Significant Others - Bonus Episode: Eric Roth on the Role of the Screenwriter

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

In this bonus episode, Liza is joined by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Eric Roth to discuss the often invisible craft of screenwriting. Eric shares his process of adapting a book to film, the relationship between screenwriter and director, and what it was like working with Martin Scorsese on Killers of the Flower Moon.We’re working hard on Season 2! Until then we will be releasing special bonus episodes from time to time. Want to support the show? Rate and review wherever you listen to your podcasts, and keep sending suggestions of Significant Others you’d like to hear about our way at [e-mail]!

Welcome to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien, and in this month's bonus episode, we're joined by the Oscar-winning screenwriter behind such films as Forrest Gump, Dune, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, and the newly released Killers of the Flower Moon. Eric Roth, thank you so much for joining us today. I thought it would be interesting to talk to you because as a screenwriter, you occupy an indispensable yet relatively low profile position as far as the public is concerned in the moviemaking process. But even more specifically, your screenplays are often adaptations of novels, which makes you a significant other, so to speak, of not only the director and actor of the movie, but also the author who wrote the original work. And you've

done this with a bunch of your screenplays, right? I have. It's a little bit of a misnomer, not because they certainly are literally adapted, but some of the adaptations, I would say, were particularly original. Benjamin Button, for instance, was from not just, but Fitzgerald had a spectacular idea of what happens to be AIDS backwards. But the story he wrote, which was in Collier's Magazine in like 1918 or something, he just did it for money, and the story's not very good, to be quite honest. I'm judging it. It's just anybody would judge it. It's not his best work.

So I had the either temerity or the blessing of just starting from scratch and creating my own story. So you just took the concept. I took the concept and then wrote just whatever I felt worked with that and created a world. And so I think that was pretty original. You know, one of the tropes in screenwriting is bad books make good movies. The same thing with bad plays make good movies.

And so you have the sort of license to throw out what you think is bad, you know, and hope you don't make a mistake. But a lot of the writing, even though it's an adaptation, I mean, I would have to go through movie by movie, is some of it's pretty original. You know, in other words, I'm not saying original within the context of an adaptation, but original as to not conceive before. I mean, Forrest Gump is a particularly original screenplay from a book that did have sort of guidelines of who's, but everything was different. He had a 400-pound man, and he went into space and all sorts of stuff. Just anyway, it was just very different. Doesn't mean it's better or worse, but it was just different. And I think you'll find that with a lot of my work. Some are a little more hidebound to the material.

And I think just to talk about the craft, because I'm not sure it's a great art form, screenwriting. I think it's a great craft. I think you can be a wonderful craftsman at it. And I think you can have a great art form screenwriting i think it's a great craft um i think you can be wonderful craftsman at it um and i think you can have a great artistry in it but i'm not sure it's a great art form uh it's a you know because it's so collaborative right you're creating something that is of no value until it's you know i mean a book at least you can publish and publish it yourself uh you can have the uh success the feeling of success of having a you know a manuscript on your desk and a screenplay really has uh not much use once if

it's not realized you know so you're very conscious as you're writing that you're you're writing a roadmap essentially yeah that's what you are doing i mean mean, Orson Welles said that, that in a way that you're designing the boat and then with help and then where the boat goes and how it gets there is pretty much the director's job. craft, if you want to call it that, that what works best, quote unquote, best on the page for you completely depends on the few eyes that are actually going to see it. You know, it's like, how does the director feel about it? Maybe how do the actors feel about it? I don't know if the actors get to care about it, but that, you know, it's not that you're approaching your craft in terms of just saying, you know, what is the best version of this or what's the form I'm experimenting with? It's just, you know, it's about, it's a real, there's a practical concern, which is, I think, very unique. I think there's a practical concern, but there's also this kind of,

first of all, I've done this for, you know, I've written 30 movies. So, I mean, I'm not bragging about it, but I know what I'm doing. I always have the same anxiety about whether I'm doing it well, which I think any artist in quote does, but I do know how to do it. And I think I know how to do it kind of unconsciously. I mean, a lot of stuff's not conscious. And I've done this, I have the same process in everything I write and adapt or the few originals I have written. And I've been successful by, I think if I have a stock in trade, it's probably, I think you'd find my screenplays to be very human.

