Interview: Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber — “(500) Days of Summer”, “The Spectacular Now” (Part 1)

Screenwriters Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber have written scripts that have made the Black List a remarkable 5 times, broke in with the hit indie film (500) Days of Summer, and have become go-to guys for adapting novels having written screenplays for The Spectacular Now (to be released this summer) and The Fault in Our Stars (pre-production), and writing high profile projects Where’d You Go, Bernadette and Rules of Civility. We are most fortunate to have them as our ‘guests’ all this week.

Today in Part 1 of our interview, Scott and Michael talk about how they broke into the business, met each other, decided to write together, and how they hit on the idea for (500) Days of Summer:

Scott M: As I understand it, the two of you met when Michael became an intern at Tribeca Films, and Scott was working there as a development executive.

Michael: It was, I want to say, March of 1998. My friends went away on spring break, and I couldn’t afford to, so I went back home to New York, and decided I would just use that week to find an internship. Opened the phone book‑‑I didn’t have any connections anywhere‑‑and just cold‑called a bunch of places. Went in, met with Scott, and very quickly, the conversation moved away from work stuff and became us talking about movies.

I had recently seen “Rushmore” and we were both gushing about how much we loved that movie. It’s pretty much been that way ever since when we’re together. We tend to talk about anything other than work.

Scott M: How did that stint at Tribeca precipitate you both getting into screenwriting?

Scott N: I had always wanted to be a writer. I just never thought it was a very practical way to make a living and I wasn’t brave enough to go out to LA, wait tables, eke out a living while working on the craft or whatever. So I went the development route instead. I was hired out of college to be the Story Editor at the company — which basically meant I was the in-house reader. I’m not good at very many things but when it comes to doing script coverage or story notes, I’m first team All-American. So they kept me around to read all the scripts, do notes, coverage, and weirdly enough, though I was a 21 year old kid, they valued my input. Which was awesome.

Michael: I was a summer intern in ’99, Scott was reading a million scripts. The internship wasn’t glamorous. None of them are. Then, in between photocopying and errands and whatever, I read a ton of scripts, generally whatever Scott thought was good. We would sit around and talk about them.

When I graduated Syracuse in 2000, most of my friends went out to LA and I never really wanted to leave New York. I just hung around Tribeca until they hired me. First I was doing floating work on the development side, but by July of 2000, I was hired to be one of De Niro’s personal assistants.

Scott N: Weber was the one who said why don’t we try writing one of these in our spare time. I couldn’t think of a reason not to.

Michael: We would sneak away during lunch breaks, have lunch on the roof of the Tribeca Film Center and talk about the scripts we had read and seen that Tribeca had bought. We’d go, “Really?” seeing these other places that bought.

Scott N: The false assumption I was under — that I think a lot of aspiring writers are under — is that most scripts in Hollywood are extremely good. Nothing like a few years reading unsolicited material to debunk that idea. But beyond that, even some of the scripts I was receiving from agents and managers, they weren’t exactly tremendous either. And they were getting bought and some of them were even getting made (12 years later, I still don’t entirely understand the getting made part of the equation but that’s a whole other story). Anyway, when the bar was set at Sorkin level, I was certainly not going to even attempt to write a screenplay. It was only when I realized there’s only one Sorkin, there’s only one Tarantino, there’s only one Cameron Crowe — it freed me up psychologically to give it a shot.

Michael: This was probably, I want to say early 2001. We didn’t know what we were doing. We didn’t have a plan. It’s not like we read a book on “Here’s how to collaborate on something.” We were mostly doing it to make each other laugh and make our friends laugh.

Scott N: He’s a very easy laugh. I enjoyed getting him to laugh at things though I am not, I don’t think, all that funny.

Michael: I came from a background in Syracuse of extensive outlining. My professor there, Evan Smith, who had a long career both writing and working as an executive, he on both sides of it, mostly in TV, had drilled into me the importance of outlining.

Scott N: Another thing I’m not — organized. And I hate outlining. But this is why I would sit down and write 50 pages at a time — some of which wasn’t terrible — but then not know where it was going, get frustrated, and delete it from my hard drive in disgust. I’m bad at writing, but great at deleting. You need to outline.

