Interview: Arash Amel — Part 4

Arash Amel is one of the bright new talents among Hollywood screenwriters, having penned the 2011 Black List script Grace of Monaco which has been produced starring Nicole Kidman and will be released later this year, as well as set up several high profile projects including “Seducing Ingrid Bergman” and “The Infinity Principle”.

Recently I caught up with Arash for an extended interview in which we covered a whole host of subjects.

Today in Part 4: Arash discusses the challenge of writing the pivotal final sequence in Grace of Monaco:

Scott: Let talk about the final scene because that is an amazing moment. Not to give away the whole ending, but basically everything comes to a head in this big, huge set piece. Grace Kelly has been immersing herself in what it means to be a princess. And in point of fact, will save Monaco or not. So there’s a lot weighing on this moment, and also on the speech she makes. And I was thinking, “That’s an interesting synergy there, isn’t it?” She had a lot of pressure on her, you as a writer had a lot of pressure on yourself to write this speech. What was that like?

Arash: [laughs] You have no idea! I’m always my own biggest critic, and when I said to myself, as crazy writers tend to do, “I’m going to end this movie with a three‐and‐a half page speech,” I just sat there and thought if I get this wrong, it’s going to be the most incredibly boring end to a movie. And I always said, “Look if it doesn’t work, we’ll cut the speech. If it doesn’t work I’ll just cobble together an ending and I’ll cut it.”

What was interesting was, probably more so than any other script than I have written, I kind of felt like I had gone through such a journey with Grace, I’d done so much research, it was one of those moments when I genuinely felt like I was in her shoes. I rewrote the Tucker-Grace scene from the mid-point. It was a process of discovery, and it was one of those moments when I said, “I’m just going to sit down. I’m just going to write what this woman is thinking and go against the grain of everything I have been told as a screenwriter” [laughs] Everything I have been told that I shouldn’t do, that I shouldn’t write words on the page for people to say, unless it’s absolutely necessary. What I’m going to do is stick this woman up in front of the world after she’s been battered and beaten, and everything that’s happened to her and say she is going to speak from the heart, to the people, to the audience. She’s going to speak to these people and she’s going to say… you know what? I’m just going to set her free.

It’s one of those moments when you’re so into the character now that the character is speaking. It’s like magic when it happens as a writer. She spoke and I wrote it, and I rewrote it, and I rewrote it, and I rewrote it. I gave it to Nicole [Kidman], and she was like, “It’s a beautiful speech, but what does every line mean?” As a great actor does, she came to it and challenged it. She challenged me. I had to stand up for it and convince her why she should say every line.

Now Olivier, from the very beginning said “I want to shoot the whole speech. And I’m going to shoot it with three cameras, and we’re going to do it over and over and over again, and it’s going to be from beginning to end, rewind, beginning to end. And it was up to me and Nicole to make it work. For me to make it work for Nicole, so she can make it work for Olivier. And that was one of the moments when, genuinely the relationship between the writer and the actor really came into its own. Nicole and I read it from beginning to end. We pushed and prodded the text, until … just through the process of me, Olivier and Nicole reading it and going through it, something just clicked and one night it hit me — that this whole speech was a metaphor for marriage. Every single line I’d written for Grace here was about being married. All in the subtext. It was all about believing the love can conquer all. And Nicole embraced it, embraced my words, became really very enthusiastic, and one of those moments when as artists you click into the same level and it cements friendships and collaborations … we modified it maybe 10‐15 percent and Nicole performed it beautifully, and you’ll see it in the finished movie. Yet there I was, a year after I’ve sold the screenplay and we were halfway through production, I finally discovered what that speech was about.

Scott: There’s a line she has in the speech…I’m going to give you a surprising movie association. She says, “I chose the House of Monaco. It may not be a noble place. It may seem pompous and circumstantial. I may not speak its language, and, heavens, it may frustrate me at times, but it’s my home.” When I read that, what movie I thought of, “The Wizard of Oz.”

Arash: That is so interesting.

Scott: Dorothy said, “There is no place like home.” In some ways Grace Kelly in this story goes on a real life adventure, has all these remarkable experiences in an almost fantasy-type land — Monaco akin to Oz — then realizes by the end, “This is my home” much like Dorothy does. At the beginning of the movie she says it doesn’t feel like her home. By the time she is done she says, “This is my home.” Do you see any comparison in those two movies?

