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Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio (Part 3) Go back to Part 1 or Part 2 of this very long interview
TE: “The hardest thing we had to do on Sandman was find a way to retell Gaiman's stories as a movie without losing what made those stories special in the first place. Our challenge was to do something which Neil had done with myths and legends in the pages of Sandman - telling them in a new way, which was not in violation of the way they were told originally.” TR: “That's a script that I still think we nailed perfectly. And part of why it's good is because it's far more Gaiman than us. Which is one way an adaptation can work. We met several times with Neil, and it was great to know he approved of the work. The problem - which I still cannot fathom - is how the folk at Warner Bros could spend money to acquire the Sandman property ... and then want to throw it out. His work is among the best fiction ever written, in any form. Why throw it away?” Please just tell me everything you're allowed to about your Iron Man project at this stage - the world (well, the readership of SFX) is agog. TR: “As usual, our goals for this project are high. We want to do a smart, tightly plotted, effective superhero movie, with a real character at the heart of it all, and never-before seen action sequences. Why lower your standards just because it's a comic book? The most exciting thing for us is what a perfect time it is for this story. We live in a time when power is being shifted from governments to industry. When Bill Gates becomes the most powerful man on the planet, you hope to hell that somehow he develops a moral centre, for the sake of us all. That's part of what we want to do with Tony Stark. “Happily, nobody has really done the definitive realistic superhero movie. The movies (for whatever reason) always take a step back, and don't take it seriously. But to fans, the stories are all real - they may be fun, they may have humour, they may be over the top ... but no fan ever thinks twice about whether it really happened. So we have an opportunity here to do a superhero the way everyone wants to see it.”
TE: “The studio wants to make it, and I know Antonio Banderas is still practising his fencing, so the best-case scenario would be summer of '01. Although there is many a slip 'twixt the cup and lip, as the saying goes. As for what to expect ... well, I don't want to give away the story, but some of the elements are the California Gold Rush, pirates, a threat from Alejandro's past, an old love from Elena's past ... oh, yeah, and Elena in the Zorro outfit. I guess I kind of buried the lead there, huh?” TR: “I don't have much hope for this project. We're writing a version of a story that was approved, but I'm not sure it's the best version of the story possible. It could turn out we're doing the sacrificial draft on this one - where you have to execute a story as well as it can possibly be done, to prove definitively to the powers-that-be that the choices made were a mistake. But I don't think, in this case, the project will recover from the initial missteps. But who knows? They may get it and love it.” TE: “There is the problem that as we started working out the story, we came up with a number of ‘This would be cool!’ kind of things. Walter Parkes at Amblin liked half of them and hated half of them, and the Columbia execs liked half of them and hated half of them - and they were literally, no hyperbole here, diametrically opposed. I guess I have higher hopes for the project because Steven Spielberg got involved at that point, and liked all of them ... which means, at the very least, our ideas for what would be a cool Zorro sequel appeal to Steven's sensibilities.” What is Shrek, what stage is it at, and why has it described as the one animated project that gives Jeffrey Katzenberg worse nightmares than The Road to El Dorado? TR: “The heart of Shrek is to do a story that plays with fairy tale conventions - to do a story set in a world where people are aware of fairy tales, and in fact probably know the people who were in the original stories. Kind of a Douglas Adams treatment of the fairy tale world, if you will. The problem is that the people involved with the project are unfamiliar with that subgenre ... Terry Pratchett's work, or Piers Anthony, or even Larry Niven. So conventions keep coming up and being proposed as story solutions, but the whole point is to undermine the conventions, go a couple steps past. It takes a particular comic sensibility to pull that off.” TE: “The problems Jeffrey is referring to really stem from the fact that Chris Farley was so clearly the right choice for the character of Shrek that, when he passed away, it threw a huge monkey wrench into the works.” TR: “The best hope for the project is that Mike Myers is involved - as well as Eddie Murphy, Cameron Diaz and John Lithgow - and as usual, there is an amazing group of talented people assembled to work on the movie.” What on Earth is Timekeeper? And how does a script for a theme park ride differ from a movie script? TR: “We did some work on the pre-show and show for a Disney circlevision project. Just one of those things that comes up when you're under contract to a studio.” TE: “I think it's still running at Euro Disney or Disney Paris or whatever it’s called now ... you know, the one with the really short lines ...” You wrote a CD-ROM called Director’s Chair. How can you write something as non-linear as a CD-ROM (especially if it has notorious maniacs like Penn and Teller in it)? TR: “Director's Chair is a program where users can shoot and cut together their own movie. So there needed to be a movie-within-the-game for people to shoot, and that's what we contributed.” TE: “It was really about tone - there was the comic version of the movie-within-the-game, the dramatic version, the action-adventure version, the noir version (which was different from the dramatic version) ... but the game itself really didn't work, and was kind of annoying.”
