Amy Schumer, Aaron Sorkin and More Writers on THR's Roundtables | Oscars 2016

right now I'm close up with The Hollywood Reporter if she just like I know what to do I know I did we'd be like very clear I did not distort any facts about Steve Jobs I was like what's it like being like really rich and he was just like there's like nothing to buy and the writers who crafted the year's best scripts Aaron Sorkin Steve Jobs make LaFave inside out Nick Hobie Brooklyn and the dollar who drew Tom McCarthy spotlight Amy Schumer trainwreck hello and welcome to close-up with The Hollywood Reporter I'm Steven Galloway executive editor features and I'm Matt felony executive editor and let's get started I'd like to start with a question for the whole group what has been your most difficult moment your biggest mistake you've made professionally and how did you recover from that people I slept with in college or popping up in my mind but nothing about my career I started trying to write scripts before I write books and I didn't know what I was doing who I was writing for what they were um and there's a lot of time I won't get back I think if I'd known what I know now if I'd known that back then then I would have saved myself quite a lot of work have you revisited any of those schools god no okay I don't even know if they exist like they weren't written on computer they were written on typewriter as that well I would say just recently you know with the newsroom the show's relationship with the critics kind of ran hot and cold and in addition to that I really struggled writing it except for really the last season last season was an abbreviated season just six episodes uh it just always felt like I had a pebble in my shoe if I can i I try to start the next thing before the the last thing is uh is over uh you know so like while we were shooting Steve Jobs I was writing the next screenplay what why do you think you had trouble I think that why do I think I had troll right in the newsroom because Amy kept making fun of me well that's did you have trouble spoofing him um I worked very hard on that scene I'm a huge huge Sorkin fan and I am very grateful for so much of his work and I I watched all of newsroom ight I enjoyed it but it was it was fun to spoof I'm sure was and I love just so we're clear I loved the food room I which Amy Amy's spoof the newsroom uh I thought it was great I thought it was really funny and mostly I thought I've got to get Amy Schumer to like me oh we like each other it's done your work is done um how about you you know I don't know if I have one particular you know oh I don't regret any of it I mean you make a lot of mistakes a long way if one thing I regret I think early on um finding like as a young writer or is he an actor also which I was and director finding like-minded people that I could connect with and make myself better by and maybe cuz I was sort of like networking I remember my father taught me how to network in this business not that I'm never networking I'm never gonna do it and I'm not great at it but but I think as a result I I kind of shut myself off from some of that and I think as I started to connect with people creatively and even going to Pixar for the first time after i did the station agent was so expansive such an expanding experience for me because 'only i was around all these like really odd goofy wonderful smart talented people doing exactly what they wanted to do and I think it started to unleash me in a different way so I feel like maybe I wasted time shocker as a young guy I loved the station agent no that's Nick how about you um I would say it's it's similar in that I came out to LA to be a writer and then immediately veiled immediately thought it was too hard there's no way you know all that talk in your head one and I immediately became an assistant and then I get to be an executive and yeah so you start to shadow artists which i think is incredibly dangerous for you it's incredibly dangerous for the person who is the writer because you shouldn't be trying to even unconsciously right through that like it's all a very dangerous but I can't say credit because I learned so much about writing and about the process and I got an incredible mentor in that process so I don't regret any of the I don't see that as a mistake but there was a lot of time spent not writing which now I use as a writer but I don't know if I could have just written who was the mental um I ended up working at egg pictures Jodie Foster's production company so she really taught me story and storytelling and so you know she's so amazing at that then it was a great way to learn storytime where did you go when you left well you know you do that crazy thing you throw yourself off a cliff and you're like you know if I don't write I'm never gonna do it I've got to just quit and everybody's like what you work for Jodie Foster you can't quit I'm like no but I think I'm gonna I think I'm gonna just go it and I quit and immediately had two babies because there is no better distraction if I'm writing hey I quit so it's pretty but then I wrote and had the babies and just you know did what every writer has to do like even if you can let's say coach or develop at a high level that does mean you can write yeah it's right completely different parts of your brain so you have to go write the five bad scripts that nobody will ever see um and go to back to the bottom of the process and learn an entirely new thing so in it's hard cuz that part of your brain is always telling you that you're doing it wrong so I did other things I wrote bad plays and just things that that analyzer couldn't be expert at so that you said before we start this for you also um threw stuff out and you you said you start on scripts before novels but you you gave up your work you gave up teaching yes it took to write was it a difficult decision no no not when I was said you know I was whenever I was 26 or 27 years old I didn't have a family um I was with terrible teenagers all day it wasn't it wasn't a big decision and you can always make teaching money and by working in bars or teaching part-time or whatever there was no money to give up so it really didn't feel like a very high risk thing that the thing that gets you down with writing I think is you feel like you're walking a plank and everyone behind you has got jobs and mortgages and and you're getting older and older and and you're still the guy who everybody else has to dip in for when you go out for a pizza and that that can become a bit embarrassing but I've never regretted embarking on the journey now do you all tweet I do not tweet I also do not tweet I do not tweet little and rarely and reluctantly I never true I have never treated Amy I tweet uh yeah I am I tweet sometimes once a day and then uh yeah I'm a Twitter you respond you engage with people sometimes yeah best and worst Twitter experiences I don't know I mean I've got a lot of death threats so those are the worst but the best you know just like things like Gloria Steinem tweeting at me or just people that are like your heroes reaching out I remember during the first season of my TV show Puff Daddy was like that girl's funny and I was like what like just it just get it connects you to people that you would never be in communication with yeah I feel a burden to Twitter I was gonna ask there no and I hear that that's the fear like they'll be this like what do I write like you're gonna