By Tribeca Film Festival Feb 11, 2007, 14:42 GMT
The following is a reprint from the Tribeca Film Festival.
Undated file photo of Mark Fergus nominated for Adapted Screenplay for 'Children of Men' by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the 79th Annual Academy Awards nominations in Beverly Hills, California 23 January 2007. EPA/UNIVERSAL STUDIOS EDITORIAL USE ONLY
Last week on the Tribeca Film Festival website several TFF alums who had received an Oscar nomination, Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby were overlooked. They were able to make their first independent film First Snow (TFF '06) thanks to a simple writing gig.
Producer Hilary Shor had hired the duo to tackle the widely-considered unadaptable ‘Children of Men’ by P.D. James. Now, Fergus and Ostby share a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination with three other writers, including the resulting film's director, Alfonso Cuaron.
In the midst of nominee lunches and other Oscar-related activities, the duo is now working on the script of the big screen adaptation of Marvel Comics' ‘Iron Man’ starring Robert Downey Jr and Gwyneth Paltrow and to be directed by Jon Favreau for Summer 2008. Fergus took some time out to chat with us about his and Ostby's work and the excitement surrounding their Oscar news.
Tribeca (T): How did you and Hawk and wind-up working on ‘Children of Men?’
Mark Fergus (MF): We worked on that a long time ago, actually. It was our second job that we got as working writers. It was a real tough novel to crack, and the idea for us was to adapt it in a manner that would attract a really good director. We worked on it for about two years and were able to snag Alfonso [Cuaron]. We were so excited because we thought were going to work with him, but he has his own writing partner, so essentially other than a few conversations and sort of a bridging from where we were to where he wanted to go, we realized he was going to take it from there. It’s one of those weird cases where everybody sort of brought something really new to it and transformed it to something kind of unusual and better and better. I heard Blade Runner kinda went that way, which is cool. T: What made the novel so difficult to adapt and how did the film evolve into its own work? MF: I don’t know if you could have filmed that book the way it was written. I love the book, but it’s mostly internal, I guess and then from that to you know, just the different changes and the political spin and all the different things that came to it along the way. It was a real evolution in the best sense of the word. I feel like we were really lucky to be part of that one, it just felt like the little ugly duckling project when it started, I don’t think anyone wanted to do it.
T: Who brought you and Hawk in on it?
MF: A producer named Hilary Shore and Eric Newman. (They) had read our stuff, liked us. We had done [an adaptation of the Philip K. Dick novel] A Scanner Darkly for our first writing assignment; not the Richard Linklater one that ultimately got made -- we were hired by Jersey Films to try to crack that book, and I think we had a lot of success with that adaptation so they said, "Hey give these guys a shot at Children of Men because it seems to be one that’s not going anywhere." We just read it, and we said, “Oh my God! This is Casablanca!” It’s the perfect love triangle. It fit that mold and that’s when they got excited and thought, "Wow this could actually be a film."
T: Is your script still on the screen? Did the other writers change much? MF: Obviously the other writers since then have taken it, and they built on what we brought and built on the next level. When I first saw the film, I was thinking, "Damn, he really rushed through everything. He didn’t take his time with this." But I was still thinking in terms of what we wrote and a long time ago. Then I realized it was all in there. It felt right and if it feels right then you don’t need all the intellectual junk to go along with it. You don’t need to explain things if it's working.
It’s great to see your stuff in there and you also see what everyone else brought to it. It just felt like everyone’s material mattered and made the story better and brought it to a new place, and then Alfonso sculpted it down to the bare bones. He didn’t try to explain too much which was pretty bold, and I think it really worked for the story. T: So here’s something that was your second job. You guys were still un-produced screenwriters. You wrote some drafts and then weren't working on it directly anymore and now years later. . . you’re Oscar nominees.
MF: That’s pretty great. When I heard Alfonso was getting involved, and we had our brief interaction, I thought, “Oh, this could be something great,” because he’s just one of those rare directors who just has something going on. So I knew it was not going to be ordinary, but I never thought that far ahead. I wish it had gotten some of the bigger [nominations] too. I certainly think it was deserved, but for us, I mean what can you say other than it's getting struck by lightning? I was living in New Mexico working on First Snow, and we were just trying to keep our lights on and getting bills paid. And now, we went to the [nominees] luncheon the other day, and we're hanging out with Clint Eastwood for Christ's sake! It was Spielberg to the left and Scorsese to the right. There’s Forest Whitaker and Will Smith, and I can’t believe were wandering around this room and not being thrown out.
T: How did you find out about the nomination?
MF: I knew they were coming out in the morning, so I was working on Iron Man really late, until about 3 am. I just went to sleep. I was so tired, and I figured if the phone rings at 5:30, it's going to be good news, and if it doesn’t I’ll just sleep. So the phone rang, and it was my friend from New Jersey. I heard her on the answering machine screaming her head off, and I just smiled and went back to sleep. I didn’t even pick up the phone. I just thought, "Cool. I can go back to sleep now," but of course I couldn’t go back to sleep. I just wanted to be peaceful about it. I didn’t want to get too geared up about it because I knew I would make myself sick wondering if we were going to win. You know, you start looking at the blogs, and you say “I’m not gonna give a shit. It's just cool to be in the running.” Then as [the nominations] get closer, you start checking Oscarwatch.com, but after a while it gets kind of depressing because we're kind of a dark horse. I didn’t think we were going to get it, and I think I stopped looking at those sites because they were really bumming me out. I figured I better just get back to work and stop hoping for it.
