How They Write A Script: Lawrence Kasdan
“I wrote screenplays as a way to get into production. I wrote six or seven before I sold one; that was The Bodyguard. I thought if I started selling these screenplays, I’d get a chance to direct. I thought that was the way in.”
Writer-director Lawrence “Larry” Kasdan is a prolific talent who has written movies in almost every genre including the thriller Body Heat (1981), possibly greatest action adventure movie of all time Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), arguably the best of the Star Wars movies The Empire Strikes Back (1983), the ensemble drama The Big Chill (1983), the western Silverado (1985), the adaptation of a best-selling drama The Accidental Tourist (1988), and the romantic thriller The Bodyguard (1992). Kasdan also makes for a great interview, a thoughtful observer of the craft of filmmaking. These excerpts come from “Backstory 4”, another in the fantastic “Backstory” series by Patrick McGilligan.
ON HOW HE GOT INTO SCREENWRITING
“I was interested in writing, and when I got to Ann Arbor [University of Michigan] I started writing theater and fiction and was able to see my plays get produced. I didn’t get into the film program for a while. I was never formally part of it — I was an English literature major — but I eventually started taking film courses. Very quickly I began writing feature-length screenplays.
I wrote screenplays as a way to get into production. I wrote six or seven before I sold one; that was The Bodyguard. I thought if I started selling these screenplays, I’d get a chance to direct. I thought that was the way in.”
ON HOW HE GOT INVOLVED IN RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK
“Steven [Spielberg] had purchased my script Continental Divide, which was very different from the film which resulted. The script had a kind of Hawksian speed, momentum, hopefully with about it. I don’t think the film turned out that way, which was one of those painful experiences I had early on. But Steven’s enthusiasm for it was what got me involved with him and George. I think that what they were looking for was someone who could write Raiders in the same way that [Howard] Hawks would have someone write a movie for him — a strong woman character, a certain kind of hero. So that’s what got me the job. George had already had the idea of the way the guy dressed, and Phil Kaufman had provided the Macguffin of the Lost Ark of the Covenant, which his orthodontist had told him about when he was eleven years old. At one time Phil was going to direct it, but he had gone on to different things. George had tole the idea to Steven, and Steven had said, ‘Oh, that excites me.’ When I was brought in, it became a Lucas-Spielberg-Kasdan movie. We sat down and decided on the kind of hero Indiana Jones would be, his name, his whip, and talked about the Macguffin and serial films. After that, we created the film by jumping through favorite moments from those kinds of films [serials] — the sort of thin we would like to see.
Raiders was produced on a scale, with a kind of modern technological ability that went way beyond any of those serials, but the spirit of onrushing events and constant crises — that’s from the serial. I think what they brought me in for, and what I tried to do, was to give it a Hawksian spine, plot or story or the production angle — you know, ‘What can we do here?’ I think that what happened in that three-way conversation was that each of us was able to bring in something of our own.”
ON WHY STAR WARS HAS A LESSON IN IT ABOUT WORKING IN HOLLYWOOD
“I sometimes kid around and say it’s [Star Wars] about Hollywood. It’s about imposing your fantasies upon others. A Jedi knight has the ability to take a weaker mind and control it, and that’s what Hollywood’s about. If the studio says to you, ‘We’re not going to make this movie,’ you, as a Jedi knight, say, ‘We are going to make it.’ And then the studio agrees. That’s what the Star Wars saga is about — it’s about following those things which are strongest in you and imposing them on the world. Making a career in Hollywood is like that if you want to do your own work. If you want to do what they want you to do, it’s easy. You just say yes. But if you want to do what you want to do, you’re constantly manipulating the chaos of the system.”
ON HIS WRITING STYLE
“Anything I say about this now is influence by the changes in my process over the years. Looking again at some of my favorite films, and seeing that they’re simpler than I thought they were, has influenced my approach to the writing and directing of films. My initial response to them was that they were infinitely complex, that one image from Lawrence of Arabia (1962), say, conveys so many ideas. So when I started writing, I was trying to pack all those ideas in, to convey them to other people, because I wasn’t going to direct those films at that time. I’ve been writing screenplays now for twenty-five years, and it’s taken me all this time to see even a glint of where I should be heading, which is to aim for a certain simplicity and stop trying to pack the screenplay with as much as I can. On the other hand, that early approach served me very well in that the people who read the screenplays were able to see the mood very specifically and didn’t have to imagine that much. Sometimes, though, I think I’ve been too specific in the writing, and now I’m trying to fight that urge and be more open to possibilities and experiences.”
ON HIS WRITING PROCESS
“I used to outline what I was going to do. I don’t do that so much anymore. It’s part of trying to loosen up the process and not know what’s happening. But I think I’m a linear person, and when I write I don’t write a quick draft and then go back. I don’t like to leave anything behind me, because I’m uncomfortable with it. I tend to write a scene many times over before going on. The last time I was really doing drafts was when I was working for George Lucas. Now, I will sometimes revise and make little changes, but the essentials don’t change. I take a lot of time and effort with the first draft, and I’d rather shoot that.”
ON DOES HE THINK HE WRITES IN THREE-ACT STRUCTURE
“I think I do. And now it’s become so completely ingrained in me that I don’t have to think about it, but when I go back and look at the work I can see that it’s there. Grand Canyon is as loose a film as I’ve ever written, and when I was done with it I saw that I was following exactly the same kind of structure I had been using since I’d learned it in college. I hadn’t thought about it once during the writing — which is what you’re hoping for.”
ON CONFLICT
“Very often my films are about the conflict between our ideas and our desires, and that’s where the drama is for me. We know how we’re supposed to act, but we’re constantly in rebellion against the things we’ve been taught, and our hearts and bodies are telling us other things. That’s true from Body Heat right through to Wyatt Earp — you have an idea of how you should live your life, but it’s very difficult to live up to that. That’s the material that interests me.”
For more How They Write a Script articles, go here.