get writer's block from a tweet but no it's just this something occurs to me that I think is kind of funny or if I to promote something or to help friends promote stuff organisers contracts these days isn't it to bring a certain number of their Twitter forwards I've only been cast in one thing and they just assumed I'd do it but uh any these days that's real I'm here I was just told by Barbara Walters that talking about them brings more so then has become just the source of everything this negative you know that's positive too though people are messaging me on Facebook saying I don't even know if you read these but my son or daughter we never knew him what was going on inside of them their special needs kid and something because of your movie they're talking about their emotions or the kid talking about he made up with his dad because at 11 he got moved and they never talked about it you know so there's also a lovely part of it they can actually tell you how they're receiving the movie and so I'm finding that the most gratifying part what about you Harry I try not to read that much of it a good or bad because it I'll then become addicted to it the only way I'll be able to feel good about myself is is reading something good and I will also search out they the bad stuff but the Internet in general uh while I recognize everything good about it that you can start a revolution with Twitter even though you know the world had revolutions thousands they did you know there are things about it that I find troubling um III think that the anonymity of the Internet has made us all meaner and dumber you know I'm just wondering as I know I'm not the only one to wonder that wonder this but that this thing that was supposed to bring us closer together I don't see it doing that I see it doing the opposite what do you think agreed to see yeah there's so much there's it's awful I mean but my personal experience of sort of that feedback was it's been more positive but you know if you want to if you want to find negative stuff about yourself it's out there but for kids I'm so grateful I didn't grow up when when Facebook or YouTube was a thing it's it's it's on permanent record your thoughts as a child yeah not only that but it's it's so much easier to for kids to bully other kids out with social media cuz you're not looking anybody in the eye when you say I don't like you or you're ugly that kind of thing you're doing it from again from behind a wall of anonymity I don't know mean girls are mean girls man thanks for cinnamon sticks I've been right to your face it's all that again I said them at sixth grade right to your face they saw the effect of what happened they saw you feel bad I saw you start to cry that you don't see the effect now but even more than than just kids and you know kids to be enough but even more than just kids the Internet takes away credentials just the whole idea of credentials that credentials are important there's a great book that I think written by Andrew keen ke and called the cult of the amateur Andrew keen was one of the kind of the founding fathers of the current internet in the way it's it's set up for social media he believes he's created a Frankenstein's monster for instance if you're coming up and you want to be a journalist and you can't get a job at the Hollywood Reporter the thing to do now is to start your own blog and attack mostly The Hollywood Reporter okay and turn things on their head and say those guys while they're in the pocket of whatever and that's gonna be their mo so we've seen credentials go away that's a big deal you know it we were Josh singing my co-writer and I on this film spotlight we were doing a lot of research sort of preliminary research unless we sat down this guy Clay Shirky I don't know if you ever anything by clay who's the kind of was one of the first guys out of the new media frontier and had some interesting thoughts and sort of circled back after he saw where it was heading which is like you have I think there's a little bit of a sort of disconnect and general public of understanding of a new media there's so much more information that we're all better off and our our citizen journalists and all this sort of aggregate but the question is where is it coming from save legacy journalism which is greatly diminished you know year by year it gets worse and worse right what in newspapers reels little solid high-level investigative journalism and like so who's supplying the news anymore right so I think that's where you're talked about with a Drock relation right so know what's soared credentials credentials reputation I made that up um but you can use that if you like um and you know I think that's something we were sort of we were dealing with the film we're like yeah I think there's a real and now talking with people as were screening the movie we realize that people like well there's more information than ever but the question is how valid is it you know how has it been just been edited has been checked it's rented the recession spotlight what did you come across that that surprised you that was one thing and by then we shall save people haven't seen if it's about uh the Catholic Church is attempts to cover up yeah the movie failure right well the movie deals with the 2001 it's predominately it deals with the 2001 investigation into the Catholic Church by the Boston Globe spotlight team a four-person investigative unit so in 2001 newspapers were at the height of their powers as before the kind of crash in 2000 2005-2006 so we don't really deal with where we are now we just sort of show by example when when things work and this investigation worked extremely well but so we didn't have to really editorialize in that way you know we'd have to comment on that would you said we'll show by example what it is and hope the discussion follows afterwards people would say where are we now which it's it's pretty dire the journalism industry but I think M is right though that when you learn to distinguish between what's a proper source and what isn't a proper source then the material that we have available to us now is incredible like if you're looking up your warts right you find the Mayo Clinic website you don't just go for war to us calmly instead what when you eat you your film room is a fascinating situation about a woman who's been imprisoned in a dungeon like setting with her kid what what research did you do for that and when you did what surprised you well I done most of it for the original novel and the funny thing was a lot of my research sources I was just trying to get information from them so I looked up things like you know video interviews with say Elizabeth Smart and then I got fascinated by the form itself I mean the horror of these interviews how incredibly nosy and intrusive they were so things that I was going to just to get information on the lives that have been kidnapped I actually got fascinated by the media random message boards about Elizabeth Fritzl in which total strangers would be saying she's my hero you know and that the putting people on pedestals and then knocking them down so so I got very interested in the kind of you know measure aspects of it and and then when we were doing the film we did a bit more and we found a few sort of extra details but it was it was mostly a matter of researching as many different situations that had anything in common with this five year old growing up in