Written Interview: Davie Koepp, Brian Koppelman, Jeff Nathanson, Andrew Walker

Gavin Polone talks with David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Spider-Man), Brian Koppelman (Rounders, Ocean’s Thirteen), Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can, The Terminal), and Andy Walker (Se7en, Sleepy Hollow) about rewrite hell.

How do you feel when you’ve been rewritten on a movie?

Koepp: I was fired off one big high-pressure type movie, but I heard about it in the worst way, in a form of gossip from my agent, who’d heard the studio had hired so-and-so to work on my movie. Nobody had told me I was fired, so the hiring took me a tad by surprise. I called the studio executive I’d been working with and said, “Did you just hire so-and-so to rewrite me?” And he sighed heavily and said, “You know, Dave, this is a tough phone call to make … “ And I screamed into the phone “YOU DIDN’T MAKE IT! I HEARD IT IN THE GUTTER!” That kinda sucked. What I didn’t know at the time was that I would be re-hired and re-fired on that same movie two more times.

Koppelman:I can’t sit here and grouse about being rewritten when the rest of the country is struggling to make ends meet each month; if I’m being rewritten, I’ve already been paid. That doesn’t mean that I never grouse. I do. But I shouldn’t.

Nathanson: My emotional response has been the same from day one, which is a mix of disgust and horror, no matter what side I’m on. It’s always upsetting.

Walker: Almost every time I’ve left a job, it was because a director came in with notes I just couldn’t bring myself to execute. If there are big notes I just don’t “get,” then the only thing that makes sense is for me to step aside and not do a halfhearted rewrite. Just that as much as I accept that getting rewritten comes with the territory, there are now two movies with my name on them that I haven’t been able to bring myself to see. That’s how high my hopes were when I wrote the first drafts of both, and how crushing it was to see what became of them (based on what little I could bring myself to read of the production draft and what I’ve been told about the final film). So as much as I like to profess shrugging off being rewritten, it can be heartbreaking.

For more of the article, go here.

And for my thoughts on the matter in this Business of Screenwriting post: Everybody gets rewritten in Hollywood.

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