Interview (Written): Andrea Berloff (“Straight Outta Compton”)

An interview with Andrea Berloff who co-wrote the screenplay for the movie Straight Outta Compton.

How’d you approach the script? How’d you figure out what had to be in, what to condense, and what to leave out?

I approached this the same way I’d approach any story about a living person, I sat down and talked to all of them. It took me over a year of interviewing everybody, I had something like 1,000 pages of transcripts, I had the guys, record executives, cultural historians, anyone who could shed light on N.W.A. and their time. It’s one thing for me to say what I think what a movie about N.W.A. should be, versus asking Ice Cube what he thinks a movie about N.W.A. should be. Cross referencing all those points of view with cultural historians — that process took well over a year. I worked on the script for three and a half years, and I wasn’t the only writer on the movie. [Jonathan Herman eventually came in and did a final pass on the script.]

What do you do with 1,000 pages of transcripts?

The good thing about all those pages is you really have some of your dialogue written for you — I don’t have to make up the words, I can use it the way they phrased it. So it becomes almost the spine of the screenplay itself. That’s the artistry behind it, looking at those 1,000 pages and figuring out what to do with it. When you get to a place in the transcript where the hair on the back off your neck tingles, you’ve got something interesting.

For the rest of the interview, go here.

Twitter: @AndreaBerloff.

For an LAT feature on the movie’s other credited screenwriter Jonathan Herman, go here.