Interview (Written): Andrew Kevin Walker

In 1995, the movie Se7en was released. To this day, it is one of the best drama thrillers ever produced. To commemorate its 20th anniversary, here is an Uproxx interview with the movie’s screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker:

When he wrote Seven, Andrew Kevin Walker worked at a Tower Records in New York for three years, and served as a PA on films like Blood Rush, “which was about murders in a fraternity house.” He vowed to write his way out of that record store, and when Seven finally sold, he had enough money to move to Los Angeles. And while Walker never thought that his movie would be made, his script eventually made its way to director David Fincher. Fortunately for all of us, Fincher accidentally received Walker’s original script instead of the copy with a rewritten ending, and from there, Gwyneth Paltrow’s eventual decapitation had its strongest supporter.

Where did the idea for Seven come from?

I had moved from a very suburban upbringing in Pennsylvania, so New York City, for me, was a real culture shock. I was in New York from ’86 to ’91, so it was the height of a lot of New York City-specific stuff, like the crack cocaine epidemic on the rise. It was very different from the way it is now. For example, you would never go to Times Square without being very careful.

It was also, even more than now, a time where a concise one- or two-sentence description of something was a really helpful path for explaining movies, especially because at the time there was a gigantic spec market. So the idea — “seven deadly sin murders” — was a reaction to living in New York and putting myself in a John Doe head space where you could walk down the street and see every “deadly sin” on every street corner. What if someone was so highly, over-sensitively attuned to these injustices? That’s where the idea of seven deadly sins came from. It was my way of trying to make my last week at Tower Records my last week at Tower Records. I worked at Tower for three years and every week I thought, “I’m going to write my way out of here this week.” But it obviously took some time.

Were you surprised when New Line acquired it? And were you nervous about potentially not being part of the creative process of making it?

First, a company called Penta optioned it in concert with Phyllis Carlyle, who was a manager, and then optioned it for Jeremiah Chechik, who was the director of Christmas Vacation. The first part of the process was me doing a massive rewrite, just obediently rewriting it and vastly changing the script for Jeremiah, and he really did make it very different and the ending was completely different. There was no head in the box. I do thank God that that version of it never got made because it would have been a very different path for me in my life. But after that option period went by and New Line acquired it, I remember very specifically the first time I went to Anne Kopelson’s office and sat down with this director, David Fincher, who I had only known as the director of Alien 3. And Fincher, in every possible way, completely changed my life, including allowing me to participate in the creative process.

Fincher was originally sent the first draft that I had written, and he reacted very favorably to it when he spoke to Arnold Kopelson. And they said, “Oh no no no no no David, we sent you the wrong draft.” So they sent him the Jeremiah Checknick draft I had rewritten, and Fincher was like, “No, I don’t want to do this, I want to go back to that first draft.” That was the seed that was planted that ended up saving the movie, in my opinion. Fincher valued my opinion throughout the process of rewriting it.

Fincher does this incredible thing that you don’t always get in the process of rewriting for someone, he listens and he just made the entire process an incredibly great and positive experience. He, along with Mike De Luca and Brad Pitt and Morgan and Kevin Spacey, fought-fought-fought to save that ending, and they are the reason that that ending was maintained and is the ending that’s in the movie. Without them, no one was going to listen to me, the lowly screenwriter — that’s just the way it goes.

Here is the movie’s famous Final Struggle scene:

For the rest of the interview, go here.