a locked room so mostly we didn't look at kidnappings we looked at situations like refugees when I was a little older when I was 17 I was walking home first tonigh you were still up in heaven but there was a guy he pretended that his dog was a guy old Nick we call him old Nick I don't know what his real name is but he pretended his dog was listed on stage actor wasn't a dog he was trying to trick me okay there wasn't a dog old next door me I was a different story no this is the story that you get you're both novelists how do you find the screenplay as the form compared the novel is it more difficult is it less free it's not waiting hard yeah I mean of course the thing you notice first of all is the space that it's a hundred and twenty pages with not very much writing on them and in a novel if you're writing a scene that works there's no real reason to stop writing that scene and if it's 15 pages and everybody's enjoying those 15 pages then the nedeth will leave it so this is great but a 15 page see in the movies that's a that's a big that's a big moment and and and so it's it's having to lose stuff that you liked or word proud of or pleased with simply because of the demands of the the form but I I really like the collaborative aspect and and say novelties a slightly lonely anilinium and when tom was talking earlier on about networking and finding people I mean that's that's the thing that I've enjoyed most as my career has gone on is meeting the right people and I didn't know them when I started writing of course I didn't and and you're given more and more opportunity to meet kindred spirits and work with kindred spirits and and but you also have executives giving you notes and they're not always good notes see I don't know if Emma and I had those kinds of executives uh I don't have an executive giving me notes I've had for the last few movies Scott Rudin uh uh who you talked about before who I think is a fantastic script editor by the way a hundred and twenty pages would not get me to the end of the first act uh and uh so I like that's notes uh a lot and then I know I've worked with great directors like Danny Boyle and uh David Fincher and they'll they'll have some some good notes - I really like the the collaborative aspect of it I like the amount of time I mean it's a long time when you're by yourself for I don't know about you guys I'm not a speedster as a writer it takes me a while takes me a while before I even start typing anything just to kind of think and you have a routine that you followed before you write yeah well I mean it looks a lot like lying on a couch and watching ass yeah to the untrained eye but do you do you change your process for film and television this is of course for both of you do I I'm sorry gasps just gonna interrupt me I don't think that's possible but no I actually I wanted to ask you know I read the book and saw room and the performances first of all brie Larson and what's the boy's name Jake Jacob Tremblay oh my gosh seven when we cast huh I mean the movie was also very disturbing of course but the book there were more details there was more and I was really wondering how that how you would handle that did you did you just have a sense of sort of what would be kind of palatable for people to see in a movie theater where you would Seton did you do try not to worry about that stuff too much we were aware that breastfeeding it's a particularly disturbing thing to show ah yes so unnatural really fine yes feedings we had talked to you but also we were being careful with our child star too you know short thing he was touchies - both - so yeah I would say some young men watch the entire film and don't notice the breastfeeding uh-huh even though there are about four moments when you see it but you see it in a kind of a hitch up the t-shirt way and they just don't see yeah you know and but no most the time time we tried not to worry I remember and I had such a dream experience working with Lenny Abramson our director there was no you know faceless executives telling me what to do it was just one to one with Lenny around a kitchen table you know but I remember him saying to me look we could get a mainstream audience for this film but only if we make it without compromise you know we can't pander to them or we won't get them so I just you know trusted him with that and but the time you're not seeing anything graphic anyway because the child perspective kind of protects you for nothing that's a choice in spotlight as well how much did you think about what audiences would and would not want to see about the underlying behavior here I don't think we really considered it it was more just our Avenue into the movie was through the journalists and through their experiences so we were seeing what they were seeing and the victims or survivors I should say the survivors they were sitting with at this point had come forward you know 20 30 years later so we're meeting men particularly in their 30s and 40s who were now coming forth with their stories and so um there are a couple scenes where we see children but not we never see the act so it really wasn't about that it wasn't relative to the story or there or the reporter's experience so um you know I think I think and I agree with Lenny I think's a great director and a really smart guy it's sort of you know I think I think we probably all agree here you just got to forget about that stuff you always have an audience in mind but you're just going after the story you know how much did you feel free to move away from the actual facts of what happened um not that much actually we really tried to stay as close to as we could to what to the events we just found him to compelling we felt like we didn't need to invent that they were there it was more made choosing what we could not include cuz it was a six month investigation we had two hours to tell the story so uh and I just think you know spending so much time with reporters and a movie about authenticity you notice what it is at the end of the day we felt like we couldn't end up be you know that we actually had a moment where halfway through this investigation spoiler alert 9/11 happens and as you know a couple of planes left Logan so everyone in the globe team was taken off that investigation which they were very close at that point almost cracking it and put on put on the 9/11 story and um when we were screening it early on some people would say like wow that's really but having that moment really takes me out of movie maybe you should remove it I'm like how do you remove 911 from a movie again about authenticity so but they're wonderful challenges you know that I think you got a deal with we need to focus on the institution not the individual priests practice and policy show me the church manipulated the system so these guys wouldn't have to face charges show me they put those same priests back into parishes time and time again show me this was systemic came from the top down Aaron did the criticism from Apple sting you at all about Steve Jobs I did not really know the for one thing I understand it Tim Cook learning Powell a widow a good friend and colleague wanting to protect the memory of their friend for another day hadn't seen the movie and people very close to Steve who had like woz like John Sculley former CEO Joanna Hoffman Andy Hertzfeld Andrea Cunningham people who knew Steve very well especially during this period who had seen