she’s like a little pornographic. Why is she telling , these, her children, about, you know, fucking this guy thinking about Africa. Why do you need to hear that from your mom? And so I made these characters, the son is in a marriage that he takes for granted and is very, sort of irritable with his wife and doesn’t respect her very much. And she’s sort of a loud mouth kind of Florida girl: and the daughter is in a loveless marriage of a man who cheats on her and she can’t leave it because she is afraid of divorcing him. And by the time they finish the diary, they both make choices in their own marriages because of what they felt their mother had experienced. Which, she basically says to them “grab life, don’t let it just go by.” And so you see the effect it had on them, which is not in the book. There is more … there is much more there that could’ve been explored.

WP: Are you ready to be vilified by all the supporters, people who are crazy about…?

RL: Fuck `em if they can’t take a joke.

AUDIENCE: (laughs)

RL: I mean at that point … right now the problem is that there is such a backlash on “Madison County” now, it is totally cool to dis it. So, there are two audiences out there now. The intellectuals and … so I think the best of it, I think what people love about it, is still there. The love story is still there, there is just more humor to it and they are three-dimensional as opposed to being one-dimensional. And I think that will help it.

WP: How did you … I’m going to take some of the things you’re saying and try to get back to specifics. You say well, what made them three-dimensional. You saw they were one-dimensional. What can you do as a writer, a screenwriter to make them three-dimensional?

RL: You create an inner life.

WP: How do you do that, and show that?

RL: My first trick, and it was a trick, was to use fantasies as you can’t really do it. I didn’t want to write long monologues, I didn’t want to use narration much. So I used fantasies to show what was going on inside of her. But once we took that out I learned in this script one of the reasons I also want to do it was that I was dying to do something simple. I had been in complicated adaptations and this was such a simple, I mean I wrote the first draft in six weeks. It was just so nice, two people simple. And it was about feelings and about nuances and I can’t really describe it to you except when I got them talking in the kitchen, I had them explore … it’s like, in the book they had this affair just far too easily for me. And in the movie, the script, you experience all the things she’s going through. You experience the excitement, the fear, the guilt, the shame all these little things that in the book were just sort of like “Oh this is like this holy experience we’re having,” and it’s just in of itself, but it is not easy to have an affair, you know when you’re married to somebody for an hundred years. And all the turmoil of how she feels about herself, how she looks, how she … I don’t know … all those little nuances all those details I found a way of showing inner life, that I didn’t find in the book.

WP: In the book there is so much interior voice. It’s talking about showing these things. Bringing them from the interior to the exterior so that we can see them. And they’re great when using his experiencing. So that the audience doesn’t just view but it is somehow involved with it too.

RL: Yeah.

WP: Umm, through all this what you’re saying … I think with adaptations the thing is, someone was telling me they were doing one, the key is to be true to the spirit, not to the letter.

RL: Right, absolutely. It’s a different medium you really can’t do that. You can’t do that. Usually my first draft on adaptations … it wasn’t true of “Madison County” `cause they had already done that … but in other books I stick too closely to the book, in the first draft, find that I am stuck and in the second draft I throw the book away and I start to invent. And I find that out of the invention it starts to work, things start to work.

AUDIENCE: I think that I read that you were working on a script with Barbara Striesand?

RL: Ahh yeah. Welp it was my script that she now has. Um, it was before she was involved … I wrote it shortly after “Fisher King”, it was an assignment from a studio. It was an adaptation of an old french movie called “The Mirror Has Two Faces”. Which was a melodrama in the fifties about a homely man who marries a homely woman, loveless and just sort of out of … it made sense, there was no love there was no romance, and, ah, the end of the movie she has plastic surgery and he kills the plastic surgeon because she winds up running off with his brother-in-law or something like that. And it was very heavy, so I took it and completely … all I took was the idea of a homely woman who becomes beautiful and I completely reinvented it and made it this love story about a beautiful man actually, who’s in love with this woman who is this fiery spirit who he can’t capture. She so breaks his heart that he decides to only to have relationships with someone he won’t have those feelings with, that he can have a, strong feelings, but he won’t get into romantic love, he’ll just get into companionship and friendship and all that stuff. And he picks this homelier woman and, of course, she falls in love with him and feels that she needs to be more beautiful for him and that’s all that happens as a result. So this struck Barbara.

