Written Interview: Graham Yost (Speed)

Today’s written interview is with screenwriter and TV writer Graham Yost. His movie credits include Speed (1994), Broken Arrow (1996), Hard Rain (1998), and Mission to Mars (2000) . TV credits include “Band of Brothers” (2 episodes, 2001), “Boomtown” (24 episodes, 2002–2003), and the new FX series “Justified” . In this interview from TheWrap.com, Yost discusses how he broke into writing in Hollywood:

Maybe a year or two later, Nickelodeon was looking for writers for this new show called “Hey Dude,” and they dug my script out and read it and really liked it. So I did “Hey Dude” for two years.

After that was done I was kind of miffed that they hadn’t offered me a development deal. They hadn’t put me on any other show. I was kind of swinging in the wind. I had run this show for them for a year, worked on it for two years, so grumbling to myself, I kind of decided, well, I’ll write a half-hour spec. So I did a “Murphy Brown.”

I had an agent by that point and she said, “You should also write a family-based comedy,” so I did a “Roseanne” spec. So I had those two specs. She thought they were really strong, but that was like January and it was gonna be another three or four months before staffing.

So I remember having lunch with a writer friend, and I said I’ve got this idea for a movie: There’s a bomb on this bus and if it drops below X speed, it’s gonna blow up. And he said, “That’s a good idea, you should do that.” So I started working on “Speed.”

I’d probably written 10 movie scripts before then, none of which had sold, but I kind of knew with “Speed” that I had a very marketable idea.

For the rest of the interview, go here.