the movie had been very enthusiastic about it you know the the tricky thing because you're just talking about facts with Steve Jobs that the thing that has surprised me is how surprised some some people have been that it's not a literal biopic that it's not a what we're used to a cradle-to-grave story where you land on the greatest hits of the character along the way I can tell you that I didn't distort pervert or invent any facts about Steve Jobs for this movie at all except one which is that you did not have confrontations with the same five people forty minutes before every product launch that he did that's plainly a a writer's construct just like if I want to do write a movie about you a an interesting way to do it might be to have the whole thing set right here uh right at this round table where all the conversations I haven't if it's a cradle to grave biography uh yes you think uh of course it's never the whole thing and it's but and moreover it isn't and I don't think it should be journalism it III don't think what you want from art is a Wikipedia page shot nicely it ought to be subjective and not objective I started with the Apple two team because we don't you know make that anymore just acknowledged the top guys have a mimosa and relax you will not blow me off right now Steve the top guy there are the top guys all right on the Apple 2 team there are no top guys there be players and beat players discourage da players I have a question because I'm really curious about this I love the structure of the film I thought it was really inventive and original um there's something about the structure of the film that feels very theatrical and feels like it could have been a play knowing you have written very successfully for the theater I just wanted what your thoughts were max I think that's really interesting and valid to some degree I yet it is a movie but I know it is valid and I think that the reason why they're saying I think there are two reasons why they're saying that one is simply the amount of language in it but the other is that in the theater you were very used to things not yeah being literal yeah I and in the movies yeah we are not so much used to things being less interesting right huh it is for instance last season there was a play on Broadway with Helen Mirren playing Queen Elizabeth again the I would call the audience right which was just a look at Queen Elizabeth not you know an entire look which would take a really long time she's a fascinating and complicated woman who's led an extraordinary life so look at the little bit of Queen Elizabeth by the structure of it being a meeting an audience with 8 or 10 of her prime ministers so Helen Mirren is playing Queen Elizabeth for a stretch of about 50 years of her life I promise you that none of what transpired in those scenes with eat Ram Prime Minister was true but no facts were altered the reason why I'm why I know that they're not true is that there's no transcript of those meetings those are Peter Morgan inventions Peter Morgan also not coincidentally wrote the movie the Queen for which Helen Mirren won the Oscar all of those scenes would have been invented but movies you expect it to be literal will you do and because you do it does create a problem when a for instance you portray Steve Jobs as having a somewhat different relationship with his daughter then may have been the case I didn't like I said I didn't change any facts or distort any facts well people disagree that luring jobs for uh what his learning job said about Steve apparentiy called a lot of people who said don't be involved with this film this isn't the Loreen called did call a lot of people said don't be involved in this film she hadn't read the film she didn't like Walter Isaacson's biography that it was based on uh now Walter's biography was comprehensive he is a very well credential journalist he was the managing editor of Time magazine he ran CNN he had written two very well-received biographies before that one about Albert Einstein the other about Benjamin Franklin and this was not just an authorized biography it was a requested biography and they told explicitly told him don't pull any punches don't whitewash anything again that I want to be very clear I did not distort or invent any facts about Steve Jobs except the one which is that he did not have these confrontations I want to say before Nick how much do you feel you do to Brooklyn which is based on suddenly real situations how much do you feel you can stretch historical truth well I mean it's a very simple story book limits um the story about a girl who emigrates from Island to New York during the nineteen fifties which was true of hundreds of thousands of people and so you can more or less come up with any version of that and you would be able to find the historical counterpart there was i also trusted : Troy being the the author because you know he's a great novelist and I wrote the scene where Ailish the lead character arrives in New York and and she comes to Ellis Island and column describes all this beautifully in the novel and I did my own version of that and then just before filming and one of the production team found out and said you know that people stopped coming to New York through Ellis Island in about 1934 and I said no I did not know that my called Gollum and I I said oh that's interesting we need Irish girls in Brooklyn I wish that I could stop feeling that I wanted to be an Irish girl in Ireland all I can say that it will pass homesickness is like most sicknesses to make you feel wretched and move on to somebody else I have a question for him you what do you do when you have writer's block or do you have writer's block ever no because I usually sit down with something pretty specific again I feel like very honored to be at this table as someone who's written one movie I don't know if I would make a mistake of ever writing something so autobiographical again because the you then you have to talk about how how true is this how true is this and you're like who cares and basically with the nature of my movie they're just like how many dicks have you seen like how many dicks have been dangling in front of you I was very protective of the character I was playing it was sort of me if I had been suspended in whatever I was sort of sophomore year of college what's sleeping around drinking a lot and I think knowing people are so quick to dismiss a woman is like oh well okay so she's a okay and so I was really careful with her and so the the one of the opening scenes of the movie the there was they they wanted me to shoot it where it was like my POV a lot of guys on top of me and I was like no that makes everyone think okay I said they're at the door like you just you have to be just real careful with what people are willing to sort of go along with you for um that definitely is not about writer's block actually a quick question about the ex I like that suit kunsan how you handled it was that something you addressed in the script stage or was that conversations with jog directorial II long conversations with Judd where I was like trust me I know what people are willing to forgive because I'm used to you know I've been lucky I'm a stand-up I'm a TV show that's it and so I have the final say um in most things so it was a lot of trust me I'm gonna protect this girl and me being like uh you know cuz he had final cut and like he didn't even have to let me