I hopefully emotional. And I think they're pretty interesting. And I think there is a literature quality to it that you could potentially, if it was a such a being, enjoy the script as it is. But you certainly would enjoy it more as to what it was intended to be. When did the idea of being a screenwriter enter your consciousness? Was it always there? Well, I was always steeped in the movies. I went to film school at Columbia, then on to UCLA.

But I love movies. I loved, like, it was a great experience when I was eight years old, going to the Brooklyn Paramount. I was raised in Brooklyn. Brooklyn Paramount Theater, sitting in the balcony and getting the hell scared out of me, watching War of the Worlds. And I just

loved the literature of film, and it was a shorthand to me. I directed some shorts. I didn't think I was quite good at it. I think I was okay, but I really felt more comfortable writing. I had written for magazines.

I had done some writing on my own for some, you know, some things where I was getting sort of professionally paid for. And I happened to win a contest that got me an agent, and that started some things happening. I also was lucky enough to be a mentee of a very friendly director named Stuart Rosenberg, who at the AFI really believed in me. And I was 19 years old and I got sent to rewrite a Paul Newman movie. And Paul Newman said, oh, our savior just arrived when I walked on the set. And I said, I don't think so.

Our savior just arrived when I walked on the set in Louisiana. I said, I don't think so. But I stayed friends with him for life. But so whatever the reason was, I got very lucky early. And I don't know, I felt comfortable doing it. I've had anxieties, of course, but I felt comfortable in the medium. I know movies quite well. and I think I know storytelling. Anyway, that's how I started. Did you read a lot of screenplays as part of your program?

No, I never really did. I read books. I saw movies like crazy. I would go to movies five, six times a week. Yeah. I'm pretty steeped in movies. I'm not as much as Marty. He has like movie channel on 24 hours a day

in every room in this house. But no, I know them pretty well and I've got a really pretty great memory for what they look like. Movies, I could tell you a lot of scenes from movies. I can tell you who directed them. What was the, you know, sort of what was the writing like? And so it's just so part of me, you know. Yeah. Yeah, and learning the form,

anybody can do that in about an hour, so it's just that simple, I mean. Don't tell Columbia Film School. Oh, well. There goes their business model. Well, it's just that learning the form, I mean, with Final Draft, certainly, you know, and I still use a very old program that I have on DOS. I don't even have a, I don't have a DOS. Anyway, but, you know, you just, once you learn the form, then you have to figure out what you're going to have to say. And that's a little different challenge, you know. That's right. So Columbia School could be fine. I don't know. They're in business. They're good. Can I ask you about the process, the actual process of when you start with the book? I start with the book. Is it different every time? I do the same thing every time. I underline what I think I'm going to want to dramatize because at my heart, I'm a dramatist. What I think would be good scenes for a movie, what would be

different. I find that I've now under a movie, what would be different. I find that I've now underlined almost the whole book. Right. That's true. I don't think I have anything close by where I could show you what I've underlined almost the whole book. Then I do kind of look at those underlines and say, which of these things I want to keep? How do I want to tell this story?

I'm also very, very particular about theme because I think that's what's most important. What's it ultimately about? to keep how do i want to tell this story i'm also very very particular about theme as because i think that's what's most most important what's it ultimately about not what the story is but what's this ultimately about and so that the theme is what i think is what uh you have to always keep in your mind that's a bigger gestalt of stuff but if you can get to that and then somehow the story can take you there and you end up with what the thematic is i think successful way to do it um and then do you ever feel do you ever feel as if you as if the book is presenting one particular theme but you're actually drawing something else out of it that you would want to focus on or is it usually in alignment it's a good question um

i don't know the answer to that one i mean i think that maybe it's an extension of the theme from the book i don't know i mean i'm not sure i've done anything that was well certainly not in opposition to the book you know that would be probably a problem right but i i think uh maybe maybe the author's theme was slightly different or you know and not not wrong but and i and i Right. was a New York Times critic, and then he does a show on PBS. I love his show. Yeah, he's a lovely show. And he said to me that, he looked at all my movies, this was a few years ago, but he said, your movies are all about loneliness. And I think he's right.