TR: “I'm not familiar with Space Island. But Treasure Planet is going to be great. Why have the big US companies not done an animated film in space? Yes, finally, Titan AE is coming out, but Treasure Planet will be better, I'm betting. The project has been one that Ron Clemens and John Musker have wanted to do for years. This one comes from the heart, and I have high expectations.” TE: “I believe Ron and John pitched Treasure Planet even before they pitched The Little Mermaid. We did a draft of the screenplay for them just after we finished Aladdin, but the project got backburnered again. I don't know how much of our work - if any - will be in the finished movie, but it doesn't matter. Like Terry, I'm just looking forward to seeing Ron and John's Treasure Planet. Why has A Princess of Mars still not been made when it has so much potential? Has the success of Disney's Tarzan made it easier to get an animated Edgar Rice Burroughs adaptation greenlighted? TR: “When things work, or they're done right, there is a logic to it. But stupidity defies analysis. So there's just no explaining some of the things Hollywood does. One of them is not making A Princess of Mars.” TE: “When we were working on A Princess of Mars, it was intended to be a live-action movie for Touchstone/Hollywood. Long after we left the project, it was shifted over to the Disney animation division.” What lessons have you learned from The Puppet Masters that you can bring to The Moon is a Harsh Mistress? And has Starship Troopers affected its chances of getting made? TR: “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress won't be made, at least, not by the folk at Dreamworks. Someday someone might do it. There's just no interest from anyone at DreamWorks in the project right now, and the option on the book has expired. One thing that hurt the project was the release of Deep Impact and Armageddon. The big central payoff image of the novel is the rocks slamming down on Earth ... and after those films, the image was no longer unique, or compelling.” Any comments on (or explanation of): Tusker, Jack of Swords, Untitled Dead Guy Project, Lady in the Clouds, Jingle or Instant Karma? TR: “Let's see. Jack of Swords, Lady in the Clouds, Jingle and Instant Karma are all stalled in Development Hell, essentially dead. Tusker is going to be PDI/Dreamworks' next CGI movie after Shrek; it's a story featuring elephants. I'm fascinated by the Untitled Dead Guy Project; what the heck is that?” TE: “Jingle and Instant Karma are two movie we're producing, not writing. They are in Development Hell right now, but I would not characterise them as essentially dead. I would characterise them as essentially being punished for sins which are not their own. We intend to do an Orpheus and rescue them - but, trust me, we won't look back. And what the heck is Untitled Dead Guy Project?” Is there anything else you've worked on that you're proud of (or think might be of interest to the readers)? TR: “Have to mention our Wordplay site, a place for screenwriters to hang out: amid the madness, it's nice to have something out there that represents your true creative sensibilities. That's www.wordplayer.com. We constantly get a lot of praise regarding the site from writers, so maybe I'll allow myself to think that it's pretty good.”
TR: “Destiny.” TE: “The final ignominious irony.” What about the Hope/Crosby influence? TR: “Intentional. Why are there no buddy comedy teams any more?” TE: “You know what bugs me? In our story, the guys would have been more Butch and Sundance then Bob and Bing. Then the decision was made to jettison our story in order to make them more like Bob and Bing - which, in my mind, meant making the movie really, really funny, with humour that worked on a multiple of levels. And yet, there was a lot of very funny stuff that was either written or boarded which was decided did not belong in the movie. Go figure.” And, given that your story centres on two sidekicks, the influence of Star Wars or The Hidden Fortress? TR: “No influence there at all. You might have said Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, or The Man Who Would Be King, or Hope and Crosby or Laurel and Hardy or Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, and then I'd say, 'Yeah, like that, that's what we were going for!' TE: “In terms of the sidekick-as-lead, the anti-heroes of Seven Samurai or Indiana Jones in Raiders of the Lost Ark would be more apropos. But, really, for me, it was Hope and Crosby or Butch and Sundance, guys who weren't necessarily virtuous or noble, but always came through for the other guy.” Official website: www.wordplayer.com Go back to Part 2 of this very long interview, where Ted and Terry discuss Little Monsters, Aladdin, Small Soldiers, Godzilla, The Mask of Zorro and Antz Or go right back to Part 1 where they talk about the road to The Road to El Dorado | ||
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Finally, a few more quick