Michael: The first thing we wrote was a simple idea we both liked. A guy is stuck in a job he hates, and he finds out he has six or eight weeks to live.

Scott N: I called it “Suck the Marrow” after the Thoreau quote and because I liked having the word “suck” in the title of our first script. Basically, every time you see the story of a man with only a few weeks to live, it ends with the dude climbing Mount Everest or having a catch with his Dad or some life-affirming Bucket List-y thing.

Michael: We thought, “No. None of that would happen. You would quit your job in a blaze of glory and you’d blow all your money on the stupidest things and you would just go crazy.”

In our version, the main character did that, but then of course, six weeks or eight weeks or whatever come and go, and he doesn’t die, and there was a screw‑up. It turns out he’s going to live.

Scott N: So he has to right all the wrongs he just created etc. It was an extended episode of “Family Guy,” basically. Really broad, really ridiculous.

Michael: We had a corpse‑fucking scene.

Scott N: A terrific corpse- fucking scene!

Michael: We had a cadaver musical number. The main character is snorting Cocoa Krispies at one point. It was totally off the wall. What it was, most importantly, is, we told a really simple story as a vehicle for character development and jokes.

Our friends liked it and some of the people we worked with liked it. It never got sold or anything like that. It encouraged us that maybe we could do this story, or it was at least worth doing again. That was really important. It also was just the beginning of the partnership in terms of us.

Even then, when Scott lived in New York, he lived on the Upper West Side, and I lived on the East Side. We never wrote in the same room then. We can problem‑solve in the same room.

We outlined a lot by phone, by email, even, very rarely, but sometimes we’ll even outline a little bit together, but the writing will never takes place in the same room. It didn’t back then in 2001, and it doesn’t now.

Scott M: That same pattern came into play with “(500) Days of Summer”. Scott was in London and you two were swapping emails across the Atlantic Ocean about this script idea.

Scott N: We weren’t exactly writing “500” while I was in London. The truth is, having written a script that was funny, that people liked, but that didn’t go anywhere, it kind of proved my point about this not because a very practical way to make a living. And now I was 25 and starting to think maybe working at a movie company wasn’t either. So I applied to graduate school in England and when they took me I said “fuck it,” quit my job and moved to a continent on which I knew no one to study a discipline of which I knew even less. It was a crazy move but I was in the mood for something crazy. I was pretty much done with the movie business and writing when — and this is true — the very first day in England, I met the girl who would provide much of the basis of Summer.

Michael: We had always talked about doing a relationship movie, something real and something relatable. We had conversations like that.

Scott N: Problem was we didn’t have the relationship we wanted to write about. And then suddenly we did.

Michael: I think Scott rented that movie “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing.” The funny thing is, neither of us has still ever seen that movie. He rented it but didn’t watch it, and then he said to me, “We should do something like that.”

Scott N: It was “32 Short Films About Glenn Gould.” I was back in Margate (where I grew up) writing my thesis for grad school and trying not to think about that girl. Which meant a lot of movie renting and Smiths listening. I never opened the DVD but I remember looking at the box and the title and having this idea in my head of what that movie could be about. That’s when I had one of those rare lightbulb-y moments. I’ve saved the email I sent Weber at 2 in the morning, August 8, 2003 which you can read below:

“i’ve hit upon a possible way to do a relationship comedy a la annie hall and make it not suck. a bit like 32 short films about glenn gould, here we have what i’m calling 308 DAYS OF APRIL, april being the name of the girl. the movie is an out of sequence collection of incidents and events or whatever, like, 1 would be the scene of their meeting and 308 would be the scene of their break up. 8 would be the time in the elevator when he didn’t ask her out, 36 would be the first time they have sex etc. etc. all about relationships and romance and the craziness involved until we have a full length funny feature that people can laugh at and possible relate to that is as interesting character-wise as it is structurally. with enough bits and pieces from our own experiences and stories from people we know, this thing could write itself.”

There you have it.

Tomorrow in Part 2, we go into depth analyzing (500) Days of Summer and learn much more about the thought process that went into writing that script.

Please stop by comments to thank Michael and Scott for taking the time for the interview and post any follow-up questions you may have.

Scott and Michael are repped by CAA and Kaplan/Perrone.

Comment Archive