Written Interview: Brian Helgeland
An interview with screenwriter-director Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Mystic River). Excerpts:
What’s your typical writing schedule? For me, once I have an idea, sometimes it’s just based on an idea for a movie, or it’s based on a character, like Conspiracy Theory started out as a character. Once I get enough background in the back of my head where I can start writing, I really sort of shut down all aspects of my life and concentrate on the script. I’ll go two weeks, three weeks without even leaving my house. One time I went 56 days where the farthest I went from my house was my mailbox. Not even to the grocery store or anything.
What drives your writing: the characters, structure or theme? I think it would be the theme of the story, whether anyone picks up on it or not. That’s definitely what drives me. But if you start in every scene saying, “This is the theme of this story,” if it starts to preach, I think it’s always a bad thing. It’s not maybe the best example because it’s not mine, but to me, Mystic River is this whole thing about neighborhood that I talked about. If someone else sees the movie and they say it’s the consequences of this violent act and how it’s reverbed through the characters’ lives, that’s fine too. It reverbs through their lives because they’re part of this neighborhood that they can’t get away from. It’s like when I listen to music, I love those old Bob Dylan and Neil Young songs where you don’t really know. You know he’s talking about something that happened to him, but he doesn’t tell you what it is. That’s how you get to be able to relate to him, because he knows what he’s talking about, and he’s got a clear idea of what the song’s about, and he doesn’t tell you what it is. That’s how you’re allowed to relate to it and draw your own conclusions. I’m not as successful obviously as those guys are at doing that, but that’s what I try to do. Hopefully, if I’m true to it, it will have meaning for other people, depending on what their situation is.
For more of the interview, go here.