March 14, 2024 • 43 mins
Before Charles Randolph won an Oscar for writing “The Big Short,” he adapted a memoir called “The Birthday Party”: the true story of a white man kidnapped by three young Black men. Is there a way to bring a story like that to screen, in a way that's honest and authentic? Randolph gives us a masterclass on a screenwriter's many minefields.
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's Oscar Night twenty sixteen. The stage of the Adobe
Theater is set with what looks like a thousand candles.
Hollywood stars are lined up in the front rows, colorful dresses,
careful hairstyles, and endless cameras ready to pan from the
crowd to the presenters. Ah, here comes Russell Crowe and
(00:45):
Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling has a gold envelope.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
In his hand. Good evening, folks. We're here to present
the award the Best Adapted Screenplay. And not to get
too technical, but that's the screenplay that was the best
at adapting to whatever harsh conditions and obstacles were thrown
in its way.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
No, it's a screenplay adapted from another source, which is
a novel play, short story, or a TV show.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Agree to disagree?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Okay, well exactly because what are we interested in in
this series on development? Hell, the maladapted screenplay, the movie
idea that does not survive the harsh conditions and obstacles
thrown in its way. Anyway, back to the twenty sixteen Oscars,
(01:36):
the video montage for Best Adapted Screenplay lists Brooklyn, Carol Room,
The Martian and The Big Short Gosling opens the envelope
and the.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Oscar goes to.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Charles Randolph and Adam McKay the Big Short.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Allow me a little bit of name dropping. Charles Randolph,
winner of that Oscar, is my and my best friend.
I met him twenty five years ago when he just
started screenwriting, and since then he's done the life of
David Gaale, the Interpreter, Love Another, Drugs, Bombshell, and Big Short.
And when he got the Oscar for Big Short. I
(02:24):
was at an Oscar watching party in Brooklyn and I
got so emotional I had to hide in the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Mister Randolph, mister Goagwell, how are you, my friend?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I'm good, I'm good. Normally Charles would just walk over
to the studio. His office is down the hall, But
today he's calling me from London, where he and his
family are living for the school year.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
How's it going now? I haven't seen him forever. I
miss you, Charles.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Le just do our thingy we can Okay, okay, okay.
Notice the interaction he says he misses me. I get
all flustered and try and get on with things. I
love Charles because I love Charles. There was no question
I was going to ask Charles for development hell story,
because I've talked with him at length about every screenplay
(03:14):
he's worked on for the last twenty five years, and
I knew instantly which one.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
He would pick.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Welcome back to episode four of Development Hell. So tell me,
tell me how that whole thing begins. Start at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So Paula Wagner and Tom Cruise by a book from
a guy named Stanning Albert called The Birthday Party, which
is a true story of him in January on January
twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, walking through the West Village
and he is approached by a young black man on
(04:01):
his right who he realized has a gun, and the
young man leads him to a vehicle that's I think
they're on thirteenth Street, maybe twelfth eleve them it's right
off Fifth Avenue. And there's another young black man waiting
who opens the door, and a third black young black
man in the car, and they basically kidnap him to
steal money out of his bank account. And what's interesting
(04:26):
is they're incredibly young. I think the oldest one is
maybe just turned eighteen. His name is Lucky. The others
are sixteen and I think fourteen, and they have no
clue what they're doing, right, They have no understanding because
they don't have bank accounts, right, so they have no
understanding that ATMs have a limit. They don't believe it.
At first. They see how much money he has in
(04:47):
his account. I think it's over one hundred thousand dollars.
So they anxiously want to get that money and it
drives them mad the system that they just can't get
that money out over the course of a night, right,
So they decide to hold him in Brooklyn with an
apartment with three young women. It's basically three young women
that sort of work for Lucky maybe it's kind of
(05:08):
hard to tell as prostitutes. And he's held there for
firs you know, basically almost I think seventy two hours,
and a relationship develops with these kids, and at some
point they're offering him pot, they offer him a blowjob
once they find out that it's birthday. They're holding him
(05:29):
on his birthday. That's why it's called the birthday party.
It'll be his thirty ninth birthday. They want to get
they want to get the money outs. They sort of
had to plan to go into the bank with him.
Of course that's not going to work. He sort of
talks them out of that. To keep him honest. They
threaten his father and they sort of ask, you know,
(05:49):
ask for his father's address, and Stanley, knowing that his
father's business card is in his wallet, can't really lie.
They end up discussing killing him. So it's a test
they do at one point. So it's just a really
tense situation where he's you know, he's afraid for his life.
And it turns out they you know, there's no way
they can making making get the money out, and so
(06:11):
they decide to let him go. With their adolescence to
their adolescents, and it's also it's adolescence, yes, right, it's right.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
It's three teenage boys.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Absolutely correct. I mean three and three teenage girls as well,
who are also quite young. I think their youngest one
is fourteen even, and they just they just do teenage stuff.
They have teenage perspectives, they have you know, you know,
yet they're very worldly, you know what I mean, yeah,
you know, And so it's you know, there's there's young
one you know, one woman you know, talking about one
sexual practice she won't do because she's saving it for marriage.
(06:42):
You can imagine what that is. And it's just it's
just it's a heartbreaking that that's her, that's the thing
she's keeping, that's the thing that she has to offer, right,
and so it's just it's it's just yeah, it's it's
it's it's it's that youth, you know. But it's also moving.
It's also sort of I mean, the book's quite good
in that sense. It's like you get a sense of Wow,
these you know, there's a real community amongst these kids, right,
(07:04):
they are wholly relying on each other, you know, and
this is the only family they've got, and they're and
they're they're they're down for that family. They'll do what
it takes for their families. Yeah, it just is one
of those books where in reading it, it has a
wrongness to it and a an authenticity to it. It's
just very hard to find right as a story.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Why was Why do you think Tom Cruise's people were
attracted to this, to this book in the first place.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, I think Stanley's a remarkable guy. He you know,
what he does over the course of those three days
is he pays attention to these little clues which you
don't sort of see coming, uh, you see him noticing things,
and then when he's being interviewed by the police, he
just repeats them back and they are there. They manage
to find these six people very quickly, I mean extreme.
(07:56):
You know, he did a remarkable job. He remembered little
bits of numbers that he heard repeated, He remembered the
patterns on the floor, He identified the bus schedule going
outside the building. He could sort of identified the flight
patterns to JFK going over the building. He knew that
it was a relative, relatively big boulevard in Queens. He
(08:16):
knew kind of he could kind of guess by the
sequels how far the ocean was away. And so he
not only managed to save himself by building a relationship
with these young people, but he also managed to put
the police onto them very quickly.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So that version, there's a slender version of the story
which is just simply Sherla colmbs absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And that's why I think I think that's in fairness
to stand. I think that's what he thought he was getting.
He thought he was going to get. You know, Tom
Cruise's going to play this guy who you know, heroically
saves himself, you know, and then bonds a little bit
with these with these young people, but but then you know,
it has to put them away. And I'm presented with
this thing, and it's just it's a fantastic story, but
(08:53):
it has the obvious problem. Right, It's a story of
three black, young black men holding a white guy, a lawyer,
a federal attorney, as a matter of fact, hostage, and
it's just it's hard to describe. It has an ethnocentrism
to it because it rooted in the perspective of the
white guy. It just feels a little untoward. It's just
(09:14):
one of the stories that we in Hollywood can't tell.
