Interview: Robert Carlock (“Whiskey Tango Foxtrot”)

An Indiewire interview with Robert Carlock (Saturday Night Live, 30 Rock, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt) who wrote the screenplay adaptation for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot which starts Tina Fey:

“SNL” does seem to be this strange incubator where people are thrown together and expected to craft something massive.

It’s also a place where anyone who’s worked on it has a shorthand about how things are done. As a baby writer there, you get a sketch on and you have to go produce it. That’s sort of terrifying, but also great and you get to make mistakes. Hopefully, not so many that you don’t get asked back [laughs]. You don’t wanna make mistakes. You want your stuff to go to air.

Anytime you meet an “SNL” person, they’ve done that job. And a lot of writers don’t get to do that job. It changes your perception of coming at it from a purely writing standpoint. It took me a while to figure out what actors want and to write for actors, as opposed to wanting actors to do what I wrote. That’s something “SNL” forces you to do among other things. I learned a lot of that from Tina actually.

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There are a few scenes in the film that carry some heavy drama. Are you surprised when you see that stuff on the big screen and the impact it has?

I’m not surprised, as in I know how good Tina is, and I hope this movie opens people’s eyes to how complete her skills are and her ability to communicate humanity in unlikely circumstances isn’t limited to people liking Liz Lemon. It was also hard to make her a human being sometimes [laughs]. Not having written a lot of things like that, it is fun to see that stuff up there and such good actors and their heads are so big in movies. Usually on TV their heads are littler than real heads [laughs]. In movies, they’re much bigger.

Here is a trailer for Whiskey Tango Foxtrot:

For the rest of the interview, go here.