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Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (Part 2) Jump straight to Part 3 of this interview or go back to Part 1
TR: “The film was based on my original (unpublished) short story ... really just a snippet, that Ted liked and was able to flesh out in an amazing way. We wrote an original screenplay, which caught the interest of a couple of producers, and sold to MGM. Neither of us much like the finished film. A common occurrence for us - people buy the script and throw it out, and what they replace it with is obviously not as good ... obvious to everybody, of course, except the people in charge.” How did Aladdin land in your lap, how daunting was it to work on a major Disney feature, and how did the casting of Robin Williams affect your writing of the Genie? TR: “We were under contract to Disney, so when the need came up for writers on Aladdin, instead of competing with hundreds of others for the job, we only had to compete with a few other staff writers. We heard about the project on a Monday, met to pitch our approach on a Wednesday, and were working on Thursday. Robin Williams was already cast when we were hired, so we knew the voice and style of acting that needed to be written. Aladdin is by far our most pleasant writing experience; it's the film where the greatest percentage of our writing choices survived to the screen.” TE: “Yeah, Aladdin was a real joy. All the talk that goes around that movies are a collaborative artform, Aladdin is the only movie we've worked on where that is true - where everyone's intent in the collaboration was to make the best possible movie. I credit Ron Clements and John Musker for that - great directors, in the complete sense of the word.“
TR: “Our original screenplay was very faithful to Heinlein. Yet another project where our original script was not followed. It's a shame, too; I still believe that book could make a great movie.“ TE: “Actually, early in the process - I think before we turned in our first draft, even - we suggested the novel could give birth to a franchise, about government agents who investigate all types of strange and bizarre pseudo-scientific occurrences. The studio didn't see that potential at all. Of course, a couple of years later, The X-Files premiered (although I was actually thinking more in terms of UFO, an earlier aliens-and-conspiracy-type program).” TR: “The finished film is pretty terrible. Key stuff from the book was jettisoned. The end result was a film that seemed derivative; ironic, since Heinlein's work was actually the original exploration of so many ideas; he was almost always there first.” Why aren't you credited on Men in Black, and is it good or bad that your work on this film is an open secret? TR: “We aren't credited on Men in Black because the WGA didn't award us credit. Over the years, we've determined there isn't much logic to how credits are assigned by the WGA. As it turns out, pretty much no one knows that we worked on Men in Black; it is in no way an 'open secret.' Even Sony, the studio who released the film, doesn't remember that we worked on it.” Now for your unfilmed version of Godzilla. Oh man, so many questions! How did you cope with the difference between Western and Asian views of the Big G, especially the determination of Western audiences and critics to deride even the best Godzilla movies as Godzilla Vs Megalon-level crap? What instructions did you have from Toho? Why did you feel it important to create a second monster? Where would you like to see (a) the American Godzilla series, and (b) the revived Japanese Godzilla series, go? Which is your favourite Godzilla film, and which do you think is the best one (not necessarily the same thing)? Sorry to get carried away, but I'm a huge Godzilla fan... TR: “It was obvious to us that audiences wanted two things from a Godzilla movie: they wanted to be scared of this big unstoppable monster, and they wanted to root for him to kick ass in the end. Godzilla is, after all, the hero. That's why we invented a story that involved a second monster. In the film that was made, neither aspect is provided: Godzilla runs and hides, and we never get to root for him. Stupid mistakes, really.” TE: “We wanted a second monster because we wanted to move Godzilla from where he was in the first movie - unstoppable destroyer who had to be stopped - to where he was at the end of the third movie - defender of the earth, but still not someone you want stopping by unless it's really, absolutely necessary. A friend of mine, a big G-fan from way back, once said about Godzilla that, ‘It's not that he's a good guy - he just hates other monsters.’ “I think the first one - the original, not the recut/redubbed/Raymond Burr-added American release - is the best one. And you can't beat Monster Zero for a great enemy, can you? After that, they all kind of blend together for me. I've liked some of the remakes/updates ... but that first one, with the skeleton at the bottom of the sea ... great stuff. “By the way, I am convinced that the whole ‘Godzilla is a metaphor for the A-bomb; analysis is wrong. In the original movie, the scientist who unleashes the weapon which kills Godzilla - metaphorically stopping the A-bomb - takes his own life afterwards. Had he died because he was trying to unleash the weapon, I would buy it - ‘We must make sacrifices necessary to prevent this from ever happening again.’ Naw, I think Godzilla is a metaphor for forces unleashed by man which he has no control over, for which he cannot predict the results, and for which he refuses to take responsibility. This makes the scientist's actions both correct to the metaphor, and makes him undeniably the hero of the movie. And I wish I could remember his name.” TR: “In the end, there's not much use in our answering questions about Godzilla. It would make as much sense to ask questions about James Bond, or Indiana Jones. Because we've never written a Bond film, or an Indiana Jones film - or a Godzilla film. The Godzilla film that got made didn't have anything to do with our work. Our credit on the film is just another testament to the vagaries of the WGA credit arbitration process.” TE: “I think it did have something to do with our work, with the basic approach we took to Godzilla - that he had to be presented as a serious threat, as something real. No dancing the jig or playing hoops with Charles Berkeley. That may sound like a no-brainer to Godzilla fans, but at the time we got the assignment, we were the only ones thinking that way. In fact, Devlin and Emmerich had been offered the project before we were, and turned it down because they didn't think Godzilla could be done except as an Airplane!-type spoof. “Later, after the movie was completed, we met Dean Devlin - the first and only time we'd ever spoken to him - and he said that it was reading our screenplay convinced them that it could be done seriously. Of course, they then chucked our screenplay and did their own, borrowing a few key elements from our story (specifically, Godzilla travelling toward New York with a purpose - although in ours, his purpose was to fight another monster, not to lay a bunch of eggs). So in a way, the Godzilla movie that got made was due to us - but it sure wasn't the Godzilla movie we wanted to see made. This is getting a little monotonous, isn't it? Let's talk about Aladdin some more.”
TR: “I don't know Replicator so I can't say whether it's similar.” TE: “Me, neither. The original screenplay was by Gavin Scott, about a kid who gets some toy soldiers that begin to think for themselves, but Steven Spielberg was the one who suggested there be two toy lines, one soldier and the other monsters. Here's the sad thing about Small Soldiers: while I don't think it’s nearly as bad as many of the other movies on our resume, I do consider it to be our only real failure. The story just never gelled. There were mitigating circumstances, but there are always mitigating circumstances. Terry disagrees with me on this one, but it's how I feel.” With The Mask of Zorro, as with Godzilla, you were reinventing a character who is iconic in some parts of the world and fairly obscure in other parts, so how do you cope? And to what extent is Zorro a prototype Batman? TR: “The concept of the masked superhero is universal; there was no worry that it won't play around the world. The creator of Batman, Bob Kane, has consistently cited Zorro as an inspiration for his work.” TE: “For me, you can't beat a guy in a mask with a sword for universal appeal. Of course, I'm of the mind that any movie with one good sword fight is a good movie, so ... “I do remember reading one review of The Mask of Zorro where the reviewer slammed the movie because he thought we had tried to take this great classic character and turn him into Batman, right down to the secret cave. Of course, Zorro had a secret cave before Batman did. In fact, in the original Zorro stories, the secret door to the cave was hidden behind a grandfather clock - which is exactly what hides the secret door to the Batcave in the comics. “Actually, here's an odd thing: in our screenplay, the door to Zorro's cave is a grandfather clock. In order to avoid similarities to Batman, the decision was made to change it to a breakaway fireplace kind of thing - which was the way the Green Hornet used to get to his secret garage. And, of course, the Green Hornet was not too dissimilar a character from Batman, right down to the secret lair, the cool car, the nifty gadgets ...”
TR: “At one point, someone found out that the finale of A Bug’s Life involved a storm. We had a storm, and flood, as a key part of our finale. Eventually ours was changed, partly to 'stay away' from what they were doing. Remember, all during production, it was assumed that Antz would be released second. “As an aside, Ted and I were present during the initial inspiration for Antz, which came from development executive Nina Jacobson (ironically, now working for Disney). Her inspiration for the film had to do with being an 'ant-like' worker at Dreamworks, and Woody Allen playing the role of the slave in Spartacus, and knowing the promise of using CGI to render the bug world ... it was completely independent (and I think it even preceded) the Disney project. There's no way it was imitative of Disney; you could see how it was born.” Continue to Part 3 of this very long interview, where Ted and Terry discuss Sandman, Iron Man, Zorro Unmasked, Shrek, Treasure Planet and many other projects Or go back to Part 1 where they talk about the road to The Road to El Dorado | ||
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Individual questions now on your various projects. For each of these I would really appreciate a brief note on what you contributed to the script, and how happy you were with the finished film. First, 
How was the writing of