AUDIENCE: (laughs)

RL: So we met the day of the riots in l.A. (laughs) the day the Rodney King verdict came in. And, what is it two years later? Two and a half years later it’s ah, she’s still working on it. And I left it last fall. Umm…

AUDIENCE: There is an article in VANITY FAIR…

RL: VANITY FAIR. Yeah she was actually … she was pulling that [diva stuff]. It was difficult you know, I think the only thing I can say about it is that she has earned the right. I idolized this woman when I was growing up `cause we’re both from Brooklyn, I just idolized her, so one thing, don’t ever meet your idols or ever work with them. The other thing is that she’s earned the right to be in creative control after all these years. The woman is huge, she’s earned that right. It just so happens that at that time I was starting to feel the need to hear my voice and I was so spoiled with Terry [Gilliam], in the collaborative process, that we sort of … she’s not a collaborative person, she sees things one way. Just to tell from the article, she sees things one way that’s it. And so I did one last draft last fall and then I sort of took my hands off of it and we’ve stayed in touch and she’s sill working on it and she may bring in someone to polish it up, and stuff like that. She makes, she makes it. I’m kind of hoping she doesn’t, but I think she might actually.

AUDIENCE: Whose screenwriting do you like and why do you like it?

RL: Current or dead?

AUDIENCE: Either.

RL: Well let’s start with the dead people first. (laughs) Joseph Mankowicz. “All About Eve” was one of my favorite screenplays of all times. Billy wilder and [I.A.L] Diamond of course, I mean that team. I tend to like, I love movies because I love performances, I love actors doing great things so I love dialogue I love good parts. And these people wrote up great parts for actors. I think that is the stuff that I love the best. Lately, I don’t know, I would have to think about it. Woody Allen I love, it’s not so much great writers but great screenplays, I think. I think Spike Lee had a great screenplay in “Do The Right Thing”, but I haven’t liked a lot of the stuff he’s done since. I thought Steve Soderburg did great stuff in “Sex Lies And Videotape” and “King Of The Hill” Actually, I thought that was really good. I loved “Witness” as a screenplay. I loved “Tootsie”, of course I have to think about it but there is a lot of stuff going on.

AUDIENCE: What do you think of “Pulp Fiction”?

RL: I was waiting for that. A day without Quentin?

AUDIENCE: Yeah really.

RL:Yyeah I have of course. Well listen, Quentin is enormously talented. i’ve known him since before “Reservoir Dogs”. What I find he teaches me, and the great thing to learn from Quentin is the way he holds himself as an artist. He is his own audience. He loves movies and he writes and creates movies for him. But because he loves movies he’s also an audience. So he’s making them for an audience as well, but that’s not his viewpoint, he just makes what he loves and what he sees is right, and lets himself … he’s bold in that and it’s a great thing. And I think he can really … he’s a talented writer. I think a lot of the movie. I think what’s brilliant about the movie is brilliant and what’s indulgent about the movie is indulgent. You know, I don’t think it’s any indication of his talent, I think it’s just a process he’s going through and this is what he had to create now. Umm, it will be interesting to see what he will do in the future. He says that the reason he’s still writing about crime and all that stuff is because his life experience has been limited. He’s still sort of a kid so that’s what he is writing about. But he says, as he lives more, will explore deeper themes and stuff like that.

WP: Do you have any aspirations in directing?

RL: Im going to actually. This “The Talisman” is my last assignment after five years of just doing assignments. And i’m going to write and direct an original which i’m just starting this sort of new phase of my career this is going to be the end of one phase.

AUDIENCE: You mentioned earlier that you had some theater experience?

RL: It was limited. It was nothing legit. I was struggling mostly. I did a lot of experimental theater, I was at N.Y.U. Experimental Theater program.

WP: You were, really?

RL: Yeah. So we did a lot of running in the park and pretending to be secret agents, running up First Avenue. (laughs) It was a lot of fun. Doing Chekov where the audience is outside, looking through the window, as opposed to the characters looking through the window. So that was a very fertile period creatively because anything went, it was a great time. And then I wrote a play that we did in workshop at “Playwrites Horizons” for awhile but ahh … I was trained in theater. Basically by that I meant in college that is what, really I did.

WP: The play went through workshops and did a showcase performance?

RL: No. We just did it for four nights up at…

WP: The process was that you were doing theater and you actually started acting right?

RL: No I was originally … that’s what experimental theater was. It sort of showed you that you weren’t just an actor, you weren’t just this … you were an artist who was sort of responsible for the whole thing. So out of that a lot of writing came, a lot of conceptualizing, a lot of stuff. It was great.

AUDIENCE: How did you make this transition? It seems to me, in the world of the theater you have one personality, a different person, not that they are all the same, but you have a group of people who are dedicated to the theater. And Hollywood is like a whole other world. How did you make … meet this gap?

