CUT TO: Rian Johnson (Writer/Director)
Rian Johnson took a break from writing his new feature, Looper, to chat with J.C. about screenwriting, working with actors, directing, and the magical journey of a story from script to screen.
Q: I’m curious as to what screenplays you have studied the most and why?
A: I’ll be honest, I haven’t studied many scripts. This is probably a bad thing. I do watch way too many movies, and often I’ll outline a film scene for scene to understand how it ticks, but when I read it’s mostly novels. My few experiences with reading a script before seeing a film have been pretty disconcerting. I remember reading Fargo, for instance, and having no idea about the Minnesota accents. Without this crucial bit of information, and the subtleties of the deadpan humor in the performances, it reads like an episode of COPS.
Q: Do you have a holy grail screenplay that you would like to get your hands on?
A: Years ago I read an unproduced Steve Martin script called Depression, which was written just around the time of The Jerk, and was hilarious. I’ve talked it up to so many people over the years. But the one hard copy of the script my friends and I had was lost, and I’ve been hunting for it ever since. Let me know if you’ve got a line on it.
Q: What’s your rewrite process like? How long do you give yourself between rewrites and has the rewriting process been similar or different for Brick and The Brothers Bloom (i.e. how many drafts of each and the challenges of each)?
A: I hate re-writing, but it’s something I’ve been disciplining myself to get better at. For both Brick and Bloom I had done so much pre-planning before I wrote, lots of the kinks got worked out before the script stage. But Bloom had much more rewriting than Brick. The first draft of Bloom was over 140 pages, I think our shooting draft was around 120. Bloom was more of a challenge because of the character work in it, the love story, and the humor. It was more of a stretch for me as a writer, and it took more massaging to get it all to work. Add the plotting and the intricacies of who knows what when, and it added up to alot of work. Fun work, of course, but still.
Q: Does being a Writer/Director affect the filmmaking process? Do you switch hats between the two or wear both all of the time? As a director, how much weight do you give to the screenplay — how important is it to you as a director? And if you were to direct a film from a screenplay that you did not write, would you feel the same about it?
A: When you’re directing a film, you’re dealing with so much madness day to day, and so many logistic elements, that when it comes time to shoot you’re really just focused on making that specific scene work as well as possible. So you end up putting a lot of blind faith in the script. It’s a bit like focusing on each individual nail, and praying that the architect (even if it’s you) knew what they were doing when they designed the house. It’s hard for me to imagine directing something that someone else wrote, but who knows.
Q: How do you feel about actors experimenting with their character? Brick seems to be pretty spot-on with the script, as does Bloom.
A: I’ve been pretty blessed with the casts I’ve gotten to work with, they’ve all put alot of trust in the material, and as such there hasn’t been too much experimentation with the script once we get to the scenes. That having been said, if something is not working in a scene, or a line turns out to be clumsy or wrong, the script is by no means sacred, and I’m always open to changing it, for the right reasons. I think the important thing is to make sure you and the actors are on the same page at the start of the process, that you’re both trying to put the same thing up there on the screen. Then you can trust each other and, to some extent, relax.
Q: What was your favorite scene in both Brick and Bloom and why? Was it different on the page and then really came to life on film or was there something that made it evolve into your favorite scene?
A: That’s a tough one, the things in Brick and Bloom I enjoy most are the things I had the least to do with. Watching the actors bring a scene to life is like watching a magic trick to me. The scene in Brick between Joe and Lucas where he’s eating the cookie, for instance. Or Rachel doing the card trick and monologue in Bloom. Even if it’s the same, word for word, it isn’t alive until the actors make it their own.
Q: I’d like to know about your experience making a larger film as opposed to the smaller first film.
A: I was very lucky, in that Bloom was financed independently, so even though it was a bigger budget, I didn’t have any control issues with a studio. So in that way the experiences of Brick and Bloom were similar. Obviously the scale of everything was bigger with Bloom, but it’s amazing how quickly that fades into the background when you’re doing the actual work of shooting. At the end of the day it’s you, the actors and a camera making a scene work. Everything else is just window dressing.
Q: Sum up your overall feelings of Hollywood and the process of getting a script made into a film. Is it a good process overall?
A: It’s the best. It’s a strange strange process, and things always end up changing. With Bloom, for instance, I think tonally the script is a little darker than the finished film ended up being. But that’s part of the process of bringing it to life, going from the script where you have 100% control but it’s inert, to the finished film where it’s the sum total of a lot of talented people’s work, and it’s a living breathing thing. Once it becomes that, you have to let go of your ego a little and let yourself discover what the film wants to be, rather than what you originally intended.
Q: The last time we spoke you stated that you supported the leak/script trade circuits around the net. Think I could get a copy of Looper when you finish that bad boy?
A: Ha – I’ve been thinking about that recently, and I might try to keep Looper a little more under wraps. I don’t know, it seems like the sort of thing that would be fun to catch people a little more off guard with. But who knows, these things always tend to leak out at some point, so you’ll have to let me know if/when you get your hands on it.
Check out more:
Brick @ IMDb
- Download the Script
- Download the Treatment/Novella
The Brothers Bloom @ IMDb
- Download the Script
Looper @ IMDb
Rian Johnson’s official site @ rcjohnso.com
Rian Johnson @ IMDb
Rian Johnson @ twitter.com/Rcjohnso
Rian Johnson’s Top 10 Favorite Criterion Releases
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