Interview (Part 3): Chris Sparling

Variety recently named Chris Sparling as one of their 10 Screenwriters to Watch. With good reason. Chris made his first splash in the business with his script for the movie Buried, starring Ryan Reynolds and followed that up with another contained thriller ATM. He has multiple projects in development and two movies slated for release: The Sea of Trees, starring Matthew McConaughey, Naomi Watts and Ken Wattanabe, directed by Gus Van Sant, and The Atticus Institute, written and directed by Chris. It comes out on iTunes on January 9, then on VOD and Blu-Ray/DVD on January 20.

Chris and I had an in-depth interview about how he broke into the business, analyzing some of his movies, and his thoughts on the craft of screenwriting. I will be featuring the interview throughout the week.

Today in Part 3, Chris digs into the two lead characters in The Atticus Institute and one of the key themes of the movie: “Possess the possession”:

Scott: Let’s talk about the two central characters in the story. There’s Dr. Henry West and Judith. West, he’s the protagonist figure in the story. If you were trying to sum up this guy in terms of his role, how would you describe Henry West?

Chris: It’s like the Fox Mulder poster from “The X‑Files”; Henry wants to believe. He’s a guy that believes there’s legitimate science in this world of ESP and clairvoyance and telekinesis. But at the same time, he’s a very aware that mainstream science questions this sort of stuff. Even when his subjects test above statistically significant levels, it’s never enough for the mainstream scientific community to view him as anything more than just a fringe scientist, a parapsychologist. Maybe even a charlatan.

He never really gets their respect, and so it’s an ongoing struggle for this guy. That’s why, for example, Henry has such high hopes in the movie when a test subject comes through that he thinks is the real deal, only for the subject to turn out to be a huge fraud.

That’s emblematic of Henry’s career. That’s why, when Judith Winstead later arrives at The Atticus Institute, Henry at first approaches her with a little bit of skepticism, because he doesn’t want to get burned again. But at the same time, it’s not long before he realizes, “This is it. She IS the real-deal. This is going to finally be proof.”

He’s enamored with her and completely taken with the possibilities of her and what it represents for him and his career, but at the same time, he can’t deny the fear that’s creeping in. She’s just so damn unsettling. It’s undoing him, mentally. He’s trying to stay in the game, but it’s just proving too difficult, because she’s not normal.

Scott: Judith is a woman brought into The Atticus Institute because she’s got this psychokinetic capability, but then it evolves over time to the point where it’s clear there’s something more malevolent going on with her.

There’s a line from one of the documentary subjects interviewed in the movie: “She became his [West’s] obsession. In hindsight, I think that was its plan.” In your mind, do you think that Judith zeroed-in on West because she knew he was consumed to prove his theory to be true, basically a weakness she could exploit?

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. It comes out more in the movie than in the script. The draft I sent you is probably the last screenplay draft as opposed to shooting script. The script changed a fair amount, especially towards the second part of the movie, and then naturally the movie changed in the edit.

All the way through, even in that draft I sent you, it’s always been a two‑hander. It’s Judith and Dr. West. She’s preying on him. She’s preying on his vulnerability. She’s preying on his need for validation.

At the same time, he needs her, and he still feels for her, in a way. He feels for her as a person, especially once the government steps in and starts to brutalize her. You know, “Don’t destroy that. I need that. I need her.” It’s like, “I know there’s something wrong here, I know there’s something malevolent here, but I still need her.

I think it comes out more clearly in the movie, quite honestly. But there’s very much this symbiotic relationship between the two of them.

Scott: Through the story, Henry goes on a downward spiral, psychologically. It’s really intriguing to track his deconstruction almost stage by stage. Did you always have that arc in mind? Was it interesting for you to explore a character’s descent like that?

Chris: Yeah, it was. Henry is the driver of the story, him and Judith. He’s the non‑possessed driver of the story, anyway. It’s easier to feel sympathy or some empathy for him. But that was always the case.

He’s just like anybody in any field. You want to be really good at what you do. Most people do. It starts when we’re kids. We make our drawings, our artwork from school, and we give it to our parents. Why? Because we want them to like it. We want them to hang it on the fridge. That need for validation doesn’t go away when we become adults. It just changes into something more grown-up, like your peers seeing your name in the local newspaper, or, knock on wood, your movie gets good reviews.