RL: Well it may be misleading to think well that I started in theater. My love is film since I was a child. I was an avid film, movie buff. So that’s where I wanted to go eventually, I just didn’t know how to get there. How I made the transition? I don’t know actually … it really wasn’t from theater to film, it was from stand-up comedy to film that it happened. That’s a shorter route actually.

AUDIENCE: Do you find it beneficial for writers to have acting in any type of theater?

RL: I can’t make a general … I wouldn’t generalize like that, but the reason I think it helped me is because I act the part and when I write dialogue, I know if it’s sayable. If it can work, where as I read a lot of screenplays for “Sundance” and stuff, and I can tell that these guys don’t know. They write lines that people couldn’t say, that wouldn’t sound right. They would sound stilted and devoid of feeling. So yeah, in that sense I think it’s a worthwhile thing.

WP: Do you say your own lines? Do you work the parts yourself? Crack out the typewriter and ahh…?

RL: Yeah. It’s almost like you’re improving playing all the parts as you’re writing it. For me anyway.

WP: I’m going to go back to some stuff I have here. Specifics. How you doing?

RL: Fine.

WP: Going back to some specifics. I’m going to open it back up some more. I want to go to … how did you get from the “Fisher King” to “The Ref”, as a producer?

RL: “The Ref” was a personal movie because my sister-in-law, Marie, and my brother-in-law Jeff … it was Marie’s idea, it was a family thing, they were trying to get something going and so I guaranteed it for Disney which meant that I would guarantee my sister-in-law to write this screenplay and if they would give her a shot to write the first draft and then if they needed me they would bring me in as the next … as the writer, and I guaranteed myself to do that, which made the project. We just stuck it as part of my deal at Disney, because I was under contract there, so that’s … that was the beginning of it and then it just got more, and more and more. I wound up taking over the writing and, ahh, and then Dennis [Leary] came on and just sort of took off.

WP: As a producer, were you very much on the set, hands on?

RL: I was actually on the set more as a writer.

WP: Oh really?

RL: Than as a producer. Ted [Demme, director] was like Terry again, it was lucky. But I worked with Dennis and Ted and Judy [Davis] and Kevin [Spacey] a lot. Rewriting scenes, we shot almost in sequence so I was rewriting a lot as we were going on. I was there in that capacity, more by … producing a job was more in pre-production, I helped pick Ted, we were looking for a director.

WP: Ted Demme?

RL: Ted Demme I and, ahh … we also had to find a producer which ended up being Simpson/Bruckheimer. Which was a whole other story. And the casting, I was involved in the casting.

WP: As a producer … when you were writing, was the producer part of you, ever involved like, “No you can’t write that.” Or did you kind of divorce it?

RL: No. The only time it came into conflict was when as a producer I had to support the director. We were having a difficult time at the studio and at one point Ted said, “If they don’t do right by this, I’m going to split,” and the writer in me went, “Oh no, they’re not going to make the movie.” But the producer in me says, “That’s right. You can’t let them blackmail you so you gotta stand your ground.” If it doesn’t get made, it doesn’t get made. That was the only time I had a sort of thing like that.

WP: Okay. Did you, you said you took over the writing … were you actually, did you actually co-write anytime? Have you ever co-written besides “Rude Awakening”?

RL: That’s it.

WP: That’s it?

RL: Oh with Terry [Gilliam]. Well except Terry doesn’t write lines as much as he comes up with story and images and things that have to be in there and I write the dialogue and then after that, he’ll take and he’ll write overwritten stuff. So yeah, I guess we co-write. Yeah.

WP: But that’s something you feel pretty simpatico with.

RL: It’s got to be the right person. Yeah, but we work well together.

WP: Umm, there were scenes, especially in “The Ref” where … I can’t remember it they were tied in their chairs or not. Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey are having this argument where he says how he gave this thing up for their business. She says, “No you didn’t, you really didn’t.” That scene made me think, for whatever reason, of the scene [in THE FISHER KING] when Ann [Mercedes Ruehl] says “You can’t be nice. You’re just a shit.” And that’s when I really felt like ahh … a voice coming through. Did you write that scene or an I totally in the dark? Do you think that’s a certain affinity that you have, a strong point? Of something that’s consistent with those kind of really raw emotional truthful…?

RL: Women telling men off?

WP: I didn’t put it in that context.

RL: Yeah. Actually I like those confrontation things. I like when people tend to bottom-line each other and sort of stick it to them, get past all the complex and all the nonsense.

WP: What do you do to make it? Because both of them had a really raw kind of truthful power. What do you do in order to find that truth so you’re not just spouting cliches? One of the easiest and worst scenes to write is two people yelling at one another and they’re just spouting, and it’s just ugly. How do you find the truth for the character?