in editing if he didn't want but um but it was it was a lot of conversations and fighting for before you went into production or did some of the during production I Michael yeah how much did you guys improv like with Bill Hader and LeBron James uh it was there was a good amount of improv yeah it would be we would shoot it sort of a scripted and then we'd play and how much of the play takes made it into the film um I don't know a bunch statistically speaking hello oh hey there it's it's Aaron oh this is Amy I think you butt-dialed me no no I I dialed you with my fingers she say what she says he called me on purpose hang up he's obviously like sick or something please John yeah what's up I just call us they had a really good time last night was born if you wanted to UM hang out again will you say that again please I was wondering if I could see you again you know what I'm gonna call the police you unsettle oh yeah well I'm like in almost everybody but well yeah another stuff yeah I was is that true so if you weren't in a scene or a day Imaginex you shot a lot you had to be tired you'd come anyway and oh yeah I was there every second what did y'all teach you don't aspect how this is thank you uh-huh what a judge Hirsch teacher yeah I'm like what other jugs are there um Jud taught me a lot he taught me I was really lucky that I had someone I'm sending scenes to going that's good just encouraging me just cuz if had I he once said I don't I would like you're right I'm gonna go back to the funny bone he he was really encouraging me and he taught me to trust my instincts and the people I know are funny and he taught me that like when you make a lot of money I was like what what I was like what's it like being like really rich and he was just like there's like nothing to buy who has taught you all the most is there a script that you've learned the most from or a person I mean certainly being in a brain trust at Pixar teaches you a tremendous amount very fast the notes it picks are coming from the other filmmakers they're coming from Lee Unkrich and Andrew Stanton and John Lasseter so the any one memorable thing that has changed how you think about writing no because I've always approached writing as what's the you know what's the idea in here what's emotionally thematically what are we trying to say and that as a writer certainly when you're working with Pete docter or Pete Sonor it's always the director I'm trying to dig that up out of the director but I'm also trying to make sure that it's so human that I can also write that because it's we've gone so deep down into what their idea is that it it's kind of hit the human condition so once we have that that kind of DNA then I know how to take the notes otherwise you're just changing all the symptoms on the top and then you just get a new symptom like what are we doing so you know it fixed our you're also screening the movie many many many times in storyboards so you're getting 300 sets of notes and then you want to brain trust me there's just tons and tons of voices coming in and that seems like such a wonderfully unfair creative advantage you know so jealous of that so you have to love getting notes can't you set it up for yourself just your friends and people you yeah but they're doing it in process they're rewriting is they're doing to be a last night shooting a movie watching a couple copies you make them maybe many many times right there's so much so much storyboard also animation different from live-action oh it's just I mean collaboration doesn't even I don't know what is a word bigger than correction you know the storyboard artist I'm working with 12 storyboard artists those they work in story that their department is called story because they are storytellers they can change the scene if they want to you're working more like in television I guess where there's a lot of storytellers at the table but you're also as you're still the writer and I'm working with the director to get his vision and keep it a whole thing and keep that DNA moving and you know sometimes you'll get tons of notes about this scene isn't working this you need to change the scene but the problem is that's the directors core scene that's his scene that's the scene he loves so then I have to go maybe it's we haven't earned it yet and it's three scenes back but can we earn that scene then you know like so it's always kind of to look for the note under the note and but I can't you can't really do that unless you know at least some the world were on of of what is that DNA what is that emotional heart of this movie you know Jodie would call it the big beautiful idea you know what is that big beautiful idea that we're trying to communicate out to the world what are your favorite things to do my favorite um well I like it when we're outside that's good like there's the beach and sunshine oh like that time we bury dad in the sand up to his neck enormous thinking more like rain rain rain is my favorite too we can stomp around in puddles you know there's cool umbrellas lightning storms like when the rain moves down her back it makes her shoes soggy I went to give a reading once a picture and and I just couldn't believe what was going on and the creative energy of the place and going there with a book that just seemed to have been so couple together out of my own head I felt like I was sharing Steve Jobs what a what a pencil did you know this story over here and there's not over say with masturbation we are enjoying the character designers and the sets you're you know you're starting to make the movie as you're turning this up and you're sitting in a room with Ronnie del Carmen who is a genius and Pete docter who's a genius and Josh Cooley who's the funniest guy ever and then Amy Poehler comes off the funniest nicest sweetest person he was like you know it's just you know so but you have either art also times than I can any creative process where you're like okay we've gone backwards or crap there are those really really hard to make you change the script when Amy Poehler Kimball um well in animation they're they're doing their voices but they can I mean they're amazing genius so they can throw lines you know so um she really fit joy so perfectly because she has the great vulnerability that you need enjoy otherwise you know an incessantly happy person is incredibly annoying it was you know we have to be really careful with that impede doctor was such a genius and trying to like why what is her goal it's this child her goal has to be the happiness of this girl not herself you know I thought it was a genius kind of construct for her to keep her and then always watching in the writing that she her response to feeling vulnerable and out of control or upset is happiness but you have to see first the crap you know that kind of upset vulnerability has to come up in her first and then she'd be like okay I know what to do but if she's just like I know what to do I know I said it you'd be like you mentioned it in a previous interview that you were approached to write a Pixar movie yeah what was that and why didn't it happen I've never met Steve Jobs but he called me uh three times and the second call was to ask me to come to her Pixar in the hope that I'd ride a Pixar movie and I love Pixar movies it it's something I would love to try and I'm particularly drawn to what you called a creative advantage the fact that you can kind of do it see it um uh and then