Interview: Daniel Waters on “Heathers”
Paul Rowlands has a site called Money Into Light and he’s recently run a two-part interview with Daniel Waters, screenwriters of such movies as The Adventures of Ford Fairlane, Hudson Hawk, Batman Returns, Demolition Man, and the cult hit Heathers. In the conversation, Waters reflects back on Heathers providing an interesting look at the movie’s gestation, creation, and influence.
What made you decide that you wanted to make ‘The greatest ever teen film’?
It was almost exactly like that. I’ve learned that naivete is one of the strongest forces in the world. The sad thing about becoming an old, grizzled screenwriter is that you lose your naivete and you start to think about what can be done and what can get made. Back then, after I had just moved out to L.A. and I was sitting writing my first screenplay, it was a case of ‘’What do I want to see?’’ I see so many movies and what I wanted to see was a high school film with Stanley Kubrick’s satire from DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) and the narration from Terrence Malick’s BADLANDS (1973). The high school films that I was seeing lacked a certain something. The parents were always to blame. The kids were always innocent. Even when they weren’t innocent, they were never to blame. I didn’t want to make a documentary saying ‘’This is the way teenagers really are. ‘’ I wanted to take a step back and take a darker, more epic, cynical, satirical approach. Stanley Kubrick did his science fiction movie. He did his horror movie. He did his war movie. Well, what if he did his teen film? So I wrote this three-hour script. Screenwriters today they read Variety, and they read the trades in order to find what is hot right now, instead of just writing. I’ve always found it ridiculous. It’s like the light of a star of a planet that blew up two hundred years ago. By the time you write what’s hot, it won’t be hot anymore. I just went in headlong and wrote this three hour teen film. It was silly and insane of me but in this case it worked out.
You’re a fan of John Hughes but the film is often described as an ‘anti-John Hughes’ film. Do you think of it that way?
In a way it is, yes. That doesn’t mean I hate his films though. Looking back now, the thing that I didn’t like about them, the quaintness and silliness of them, is even more endearing today. They’re time-capsule fun. Even at the time I enjoyed them -it was just certain elements of them I always had problems with. In THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985) a character says ‘’When you grow up, your heart dies. ‘’ HEATHERS is saying ‘’When you’re 14, your heart dies. ‘’ Evil and bad behaviour can happen at a much younger age than just when you’re becoming an adult.
Did you ever think it might have been possible to get Kubrick to do the film?
I honestly did think that somehow he would see the script and say ‘’Yeah, I’ll do it.’’ I thought I would have to go to England and work with him, and he would probably take a screenwriting credit with me. That was me being realistic!
Here is the original trailer for Heathers:
For the rest of the interview, here are the links: Part 1, Part 2.