Scott: Let’s talk about Judith. You mentioned this idea about this militarization. She starts to become more and more activated in some very violent and malicious ways. I don’t know if this is still in the movie, but you bring in Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney. Are they still in the film?

Chris: No, they’re not.

Scott: But that was so cool!

Chris: Let me go back to what you asked me before about what was the impetus or the inspiration for the movie, aside from the things I mentioned in terms of wanting to direct a movie and everything else. As far as the shaping of the movie itself, why I decided to do it in pseudo‑doc style, apart from the financial benefit of doing it that way, it was partly influenced by a movie that came out — it must have been at least six or seven years ago by now — called DEATH OF A PRESIDENT. It was about the assassination of George Bush. It came out while he was still in office.

I remember watching that film. It was a pseudo-documentary. It was about George Bush being assassinated and the fallout from that. It had interviews with the Deputy Director of this and a Secret Service agent and this person of importance, and so on. But, none of them were real — they were all actors.

I found the movie riveting. I really did. The biggest takeaway, for me, was… In a weird way, it was like the Stanley Milgram study, the obedience to authority study. It was almost that at play when you had these authority figures saying this stuff in that movie, talking about the assassination in a believable enough way.

I bought it. I knew it wasn’t real, mind you, but I still went along for the ride. It was almost like it added a layer of authenticity because it had these authority figures — figures that, like the Milgram study showed, make you more inclined to obey, to believe. The movie also used a lot of footage where you did see real people. You saw Clinton at Bush’s funeral and all sorts of crazy things like that. So, by having the real authority figures in there with the stock-footage, it magically made the fake authority figures seem pretty real, too.

That, early on, was part of what I wanted to do with ATTICUS. I really wanted to set this thing in the real world. I wanted to have Gerald Ford involved. I wanted a then-young Rumsfeld and a young Dick Cheney involved, back when they were in Ford’s cabinet. I wanted to add that sense of realism to it.

Unfortunately, that was probably the only thing the producer, Peter Safran, the executive producer, Dan Clifton, and I ultimately had to settle on not doing. We ultimately felt it would distract from the narrative. Plus, we could have encountered clearance issues. So that stuff, those specific real people that were in the script, did not make it into the movie. However, there are plenty of people that are essentially fake representatives of the Department of Defense, the Defense Intelligence Agency. I still utilized that approach, but didn’t use any real people.

Scott: Their philosophical worldview is in play there. It gets to the heart of this central conceit of the militarization where they say, “Possess the possession.” How early on did that narrative element emerge, this idea of militarizing a possessed individual?

Chris: It was the combination of two things. I always had that idea in mind, the idea of the government stepping in if there really was a possessed person, and then asking myself, “What would they do?” What would they do if they just ‘stepped in’”? What does that even mean?

I couldn’t help but think that if they came across a woman who could affect someone’s breathing, for example, you could use her to murder someone. You could assassinate a foreign leader — possibly from across the globe — without even touching them.

Then I started delving deeper into that sort of stuff and found that, at least as best as I can tell, the Defense Intelligence Agency, back in the ’60s or ’70s, was investigating psi, as was the KGB. Not with possessed people but with people who allegedly had telepathic abilities, clairvoyant abilities. They were seeing if they could somehow turn these people into some kind of weapon, a psychotronic weapon.

Scott: Like THE MEN WHO STARE AT GOATS.

Chris: Exactly, same idea. There are true accounts of that kind of stuff happening, or at least attempts at making it happen. It stood to reason, to me, then, that something similar would happen with a possessed person, but now you factor in these other abilities.

This is a force. This is an entity. That’s why I said I wanted to try to explore the scientific aspects of possession — like what goes on in the body physically. What’s going on that we can actually study and maybe replicate and utilize?

A trailer for the movie The Atticus Institute:

Tomorrow in Part 4, Chris reveals the background on another of his movies now in production The Sea of Trees.

To read Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, go here.

Chris is repped by UTA and Kaplan / Perrone Entertainment.

Twitter: @chrissparling.

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