yeah I don't hurt all them uh but I can't remember exactly why I didn't do it but uh we got regrettably I didn't go past that question is there a film or a writer or play that really influenced and shaped your writing yo a few I mean when I was starting out William Goldman took me under his wing and he kept me there I you know he's still the person I show pages Dylan talked to from the Steve Jobs script sure uh What did he say I he said they're really gonna let you do this he was uh uh he was very else he has Moodle as his reputation I've never had the the privilege of meeting that guy but what I've read about him is he I mean in a wonderfully smart way but as he as brutal as he's out to me he know he's just wonderfully smart and he's listened it was a bit of a curmudgeon uh about him but it's uh it's very charming it's not yeah Gretna ng uh in anyway and Nick and Emma how about you any I've heard the most being brand new at this I've learned the most just from going through from writing the script based on my novel right to just seeing it getting made and individual scenes where all the dialogue fell away and I realized that still my scene and I wouldn't have known that starting out I would have thought the scene is really the words they speak you know I was all about the dialogue at first I now realize that enormous to homeopathic way they can take away all the dialogue and it still the scene and I even began enjoying what the actors improvised whereas I was really tense about the notion of them improvising before I remember in this in the writing process about draft-free then he said oh that's a family meal they can improvise and I'm like no no I'll write them great lines let me write them great lines you know and then on the day they were doing a lot of improvising and I at that point trusted them I trusted they had their characters and I liked what they came up with and because we were working with a child it seemed to make sense to improvise a bit because when you want that completely naturalistic you know bouncing on the bed fun with mums stuff you have to let the members rise I mean I didn't read the book actually sadly now I've seen a movie which had loved but that transition like midpoint with a movie like I had no idea I thought they were in the room the whole time and it's when agent you were prepared to stay I was I was I was feeling it though I was like oh boy but when they that was did that concern you at all that transition what you see you know in fiction you can do anything like there's no rules at all fix yeah wonderfully baggy yeah um so so the book is in two halves and I knew that would make it all shaped film but I had a feeling would works is what's the separation in the book you actually pop right yeah the film the escape maybe a little bit including the escape scene that gets you to halfway through right so the film that the first half is great you you've never been trapping but there is that that saying that you should write what you know which Amy you did I guess how much do you feel a writer should write what he or she knows oh I don't know I think people should do what they're good at and some people are great at writing fiction I know I love reading fiction at historic fiction um I like to write what I know and but I also like to daydream a lot but you know the external situation or is it the internal what you know about life and what your perspective on life is and what you've observed and saying that can happen on Mars that could happen in a route like I don't I don't know that what you know has to be the external I mean certainly for a beginning writer that might be easier yes it's really cold up like lying about hugging the shore I think the process of getting older is pushing further out and and you say write about what you know I don't know that much material my career this is going on so I've got to find some other stuff and of course you know maybe Erin didn't know that much about Steve Jobs before he wrote the movie and you you find out stuff and and you dramatize it and that's the joy yeah I didn't know actually anything about Steve Jobs and more importantly I didn't care that much um uh and God knows I didn't know and still don't know anything about technology I'm technologically illiterate my point is it it can become what you know you your exact take on a particular story uh it is gonna be framed by your subjective of you and and so you know I think if you lined up ten writers and asked them to uh everybody write a movie about Steve Jobs thing he'd get very ten very different movies we're well on our way to proving that the Santa Fe Opera Company just commissioned an opera about Steve Jobs and the people you were talking about before the Apple a literalist their heads are gonna explode when they try to explain to people that Steve Jobs wasn't a tenor whose sang an aria you know but it's gonna be those right ride at Universal Studios killer my omegas anything you wish you could go back and that has been made him completely rewrite or redo of ours or somebody else's or either one is there a film you'd love to there's nothing I've ever written there isn't a single episode of television there isn't a play there isn't a movie that I don't badly wish I could have back and I do again I don't feel that way I feel like how the hell I get because I nailed it oh that's a great feel no because it's a process right and it slips what your first question was about what do we regret hopefully we don't regret that much I think like that's what Amy's movies so great about right it's like all the mistakes we made and accumulative and the sloppiness of it so I love about your movie the sloppiness of it and in so many ways and I feel like that's it's what make that's what gets us to where we're going and I think better than regretting even kind of steal yourself for it and like accept it and work through it like you were saying jump back into the next project it's just the best way to get work oh it's a lot less painful I think the impulse to write is to take what went wrong before more and use it with the next thing and to work on something fresh and and the idea of going back on anything now is a nightmare yeah to me actually I just want to leave it did you feel that from trainer that you want to does it didn't make you want to write more or or or more nervous about writing I love writing I'm an introvert and my feel it's such an escape it's just you know I feel the most sort of it's time well spent but and and like you're saying it it's via there is always somewhat of writing what you know just something that it feels important that feels important to me to communicate you know even if it's nothing I've ever experienced but this one thing that really struck a chord with me I saw and loved your movie but if I had to guess between introvert and extrovert yeah huh I have a question actually just kids will never be around the table again maybe but like you know I feel like comedians and I'm up now I'm far from a comedian expert so if this sounds dumped I'll talk about this I know I know I know but um they were talking about writing what you know and that's where comedians seem to really draw from and you seem to do that wifely so um but have you ever done any in your comedy where you feel like especially you know your work we feel like you're getting far from yourself or of you know I came from there okay you start out you're