Written Interview: Derek Haas
Today’s interview is with screenwriter-novelist Derek Haas. You may remember the name as Derek is the founder and host of the terrific short fiction site Popcorn Fiction. Derek’s screenwriting credits (along with co-writer Michael Brand) include 2 Fast 2 Furious, 3:10 to Yuma, and Wanted. It was just announced this week that his newest movie The Double just landed a domestic distribution deal, so it’s a good week, and we’re all happy for him. The interview comes from a nice blog called 12pt Courier. An excerpt:
How did you get into screenwriting? When was your “lucky break”?
I always wanted to be a writer… in sixth grade, I asked my parents for a typewriter for Christmas. I wrote stories all through junior high and high school, mostly to amuse myself. My parents also purchased a Betamax video camera and my buddies and I made movies just about every day in the lovely suburbs of Richardson, Texas, just outside of Dallas.
I went to Baylor University and graduated with a BA in English in ’91 and then an MA in English Lit in ’95. After school, I worked in advertising for a while. I wasn’t on the copywriting side… I was an account manager. I kept writing at night, first on a novel (which wasn’t very good but taught me a lot about writing) and then on an idea for a screenplay.
In 1998, I partnered with Michael Brandt, a friend of mine from college, and we wrote a script together. We had written a couple of terrible scripts in a screenwriting class at Baylor, but decided we’d try again. We passed the script back and forth via email, never seeing each other while we wrote it. He got it into the hands of some woman who worked on the production side of the business, she got it into the hands of an assistant to a producer, she gave it to the producer, the producer gave it to Brad Pitt’s manager, and the manager gave it to Brad Pitt. He said he wanted to do it and in March of 1999, we sold our first script. It didn’t get made, but it got us represented and made a name for us in Hollywood.
Then we worked a while learning the ropes, doing rewrites and polishes, and finally we were offered the sequel to the Fast and the Furious in 2001. We said “no.” Our agents said “yes.” They realized we needed to have a produced movie under our belts. It worked out quite well for us… we hit it off with the director, John Singleton, and spent most of the movie on the set in Miami, watching a $90M production get made. It came out and was successful, and we proved we could deliver a script through production. From there, we’ve been fortunate to work with some great directors, actors, producers and crew.
For more of the interview, go here.
For another interview with Derek, go here to MyPDFscripts.com.