You simply cannot tell that story right. And you know,
if the film were being made, and you know, in
fifteen years earlier than nineteen ninety eight, he could have
gotten away with that. But by that period it was
already too late to tell this story without fully honoring
the humanity of the perpetrators. And so the thinking is,
(09:36):
how can we take this and make it work? And
what I end up doing is I turn up everyone's
racism for lack of better phrase, right, I make Stanley
a guy who thinks he's a liberal, but he's trapped
by his own categories in the world. I make these kids,
these kids who have very few opportunities and are trapped
(10:00):
in their own kind of perspective of the other. So
there these are a group of people who, even though
Stanley's being held in this apartment, blindfolded and basically in
a big room with six kids, six young people, he
can't see them really literally and metaphorically, and they can't
see him, right. Uh. And then what happens is, you know,
in the script, you know, he starts to rebel against
(10:22):
this situation. He gets he gets angry, and they start
to work through their own prejudices, prejudices against one another,
and it sort of culminates in a in a in
a scene where basically he unloads on them and he
gives voice. I think a little bit of that old
essay from Poete Hertz, is it? Norman? Can you remember
(10:46):
the Norman.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
R your Nego problem in mind?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Exactly? My Negro problem yours? Yeah? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
From Yeah, Actually both Charles and I got it a
little wrong. It's My Negro Problem and Ours by Norman
pod Horitz, published in nineteen sixty three. It's a famous
in the you read it today, really unsettling essay where
pod Hortz confesses to quote the hatred I still feel
(11:16):
for Negroes quote based on his experiences growing up as
a working class Jewish kid in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
And the way you know a Gibstanley and basically that perspective,
he is someone who's both understanding of where they come from,
but angry that they still act as though the door
is closed to them, you know. And and I can
actually read it for you because I had it on
the script I have. I can read the scene to
you if you want it. I do want you to
(11:46):
do that.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, and you'll see.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I mean the piece is you know, it's quite raw. Really,
it's it's it's it's you know, it's in an area
era prior to current sensibilities. I think I wrote it
in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, And
you kind of get a feeling for, uh, for the
script in terms of it's you know, it's taking some risk.
(12:12):
Let me put it that way. He's been held for
a few days, right, So the kids are in the room,
Stanley's there, he's looking away from them. He let him
take his blind fall off but he's face in the wall. Lucky, Stanley,
let me ask you something. If you had a chance
(12:32):
to put me away for life, would you do it?
Stanley considers, Stanley, you know where I live, you know
where my father lives. I don't know who you are.
I don't know where we are. I don't care. I
just want this whole thing to be over. Lucky contemplates
the flat sincerity of Stan's answer. Then he laughs. Everyone looks.
(12:55):
It's a strained laugh. That's right, Lucky says, Make the
negro think he's got a chance. Open that door wide.
Then boom. He slaps his hands together and stands the
ear stan flinches as Lucky stands and turns away from him.
Stanley mutters, grow up, pardon I said, grow up? Yeah?
I heard you shoot me or let me go. Either way,
(13:18):
Stop pretending that you're the victim here. Stop whining. There's
no anger in his voice. The door's open, Lucky, Okay,
not always, not everywhere, but after thirty years of people
like me, it's pretty much fucking open. If you'd stop
worrying about being a negro, maybe you could just walk
through it. And if you don't, don't blame the rest
(13:39):
of us. White man's keeping you down, white man's put
crack in the hood, white man's giving you aids. Please
grow the fuck up a stun silence, Lucky steps back
over to him, looks down on the back of Stan's
head with confused menace. Stanley's not done. The door's open,
he says, deal with it. You're just too proud to
(14:00):
walk through or afraid. It's either that or you're just
playing lazy. Lucky grabs Wren's Tech nine. He yanks Stan
backwards by the scarfing, rams the muzzle into his mouth.
Stand wretches mystic scream. Stand forces himself to keep his
eyes shut. Stand, Lucky says, grabbing the stand by the
tie gun still in his mouth. Lucky drags him too
(14:20):
the hallway. Sin and Wren push through. Stay here, Lucky yells.
Lucky forces Stand down the hall hall. He thinks he's
taking him to his to the bathroom, to his execution. Instead,
he pushes Stand hard against the front door. There's your door,
Lucky says. He pulls Stand back, opens it wide, gets
behind him. Open your fucking eyes, he says. Stands pov
(14:45):
on the building landing, framed by the open front door.
Dark and dangerous freedom. Lucky presses the gun to stands back.
Door's open, Lucky says, go on, bounce, walk through, walk through.
He's angry. Now Stan doesn't move, can't move a decisive.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Beat, yeah, Lucky says, ain't that easy.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Lucky slams the door or he turns to see Stan
has his eyes still closed, as always refusing to see him.
He gets right in the white man's face and whispers,
negro Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Wait, so in the book that doesn't happen at all,
So is it the problem?
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Right? The problem is, you know, to earn the right
to tell this story, you have to sort of reframe
it and you have to take its underlying racist complexity
and you have to make it the theme. You have
to thematize that complexity, right, And that's what we do.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
When we get back, Charles talks about adaptation. We're back
with Charles ran talking about his adaptation of the Birthday
(16:11):
Party and how tricky it can be to adapt a
true story for a screenplay.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I'll give you another not related to me, but a
very good example. I ran into Robbie Robinson, who is
Michael Keaton character in Spotlight, who's the editor on the
Spotlight Team.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So Spotlight is the movie about the Boston Globes investigation
of Catholic priests suspected of pedophilia, among other things. And
in that movie, Michael Keaton plays the editor of the
Boston Globe.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Remembering correctly?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And there is a scene so you run into the
guy who was the real editor of the Boston Globe.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Correct. Robbie says, you know, love the film, and there
says one part I don't love, which is the part
where it turns out that the Spotlight team was given
the information about what the Catholic priests were doing earlier,
and I was the editor at the time a newspaper
was given it and I nothing, And he says, the
truth be told. When that story came in, it was
(17:13):
one of forty stories that on the tip line for
that week. It was the second week that I was
on the job, and I wasn't even there that week.
I was actually had taken a vacation week in the transition.
And so you know, I've always been a little uncomfortable
with that scene because it's not really quite my culpability
is really not quite what you know, what the film portrays.
(17:36):
And of course I'm saying to Robbie, You're not winning
an Oscar without that scene, right. That scene is what
makes that movie right because in that moment we see
the people in the Spotlight Team, like all of society,
like us as viewers, are culpable on some level right
of ignoring this problem for many years. And that's what
makes it interesting. And so this is the problem of
(17:56):
this that you face, right.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
In order to understand to earn the right to have
to to make heroes out of the Spotlight Team, to
be a moment of resistance in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, well, I mean it's not in the beginning. It's
towards the end of the film. But they have to
be not just people who uncover, right, some horrible truth
about society. They have to face their own culpabilities in
relationship to that right. And that's necessary. And so when
taking a true story and building a film out of it,
(18:33):
you have to find those moments. How can we take
this thing and make it something's you know, more dramatic
and more you know, politically compelling, let's say, than what
it and then what it is. And the first problem
is easy to solve, the second problems hard. And in
this case, the choice was In my case, the choice
(18:54):
is to make Stanley Alpert different than the real Stanley Alpert.
And the fact is right because the real Stanley Appert
doesn't have those qualities. And obviously the person who hates
this version more than anyone is Stanley Alpert. Right, He's
always making jokes, he's always you know, he's he's always
referencing things, you know, he's he's he thinks of himself
as a liberal, you know. And it allows me to,
(19:16):
as in the section I read to you, it allows
me to focus on that critique of African American culture
that at the time was something that went a little
bit unspoken, but was in a lot of people's hearts,
right like in like in the and the Poet's essay.
But you know, but but you know, was not was
not never sort of portrayed, right, And of course that
(19:38):
didn't that did not end very well.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
We're gonna get to that in a second. But I
wanted to this. This is a really, really crucial thing,
and I want to kind of spend a little more
time on it. This goes to something you have often
said to me about screenwriting, which is that the important
conflict is not the external conflict, but the internal conflict, right.
(20:01):
So it is not enough, in other words, for us
to have a movie about a an obvious conflict between
three black men and a white guy they're just kidnapped.
There must be an internal conflict within the white guy's
heart and the black guys, yeah parts right for us
to kind of for the movie to come alive. Right,
(20:24):
So what you're saying is that you had to construct
an internal conflict for Stanley.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Correct, And that means I have to move away from
the victim narrative because victims inherently aren't generally speaking, people
who are facing that kind of internal conflict. They're facing,
generally speaking, an exterior conflict. And then will you stay
up away from from that narrative. It becomes a problem
(20:51):
obviously for them for someone who sort of feels like
we're a victim, right, But it also it also makes
a better story, right, And this is part of the
part of the problem with the moment you know in
which we're recording this podcast, is that there is such
a an attempt to to elevate victim stories to to
(21:12):
to platform people without often the sort of constituent internal
conflict that's going to make them fully human and fully engaging. Right.
And that's why so many of those films fail to
work or fail to make money, is because they don't
they don't solicit our attention fully, right, because you could.