just everyone's just doing an impression of a comedian pretty much you don't know I'm still figuring it out but I used to play a character on stage and I would say really irreverent kind of some racist just I played like this very you know privileged kind of almost white sort of Republican chick right and that's not who I am I did not grow up with money right with Democrats but I'm white um but uh and now I'm just keeping a closer and closer to myself onstage and so we're you know you were saying the messy the messiness the sloppiness there are things I've said on stage that you know people kind of treat comedians like politicians now where they go what was this and they'll pull quote and take it out of my set from three or four years ago and say what does that mean and it's like it was a joke like it had his setup in a punch line and and I'm evolving and so I don't regret any jokes I've said but yet and then as a comic hopeful you know hopefully you're evolving and and I really like I like a lot of different kinds of comedians but it there is something really appealing about people letting themselves be a little bit vulnerable because being a comic is so much about control it's like such a yawn that we like we all had hard times as kids and so we as a comic you get a lot of control which it's why it makes the introvert thing a little less surprising because you know I'll be alone all day and my only interaction will be with thousands of people in the crowd that I don't have to talk back to and if they talk back I'm allowed to throw them out um but yeah it's uh I think I think hopefully you get closer and closer to yourself I think that's this to do with the phone Joe does it right not just as a comedian but you doubt what you do I think when I when any comedian who starts out is just delusional like the thought that you weren't people's attention on stage is very stupid it's it's less self down more experimentation and it's like a science experiment by the time I film is special or do something on TV I've tested these jokes to the point of it feels like science like this is where people laugh and so I'll try it and if it doesn't work then I I stopped doing it except for a couple times or I'll get really indulgent and it just makes me laugh Erin can't do with self-doubt is it - hmm yeah no sure uh all the time and I mean it's like Sisyphus there's never been a time when I haven't finished something and have it felt like uh I'm I just wrote the last thing I'm ever gonna write I can't I'm not gonna have an idea uh nothing's gonna work I've used all the words I know in every order I not it you know that kind of thing um uh and then when I am writing something you know is any did I actually write a story uh you know before you even get to is this good did what was in my head make it to the paper so esa i deal with self-doubt all the time and what about you it's gonna sound dreadful but no I mean I often doubt that the work is good you know line by line I might be like that's rubbish that's no good but I try and spend as little time as possible thinking about whether I am any good I try not to have a sort of distinctive donohue style and typically people will have read four of my books before they realized they're all by the same person I just serve the story you know so if it needs to be contemporary and funny great if it needs to be um you know it's a fairy tale language great it's it's not me it's not me so of course it is just as egotistical as any other kind of writing are you Elena Ferrante I'm just trying to think of it as what does this project need what style what techniques what historical period what vocabulary does this need so it that keeps all the pressure off me I do the same thing like I just somehow start to fight for the character like fight through my own doubts because if we don't tell their story it's not gonna happen you know that's not gonna come into the world so I just know I'll forget about a long break in the character I obliged characters yeah it's gonna come out into the world and so when I'm starting to doubt or be like oh my god this is this doesn't work at all you know it's just but you have to lean in because you have to fight for the character for the struts my quote holy man you're gonna one of the things I've noticed working in films and books is that there's way more opportunity for self-doubt in movies because you get turned down endlessly by endless numbers of people and whereas with my books I'm dealing with my editor and it's a long-established relationship and unless I've completely screwed up the book they will publish it and if I've completely screwed it up you will work with me very patiently to get it to a state where it's publishable whereas with movies it's every week a financier now we're not interested in actors not interested a directors not interested in each one I think if you do have so great you're being hammered into the table just by the process and one of the great reliefs about writing fiction is not having to deal with that you adapt other people's novels or not you're wrong is that a formal decision you came too early or did sort of happen uh I decided I did my first one fever pitch I adapted myself and I enjoyed it and it had to become something else but when high-fidelity the next book was optioned I thought I don't want to do this I don't want to spend three years writing a book and then five years taking out all the bits that I put into the book in the first place and dealing with the same characters for what would probably turn out to be eight years I mean that's that's the maths of it that it takes more or less or it's taken five years for all the movies that I've been involved with to be made mmm two or three years to write them so I would really rather do something else the beautiful thing about adaptation is having access to somebody else's hate though I think with fiction there's always a point where you think like this one's gonna be different this one's gonna be different and then halfway through the hi it's me again and whereas something like you know last year I adapted wild and I could not have written that book but there's something I can do in the adaptation process so it's really refreshing for me to adapt somebody else's I have a question for the women here as writers as women and as consumers sorry what annoys you I'm so sorry what annoys you most when you see female characters written on screen oh um first of all I want to apologize for portraying Deon I just I was preparing myself for the heartbreak of usually the question that follows there's a woman what do you guys think do you get sick of a signals endless girlfriend roles you know I in order to cast mine or movie room I I think I watched every movie that featured a white woman between 20 and 30 and so often you see brilliant actors like say brie Larson who we both worked with great and the number of small girlfriend roles they get that are just so unworthy of them so so that annoys being movies where women are so often they incredibly supportive element I mean even a good movie likes a love and mercy there'll be some angelically supportive woman propping your offer there's just too many of these roles you find as women writers that you're not given the chance to write action pieces or male centric pieces uh well I'm gonna write Captain Marvel so it's pretty action so I think is he gonna get his period it's a woman woman