Written Interview: Billy Ray (“Captain Phillips”)

Interview with Captain Phillips screenwriter Billy Ray:

Q: What would you say the biggest challenge was with writing the film?

Ray: I think the biggest challenge probably would be I wanted to do honor to the behavior of these men, these merchant mariners who had survived this thing that I think would have killed me. I wanted to make sure that we shone a light on them that was appropriate with the dignity with which they carried themselves and I’m confident that we did.

Q: What surprised me about this film is how sympathetic I felt toward the pirates.

Ray: From the beginning we were very determined that we didn’t want cardboard bad guys. That’s just not good writing. You always want to dimentionalize your characters whenever possible, whether they’re good guys or bad guys. You always want them to look like full, actualized human beings. Not so much that audiences can sympathize, but so that audiences can understand and maybe recognize a piece of human behavior in those characters and that was very important to me. And very important to Paul and he went out and got it.

For the rest of the interview, go here.