RL: Do you find the truth for a character? My first thing that I think of is from my own experience. Putting myself in that experience and what I’d say.

WP: And then you would play the other person and what whey would respond?

RL: And what they would say.

WP: And so it’s just a matter of trying to know the character and have them really react.

RL: I mean, really writing. What you’re doing is just taking pieces of you and putting them in all different characters. I mean they are all you, really, so you just … you know.

WP: How do you try to bury the voice so it doesn’t sound like you always?

RL: Well it comes to tone. I don’t know … I don’t know.

WP: You won’t be graded. I’m just trying to figure it out for myself. Maybe they’ll find out too. The ending [to "The Ref"] seemed like everything had to happen fast and rushed.

RL: Yup. That was a reshoot.

WP: Oh yeah? Why was that?

RL: Well, why was that? `Cause the ending didn’t work. This was an odd thing we … one of the problems I had with this production was that the actors … it was wonderful working with the actors but on a certain level it also go a little out of hand. And, they kept trimming or wanting to trim different plot points and things. So by the time we got to the end, it wasn’t properly seated and it just didn’t work. And no one listened (laughs) so it just sort of happened. Like for instance, the character of the boy I feel the most, I feel awful about because he was a fourteen year old actor. He didn’t know how to pull me over and say, (knocking on table) “You know this doesn’t work.” or, “Why this?” While Judy and Kevin really knew how to do that. So he got a little … I should’ve been his voice, I should’ve protected that. And I got swept away. So it was all, it was kind of a mish-mosh. And then, and we tried to go for something serious that just didn’t work, I mean originally Dennis gets caught and sacrifices himself for the family and goes to jail and all that kind of stuff and winds up being an author, umm on a talkshow (laughs). Because he’s so good at psychological bullshit you know, there was that whole thing, but it was just not done right. So we came back and thought up the fastest, quickest way to sort of wrap it all up, and that’s … we just more or less approached it with, “Let’s just have fun and try to do it according to that.” But there were no more layers.

WP: It was really (inaudible)… up to that point. You mentioned Dennis in both “The Ref” … you have Dennis Leary, you have Robin Williams, they do this really strong character presence, comic personas. Do you get tired of people asking, “Did you write that line or did you ad lib that?”

RL: Sometimes.

WP: How did you deal with that with such strong…?

RL: Robin … in the case of Robin, it’s like Terry said, “You don’t hire Robin Williams if you’re not going to use Robin Williams.” You know, that’s his talent. But he was actually very … I guess one of the reasons Im so proud of that scene on the street is because he is so to the script, except for two lines which he added about the revolving door and something else, some memory he added in there. Other than that he just stuck to that, he just stuck to it. But he was very respectful. He would never change anything without asking and if he needed to improv, what Terry would do, he would have him do it by the script and then he would do a take where he would just let him go. And quite often there was something in there. Um, so it was a question of collaboration and as long as it is collaborative it’s great and Robin was great, he was respectful, he was collaborative, he was wonderful. And Dennis was the same way. Dennis would never come up with a line if it wasn’t emotionally true. And I gotta say most of them either stuck to the script or we collaborated on writing stuff together for it. But yeah it was great. All actors do that anyway. Whether they are comedians or not. All actors have to make their own anyway, so I find that no matter who you’re … you’re always in collaboration with the actors to make it theirs and quite often, if you’re lucky, they’ll come up with better stuff.

WP: You’re not with the Cohen brothers and, “No line can be changed.”

RL: Oh I don’t believe in that. How can you do that? I don’t think that can work really. I think that’s limited. Unless you’ve got good people. You’ve got good actors, they’re just going to add to it.

WP: So it was originally written that Parry really does hop on the table and sing “Holding my Penis”?

RL: Yeah I wrote that in the script.

WP: That’s so funny. II seems like a real Robin Williams moment.

RL: I know, well that’s wild. I wrote that in the script actually. Um, what I didn’t write, that’s a perfect scene for putting the two together. I wrote that part but he ad libed “golden orbs … put your golden orbs…” Yeah that part. So you put the two together.

WP: (laughs) I goes back to a solid foundation and incorporates it.

RL: Exactly. You’re giving a blueprint to the actors and they can fly off of it.

WP: Okay. I got that series done. Now I just have a general series of writing …. but i’m going back out to the audience. Yes sir?

AUDIENCE: Do you have a specific genre that your work is drawn to?

RL: I tend to be drawn towards … I mean I love all, most kinds of movie. I love thrillers, I love suspense movies, I love love stories. I think the ones I like the most are things that sort of have a bittersweet quality to them. That have a comedy and a drama to it. Those are the ones that move me the most. `cause it’s through laughter and through tears, kind of thing. I like the combo.

