Interview: Justin Marks — Part 3

Screenwriter Justin Marks has been described as the “most gainfully employed professional fanboy on the planet right now.” Understandably so given the fact Justin has written such projects The Raven, Super Max, Suicide Squad, Shadow of the Colossus, Hack/Slash and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Captain Nemo.

The Hollywood Reporter recently featured this guest column Justin wrote called “My Life as a Screenwriter You’ve Never Heard Of.”

Justin has written over 20 movie projects. This interview in 6-parts offers an informed perspective of the craft from Hollywood’s front lines.

Today in Part 3, Justin discusses his original screenplay “Earth Prime” and how a spec script can have value even if it doesn’t sell:

Scott: Let’s talk about a spec script you wrote called “Earth Prime”. Here’s a description I found on it:

“A detective is sent to an orbiting colony in space to investigate an act of terrorism, only to become embroiled in a much larger conspiracy, when he learns that one of the victims is a girl he once loved.”

I read the script, great script.

Justin: Thank you.

Scott: In the story, most humans are living in these huge orbiting residential space stations, because the Earth has pretty much become uninhabitable, due to environmental reasons. What attracted you to this futuristic setting?

Justin: One of the lessons I learned while writing that movie, and going out with it, is you can’t just create blown out sci‑fi like that with no respect for how much the movie would cost. But “Earth Prime” started with themes for me. I love being able to hone in on one central idea that is both about the world and the characters. “Earth Prime” asked the question, “What does it mean for us to move on?” As a civilization, and as people individually. And if we move on, what baggage do we bring with us?

I had this idea of seeing a group of Sunni Muslims praying to Mecca, except in this case Mecca was orbiting below them. We’ve moved on from our world, but we’re still tethered to it. Spiritually, emotionally. We’re trapped in the past.

Scott: Interesting because the protagonist character Simon, who is basically like a law enforcement guy, is tethered to his own past, so it works on an individual level there as well.

Justin: Yeah. He’s someone who has a lot of regret, and lives with it, and has to confront that over the course of the film.

Scott: Why do you think post-apocalyptic and dystopic stories are so popular nowadays?

Justin: I don’t know. I think it’s just a safe place for us to reflect on how we feel about the world today.

Scott: Here’s a related question. There’s a substantial conspiracy at work in “Earth Prime”. That’s another thing that seems to be popular in TV shows as well as movies. What do you think is the appeal of complex conspiracies?

Justin: It’s the cynical world we live in. I think a whole conspiracy implies that something is broken. You look back at movies in the seventies and they did the same thing with the Watergate era. Our world is fundamentally broken and the institutions around us are fundamentally broken.

I love a future where nothing works, where things are built the way you would hope they’d be built, but they don’t function right. I love 2001, but it’s just so clean and so ideal. It’s a commercial for Pan‑Am. I want to see futures where all of these ideals are just shattered by reality. I guess I’m just innately disappointed by our world. I think the movies should reflect that.

Scott: One of the challenges associated with science fiction stories is what generally we call world‑building, creating a palpable, coherent sense of what the futuristic setting is, while not getting bogged down in too many details in the script. How much of an issue was that for you when you were writing “Earth Prime”? How did you go about handling that?

Justin: It’s a huge issue. When you’re writing a sci‑fi script it’s everything. Specificity is everything. Because no matter what story you’re telling, no matter what the plot is, sooner or later you’re bringing up old tropes or clichés of the genre. It’s just going to happen. Other movies have treaded this ground. You have to find a way to make a reader think, fundamentally, “I’ve never read this before.” So what you do is, you draw a blueprint of the world, and then you try to see the way people would unexpectedly inhabit it. It’s like architecture. You can design a building, but once you open the doors, people are going to make it their own. That contradiction, of spontaneity and planning, has to be present when you’re doing world building and sci‑fi. There has to be a sense of a future that has unintentional scuff on it.

If you start to build that out, suddenly, the world starts to feel real and lived in. Voltron is a great example where I tried that. My goal has always been to give sci-fi scripts moments of, I don’t know, verisimilitude I guess.