Arash: I had never made that association, but I can see it. When I first started looking at this, interestingly I always said, “This movie, it’s a real‐life fairy tale.” It plays into a lot of the fairy tale archetypes, in terms of the mentor character, and the fairy godfather who shows up and teaches you to be a princess, and the being stuck in a castle, and all those things.

This is so interesting. I’ve never thought about the “No place like home” but I guess it is. Yeah, absolutely.

Scott: It’s Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey.”

Arash: Did that come through?

Scott: Absolutely. When Hitchcock shows up with the script and the million dollar offer to do the movie, that’s the Call To Adventure. That’s a chance for her to start her journey, it’s one path or the other.

It’s one of those Hero’s Journeys that’s more internal. She doesn’t go off and fight dragons or whatnot. Much of it is a very psychologically based drama. That’s the beauty of the Hero’s Journey, it doesn’t have to be all externalized. It can be more psychological in nature.

Arash: Absolutely. I think that probably comes from my approach. Even in classical Lion King type of hero’s journey movies, the concept of the Hero’s Journey for me is actually a metaphor.

My interpretation of it, is that it’s a metaphor for what are normal people’s everyday internal struggles. Throughout our lives we are faced with choices that dictate our lives. They may be the simplest, and most domestic, and mundane, seeming of choices, but they could be potentially life‐changing.

For me, it was do I stay in England or do I heed the call of adventure and go to Hollywood?

I think the reason why, for me, I love the archetypes, and I love the fact that they can be internal and they can be external. I think for audiences, what you have to give them is that thing that they can apply, and they can take away for their own lives.

That’s when audiences can sniff out something that’s truthful or something that’s bogus, where you’re trying to feed them something that’s more cynical, in an attempt to make money rather than tell a story and move them.

The essence and what fascinates me as a writer is that human condition. I think movies, for me, are always a metaphor for internal conflict. That’s how you get to actually really truthful and genuine characters that audiences can relate to.

Scott: That’s great. So your script made the 2011 Black List. What did that mean to you?

Arash: It was significant. The interesting thing was that it made the Black List after it had been sold, and Olivier had already come on board. It wasn’t the catalyst for getting the script off the ground, but what it did do was it changed the perception of me in town. I have to give total credit to Franklin and all of the guys at the Black List. In terms of, what they’ve been able to do is create I guess a badge, a standard, in a town where awards and monitors and badges of honor and all these things are everything. They all make that little bit of difference.

I remember the week really well. It was the last working week of 2011, Olivier had come to town and we were due to meet a slew of actresses for Grace. Everybody was talking about the Black List, and the script being on the Black List — we landed number 12 if I remember right. I also had pre-booked studio meetings that went from generals to “We really want to be in business with you.” That’s huge, for a writer who’s struggling and making it and working up the ladder. For them to go from leaning back, to sitting forward now … that’s what the Black List played into, a sign of quality. That’s what I view it as. I felt like I didn’t have to explain myself so much anymore.

Scott: You’re involved with a number of other projects. There’s a mysterious studio project, the latest script that you sold. How soon are we going to be able to hear about that?

Arash: I hope soon. I’m very excited about it. I’m the guy with all the projects that I can never talk about. [laughs] Everything is always under wraps.

At the moment, I’m in the middle of five projects of which I’ve sold or been signed for at various studios. There’s one assignment in there … I know we did six deals in the last twelve months in total for new stuff which takes me off the market for the next year or so.

They are going to slowly, one by one, be announced. One is the follow up to Grace, which I’m doing with the same financiers, and there was the The Infinity Principle which is actually done in terms of scripting, right now I’m scripting for Fox a pitch that we just sold them, which one day they might announce. [laughs] You know how these things are. Everything is under wraps until one day you turn on your computer and there’s a headline announcing it.

Tomorrow in Part 5, Arash goes into great detail about how a writer can stack multiple writing projects.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go here.

Please stop by comments to thank Arash and ask any questions you may have.

Arash is repped by CAA.

Twitter: @arashamel.

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