You know, there's a reason Schindler's List is focused on
(21:33):
Schindler and not the people in the camps, right, because
Schindler has a strong internal conflict, right, which is much
harder to do if you're you know, a victim of
a holocaust. Right, It's just you know, it's much harder
to do.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And he's he is criticizes and he for the centrality
that he that the movie, uh, for the fact that
Schindler's at the center of the movie.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
And yes, and but by putting by putting Schindler, you
can actually tell the other stories better better. Right. It's
the interesting contradiction here, right, because it gives us a
sort of an emotional perspective where we do not know
is character going to choose Option A or Option B.
That's what you kind of want to be, and all
my films strive for that, right. So we have it
(22:17):
here with these three kids, in the sense they're having
to make the choice. How bad at gangsters do they
want to be do they want to kill someone? Right?
And we watch them in the film discuss that amongst
themselves try and make an effort, and they're not up
to it. Each try at some point to try and
be the guy, and they just can't. These kids just
can't do it right. Whereas you know, Stanley needed the
(22:37):
same thing in the story and and for me, that
was him basically fighting his own desire because he's a
talker and he's a man who wants to own truth.
He said, you know, he gets up in front of court.
He's a litigator, right, he's a federal attorney and speaks
truth to people who do im moral things, and so
he wants to be that guy. In the course of that,
(22:58):
he really starts to realize as they express themselves in
their background, as their humanity becomes more fully realized over
the course of the film, he you know, he realizes
that he does see them as in the scene that
I just read to you.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
So his wait, so that just to go a little
bit more over his conflict. He believes himself to be
a liberal who can see the broader context in which
disadvantaged people act. And yet when he is in this situation.
He struggles to maintain.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
That absolutely yeah, yeah, well, and bookends with the fact
that he has to go at the end of the
film to a you know, to a lineup and and
basically pick the young man out of the line which
was essentially you know, assuring that justice will be served.
(23:53):
So he's met making this choice, right, He's come to
see their humanity. He knows that the system is going
to be incredibly harsh on the man. It was they
all got anywhere from I think fifteen to twenty years
and essentially sort of ruining their lives. And yeah, he's
you know, he still does it, but he doesn't like
it in the film, so.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
He described that describe that an so he in the
movie version, are you now back? So does the ending
go the way the ending when in real life?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yes and no. I think one thing that that it
does is it makes him more empathetic to their plight. Right.
I won't say that the film sees their their their
backgrounds as exculpatory, but it does. The film does suggest
that they deserve greater understanding than the system will give
(24:46):
them because of the back the harsh backgrounds they come from.
All of them I think are potentially, you know, fatherless
and have problematic backgrounds. We hear a little bit about that,
and of course the film in the real story, No,
and the real story, you know, Stan Albert, a victim
of crime, wanted to see justice served, and justice was served.
(25:07):
And I don't think he felt particularly ambivalent about it.
I don't know. I mean, in my discussions with him
after he read the script, you know, it's it seemed
to offend him that he owed them, he owed them
more than, you know, more than what was given to
them in terms of how he portrayed them in the book,
(25:29):
you know. And he may not be wrong, you know,
I mean, you know, I'm using his story for my
own purposes.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Right when we get back, Charles and I talk about
who gets to tell whose stories. So in the movie version,
he gets they let him go. The young men are arrested,
and does is the climax of the movie him picking
(25:55):
him out.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Of the No, it's them being sentenced in there and
they remember they haven't been able to look at each other.
Really the course of the film. It's sort of an
interesting thing, is you know, he's got the scarf which
they've blindfolded with, so s for covers most of his
face and then they turn him away. They never really
get a chance to look at each other. And at
the end of the film, uh, he basically in the
(26:19):
in the courtroom has a chance to walk eyes with
It's lucky, the sort of the their leader and the
first time these two people can actually see each other.
But he sort of comes to a place where, you know,
he can see the other violently, and that's that's the
best we can hope for for that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah, it's a beautiful metaphors they're running throughout this that
we've two people who literally and figuratively cannot see each other.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah. And then by the end the occupy, Yeah, occupy
the same space.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, even as he occupied the same space. By the
end of the movie, even as these young men are
being sent off to jail, we have we the audience
have some feeling that they're seeing each other for the
first time, right, which is necessary because, as you said,
if it's simply slam bam, if it's a law and
(27:13):
order episode, it's not interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
And you can't do it right. I mean, there is
a history of obviously you know, the victim in TV
shows and movies, you know, being white and the perpetrator
being black. But it's something that we've been uncomfortable with
for a long time now, right And certainly the idea
of three black three black men rang on a white
(27:36):
guys has always been I mean not always, but it
has been complicated in recent years, in the last twenty
thirty years, it has been a complicated idea, right And
and really it's why this thing was sort of in
development hell, because nobody ever got comfortable with it.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So you finished the script and tell me what happens next?
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Who do you take it to? First? It goes immediately
to a few directors. In fact, one director that first
weekend calls me on a Sunday night, which never happens
based on the weekend read, incredibly excited about it and saying,
I'm all in, I love this, this is fantastic. Come Monday,
he goes in the office. He has two interns who
(28:17):
are graduate students from NYU who are both black, who say, now,
you can't do this, this is not this is not
going to work, you know, and you know he backs
out immediately. So he backs out twenty four hours later.
But there are a lot of directors who came on
board Unfortunately, there were no black directors available. I think,
you know, I think we a couple were approached. It
(28:39):
was a slight It was two thousand and eight, so
there weren't quite as many as we have now obviously,
but no one, No one was around. I think what
we tried to do is we tried to tone it down.
We tried to sort of tone down, you know. I
remember sort of sitting in the office with going through
and counting all the inwards and seeing how many we
could take out, just to sort of make it a
little bit more palatable to be because it's raw, it's
(29:00):
very raw. Then what happens, well, what happens is a
couple directors go away and nobody really works until the
great Milosh Foreman.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Milosh Foreman, famous for directing One Flew over the Cuckoo's
Nest in nineteen seventy five. In two thousand and seven,
he's well into his seventies, and.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Milosh has a remarkable ability to do dramedy and comedy
and drama at the same time. And Milosh says to me,
when we first sort of start unpacking the history of
the project, he says, stop, stop. It doesn't matter if
the characters are real. If the actors find in them
(29:40):
real humanity, and the actors bring their own truth to it,
it will work right, and all that other stuff will
go away. And if it's problematic, we get rid of
it in the editing room. Don't we have the time?
We called it political correctness, right, so don't worry about
the politically well, it's polity correct not if it's real
and if it's human, and we will be totally fine.
And he had another thing he would talk about, which
(30:02):
was that, you know, anytime you nestle up against censorship,
you know you're in the zone when you're making something interesting.
In fact, he talked about he would talk about how
and he's from Czechoslovakia, how you know the great thing
about having our actual sensor is they tell you exactly
where the line is, so everybody knows exactly where the
line is, and so that you can you can you
(30:24):
can approach the line with great subtlety, right because because
everyone knows where it is. And that's the thing that
American culture does not have, is that sort of that
sort of you know, clear sense, no line until we,
of course do it a line. In recent years, we've
kind of created some lines for ourselves. But yes, there's
no line, right, And so he said, and so he said,
it's good that we make people uncomfortable. It's good that
(30:46):
it's raw. It's good that some of it's incredibly provocative,
because that's what's going to make it real. And and
and he fully owned it. And you know, I get
I get emotional thinking about it, but he he was
just so open to what the thing was, right. And
then you know, I get a series of notes from him,
(31:08):
and I realized their notes on a scene he's already done.
And I get another series and I realized their notes
on something entirely different. And I call his wife and
she's like, yeah, you know, he's not been feeling well,
give me a couple of weeks. And then he never
came back to it. At that point, I think she
had realized that he just wasn't up to it. You know,
(31:28):
he was quite old. Yeah, And and so you know,
I finally find the guy that I think can bring
it home and and he's just not. He's just can't.
He's just not gonna be able to do it. You know,
I think she worried that he wouldn't even have the
stamina to do it right, you know, because directing takes
two years, takes two and a half years. So if
you see problems at the beginning, you know, you got
to remember, what where's this person going to be in
(31:49):
two years?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
When does he die?
Speaker 1 (31:51):
How he dies about three years later? You know, And
I do not know what shape he was in in
the end. He may have been fully cognizant all the
way to the end, but but you know, he died
a bit later.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
But it was Can we just pause on meals about this?