yeah I don't know I I think that I'm hoping and perhaps this is naive that if you're a great storyteller that that that that's the first stop what male-female you're writing about emotion inside somebody's head you're writing about a superhero you're writing about historical figure you're a great storyteller so I'm hoping that's the first stop but perhaps I'm naive um in terms of what they're looking for um but yeah I mean right now I think it's it's it's not ideal but I think it's fine that they want a woman to tell a woman's story I think that's pretty awesome maybe ideal me that's all you get to do is do women but that's okay like let's have women tell women's stories that's bad people they were asking me during the press about Judd and like how he's gotten a bad rap that isn't righted enough for women it's like first of all he does and like he's not a would look like why don't you write more form it it's just it's just strange I yeah if you guys sort of identify with that you want to write about it but I think it's a strange sort of criticism I think it's different than the sort of diversity issue exciting that we got six movies here in four of them feature theme right great female roles I haven't seen your film Nick as for the trailer but looks great but but it's still right oh yeah in Hollywood I'm yeah but I'm just saying it's exciting that we're at this day mocha the statistics you know women over 40 they're at no major role so you'd accept four months of Meryl Streep takes even with you know few years ago several women running the studio yeah it's not happen my next movies an action movie with a woman in her 60s really yeah is it this is this one you're writing Jennifer Lawrence all right no we're both very young is their sense of advice you would give to us starting screenwriter that you wish you know when you began meet Judd Apatow mm-hmm I think um mine would be that when I started I didn't know that everyone pretends that the movies going to be made at the end of this process that if there is a pretense and and I thought that when things weren't going anywhere else because the script was terrible and therefore he should just pack it in but in fact that's all part of it that this hurdles hurdle turtle turtles hurdles and that this pretense producers of pretending screenwriters are pretending directors are pretending and eventually if you pretend hard enough then it goes from kind of black and white to color and the movies made at the end of it and I wish I'd known that earlier wrong thought I would have chucked less out I think all right we have time for one more and we will end it but we wanted to ask everyone their favorite line of movie dialogue something that has always stuck with you or that has influenced you in some way not their own prison no it could be your own I guess um what came to mind right away was the movie Jesus's son and Samantha Morton's character and Billy Crudup they're like you know falling weirdly quickly in love and she says we're wrecking like trains I just love that alright one of the movies that made me want to write was Barry Levinson's diner and I don't know why I always remember this line but there's a scene where Mickey Rourke and I can't remember the other guy they meet this beautiful girl who's riding a horse and she says my name's Jane Chisholm like the Chisholm Trail and they go alright and then one folks the other says what Tizen truck I don't know why I always that seems to sum up my attitude to writing really walk kids in traffic Emma I'm so intimidated to be in this company I cannot think of a single line from a single movie go oh Tom what about you uh you know I I'm almost of the same thing and I have too many and I'm like who died but I'm for me and this sounds a little bit like a cop-out it maybe it is but it's um it's silent moments that I go to it'sit's not having anything yes oh poor lad pick that helping sequences simple idea seem easy short film about it any custody yes but that Butch Cassidy jumping off the cliff wouldn't have meant anything without the scene that comes without the I can't swim scene that comes before yeah and you're right there Tama there are silent moments in movies like for instance Helen Mirren looking across the stream at the stag that stayed with us for a long time generally when we remember movies we remember today I'm only mentioning this because this is a group of writers around say well generally when we remember movies we remember lines of dialogue that stay with us like we're gonna need a bigger boat or something like that but Zegers that's Shakespeare yeah mine is actually uh from a movie that did quite work I think was in the early eighties called a competition with Richard Dreyfuss and and Amy Irving I'm drawn to people who are and especially writing about people who are really good at something all the characters I write are much smarter than I am they're much just better at what they do then uh are they're really good at something and this movie was about two world-class pianists who fall in love during a piano competition and it really looks like Richard Dreyfuss is going to win this competition and then he's standing backstage while Amy Irving plays her just ungodly difficult concerto out there and she wins and he's really dumbstruck and she says you had to know I could play uh and he just says not like that oh and that line has always stuck with me I would say I'm the opposite I don't remember the dialog I remember images like as soon as you asked that question I see images starting to flash like in the piano he's dragging her over to cover I cut off her finger or I see in blue she's coming up out of the water and here's the music and goes back under or Toy Story when he looks out of the toy chest and the whole room turns into Buzz Lightyear like they're these kind of intense visual character moments that have plot in them they have theme in them they're visual they're using the medium they're emotional like they're just these perfect moments that to me is such amazing that's what I remember those are they're like these a beat maybe because Aaron's putting the screws to us now maybe um Meryl Streep how do I look at the end of Kramer vs Kramer right before the elevator yeah just that question go from the wire something about the vulnerability and it was improvised we didn't know that they were shooting the the scene and Robert Benton overheard her say that said that's how we're gonna end it now genius and that's how we're gonna end this I'd like to thank all of you for taking part in close-up with The Hollywood Reporter thank you just images again my friends this is really good ah

Channel: The Hollywood Reporter

Views: 326,541

Rating: 4.8508887 out of 5

Keywords: THR, The Hollywood Reporter, movies, film, entertainment, roundtables, oscars, Amy Schumer, Trainwreck, Aaron Sorkin, Steve Jobs, Nick Hornby, Brooklyn, Emma Donoghue, Room, Meg LeFauve, Inside Out, Tom McCarthy, Spotlight, screenwriters, writers, Bill Hader, Brie Larson, LeBron James, Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Saoirse Ronan, Jacob Tremblay, Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, Phyllis Smith, Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Emory Cohen

Id: G-GKiB43iJs

Length: 61min 2sec (3662 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 21 2015

Reddit Comments

[u/MrCaul]

The one with the animation directors is real good.

Just apropos.