I think he's right, somehow in there. Wow. And now I think, at my age, it's about loneliness and mortality, so it's a disaster. It's the human condition. Yeah, exactly. Wow. But I think that resonated. So I don't know if that's always the theme of the work, but it certainly inhabits what I write, you know?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. So a project like Forrest Gump, how did that come to you? Was it brought by someone? That was brought to me. I had written a screenplay called The Postman from a book for a producer named Wendy Feinerman. for a producer named Wendy Feinerman. The book was a dystopian book about a postman in this kind of dystopian world. And I thought it might be a good kind of satire,

like Jonathan Swift or something. And so I had known Tom Hanks a little bit, and I said, what do you think of this? And he said, give it a whirl you know so i wrote what was kind of a oddball uh post-apocalyptic piece that was i don't think it was out and out humors but more like as i say jonathan swift kind of thing that was uh the ironies of things and and it we we went through a number of incarnations with directors and all nobody it never worked out and then like 10 years later, Kevin Costner made it.

And it was a bad movie. I mean, really bad. But the guy who ended up writing it, rewriting me, a guy named Brian Helgeland is a wonderful, wonderful writer. He wrote Mystic River and L.A. Confidential and a number of movies he's directed. Really talented man. Nice man. And he called me and said, do you want credit on this? I said, I don't know anything about it really anymore.

And he said, well, think about it. I'll be glad to share it with you because he was such a generous guy. So I called my agent, and my agent said, who happened to also handle Kevin Costner at the time, and said, all I can tell you is the dailies are magnificent. This is going to be some movie. So I think I thought about it. I said, okay, I guess I'll take credit on it, which I got.

And I won a Razzie. It was one of the worst movies of the year. Oh, agents and their. No. Anyway, I met Tom Hanks through that and we became quite friendly and close. And there was this oddball book, Forrest G wendy finerman producer gave me and they he had tried to write the author for warner brothers didn't work out and i i said i said it's kind of interesting thing uh you know it's a little farcical for me but maybe there's a way uh to make it have some meaning and ask tom you know we asked

tom would you want to do this if we worked it out? And he read the book, said, yeah, go ahead, give it a shot, you know? So I started, I did stay in obviously close contact with Tom as to what he liked or didn't like about it. And we ended up, I ended up writing it and we got lucky, you know? So. Well, I think it's a little more than luck. Yeah. Well, whatever my career, then of course my career completely changed, you know. So then, then I had to pick

the most things and, or I can pick what I wanted to do to some extent. And so, you know, it's,

success is wonderful. You know, if you're, it's a real grind if you, you know. I look forward to learning about that someday.

I don't think there's any alchemy to it. It's just, it just happens that someday. I don't think there's any alchemy to it. It just happens by something. I don't know if it's, I don't think you can manifest it, you know? No. I think you have to, you know, so there was a little bit pre, I had some other things that were decent, but nothing that really cracked through, you know? And then you had that and people say, oh, you know something. Well, I didn't know any more than I knew before that, you know.

Right. But somehow I could articulate that in some kind of way that meant something, you know. It's lightning in a bottle. The lightning in a bottle, yeah, it was for sure. And so then my life changed that way, you know. Yeah. Yeah. And I know you've worked multiple times with Martin Scorsese. Is that the director you've worked the most with?

No, no, no, not at all. I've only done one movie with him. Oh, okay. No, I've done, we had others. Oh, just one? Just Killers. I've had others we had tried to get done or we were thinking about doing and i've known him for many years no i've never uh you know there's always this kind of two schools in a way the west coast and the east coast schools you know and uh marty and his group were really the east coast guys and wonderful the best you know and i was more uh not not leaning toward, but the stuff I was interested felt more West Coast in some way. But I mean, the person I work with the most, I guess, is I've done a lot of work for David Fincher, who I love more than life itself.

Very loyal, wonderful, hard, hard, hard taskmaster. Talented. Talented beyond belief. Michael Mann. Yeah. I did two or three movies with him. Bob Zemeckis, who I love as a wonderful guy to work for. But Marty, I've known for a long time. But Marty, I haven't, I have never done anything prior to this. Yeah. Got it. And so how, how much does it vary your piece of it, depending on who's directing?