So Milish is a person who comes out from under
the iron curtain. He grows up in toutalitarianism. You know,
he he has a kind of I mean, if you're
looking so what this project, what you're saying is what
(32:21):
this project needed was an authenticity in its interpretation, you
would something, it needed fearlessness, It needed fear and one
way to do this is to find a black director
with you know, That's what That's the solution we would
do today. Correct, Correct, for whatever reason, there wasn't someone avel.
(32:43):
But the other version is to find someone like Milosh.
He started his career thumbing his nose at one of
the history's most brutal authoritarian totalitarian regimes. So it's like
he's like, if anyone's going.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
To say f it, and he did, and he and
it was and it was it was just I can't
tell you how liberating it was. It was just shockingly
liberating after I think it had been three maybe four
years at that point, you know, and he's like, no,
let's we will get this. Do not worry. This is
not our this will not be our problem.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And you think he's you think he's right, his interpretation
is right.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
I do think he's right. Yeah, I do think. I
think what happens is if you hire actors who you
know who can bring something to it, if you listen
to other people from other cultures, if you gets a
communal effort a film, right and and if you do that,
you will find authenticity, you know, if you're looking for it.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Because I know you well, if you permit me a
little bit of of of psychoanalyzing for those who don't
know you. You are you're the son of an evangelical
preacher from Texas. You grew up all over the world
because your dad was smuggling bibles into Eastern Europe. You're
(34:03):
you're you're so out in certain ways, you're such an
outsider to Hollywood. It's it's phenomenal, and the outsider has
you know, in some ways, you you and Milo c
I I on this because you're because you're both outsiders, right, right, right.
It's one thing that this was written by the standard
(34:25):
Hollywood screenwriter, who is the privileged white guy who went
to Harvard and then you know, did a graduate degree
at NYU and then interned for a famous director and
blah blah blah. Right, that's not you. Though there is
a privilege in writing something like this, there is great
(34:47):
advantage and privilege in not having a dog in the fight,
in not being part of the worlds that you're portraying.
So we understand the privilege that comes from belonging. The
person who belongs can tell a certain kind of story
with a degree of confidence and accuracy and verve that
(35:11):
the outsider can't. But then, but we're forgetting that there's
a there is a separate set of advantages that come
from being someone who doesn't belong to either of these worlds.
And my point about you was that in this context,
you're not part of Stanley's world, right, That's that you're
Charles from Texas. You're not part of his world, and
you're not part of the Lucky's world. You're you're off
(35:33):
on your own little island, and that there's so so
much that's an incredibly liberating moment to be the outside,
you know, to be so I feel like we're overprivileging
the set of advantages that come from belonging, and we're
under we have underestimated the set of storytelling advantages that
(35:54):
come from being the fly on the wall who's just like,
you know, you don't know anything to Stanley. That's why
you're able to do that. You're not if you were
part of his world, you would have been constrained in
your portrayal of him. Similarly, Lucky, if you were part
of his world, you would have been coned. You're on.
You were unconstrained because you weren't. This wasn't And that's
(36:16):
like why it's so important for all of us at
storytelling to defend the right of the storyteller to describe
worlds of which they are not a part. That is
it's so essential that we defend that.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah, absolutely, and particularly for writers, right, there's something about
you know, there's something about the screenwriter which is different
from the other other jobs on the set, which then
you're required to give voice to to dozens of different people, right,
you know, and and to be good at that, you
(36:51):
you know, you need to be able to to to
understand different types and embrace different worlds. And I do
think you're right. We've undervalued in a way what it
means to be, you know, to be someone who lurks
above it a little bit, right, Uh, certainly in my field,
now maybe in maybe in other fields, to be different, right,
I think what the end that people want is they
(37:13):
want everyone from different backgrounds to be able to tell
their story, to be in the position to sort of
sit in the director's chair if they want, or to
sell screenplays that they want, and that is that is
the goal. Right. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that we
should silo off our industry in that way, you know,
and silo off our subjects, because we do. We do
(37:36):
lose something when we are no longer communicating across you know,
not just cultural or racial lines, but ideological lines. You know.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
You know, what's interesting about this story told today is
obviously it's sort of it fits a project conceived in
two thousand and seven, feels makes us a little honey
of this nature makes us a little uneasy in twenty
twenty four, nearly twenty years later. The other thing is
(38:09):
that it was interesting about it is that I feel
like our uh, our attitude towards projects like this on
the on the kind of racial periphery have become a binary.
We think of white projects and black projects, and a
white project is done by a white person, and a
(38:30):
black person project gets done by a black person. But
this movie isn't black or white. It's about black beating
white and white meeting black and like so it's like
it's not clear each side has a right to tell
the story right, and a lot of what's what's going
on in this kind of like like when you talked
about the one director loves it and then the interns
(38:52):
read it the black and say you can't do it,
is that it's a dispute about they're obviously understandably reading
this through their eyes as black beats white. Stanley's reading
this as white beats black, right, and like it's it irresolvable,
it's not. What makes it fascinating is that I can't
(39:14):
think of a movie that a contemporary movie. I mean
this movie today would give us fits. I mean, you'll
give us fits today because no one can decide what
it is exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
It would it would, it would aggravate an unresolved tension
in our society. And I think the mistake I made
is I assumed that I knew where society was going.
I assumed that I knew that what's going to happen
is that we're all going to be better at working
through our residual racist attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, and we're going
to get closer and closer. In fact, the film ends
(39:47):
with Stanley listening to a bit of rap, and this was,
of course, after Obama had been elected, So the sort
of message of the film was actually, we're we're on
the road. We're not there yet, but we're on the road.
And of course that didn't happen. Where I thought society
was going is not where we went. We were trenched
back into, you know, even stronger understandings of the importance
(40:08):
of race and not to some you know, idealized version
of all. It's going to learn to ignore our differences
more and more and embrace, you know, in these these
things that won't matter, and you know, you couldn't. I mean,
you couldn't do the film today even reading it today.
I read it today in a restaurant and I just
try myself wincing, you know, every other page, because it's
you know, I you know, I really went for it.
(40:29):
I really am. It's very provocative in places, in people
saying the things that they're not supposed to say. You know,
I'm always interested in things that feel uncomfortable and awkward
for me, like like I don't know, I want to
go there, because what that gives you, if you will
sort of take on those subjects, is the texture of
the world starts to become really interesting. I mean, because
(40:52):
suddenly every little choice matters, you know, And and that's why,
you know, it's one of the one of the scripts
that I enjoyed writing the most, because every little choice
starts to matter, right, because all kick comes laden with meaning.
Part of it is just a professional habit of Okay,
it's awkward, it's uncomfortable. That's whe I'm going to go, right,
But also part of it is, you know, I do
(41:12):
feel like, you know, this is not writing in the novel.
This is a collective endeavor, and we get to check
our work with people of all sorts, of all stripes,
and you know, if we're open and if we're all
working hard, you know we can we can get to
(41:33):
something that feels very true. If you try things and
that they work, they work, and if they don't, they don't.
That's what this is. That's what this is why we
do why I do this business, and it allows us
to take greater risk, I think, instead of less right
because you know we're working together.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
There is no movie version of the Birthday Party. When
Milos Forman drops out, it's the end. The adaptation does
not survive the harsh conditions and obstacles thrown in its way,
which is a shame. This episode was produced by Nina
(42:23):
Bird Lawrence with Tali Emlin and Bena daph Haffrey. Editing
by Sarah Nix, original scoring by Luis Quira, Engineering by
Echo Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
(42:45):
Next time on Development Hell, Patty Jenkins talks about her
R rated Dog movie.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
This is.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
This sort of on one level is super bleak. It's
not it's.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Magical, no, it is it is.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
The journey is bleak, and it seems like it's going
to be, but it ends up being magical.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
It heads up that our friends over at the Happiness
Lab have a special episode I'm in Your Way soon
to celebrate World Happiness Day. I'm in it talking about
running and the journey versus a destination Spoiler alert, I'm
a destination guy, not a journey guy. It'll be dropping
into this feed on March twentieth, but you can find
happiness tips from doctor Lori Santo's any Day over at
(43:27):
the Happiness Lab
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
It's Oscar Night twenty sixteen. The stage of the Adobe
Theater is set with what looks like a thousand candles.
Hollywood stars are lined up in the front rows, colorful dresses,
careful hairstyles, and endless cameras ready to pan from the
crowd to the presenters. Ah, here comes Russell Crowe and
(00:45):
Ryan Gosling. Ryan Gosling has a gold envelope.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
In his hand. Good evening, folks. We're here to present
the award the Best Adapted Screenplay. And not to get
too technical, but that's the screenplay that was the best
at adapting to whatever harsh conditions and obstacles were thrown
in its way.
