Written Interview: Jeffrey Boam

Originally appearing in EON Magazine in February 2000, just a few weeks after his sudden death, this interview with screenwriter Jeffrey Boam is a special treat. Many of you may not even know his name, but his list of movie credits is impressive including The Lost Boys, Innerspace, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Lethal Weapon 2, and Lethal Weapon 3. In 1988, I had the good fortune to meet Jeffrey with his then producing partner Carlton Cuse (who later went on to write and produce the TV series “Lost”). His passing away at the age of 53 was definitely a loss to the screenwriting and film community. Some interview excerpts:

An assignment for LETHAL WEAPON 2 followed, working for director Richard Donner which proved to be quite grueling.

“You do a lot of changes on the LETHAL WEAPON movies because Donner is very spontaneous and always wants something new the day he shoots the scene,” recalled Boam. “He’ll call me up around seven in the morning saying ‘We’re about to shoot this scene, I have this idea, what do you think? Can you fax it to me?’ So we were constantly altering the script as we went along.”

Shortly after LETHAL, Steven Spielberg called with the Holy Grail of writing gigs (so to speak).

“I forget what he said, but it was something like, ‘You wanna get real rich?’ and I said ‘Yeah, why?’ and he said, ‘I think you should do the next Indiana Jones movie’,” recalled Boam. “He said he had to talk to George because George didn’t know me from Adam. So a long time went by, and I actually put it out of my mind. Then Steven called me for some other reason, and I said ‘By the way, anything going on for the Indiana Jones idea?’ and he said, ‘I think George is going to call you soon.’ So I got a call from George and he wanted to meet me at Amblin. I went over there, met with George and got along real well and the next step was spending about two weeks with George working out the story for INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE.”

The process proved to be very simple according to Boam. “Lucas had ideas for set pieces already in mind,” recalled Boam. “The whole thing in Venice with motorboards and the two hulls the motorboat gets crushed between was already in his mind. And what I brought to it especially was this whole Sean Connery thing. The father character had never been evolved. This was actually Lucas’ fourth attempt to do a third INDIANA JONES movie. There were two other writers who had kind of false starts, but nobody really tackled the father relationship or the father’s character, so that gave me a lot to work with.”

Here’s a classic scene written by Jeffrey from Lethal Weapon 2:

For more of the interview reprinted at AssignmentX, go here.