Interview: Chris Borrelli (2009 Black List) — Part 3

Christopher Borrelli, who wrote the 2007 Universal / Gold Circle horror thriller Whisper and co-wrote the 2009 Fox / WWE action film The Marine 2, sold the spec scripts “The Vatican Tapes” [Black List] to Lionsgate and Lakeshore in 2009, “Wake” to Hammer Films / Exclusive Media Group in 2010, and “Sad Jack” to Code Entertainment in 2011. In addition he has worked on the remake of Bad Influence for MGM, an adaptation of the French horror film ILS (“Them”) for Gold Circle, a live-action series “Necessary Evil” at the Cartoon Network with partners Jonathan Davis and Max Burnett, and has a blind deal at Focus / Rogue. Also “Twittering from the Circus of the Dead” with Todd Lincoln attached to direct.

In April “The Vatican Tapes” was greenlit for production with a July 15th start date. In May, Chris agreed to terms on the sale of another spec, the announcement is forthcoming.

Today in Part 3, we continue our analysis of Chris’ script “Sad Jack”:

Scott: It’s important when we write characters to come up with those specific bits of business that make them feel real. And one of the ways you convey Jack’s psychological state I thought was effective wasn’t visual, it was an audio thing. That buzzing of lights, a kind of a recurring theme.

Chris: Right.

Scott: So that was one thing. Another thing I thought was interesting…he has this uncanny ability when he’s shooting a gun to catch the casings in mid-air. Do you remember how you came up with that idea?

Chris: That just came out of nowhere to be honest with you. I sold another script the year before, and we’re about to announce the new director on that, that I’m excited about. That’s a script called “Wake,” that’s meant a lot to me too…I love that character. That character could kind of be Jack’s cousin. I knew that they were sort of similar, and I didn’t want to get stuck with the same sort of idea. Oh, that character doesn’t have the schizophrenia…he’s a much happier person, even though he’s in the same sort of world.

That character I wrote, I wanted to write an action movie with a main character who couldn’t shoot. They’re always such great shots, I wanted to do a guy who couldn’t shoot…he can’t hit anything.

Jack, I went the other way with him. He’s very clear sighted, he’s very good at what he does. Part of the manuscript about the schizophrenia, is he’s happiest when he’s either in danger, or he’s got to be firing on all cylinders. It’s part of his condition.

Restless and boredom is a detriment to his life. He’s very unhappy when there’s not much going on. But he’s happiest, and calmest, Jack is, when he has things that would frighten the hell out of you or me, or too many things going on…he loves it.

Throughout the script, our main character Jack is, in many ways, referred to as an animal…different kinds of animals. This is some more subtle stuff I put in scripts that not everybody has to get to, hopefully, enjoy the script.

But I keep coming back to the imagery of different animals. There was a scorpion and an octopus…all these different animals that represent different parts of Jack’s personality. Along those lines, not everybody’s going to understand everything in a script.

Just putting it in there and having them feel the world is rich. If you even may not pick up on this. It’s very subtle, but the first time we meet Jack he’s in shorts, second time he’s in jeans, third … you know.

As the script goes on he’s in a polo shirt. At the end, when he winds up in prison for a stint, he’s got his pants pulled up very high. It’s like he’s aging. As if he’s becoming a man as the film goes on.

Again, this is an action movie with some genre moments. I like to layer in different kinds of imagery and different kinds of symbolism just to build it out and make it feel rich and it makes me happy.

Scott: Now that you mention it, I remember the description and that evolution in terms of his attire and stuff.

Chris: Yeah.

Scott: It’s great you thought that through. In a way it’s like that image of like the iceberg. 90 percent of the ice is below the water. For writers, maybe 10 percent of what we learn about our characters ends up in the script, but we need to know that 90 percent to understand them.

Chris: That’s so true, and the other part of it is, it’s why screenwriting is…You have to…There’s a certain technical side to screen writing. There are many, many great authors. They can’t necessarily write a screenplay. It’s not lack of talent. It’s just that screenplays are so much about what is said, and what is visual. They’re supposed to be clean, and sometimes you have trouble keeping a script under 120 pages. I sold a script that was only 79 pages, but it depends. At the same time, with the screenplay it’s supposed to be very, very clinical. Everything there, in my opinion, should mean something. Every sentence in a spec I send out, or a job I do, I check for every sentence to have a real reason for being there.

If not, I relish cutting it. It kind of trains your mind when you’re a screenwriter. I just finished writing a fiction book, that people have been a little bit excited about. That’s a whole other subject I realize, but it felt fun to have a little more freedom to be able to say what a character was thinking for a [laughs] change, without having to fake it, or write it, or tell it in a look.

It’s been fun to write in a flashback or two, where a character thinks back to a distant event, without realizing it’s a film, and being expounded in that way.

Scott: Back to “Sad Jack,” the protagonist Jack, he intersects with a next door neighbor, Caroline. She leads kind of a sheltered life. I think she works, basically, like a tax accountant.

Chris: Yeah.

Scott: In many ways you’ve got these two characters that are from completely different worlds. How did Caroline’s character emerge in your creative process?

Chris: I would say that’s simple. Of course, I wanted to have a romance. Someone who really understands film philosophy better than me might do it different. I sometimes feel that a character like that is your main character. So in the Hurt Locker, I feel Anthony Mackie’s character is actually probably the main character. That’s just my two cents because we relate to him much, much more than the more over the top characters.

Caroline’s essentially us. She hasn’t dealt with someone trying to kill her before. She’s honest, she’s decent and in a way she has to go into this netherworld and there is just one guy who is going to help take her through it, and that’s Jack.

He’s doing it because he can’t express it, but he’s in love with her and he has been for a long time and he has one chance to actually do something right in his life.

The short answer, one sense I’d give you is it’s just the opposite of the main character. Obviously it wouldn’t be any fun if she was too close to him, too similar, anyway, to him in this kind of story.

If this was a two anger buddy action kind of film that would be different, but for something like this you wanted a contrast and that wasn’t hard to do because she’s a very relatable, regular person like most of us.

Scott: When working with a dynamic whereby the protagonist develops a relationship with an Attractor character, how important is it to identify an authentic point of connection between the two? In this case, what is the point of connection between Jack and Caroline?

Chris: I went very primal and basic with it, but it asks a bigger question as the film goes on. In the primal way, Jack just has…he has watched her from afar…she’s his neighbor…without being a stalking, too creepy…creepier than he already is. He just has feelings for her. The more interesting way is what she feels about him. That is that we’re wondering throughout the film, when she doesn’t need him anymore, will she still need him anymore…will she want anything to do with him?

We seem to go back and forth with that. She’s not a manipulative person, she’s just fighting for her life here. But the question is, can someone like Jack move with Caroline to the suburbs, and have a regular life?

I think most of us just realize in reading, it would feel inauthentic if that would happen. We know that he’s in a different world, we know that this is his chance to do something right, and that just layers sadness to the script, that’s in the background.

It also makes Caroline a little more complicated. I always think of the sitcom mom…Caroline’s not sitcom mom where she just always plays off interesting people. There’s something in her that she’s…how far is she willing to go to stay alive, and when she doesn’t need him anymore, will she want anything to do with him?

So that’s one of the questions that’s asked throughout the script.

Tomorrow in Part 4, Chris discusses how two of his spec script sales went down.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

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

Chris is repped by WME and DMG Entertainment.

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