Speaker 3 (01:05):
No, it's a screenplay adapted from another source, which is
a novel play, short story, or a TV show.
Speaker 1 (01:14):
Agree to disagree?
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Okay, well exactly because what are we interested in in
this series on development? Hell, the maladapted screenplay, the movie
idea that does not survive the harsh conditions and obstacles
thrown in its way. Anyway, back to the twenty sixteen Oscars,
(01:36):
the video montage for Best Adapted Screenplay lists Brooklyn, Carol Room,
The Martian and The Big Short Gosling opens the envelope
and the.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Oscar goes to.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Charles Randolph and Adam McKay the Big Short.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Allow me a little bit of name dropping. Charles Randolph,
winner of that Oscar, is my and my best friend.
I met him twenty five years ago when he just
started screenwriting, and since then he's done the life of
David Gaale, the Interpreter, Love Another, Drugs, Bombshell, and Big Short.
And when he got the Oscar for Big Short. I
(02:24):
was at an Oscar watching party in Brooklyn and I
got so emotional I had to hide in the bathroom.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
Mister Randolph, mister Goagwell, how are you, my friend?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
I'm good, I'm good. Normally Charles would just walk over
to the studio. His office is down the hall, But
today he's calling me from London, where he and his
family are living for the school year.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
How's it going now? I haven't seen him forever. I
miss you, Charles.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Le just do our thingy we can Okay, okay, okay.
Notice the interaction he says he misses me. I get
all flustered and try and get on with things. I
love Charles because I love Charles. There was no question
I was going to ask Charles for development hell story,
because I've talked with him at length about every screenplay
(03:14):
he's worked on for the last twenty five years, and
I knew instantly which one.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
He would pick.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
Welcome back to episode four of Development Hell. So tell me,
tell me how that whole thing begins. Start at the beginning.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So Paula Wagner and Tom Cruise by a book from
a guy named Stanning Albert called The Birthday Party, which
is a true story of him in January on January
twenty first, nineteen ninety eight, walking through the West Village
and he is approached by a young black man on
(04:01):
his right who he realized has a gun, and the
young man leads him to a vehicle that's I think
they're on thirteenth Street, maybe twelfth eleve them it's right
off Fifth Avenue. And there's another young black man waiting
who opens the door, and a third black young black
man in the car, and they basically kidnap him to
steal money out of his bank account. And what's interesting
(04:26):
is they're incredibly young. I think the oldest one is
maybe just turned eighteen. His name is Lucky. The others
are sixteen and I think fourteen, and they have no
clue what they're doing, right, They have no understanding because
they don't have bank accounts, right, so they have no
understanding that ATMs have a limit. They don't believe it.
At first. They see how much money he has in
(04:47):
his account. I think it's over one hundred thousand dollars.
So they anxiously want to get that money and it
drives them mad the system that they just can't get
that money out over the course of a night, right,
So they decide to hold him in Brooklyn with an
apartment with three young women. It's basically three young women
that sort of work for Lucky maybe it's kind of
(05:08):
hard to tell as prostitutes. And he's held there for
firs you know, basically almost I think seventy two hours,
and a relationship develops with these kids, and at some
point they're offering him pot, they offer him a blowjob
once they find out that it's birthday. They're holding him
(05:29):
on his birthday. That's why it's called the birthday party.
It'll be his thirty ninth birthday. They want to get
they want to get the money outs. They sort of
had to plan to go into the bank with him.
Of course that's not going to work. He sort of
talks them out of that. To keep him honest. They
threaten his father and they sort of ask, you know,
(05:49):
ask for his father's address, and Stanley, knowing that his
father's business card is in his wallet, can't really lie.
They end up discussing killing him. So it's a test
they do at one point. So it's just a really
tense situation where he's you know, he's afraid for his life.
And it turns out they you know, there's no way
they can making making get the money out, and so
(06:11):
they decide to let him go. With their adolescence to
their adolescents, and it's also it's adolescence, yes, right, it's right.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
It's three teenage boys.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Absolutely correct. I mean three and three teenage girls as well,
who are also quite young. I think their youngest one
is fourteen even, and they just they just do teenage stuff.
They have teenage perspectives, they have you know, you know,
yet they're very worldly, you know what I mean, yeah,
you know, And so it's you know, there's there's young
one you know, one woman you know, talking about one
sexual practice she won't do because she's saving it for marriage.
(06:42):
You can imagine what that is. And it's just it's
just it's a heartbreaking that that's her, that's the thing
she's keeping, that's the thing that she has to offer, right,
and so it's just it's it's just yeah, it's it's
it's it's it's that youth, you know. But it's also moving.
It's also sort of I mean, the book's quite good
in that sense. It's like you get a sense of Wow,
these you know, there's a real community amongst these kids, right,
(07:04):
they are wholly relying on each other, you know, and
this is the only family they've got, and they're and
they're they're they're down for that family. They'll do what
it takes for their families. Yeah, it just is one
of those books where in reading it, it has a
wrongness to it and a an authenticity to it. It's
just very hard to find right as a story.
Speaker 2 (07:26):
Why was Why do you think Tom Cruise's people were
attracted to this, to this book in the first place.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Well, I think Stanley's a remarkable guy. He you know,
what he does over the course of those three days
is he pays attention to these little clues which you
don't sort of see coming, uh, you see him noticing things,
and then when he's being interviewed by the police, he
just repeats them back and they are there. They manage
to find these six people very quickly, I mean extreme.
(07:56):
You know, he did a remarkable job. He remembered little
bits of numbers that he heard repeated, He remembered the
patterns on the floor, He identified the bus schedule going
outside the building. He could sort of identified the flight
patterns to JFK going over the building. He knew that
it was a relative, relatively big boulevard in Queens. He
(08:16):
knew kind of he could kind of guess by the
sequels how far the ocean was away. And so he
not only managed to save himself by building a relationship
with these young people, but he also managed to put
the police onto them very quickly.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
So that version, there's a slender version of the story
which is just simply Sherla colmbs absolutely.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
And that's why I think I think that's in fairness
to stand. I think that's what he thought he was getting.
He thought he was going to get. You know, Tom
Cruise's going to play this guy who you know, heroically
saves himself, you know, and then bonds a little bit
with these with these young people, but but then you know,
it has to put them away. And I'm presented with
this thing, and it's just it's a fantastic story, but
(08:53):
it has the obvious problem. Right, It's a story of
three black, young black men holding a white guy, a lawyer,
a federal attorney, as a matter of fact, hostage, and
it's just it's hard to describe. It has an ethnocentrism
to it because it rooted in the perspective of the
white guy. It just feels a little untoward. It's just
(09:14):
one of the stories that we in Hollywood can't tell.
You simply cannot tell that story right. And you know,
if the film were being made, and you know, in
fifteen years earlier than nineteen ninety eight, he could have
gotten away with that. But by that period it was
already too late to tell this story without fully honoring
the humanity of the perpetrators. And so the thinking is,
(09:36):
how can we take this and make it work? And
what I end up doing is I turn up everyone's
racism for lack of better phrase, right, I make Stanley
a guy who thinks he's a liberal, but he's trapped
by his own categories in the world. I make these kids,
these kids who have very few opportunities and are trapped
(10:00):
in their own kind of perspective of the other. So
there these are a group of people who, even though
Stanley's being held in this apartment, blindfolded and basically in
a big room with six kids, six young people, he
can't see them really literally and metaphorically, and they can't
see him, right. Uh. And then what happens is, you know,
in the script, you know, he starts to rebel against
(10:22):
this situation. He gets he gets angry, and they start
to work through their own prejudices, prejudices against one another,
and it sort of culminates in a in a in
a scene where basically he unloads on them and he
gives voice. I think a little bit of that old
essay from Poete Hertz, is it? Norman? Can you remember
(10:46):
the Norman.
Speaker 2 (10:47):
R your Nego problem in mind?
Speaker 1 (10:51):
Exactly? My Negro problem yours? Yeah? Exactly?