Is it very different? It varies in as much that when all is said and done, it's the director's film. You can talk about it and it has to be on the page and all that stuff, which I believe in, too. But the director is the one that's going to, if it barks like a director and sounds like a director, it's going to be a director. And the director makes the final decisions. I always tell the same story about, I wrote a movie called The Onion Field, or a version of it. And the director, I loved the scene in it. And the director said, I don't like it.

And every week we'd fight about it for like three weeks. And he finally says, you can leave in the script. I'm just not going to like it. And every week we'd fight about it for like probably three weeks. And he finally says, you can leave in the script. I'm just not going to shoot it. So that was the end of that conversation. But it was a good lesson because that's the bottom line. So you have to find, I call it the third rail. The director has his point of view and perception of how he wants something done. The writer does and to have a

successful and quote marriage and uh you know combination of the two talents uh you need to find a third way then where you can articulate how the director might see it but in a way that you know articulates what you wanted to begin with and so it's a little bit of a juggling act but it can be worth it you know and you have to be honest what you don't like and what you wanted to begin with. And so it's a little bit of a juggling act, but it can be worth it, you know, and you have to be honest what you don't like and what you like. And I've had, I've worked with, I mean, as much, I'm as proud as anything. I work with Kurosawa. I work with Marty, who's a genius and Fincher and Michael Mann and Zemeckis and Spielberg. And I mean, the list is incredible that I've, I mean,

that I've gotten and same thing with the actors. I mean, most incredible actors. So it's, it can be a great collaboration. It can be also very fraught, you know? Yeah. You have to sort of know when to back off and when to go forward and when they really want you on a set and when they don't. I mean, all those kind of things. And it's a relationship. And these are people who devoted their life to not being at home and wanting to do that.

And it's just different. And it's just the solitude of writing I love. The directors want to be leaders and they don't mind moving mountains to do things. It's a little more zen, the writing, even though it can be a little aggravating. Sure. I did want to talk to you about your latest project, Killers of the Flower Moon,

and I'm wondering if you can tell us a bit about what it was like adapting that screenplay and working with Martin Scorsese. I think that it's such a movie of Marty, of his essence and his soul, that he captured, as I talked about, a theme thematically, what this movie should be about, which is uh this crushing

the crushing sort of soul crushing way that these people were um that we treated these particular people and that uh that we're all culpable in a way that which is not to say that we all need to walk around feeling guilty but that certain things happen because we're not paying attention to what's the human thing to do. But anyway, Marty made this, I think this movie is certainly as good as anything I've been involved with. And I've had some really good things to be involved with. And it was a real exercise in trying to be creative. He's just giving a person as you'll find what marty's wants all your imagination and if you said to him i think i want the movie to run backwards he would do that try it you know but this one we went off the book itself was wonderful and it was a very touching story about

these people who had nothing and the osage and lived in the shitty land in Oklahoma and discovered oil and then had everything and then people came in to kill them. And this is about what was done to them and what is done to people in all sorts of circumstances. Is it a difficult story to live inside of? Is it a difficult story to live inside of? It's difficult on a human basis, but there's a great character named Molly who's the lead in it, who somehow was the guiding light of it, this particular character.

And men will be men in a way in it, so that there is a... I don't think this was as difficult as some other things to inhabit. It was just difficult to get it so that we were, which we ended up, Marty, and I contributed to Marty, that we ended up finally going from inside out rather than outside in. But it ends up being this really epic piece about things we really haven't dealt with and done in a wonderful way where we know right away who's guilty of this thing. And anyway, it's a movie, I'm promoting it now, but I wish people will go see because I think it's a really important piece. Well, I for one cannot wait to see it.