T: The entertainment gods require that we ask the following question: Have you thought about what you’re going to wear?
MF: I don’t own anything decent at all, and certainly none of the designers really want to outfit a bunch of writers, so I mean no one is banging the door down saying “Hey will you wear our clothes?” I was kind of hoping somebody might lend us a tux. I might just buy one or rent one. I'll see whatever Leo is wearing, and I'll just copy him because he’s very cool, you know.
I mean, I don’t even own a decent jacket to go out in. Even for the luncheon, I had to just improvise clothes. I mean, me, Guillermo del Toro and Hawk were the only people in jeans.
T: At least that's good company. MF: I know, right? Whatever he does is cool with us.
T: Are you ready for that overwhelming red carpet experience?
MF: No, I don’t even know what it's going to be. I live right near [The Kodak Theater], so we were thinking of just walking. But apparently, they want to drive us down and dump us at the door. I thought it would be fun to walk from N. Vine Street; just waltz on down there and say, “We’re going in there. We have tickets.” I’m just going to be gawking at whatever is going on. I don’t think anyone is going to be beating down the door to get at the screenwriters, but I don’t know how that works.
T: And now you're hard at work on ‘Iron Man,’ which seems like it's going to be huge. How did you get involved?
MF: I think actually one of the reasons they hired us is because we weren’t comics guys. We don’t really know the world that well, so we could have a little bit of perspective and not get too caught up in the rules and what people might expect. They’ve had some other writers on it who worked on some drafts who were more of those guys. Jon [Favreau, the director] is really specific about what he wants, so he doesn’t mind a lot of voices adding to the fire, and he will define what it should be and what it shouldn’t.
We got hired to adapt a book for [Jon] called John Carter of Mars -- the Edgar Rice Burrows’ novel -- which is still somewhere on its way to getting made. [Jon] hired us to do that one and we had such a great time working on that and we just worked really well together. When Carter didn’t take off right away, he just brought us on board with this, and I think he likes our way of working. We have a good synergy together all of us.
T: Tackling a popular comic book is a dangerous proposition, though, and if you and Hawk aren't "comics guys" …
MF: I did read all of the history of this comic, studied a lot and got up to speed on it, but I’m glad I didn’t know too much, because it’s very freeing to not feel like I’m stepping on the rules. If we do step on any sacred rules or anything, believe me Marvel will tell us, "OK, the fans are not gonna dig that." So they keep us in check so we can just tell the story and decide what it needs, independent of what the comic world needs from it.
T: And now ‘First Snow’ is coming out in a little over a month too right?
MF: Yeah, that’s coming out in late March (on Mar. 23). [Yari Film Group] has got the site up already (www.firstsnowthemovie.com), and they did some beautiful posters and trailers for us. We’re happy to get it out there. You guys were our first festival, and then we’ve done a bunch since then, and the festival audiences have been nuts about it. I know that’s much more of a film audience than the general public, but we feel really good about how it's going to play. We hope it will succeed, but it only has to be a small win for us to be happy. I just know we made the movie we set out to and the response so far has made us really glad that we stuck to our guns through a lot of creative battles.
T: Are you planning to like write your own projects and direct more? And does Hawk want to direct? MF: I think he probably does eventually. He’s got three kids and lives in Vermont, so he’s sort of out of the madness a bit, which is good. I think he eventually will get the bug because he’s a film student and has made a lot of films already, and I think he will probably want to do it. We have found some really nice projects that we loved in the last year, but they belong to other people; they come with baggage. There’s nothing like just writing your own stuff and saying “OK, if you don’t want do it with us or this way, then thanks for your time,” and you can just walk away with your script.
We’re almost done with something, but you really have to lock yourself away. We can't do something in the midst of Iron Man and all this other stuff. You can’t share your attention. That’s what the goal is, though: to get something new by the summer and try to do the same thing -- get out there and sucker someone into financing us again.
T: Well now you’re Oscar nominees so maybe it’ll be easier.
MF: Yeah, maybe it will be easier. That’s the great thing about it. You can always sort of drop that as a way to make them pay attention. It is one of those things you can carry around and flaunt ridiculously, but if it helps get a thing financed or it helps us get First Snow out there, it might be worth it.
‘Children of Men’ is still in theaters. ‘First Snow’ will be released by Yari Film Group. Releasing on March 23, roughly around the same time ‘Iron Man’ will be starting production for a summer 2008 release.
Be sure to catch Mark, Hawk and the rest of the Tribeca Film Festival “nominees” on the 79th Annual Academy Awards on February 25th, live at 8 PM Eastern.
The original interview can be seen here.
Mark Fergus is...
Reading...I'm re-reading Ulysses the James Joyce book, which I try to read every couple of years. I've probably read it six times since I was a kid because all of my Irish relatives were always jamming it in front of me saying, "This is our great novel," and I'd say, "OK, have you read it?" And nobody's read it but everybody talks about it like it's the greatest thing ever. It's one of those books that you can kind of dip into at any place and just start reading. It's just this maddening novel, but it makes you really excited about what you can do with words. I'm not sure how I feel about the book, but I keep going back to it as a real source of inspiration.
Watching...‘The Lives of Others.’ It's up for Best Foreign Film from Germany. It's so well done it just makes you weep. You just want to be better at what you do because you see a storyteller in such command of this story.
Listening to...I just got iTunes so I've just been listening to anything I can think of. I got this Miles Davis record Bitches Brew, which I had never heard and always wanted, and I've listened to it obsessively. And then something from when I was nine years old: Kiss Alive!
©2006 Tribeca Film Festival
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