Speaker 2 (10:55):
From Yeah, Actually both Charles and I got it a
little wrong. It's My Negro Problem and Ours by Norman
pod Horitz, published in nineteen sixty three. It's a famous
in the you read it today, really unsettling essay where
pod Hortz confesses to quote the hatred I still feel
(11:16):
for Negroes quote based on his experiences growing up as
a working class Jewish kid in a tough neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
And the way you know a Gibstanley and basically that perspective,
he is someone who's both understanding of where they come from,
but angry that they still act as though the door
is closed to them, you know. And and I can
actually read it for you because I had it on
the script I have. I can read the scene to
you if you want it. I do want you to
(11:46):
do that.
Speaker 3 (11:46):
Yeah, and you'll see.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
I mean the piece is you know, it's quite raw. Really,
it's it's it's it's you know, it's in an area
era prior to current sensibilities. I think I wrote it
in two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight, And
you kind of get a feeling for, uh, for the
script in terms of it's you know, it's taking some risk.
(12:12):
Let me put it that way. He's been held for
a few days, right, So the kids are in the room,
Stanley's there, he's looking away from them. He let him
take his blind fall off but he's face in the wall. Lucky, Stanley,
let me ask you something. If you had a chance
(12:32):
to put me away for life, would you do it?
Stanley considers, Stanley, you know where I live, you know
where my father lives. I don't know who you are.
I don't know where we are. I don't care. I
just want this whole thing to be over. Lucky contemplates
the flat sincerity of Stan's answer. Then he laughs. Everyone looks.
(12:55):
It's a strained laugh. That's right, Lucky says, Make the
negro think he's got a chance. Open that door wide.
Then boom. He slaps his hands together and stands the
ear stan flinches as Lucky stands and turns away from him.
Stanley mutters, grow up, pardon I said, grow up? Yeah?
I heard you shoot me or let me go. Either way,
(13:18):
Stop pretending that you're the victim here. Stop whining. There's
no anger in his voice. The door's open, Lucky, Okay,
not always, not everywhere, but after thirty years of people
like me, it's pretty much fucking open. If you'd stop
worrying about being a negro, maybe you could just walk
through it. And if you don't, don't blame the rest
(13:39):
of us. White man's keeping you down, white man's put
crack in the hood, white man's giving you aids. Please
grow the fuck up a stun silence, Lucky steps back
over to him, looks down on the back of Stan's
head with confused menace. Stanley's not done. The door's open,
he says, deal with it. You're just too proud to
(14:00):
walk through or afraid. It's either that or you're just
playing lazy. Lucky grabs Wren's Tech nine. He yanks Stan
backwards by the scarfing, rams the muzzle into his mouth.
Stand wretches mystic scream. Stand forces himself to keep his
eyes shut. Stand, Lucky says, grabbing the stand by the
tie gun still in his mouth. Lucky drags him too
(14:20):
the hallway. Sin and Wren push through. Stay here, Lucky yells.
Lucky forces Stand down the hall hall. He thinks he's
taking him to his to the bathroom, to his execution. Instead,
he pushes Stand hard against the front door. There's your door,
Lucky says. He pulls Stand back, opens it wide, gets
behind him. Open your fucking eyes, he says. Stands pov
(14:45):
on the building landing, framed by the open front door.
Dark and dangerous freedom. Lucky presses the gun to stands back.
Door's open, Lucky says, go on, bounce, walk through, walk through.
He's angry. Now Stan doesn't move, can't move a decisive.
Speaker 3 (15:03):
Beat, yeah, Lucky says, ain't that easy.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Lucky slams the door or he turns to see Stan
has his eyes still closed, as always refusing to see him.
He gets right in the white man's face and whispers,
negro Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Wait, so in the book that doesn't happen at all,
So is it the problem?
Speaker 1 (15:34):
Right? The problem is, you know, to earn the right
to tell this story, you have to sort of reframe
it and you have to take its underlying racist complexity
and you have to make it the theme. You have
to thematize that complexity, right, And that's what we do.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
When we get back, Charles talks about adaptation. We're back
with Charles ran talking about his adaptation of the Birthday
(16:11):
Party and how tricky it can be to adapt a
true story for a screenplay.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
I'll give you another not related to me, but a
very good example. I ran into Robbie Robinson, who is
Michael Keaton character in Spotlight, who's the editor on the
Spotlight Team.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
So Spotlight is the movie about the Boston Globes investigation
of Catholic priests suspected of pedophilia, among other things. And
in that movie, Michael Keaton plays the editor of the
Boston Globe.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Is that right?
Speaker 3 (16:47):
Remembering correctly?
Speaker 2 (16:48):
And there is a scene so you run into the
guy who was the real editor of the Boston Globe.
Speaker 1 (16:53):
Correct. Robbie says, you know, love the film, and there
says one part I don't love, which is the part
where it turns out that the Spotlight team was given
the information about what the Catholic priests were doing earlier,
and I was the editor at the time a newspaper
was given it and I nothing, And he says, the
truth be told. When that story came in, it was
(17:13):
one of forty stories that on the tip line for
that week. It was the second week that I was
on the job, and I wasn't even there that week.
I was actually had taken a vacation week in the transition.
And so you know, I've always been a little uncomfortable
with that scene because it's not really quite my culpability
is really not quite what you know, what the film portrays.
(17:36):
And of course I'm saying to Robbie, You're not winning
an Oscar without that scene, right. That scene is what
makes that movie right because in that moment we see
the people in the Spotlight Team, like all of society,
like us as viewers, are culpable on some level right
of ignoring this problem for many years. And that's what
makes it interesting. And so this is the problem of
(17:56):
this that you face, right.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
In order to understand to earn the right to have
to to make heroes out of the Spotlight Team, to
be a moment of resistance in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (18:12):
Yeah, well, I mean it's not in the beginning. It's
towards the end of the film. But they have to
be not just people who uncover, right, some horrible truth
about society. They have to face their own culpabilities in
relationship to that right. And that's necessary. And so when
taking a true story and building a film out of it,
(18:33):
you have to find those moments. How can we take
this thing and make it something's you know, more dramatic
and more you know, politically compelling, let's say, than what
it and then what it is. And the first problem
is easy to solve, the second problems hard. And in
this case, the choice was In my case, the choice
(18:54):
is to make Stanley Alpert different than the real Stanley Alpert.
And the fact is right because the real Stanley Appert
doesn't have those qualities. And obviously the person who hates
this version more than anyone is Stanley Alpert. Right, He's
always making jokes, he's always you know, he's he's always
referencing things, you know, he's he's he thinks of himself
as a liberal, you know. And it allows me to,
(19:16):
as in the section I read to you, it allows
me to focus on that critique of African American culture
that at the time was something that went a little
bit unspoken, but was in a lot of people's hearts,
right like in like in the and the Poet's essay.
But you know, but but you know, was not was
not never sort of portrayed, right, And of course that
(19:38):
didn't that did not end very well.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
We're gonna get to that in a second. But I
wanted to this. This is a really, really crucial thing,
and I want to kind of spend a little more
time on it. This goes to something you have often
said to me about screenwriting, which is that the important
conflict is not the external conflict, but the internal conflict, right.
(20:01):
So it is not enough, in other words, for us
to have a movie about a an obvious conflict between
three black men and a white guy they're just kidnapped.
There must be an internal conflict within the white guy's
heart and the black guys, yeah parts right for us
to kind of for the movie to come alive. Right,
(20:24):
So what you're saying is that you had to construct
an internal conflict for Stanley.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
Correct, And that means I have to move away from
the victim narrative because victims inherently aren't generally speaking, people
who are facing that kind of internal conflict. They're facing,
generally speaking, an exterior conflict. And then will you stay
up away from from that narrative. It becomes a problem
(20:51):
obviously for them for someone who sort of feels like
we're a victim, right, But it also it also makes
a better story, right, And this is part of the
part of the problem with the moment you know in
which we're recording this podcast, is that there is such
a an attempt to to elevate victim stories to to
(21:12):
to platform people without often the sort of constituent internal
conflict that's going to make them fully human and fully engaging. Right.
And that's why so many of those films fail to
work or fail to make money, is because they don't
they don't solicit our attention fully, right, because you could.
You know, there's a reason Schindler's List is focused on
(21:33):
Schindler and not the people in the camps, right, because
Schindler has a strong internal conflict, right, which is much
harder to do if you're you know, a victim of
a holocaust. Right, It's just you know, it's much harder
to do.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And he's he is criticizes and he for the centrality
that he that the movie, uh, for the fact that
Schindler's at the center of the movie.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
And yes, and but by putting by putting Schindler, you
can actually tell the other stories better better. Right. It's
the interesting contradiction here, right, because it gives us a
sort of an emotional perspective where we do not know
is character going to choose Option A or Option B.
