Q&A: Screenwriter Stan Chervin (“Moneyball”), Part 4

Stan Chervin is one of the credited writers on the screenplay for the movie Moneyball along with Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin. In the fourth part of my Q&A, Chervin discusses his current and future script projects.

Moving on to some projects you’re currently working on, you are adapting the book “Heat” by Bill Buford which is described as a “story of one man’s journey from journalist to kitchen slave to culinary apprentice.” How did you get involved in this project? What about the story attracted you to it from a creative standpoint?

Bill Buford and I were at Berkeley at the same time. He was a senior when I was a freshman but we met in a Shakespeare seminar taught by Prof. Stephen Booth who both Bill and I consider to be a mentor. (Bill’s first book, Among the Thugs, is dedicated to Professor Booth.) I had followed Bill’s career, first at Granta, then at The New Yorker, where he was the Fiction editor, and had been a fan of his first book so I read Heat as soon as it came out.

As with Moneyball, I immediately thought Heat could make a movie. Around that time, I was talking to Rachael about random Moneyball matters when I mentioned to her that I had read this great book and I was thinking about adapting it. “It’s called Heat by Bill Buford.” There was an eerie pause and then Rachael said, “Stan — I’ve been trying to set that book up as a movie for a month now.” Despite our closeness, and our desire to work together again on another project, both Rachael and I had discovered Heat on our own and were pursuing it independently, without having told the other. We immediately teamed up at that moment.

As in the case of Moneyball, Heat is really about one thing. Bill sets out on a search, in a way, to find out the answer to the question — “What makes the best cooking?” Ultimately, the answer he discovers is surprisingly simple, but can apply to so many different aspects of life: “The best cooking is done with love.”

You are also working on Quantum Hoops, the story of Cal Tech’s basketball team. What is that story about? How did you get involved with it? I understand this was a project you pitched around town in Hollywood. How did it end up with Ben Stiller and Stuart Cornfeld attached as producers? Where is the project currently in the development process?

Jeremy Platt and Brian Truman had the rights to a documentary on the Cal Tech Men’s basketball team and their 300 game/25 year losing streak and were looking for a writer to dramatize it. My agent recommended me.

I believed that the only “star” part was the coach’s part. I then created a fictionalized story about a Division I basketball coach who, through various reasons, finds himself stuck coaching at Cal Tech, but desperately wanting to be somewhere else. The analogy I always used was To Sir, With Love where Sidney Poitier’s character sees teaching as a temporary way to earn the rent until he gets his “real” job as an engineer. With this fictional lead character, I created a kind of Hoosiers meets Revenge of the Nerds storyline.

It’s very hard to sell anything of a pitch these days, but particularly a sports movie which I feel has an unfair and inaccurate reputation for “not doing well overseas.” The pitch employed all sorts of audio-visual bells and whistles: we started with a five-minute ‘recap’ of the documentary which my daughter had edited for us; I also had a board covered with photos of famous Cal Tech pranks and traditions which I had incorporated into the pitch, and on another board I had cards with all of the major beats of the story.

It’s always easier to sell a pitch with a piece of talent attached. Ben Stiller was an obvious choice to star and/or direct. We pitched to was Erica Steinberg who loved it and had us pitch to Stuart. All of them are very intelligent, very perceptive and very, very good at story. Their input greatly improved the pitch. Although Ben is still our first choice to star and direct, he is officially attached only as a producer. This provides a great incentive for me as a writer. I need to write a script that is good enough to get Ben to attach himself as star and/or director.

I am currently writing the first draft which I hope to turn in soon.

It seems like you have written a number of book adaptations. Do you have a particular interest in writing adaptations or is it something that just played out organically based on opportunities that arose for you?

When it comes to books I’m attracted to, it’s like jazz: I can’t describe it, but I know it when I hear it.

Beyond that, it has played out organically only in that when I do find a property that I want to adapt I tend to pursue it with dogged determination and persistence. The Moe Berg project took me almost six years of pitching to everyone who would listen before I was able to set it up at Warners with George Clooney. Moneyball took seven years to get made.

You have also written for TV (“Extreme Team” for ABC, “7th Precinct” for Samuel L. Jackson). What are some of the key differences you discovered writing TV as compared to writing movies.

The main difference is time. Features unfold in an odd, other-world reality in which time has no value because there’s so much of it. Until you actually get a movie green lit and a production start date set, there are no real deadlines in features. Television is all about deadlines. They have very specific calendars of when you can sell something, and even more clearly defined dates of when it has to be turned in by.

Similarly, the power and relative importance of the writer is inverted in television and features. In features, for the most part, the writer is considered an easily replaceable, rather powerless cog in a larger machine. That’s why writers are so easily replaced on features. In Television, the writer, and particularly the writer-producer or showrunner, has all the power and importance.

For Part 1 of the Q&A, go here.

For Part 2, go here.

For Part 3, go here.