Interview [Written]: Max Frye and Dan Futterman (“Foxcatcher”)

A WGA interview with Foxcatcher screenwriters Max Frye and Dan Futterman. Although they share writing credit, they did not write together, however as you will see in these comments below, their combined effort was very much in the spirit of teamwork.

I know you two did not write together, but can you each tell me about your first exposure to the material.

Dan Futterman: When I first discussed the material with Bennett, he was focused on just du Pont and Mark Schultz and the oddness of that relationship. But what I remember thinking is, I’m not sure if I get this. [Then] Max and Bennett hooked up… After Max wrote his draft, I thought, Oh, I completely get it. What to me was really, really important was the bringing in — in a very full way — of Dave as a third part of this triangle. That was work that we then continued to discuss, Bennett and I, and I would go off and write and hand it to him. Bennett was very, very involved in all of this. But Max can talk about the beginning now.

This is exceedingly unique, subtle, complicated, true-life material. What for you was the linchpin to breaking this story? I read that, indeed, it was the incorporation of Dave and this kind of triumvirate of three characters?

Max Frye: Yeah, that was it. When I sat down with Bennett and started talking about the movie, he started with the life rights to Mark Schultz, and he had this vast trove of public domain material — hundreds of hours of interviews of wrestlers that had been at Foxcatcher and had knew Dave and Mark, knew du Pont. Du Pont had written a couple of books, or ghostwritten a couple of books talking about coaching [and other things]. So the big question was, where’s the real story here? What is it that compelled these people and ultimately ended up in this tragedy?

[Initially] Bennett and I approached it as kind of a Mark and du Pont story, and it just didn’t feel right, it just didn’t work. The tension was there between them, but there was something missing. For me, it was the realization that this was almost a love triangle and that these three people had a profound influence on one another. Not only were they vying for the affection and respect of each other in a way — especially du Pont and Mark for Dave’s respect and affection — but that it was a power struggle going on [over] who would be dominant in what particular areas. Dave was dominant in wrestling, even more so than Mark, and du Pont was dominant because he was rich and a du Pont. But Dave wasn’t just dominant in wrestling, he was dominant personality-wise. Mark wanted a gold medal, but even more he wanted Dave’s love and respect.

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And Max I’m curious, now obviously with the film complete, what do you feel Dan brought to the story?

Max Frye: If you were to make a metaphor, I felt like I had created this body, and I don’t know it had life. It had the potential for life. When I look back at everything — Dan went in and rearranged things, and grafted this onto that. But he did a lot of paring away, cutting and just making things much clearer. I feel like that was really what made everything come alive as a story. But really as he said, just taking away, taking away ’til you get to the bare, to the real essence of what it is. That was a lot of his work. That really gave life and made it real.

Dan Futterman: If I could just jump in for one second. I think Max is selling himself short a little bit here. There’s a whole lot more life in his script than he’s giving himself credit for. Max and I have both done some rewriting and been rewritten and they are what they are. This really felt like a different animal to me. It felt like I was continuing on a path that Max had started on. The Writers Guild strike happened, and Max had put off other work that he had to jump onto. A lot of this stuff was a road that Max started plowing and would have continued to plow. It was really, really important to start plowing the road the right way in the first place. He set us off in the right direction — he was invaluable. That work was invaluable. Often writers don’t appreciate the work that’s come before them enough. In this case it was perfectly obvious to me how valuable he was.

Well, you guys are definitely setting an example of magnanimity among writers.

Max Frye: Which will not be followed by anybody.

Great to read about two screenwriters acknowledging each other’s contributions.

A trailer for the movie:

For the rest of the interview, go here.