That's what you kind of want to be, and all
my films strive for that, right. So we have it
(22:17):
here with these three kids, in the sense they're having
to make the choice. How bad at gangsters do they
want to be do they want to kill someone? Right?
And we watch them in the film discuss that amongst
themselves try and make an effort, and they're not up
to it. Each try at some point to try and
be the guy, and they just can't. These kids just
can't do it right. Whereas you know, Stanley needed the
(22:37):
same thing in the story and and for me, that
was him basically fighting his own desire because he's a
talker and he's a man who wants to own truth.
He said, you know, he gets up in front of court.
He's a litigator, right, he's a federal attorney and speaks
truth to people who do im moral things, and so
he wants to be that guy. In the course of that,
(22:58):
he really starts to realize as they express themselves in
their background, as their humanity becomes more fully realized over
the course of the film, he you know, he realizes
that he does see them as in the scene that
I just read to you.
Speaker 2 (23:13):
So his wait, so that just to go a little
bit more over his conflict. He believes himself to be
a liberal who can see the broader context in which
disadvantaged people act. And yet when he is in this situation.
He struggles to maintain.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
That absolutely yeah, yeah, well, and bookends with the fact
that he has to go at the end of the
film to a you know, to a lineup and and
basically pick the young man out of the line which
was essentially you know, assuring that justice will be served.
(23:53):
So he's met making this choice, right, He's come to
see their humanity. He knows that the system is going
to be incredibly harsh on the man. It was they
all got anywhere from I think fifteen to twenty years
and essentially sort of ruining their lives. And yeah, he's
you know, he still does it, but he doesn't like
it in the film, so.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
He described that describe that an so he in the
movie version, are you now back? So does the ending
go the way the ending when in real life?
Speaker 1 (24:25):
Yes and no. I think one thing that that it
does is it makes him more empathetic to their plight. Right.
I won't say that the film sees their their their
backgrounds as exculpatory, but it does. The film does suggest
that they deserve greater understanding than the system will give
(24:46):
them because of the back the harsh backgrounds they come from.
All of them I think are potentially, you know, fatherless
and have problematic backgrounds. We hear a little bit about that,
and of course the film in the real story, No,
and the real story, you know, Stan Albert, a victim
of crime, wanted to see justice served, and justice was served.
(25:07):
And I don't think he felt particularly ambivalent about it.
I don't know. I mean, in my discussions with him
after he read the script, you know, it's it seemed
to offend him that he owed them, he owed them
more than, you know, more than what was given to
them in terms of how he portrayed them in the book,
(25:29):
you know. And he may not be wrong, you know,
I mean, you know, I'm using his story for my
own purposes.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Right when we get back, Charles and I talk about
who gets to tell whose stories. So in the movie version,
he gets they let him go. The young men are arrested,
and does is the climax of the movie him picking
(25:55):
him out.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Of the No, it's them being sentenced in there and
they remember they haven't been able to look at each other.
Really the course of the film. It's sort of an
interesting thing, is you know, he's got the scarf which
they've blindfolded with, so s for covers most of his
face and then they turn him away. They never really
get a chance to look at each other. And at
the end of the film, uh, he basically in the
(26:19):
in the courtroom has a chance to walk eyes with
It's lucky, the sort of the their leader and the
first time these two people can actually see each other.
But he sort of comes to a place where, you know,
he can see the other violently, and that's that's the
best we can hope for for that stuff.
Speaker 2 (26:37):
Yeah, it's a beautiful metaphors they're running throughout this that
we've two people who literally and figuratively cannot see each other.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Yeah. And then by the end the occupy, Yeah, occupy
the same space.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Yeah, even as he occupied the same space. By the
end of the movie, even as these young men are
being sent off to jail, we have we the audience
have some feeling that they're seeing each other for the
first time, right, which is necessary because, as you said,
if it's simply slam bam, if it's a law and
(27:13):
order episode, it's not interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:16):
And you can't do it right. I mean, there is
a history of obviously you know, the victim in TV
shows and movies, you know, being white and the perpetrator
being black. But it's something that we've been uncomfortable with
for a long time now, right And certainly the idea
of three black three black men rang on a white
(27:36):
guys has always been I mean not always, but it
has been complicated in recent years, in the last twenty
thirty years, it has been a complicated idea, right And
and really it's why this thing was sort of in
development hell, because nobody ever got comfortable with it.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
So you finished the script and tell me what happens next?
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Who do you take it to? First? It goes immediately
to a few directors. In fact, one director that first
weekend calls me on a Sunday night, which never happens
based on the weekend read, incredibly excited about it and saying,
I'm all in, I love this, this is fantastic. Come Monday,
he goes in the office. He has two interns who
(28:17):
are graduate students from NYU who are both black, who say, now,
you can't do this, this is not this is not
going to work, you know, and you know he backs
out immediately. So he backs out twenty four hours later.
But there are a lot of directors who came on
board Unfortunately, there were no black directors available. I think,
you know, I think we a couple were approached. It
(28:39):
was a slight It was two thousand and eight, so
there weren't quite as many as we have now obviously,
but no one, No one was around. I think what
we tried to do is we tried to tone it down.
We tried to sort of tone down, you know. I
remember sort of sitting in the office with going through
and counting all the inwards and seeing how many we
could take out, just to sort of make it a
little bit more palatable to be because it's raw, it's
(29:00):
very raw. Then what happens, well, what happens is a
couple directors go away and nobody really works until the
great Milosh Foreman.
Speaker 2 (29:10):
Milosh Foreman, famous for directing One Flew over the Cuckoo's
Nest in nineteen seventy five. In two thousand and seven,
he's well into his seventies, and.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Milosh has a remarkable ability to do dramedy and comedy
and drama at the same time. And Milosh says to me,
when we first sort of start unpacking the history of
the project, he says, stop, stop. It doesn't matter if
the characters are real. If the actors find in them
(29:40):
real humanity, and the actors bring their own truth to it,
it will work right, and all that other stuff will
go away. And if it's problematic, we get rid of
it in the editing room. Don't we have the time?
We called it political correctness, right, so don't worry about
the politically well, it's polity correct not if it's real
and if it's human, and we will be totally fine.
And he had another thing he would talk about, which
(30:02):
was that, you know, anytime you nestle up against censorship,
you know you're in the zone when you're making something interesting.
In fact, he talked about he would talk about how
and he's from Czechoslovakia, how you know the great thing
about having our actual sensor is they tell you exactly
where the line is, so everybody knows exactly where the
line is, and so that you can you can you
(30:24):
can approach the line with great subtlety, right because because
everyone knows where it is. And that's the thing that
American culture does not have, is that sort of that
sort of you know, clear sense, no line until we,
of course do it a line. In recent years, we've
kind of created some lines for ourselves. But yes, there's
no line, right, And so he said, and so he said,
it's good that we make people uncomfortable. It's good that
(30:46):
it's raw. It's good that some of it's incredibly provocative,
because that's what's going to make it real. And and
and he fully owned it. And you know, I get
I get emotional thinking about it, but he he was
just so open to what the thing was, right. And
then you know, I get a series of notes from him,
(31:08):
and I realized their notes on a scene he's already done.
And I get another series and I realized their notes
on something entirely different. And I call his wife and
she's like, yeah, you know, he's not been feeling well,
give me a couple of weeks. And then he never
came back to it. At that point, I think she
had realized that he just wasn't up to it. You know,
(31:28):
he was quite old. Yeah, And and so you know,
I finally find the guy that I think can bring
it home and and he's just not. He's just can't.
He's just not gonna be able to do it. You know,
I think she worried that he wouldn't even have the
stamina to do it right, you know, because directing takes
two years, takes two and a half years. So if
you see problems at the beginning, you know, you got
to remember, what where's this person going to be in
(31:49):
two years?
Speaker 2 (31:50):
When does he die?
Speaker 1 (31:51):
How he dies about three years later? You know, And
I do not know what shape he was in in
the end. He may have been fully cognizant all the
way to the end, but but you know, he died
a bit later.
Speaker 2 (32:00):
But it was Can we just pause on meals about this?