One thing I wanted to ask you before we go is when you're watching films, do you ever, because what you do is one of those things that can be a little bit invisible, right? So when you're watching other people's work, do you ever have moments of sort of thinking, oh, that was clumsy or why did they do that that way? Oh, yeah, all the time. I don't like, they do it in television more than movies, but I don't like exposition. So that's, and most writers fall into, not most, I don't know, I don't know the percentage, but that's the easy way out, where you're telling what people know, and two people talk together, and they're saying,

well, you know, next week, so-and-so's getting married, and we're all going to go to the wedding, and like the person didn't know that. I mean, the best writing, and there's some people I just, I'm in awe of who do it, is subtextual writing. You don't write about what's actually going on, but you write about what is going on. But you do it in a different way. Well, you do it with a metaphor metaphor you do it with an illusion and and that's really hard and that's what the great novelists do you know they don't always have to be right on the nose about what they're saying and the great writers like bo goldman and i guess william goldman and um the people i just admired so much uh playwrights are wonderful at

that kind of stuff you know it's it's the best kind of writing and it takes you your whole life to learn how to do it and i haven't got there yet i haven't got there yet i really haven't i haven't i wish i had i i think we're all benefiting from watching your education how well good i'll share it okay um i have one question that i like to ask people um in closing which is if there is someone that you would consider to be the significant other of your trajectory, not necessarily a spouse. It could be anyone and it could be multiple people. But is there anyone that comes to mind for you where you think, oh, if not for that person, I would have had a very different outcome? Well, I had a lot of people who helped mentor me. I mean, just were good ears, even though I'm not,

I'm not very good at sharing my work. When I'm done, when I think it's right, I turn it in, like I turn in a script today. I think it's right to be turned in. Now, I'm sure when I look at it again, I'll want to bomb it. But, you know, but not, i can name some writers who uh bo goldman was instrumental to me alvin sergeant um but i took my cues from a lot of directors who were very very um compatible and collaborative but i don't think anybody in particular usually i would say the the people i've lived and loved you know were my friends and some were harder on me than others about the work but they were always my muse in that sense and then i'm a great observer i think if i have a good i have a good sense of what

i think i remembered this the other day for instance it's such a for instance. It's a big thing, but it's small. So I used to be friends. I won't even name the band, but a particular band, a very well-known rock artist. And they were playing and somebody threw a marshmallow at them at a big concert

and hit them in the head. And he threw the marshmallow back and hit the person in the head. But these people all came prepared with marshmallows. And they threw like 600 marshmallows. A giant marshmallow fight broke out. And I said, that's a great scene for something, you know? And then there's this way smaller things about the things in life the children do.

Or you see somebody when they're passing away. Or those things that you try to humanize, you know? when they're passing away or those things that you try to humanize, you know, that make a particular person in my life has a habit of standing like a stork. And so I put that in a movie. I mean, so it's the things that somehow lead you to what, I don't even know how to explain it, but there's things that inspire you. There's tiny things that lead you to try to be hopefully poetic and or at least make something that's uh memorable in what you're doing i i i find it it's interesting so i know you're a playwright and you're very good thank you and um so i wrote high noon right a version which we're still trying to get an actor but i was having a conversation with a

very talented director guy i won the tony this year named michael arden and um i was trying to say i want to somehow be able to do what they can we can do in a movie where you can just in a look or a or a gesture and i said but that's all close-up and you don't get that in the stage you know but that's what i wish we could somehow inhabit. And that's what I'm good at doing, or hopefully are good at doing somehow, imparting something that, I'll give you one example that in the movie, The Insider, I had written a page and a half monologue

and Al Pacino called me the day they were going to shoot it and said, I can do this with one look. I said, well, let's call it Michael Mansey, what he says. So Michael smartly says, we'll shoot it both ways. And he ended up using the look, you know, and I'm sure, and it did impart the same exact thing that I had written, you know. So it's, look, it's a great visual medium and try to take advantage of that and try to balance advantage of that and try to balance what you,

the words people say and, and also make all the characters quite different that they're, that they all have their own psychology, own way of looking at the world. And they articulate it that way as we do in life, you know? Well, I have a million more questions for you,

but I'm going to stop us there because I think I've taken up enough of your time. Thank you so much, Eric Roth. This was really delightful. All right. Well, I've enjoyed and I always love seeing you. Likewise. Killers of the Flower Moon is now in theaters. So if you haven't already, please be sure to check it out.

We'll be releasing bonus episodes right up until season two comes out, so don't forget to hit the subscribe button. And as always, we welcome any and all suggestions for upcoming episodes. You can email us at significantpod at gmail.com.