WP Can you see yourself trying something, gangster movie western?

RL: I’m going to try. I don’t think I could write a western (laughs). The closest I came to a gangster movie was an assignment I had for Disney called “Widows”, which was about four women who knock over a casino. But they weren’t gangsters they were wives of gangsters. So that was the closest I came to it. I don’t know if I could do that.

WP: What about “The Talisman”? That’s a whole…

RL: “Talisman” again. What happened after “The Fisher King”, was that I sort of got type-casted into doing fantasies and myth. Became Mr. Myth and so I was attracted to “The Talisman”. Be careful of what you ask for, because I remember ten, eleven years ago I read that book before I was a writer, anything. I loved the book, I was a Steven King fan at the time. I think it was the last one of his I read, and I wanted to do it, and Steven had wanted to do something and they pitched me something I didn’t want to do. Well I said, “You have this book let me try it.” And again they had had seven different drafts before, from seven different people, and no one was able to crack it. And now I understand why; it’s a mess, the book is a complete mess. I mean apparently these two authors wrote it by modem and never met. I mean they know each other but they didn’t write together so, one chapter is his, one chapter is his. And the rules are inconsistent with this fantasy world. So again this is the third draft I’m doing throughout all the other two … started from scratch and just started all over again. This has been a hard one. It will not reveal itself to me, it’s like sometimes I think when you’re working on something long enough it becomes its own, it becomes alive almost. It becomes an entity onto itself. And it’s either going to reveal itself to you or it’s not. Or it’s going to do it in it’s own fucking time. And this one is like a little kid who just won’t show himself to me yet, he’s just slowly letting me in and the only way I’m getting there is by simplifying, just cutting, simplifying, simplifying making the theme simple to understand and making the story simple `cause again I get too complicated story wise. This has been a hard assignment.

WP: Has the genre had any effect? Or it’s not really a concern?

RL: Fantasy and action are not my thing, so I’m using a lot of reference. Just movies that I like and pacing that I’m familiar with from other movies and I’m using that to inspire me to come up with ideas for this. So yeah, it’s a challenge.

WP: Is anybody set to direct?

RL: No.

AUDIENCE: Really quickly you mentioned that these in-laws that started “The Ref” and you guaranteed it. At what point … are you on good terms with your in-laws(laughs)?

RL: Yes.

AUDIENCE: And so, what happened at that transition point when you said to your in-law, “Thank you very much.”

RL: She knew. Well Jeff continued as producer. Marie completely understood. She was grateful, it was her first try at it and she knew that it wasn’t there. It was her story, it’s still her story. Most of the dialogue is mine. The story is hers she is learning on how to write characters. She tended to write on one level and she doesn’t get into any other levels. But the wreaths and the candles were her thing.

AUDIENCE: Are you totally based in L.A. Now?

RL: I live in New York. I’m from Brooklyn.

AUDIENCE: Have you had to spend any large number of months or years in L.A. To do what you’re doing?

RL: Never.

AUDIENCE: So how do you do that?

RL: I wrote “Fisher King”. Sold it.

AUDIENCE: And sold it from here completely.

RL: Mmh-mmh. And that was it. My wife and I, sort of, thought about living out there for a month. I never lived in a suburb. I’m from Brooklyn. You know in Manhattan, I don’t know how to live in a car and mini-malls and things like … I don’t know how to do all that. I like going out there but I always feel like I’m on vacation when I’m out there. So it’s hard work out there for weeks at a time and when we made “Fisher King” we were out there for three months. But no, I never lived there.

AUDIENCE: You sold “Fisher King” though…

RL: The agency out in l.A..

AUDIENCE: In L.A.? They didn’t say to you, “Well, come out…”

RL: Yeah when I sold it I went out there and spent time and went to parties. I didn’t have to live there.

WP: How did you get your agents?

RL: I just since moved. I’m with C.A.A..

WP: How did you get your agent?

RL: It was through my wife. A friend of … I was at William Morris but I wasn’t happy there and I sent this script to a friend of my wife who never read it and did it as purely a favor. And I just wrote everything under the writer’s strike so people were looking for material. And these other writers, agents, sent it to the people who bought it ultimately.

WP: You used the contact you had through somebody you knew?

RL: Absolutely.

AUDIENCE: Do you think it’s impossible in this era to stay in New York?

RL: No. I think it’s getting easier. A lot of L.A. People are moving here too. Even agents are moving here. Well ever since the floods the riots the violence … it’s like Soddom and Gommorah … “Don’t look back!”(laughs)