So Milish is a person who comes out from under
the iron curtain. He grows up in toutalitarianism. You know,
he he has a kind of I mean, if you're
looking so what this project, what you're saying is what
(32:21):
this project needed was an authenticity in its interpretation, you
would something, it needed fearlessness, It needed fear and one
way to do this is to find a black director
with you know, That's what That's the solution we would
do today. Correct, Correct, for whatever reason, there wasn't someone avel.
(32:43):
But the other version is to find someone like Milosh.
He started his career thumbing his nose at one of
the history's most brutal authoritarian totalitarian regimes. So it's like
he's like, if anyone's going.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
To say f it, and he did, and he and
it was and it was it was just I can't
tell you how liberating it was. It was just shockingly
liberating after I think it had been three maybe four
years at that point, you know, and he's like, no,
let's we will get this. Do not worry. This is
not our this will not be our problem.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (33:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
And you think he's you think he's right, his interpretation
is right.
Speaker 1 (33:23):
I do think he's right. Yeah, I do think. I
think what happens is if you hire actors who you
know who can bring something to it, if you listen
to other people from other cultures, if you gets a
communal effort a film, right and and if you do that,
you will find authenticity, you know, if you're looking for it.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
Because I know you well, if you permit me a
little bit of of of psychoanalyzing for those who don't
know you. You are you're the son of an evangelical
preacher from Texas. You grew up all over the world
because your dad was smuggling bibles into Eastern Europe. You're
(34:03):
you're you're so out in certain ways, you're such an
outsider to Hollywood. It's it's phenomenal, and the outsider has
you know, in some ways, you you and Milo c
I I on this because you're because you're both outsiders, right, right, right.
It's one thing that this was written by the standard
(34:25):
Hollywood screenwriter, who is the privileged white guy who went
to Harvard and then you know, did a graduate degree
at NYU and then interned for a famous director and
blah blah blah. Right, that's not you. Though there is
a privilege in writing something like this, there is great
(34:47):
advantage and privilege in not having a dog in the fight,
in not being part of the worlds that you're portraying.
So we understand the privilege that comes from belonging. The
person who belongs can tell a certain kind of story
with a degree of confidence and accuracy and verve that
(35:11):
the outsider can't. But then, but we're forgetting that there's
a there is a separate set of advantages that come
from being someone who doesn't belong to either of these worlds.
And my point about you was that in this context,
you're not part of Stanley's world, right, That's that you're
Charles from Texas. You're not part of his world, and
you're not part of the Lucky's world. You're you're off
(35:33):
on your own little island, and that there's so so
much that's an incredibly liberating moment to be the outside,
you know, to be so I feel like we're overprivileging
the set of advantages that come from belonging, and we're
under we have underestimated the set of storytelling advantages that
(35:54):
come from being the fly on the wall who's just like,
you know, you don't know anything to Stanley. That's why
you're able to do that. You're not if you were
part of his world, you would have been constrained in
your portrayal of him. Similarly, Lucky, if you were part
of his world, you would have been coned. You're on.
You were unconstrained because you weren't. This wasn't And that's
(36:16):
like why it's so important for all of us at
storytelling to defend the right of the storyteller to describe
worlds of which they are not a part. That is
it's so essential that we defend that.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Yeah, absolutely, and particularly for writers, right, there's something about
you know, there's something about the screenwriter which is different
from the other other jobs on the set, which then
you're required to give voice to to dozens of different people, right,
you know, and and to be good at that, you
(36:51):
you know, you need to be able to to to
understand different types and embrace different worlds. And I do
think you're right. We've undervalued in a way what it
means to be, you know, to be someone who lurks
above it a little bit, right, Uh, certainly in my field,
now maybe in maybe in other fields, to be different, right,
I think what the end that people want is they
(37:13):
want everyone from different backgrounds to be able to tell
their story, to be in the position to sort of
sit in the director's chair if they want, or to
sell screenplays that they want, and that is that is
the goal. Right. That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that we
should silo off our industry in that way, you know,
and silo off our subjects, because we do. We do
(37:36):
lose something when we are no longer communicating across you know,
not just cultural or racial lines, but ideological lines. You know.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
You know, what's interesting about this story told today is
obviously it's sort of it fits a project conceived in
two thousand and seven, feels makes us a little honey
of this nature makes us a little uneasy in twenty
twenty four, nearly twenty years later. The other thing is
(38:09):
that it was interesting about it is that I feel
like our uh, our attitude towards projects like this on
the on the kind of racial periphery have become a binary.
We think of white projects and black projects, and a
white project is done by a white person, and a
(38:30):
black person project gets done by a black person. But
this movie isn't black or white. It's about black beating
white and white meeting black and like so it's like
it's not clear each side has a right to tell
the story right, and a lot of what's what's going
on in this kind of like like when you talked
about the one director loves it and then the interns
(38:52):
read it the black and say you can't do it,
is that it's a dispute about they're obviously understandably reading
this through their eyes as black beats white. Stanley's reading
this as white beats black, right, and like it's it irresolvable,
it's not. What makes it fascinating is that I can't
(39:14):
think of a movie that a contemporary movie. I mean
this movie today would give us fits. I mean, you'll
give us fits today because no one can decide what
it is exactly.
Speaker 1 (39:25):
It would it would, it would aggravate an unresolved tension
in our society. And I think the mistake I made
is I assumed that I knew where society was going.
I assumed that I knew that what's going to happen
is that we're all going to be better at working
through our residual racist attitudes, thoughts, beliefs, and we're going
to get closer and closer. In fact, the film ends
(39:47):
with Stanley listening to a bit of rap, and this was,
of course, after Obama had been elected, So the sort
of message of the film was actually, we're we're on
the road. We're not there yet, but we're on the road.
And of course that didn't happen. Where I thought society
was going is not where we went. We were trenched
back into, you know, even stronger understandings of the importance
(40:08):
of race and not to some you know, idealized version
of all. It's going to learn to ignore our differences
more and more and embrace, you know, in these these
things that won't matter, and you know, you couldn't. I mean,
you couldn't do the film today even reading it today.
I read it today in a restaurant and I just
try myself wincing, you know, every other page, because it's
you know, I you know, I really went for it.
(40:29):
I really am. It's very provocative in places, in people
saying the things that they're not supposed to say. You know,
I'm always interested in things that feel uncomfortable and awkward
for me, like like I don't know, I want to
go there, because what that gives you, if you will
sort of take on those subjects, is the texture of
the world starts to become really interesting. I mean, because
(40:52):
suddenly every little choice matters, you know, And and that's why,
you know, it's one of the one of the scripts
that I enjoyed writing the most, because every little choice
starts to matter, right, because all kick comes laden with meaning.
Part of it is just a professional habit of Okay,
it's awkward, it's uncomfortable. That's whe I'm going to go, right,
But also part of it is, you know, I do
(41:12):
feel like, you know, this is not writing in the novel.
This is a collective endeavor, and we get to check
our work with people of all sorts, of all stripes,
and you know, if we're open and if we're all
working hard, you know we can we can get to
(41:33):
something that feels very true. If you try things and
that they work, they work, and if they don't, they don't.
That's what this is. That's what this is why we
do why I do this business, and it allows us
to take greater risk, I think, instead of less right
because you know we're working together.
Speaker 2 (41:49):
There is no movie version of the Birthday Party. When
Milos Forman drops out, it's the end. The adaptation does
not survive the harsh conditions and obstacles thrown in its way,
which is a shame. This episode was produced by Nina
(42:23):
Bird Lawrence with Tali Emlin and Bena daph Haffrey. Editing
by Sarah Nix, original scoring by Luis Quira, Engineering by
Echo Mountain. Our executive producer is Jacob Smith. I'm Malcolm Gladwell.
(42:45):
Next time on Development Hell, Patty Jenkins talks about her
R rated Dog movie.
Speaker 1 (42:51):
This is.
Speaker 2 (42:54):
This sort of on one level is super bleak. It's
not it's.
Speaker 3 (42:58):
Magical, no, it is it is.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
The journey is bleak, and it seems like it's going
to be, but it ends up being magical.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
It heads up that our friends over at the Happiness
Lab have a special episode I'm in Your Way soon
to celebrate World Happiness Day. I'm in it talking about
running and the journey versus a destination Spoiler alert, I'm
a destination guy, not a journey guy. It'll be dropping
into this feed on March twentieth, but you can find
happiness tips from doctor Lori Santo's any Day over at
(43:27):
the Happiness Lab
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