Scott: If I’m not mistaken, “Earth Prime” hasn’t been set up yet.

Justin: No. It was never set up. There were some things going on with it, but they all fell through, in terms of the way I wanted the movie to get made. I had a very ambitious plan for how that movie could look. I wanted it to be shot, actually, on location in Paris. All of the fake cities are actually just real cities, real neighborhoods in Paris. You would paint the sky, as I called it, to give it the impression that you were actually somewhere else. I wanted it to feel very much there and not there. I thought that’s how the movie could actually be made at a price. Not everyone agreed with me.

Scott: But if I understand it, didn’t that script help you, in terms of getting some writing assignments subsequent to that?

Justin: Oh, very much so. This goes back to that thing about breaking out of the box. At that time, where I was as a writer, I had been doing a lot of comic book stuff, a lot of action figure stuff, a lot video game stuff. I love video games, I write video games as well. I was doing that on the side, too. I got to this point… after I wrote 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea for Disney. It was a great process, but then it all fell apart very quickly, which was heartbreaking. I had this moment… this is just a personal thing. But we are, as writers, putting our hearts into everything we do… I had this moment of saying, “I need to grow.” I wasn’t satisfied. Like all writers, we hate what we wrote yesterday and we love what we’re going to write tomorrow.

I used “Earth Prime” as an opportunity to say, “I want to try to do something that’s more mature, more thematically ambitious.” As a result, what it got for me was a string of jobs that filled that mandate. I wrote a character piece for Paramount. Well, it was an action movie about Air Force One crashing in Afghanistan, but it was really about the meaning of the American presidency, as seen by a number of different people. I’m working on a project right now, with a high profile director, that’s a period piece set in turn of the century Russia. It’s actually an espionage thriller. But it’s also a satire set in the early days before spies had rules. I’m doing a project with Bruckheimer that is very much a Disney drama, something that I never thought I could write. Just a really heartfelt, emotional buddy movie.

For me, I think it’s about finding those locked areas of your head that you didn’t think you had the key to. Challenge yourself. Everyone always says, “Write what you know.” But if you always write what you know, you’re never going to grow.

When I started this Bruckheimer project, I had no idea if I could really write it. Now, I think it’s probably my favorite thing of anything I’ve written. You have to take that leap. That’s what “Earth Prime” represented for me. That’s how I started to change.

Scott: That speaks to two things that are really important for aspiring writers to understand. One is that spec scripts have value, even if they don’t sell.

Justin: Always.

Scott: Secondly, this goes back to Joseph Campbell and that idea of following your bliss. If you translate that into the creative realm, it’s like, “Follow your creative instincts.” You did that with “Earth Prime”. You just said, “I want to do something that I feel creatively drawn toward.” As a result, you benefited by getting all of these other gigs.

Justin: Yeah, even when the script didn’t sell. That’s a really important lesson. We all read the same trades, as aspiring writers or working writers. We see the big spec sales. There’s something really great to, “Wow. I wrote this thing. Here’s a big check. I’m going to go out and celebrate. That’s going to be my life.” But the reality is that, not even 9 out of 10…You know the stats better than me. I’d say it’s probably like 95 out of 100 specs, they don’t sell. That doesn’t mean that there were 95 out of 100 specs where people’s time was wasted. Everything is about the process. There are scripts that I’ve written that I’ve never shown anyone. Because I just feel like, “Yeah, this is fun and I wanted to try this, but you know what? I can’t do this genre, this genre doesn’t work for me. But I’m so glad I tried it, because now I know where that limitation is, and I’m just going to set it aside and move on with my life.” It’s so important to write for yourself. It’s not just about creating a chance to sell something. It’s about finding something in yourself what you didn’t know you could write before.

Tomorrow in Part 4: Justin discusses the low-budget project he wrote “Come Sundown” and what he’s learned about making an indie movie.

For Part 1, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

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

Justin is repped by CAA and Madhouse Entertainment.

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