Interview: Kelly Marcel

With the enormous opening weekend box office success of Fifty Shades of Grey, I thought it would be a good idea to reprise my December 2013 interview with that movie’s screenwriter Kelly Marcel.

London-based writer Kelly Marcel wrote the 2011 Black List screenplay Saving Mr. Banks which was produced starring Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, and Paul Giamatti. She is involved writing several other high profile movie projects including The Little Mermaid and Fifty Shades of Grey.

Here are links to the six installments of the entire interview:

Part 1: “Working in that video store was my education. Nothing is going to teach you structure like watching endless movies and TV shows. Seeing what’s good and why it’s good. Seeing what doesn’t work and figuring out why it doesn’t.”

Part 2: “I loved the idea that this sweet film, this huge part of all of our childhoods, was born out of terrible tragedy. I was taken with the idea of redemption and the effect that our parents can have on us all the way into adulthood.”

Part 3: “I loved it, I wanted to write it, and that was that. It was only afterwards that I thought: ‘Oh fuckitty shitballs! This ain’t EVER getting made.’”

Part 4: “It cannot be said enough that no matter how good anyone thinks a script is, if you don’t have the right director -­- a person who will love it and own it as much as you have up to this point -­- then you are completely screwed.”

Part 5: “I wrote everything I wanted to say, it ran to 17 pages or more and then I cut it down and then I threw it all away and then I started again.”

Part 6: “I’m personally a big fan of knowing what your theme is before starting. I think they can arise as you tell the story, but writing within and for a theme seems to me to help the process along.”

Kelly is repped by WME.

Twitter: @MissMarcel.