Interview: Terry Rossio

The writing duo of Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott are — in my humble opinion — the best writers here-and-now of mainstream commercial Hwood movies, what is called ‘popcorn movies.’



I’ve already featured an interview with the duo here, but here is a Q&A with Rossio that has to be included on this site, if for no other reason that there’s so much good stuff here. Such as:

JRM: How did you break in, and how did you come to be where you are now?



Terry Rossio: I’m going to try to not give the usual boilerplate answers in this interview, and that means not going along with false presumptions, no matter how seemingly benign. The question about breaking in seems perfectly legit, but really it’s not. A writer must create compelling work, and then try to sell it. Once sold, the writer has to do the same thing again. It’s really not true that the writer ‘breaks in’ — that’s an artifact of the belief that the person is being judged, not the work, and also of the belief that there is an inside and an outside, which I don’t think exists. There are too many screenwriters out there with only a single credit for there to be an inside, and too many writers on the outside making sales, to too many markets which are either new, changing, or undefined.



In truth buyers are just not that organized, your buyer is not my buyer, or in some cases, you can become your own buyer. Courtney Hunt was nominated for an Academy Award this year for best screenplay for Frozen River, and she’s never sold a screenplay. Is she on the inside or the outside? In truth, anyone, at any time, can come up with South Park or Superman or Sandman, and that’s all that matters.



I know writers want to think it’s all about access, and it’s true that for me, at this point, I can get a screenplay read, far easier than most. But that doesn’t mean much if it doesn’t sell, and no writer is so inside that anything they write sells. Lawrence Kasdan has three unsold specs. Shane Black has films he wants to get made he can’t get made. When every studio passes on your project, let me tell you, that feeling of being on the inside disappears fast.



Sure, of course, when it comes to breaking in, there are techniques to market work, which should be used. Any single avenue is possibly correct, but you only know the right avenue in retrospect. In our career, we broke in through sending query letters and spec screenplays, but so what? New writers have to try every technique, all the time. This includes query letters, phone calls, networking, contests, seminars, internships, working on spec, blind submissions, creating your own website, making films on your own, working as an assistant, targeting an agent first, targeting a production company first, working in other media, optioning properties, etc., etc., you get the idea. One approach will eventually be effective, but that doesn’t mean the other attempts could have been avoided. You can’t fire just one pellet out of a shotgun.



As to the second half of the question — how did we come to be where we are — I guess the thing that gets overlooked is that we picked projects that had built-in high audience awareness. Aladdin. Godzilla. Zorro. Sinbad. Pirates of the Caribbean. And now Lone Ranger. We’ve created some cultural awareness as well — Men in Black, Shrek, National Treasure — which is more difficult, but great when it happens.

JRM: You make it look easy. You say you chose projects with high audience awareness — but how did you come to be in a position to do that in the first place, when those properties were owned by others? I guess what I’m saying is, that may be how you and Ted became the 800-pound gorillas of screenwriting — but how were you able to convince the plantation owners, so to speak, to hand you the big bananas?



Terry Rossio: It’s not as impossible as it seems. Stephen King gives up rights to his stories to filmmakers for a dollar, if he is approached with the right level of expertise and passion. That’s how Frank Darabont got started. There are many, many titles in the public domain. Anyone could write a Medusa film, or Aphrodite, or Shakespeare in Love. Look what Broadway did with Wicked, based on Baum’s novel. New books are published all the time where the film rights are available. There are board games, obscure comics, foreign films where the rights are unwanted. Heck, you could even approach Disney and try to get them to make a film from a theme park ride, which we tried to do in 1992.



There are treasures to be found on the open assignments list. Ted and I were shocked to find Mask of Zorro was an open writing assignment. Any writer with an agent had a chance to go pitch on that. There are historical events (such as Titanic), biographic movies, such as Walk the Line or Ray, or Milk or Nixon. Look what Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have done in their careers writing household name biographies.



Short of that, writers can choose to work on projects where at least the topic is universally known. Do a disaster film about the moon crashing into Earth, for example. Or a horror film about the monster under the bed. Or a kid catching cooties. Everyday common knowledge is potential pop culture. It’s not up to me to be creative and point out all the possibilities, that’s up to the writer. I don’t mean to say that it is easy, but there is so much mental real estate out there, a screenwriter should be able to grab onto something.



It does no good for writers to take a helpless stance.

The JRM in the interview is John Robert Marlow. As to why you should read every last word of this interview with Rossio, here is a partial list of Elliott & Rossio credits:

Aladdin



The Mask of Zorro



Shrek



Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl



Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest



Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End

That’s — what — a zillion dollars worth of box office receipts?



Dude just might have something of value to say…



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