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HOW BIG FISH'S JOHN AUGUST HOOKED A HOLLYWOOD CAREER
by Tom McCurrie
Ever wonder how a nice guy makes it in Hollywood without an uncle who runs Dreamworks? John August, the writer of GO and BIG FISH, explained how he did it at a recent Q & A session in Los Angeles.
August went to college in Des Moines, Iowa (the nicest place on Earth), where he majored in journalism. After graduation, it was "either one coast or the other," i.e. go East to break into magazines or West to break into film. August chose West -- he was accepted into the Peter Stark Program at USC, a program which teaches the ways (and wiles) of producing. Being stuck with 25 fellow Starkies all grasping to be the next Joel Silver was like "a two-year episode of the Real World." After graduating from USC, August got a taste of the Real World, all right: mindless employment answering phones at Universal, "the classic entry-level job." During that time he wrote his first script, one he calls totally "overwritten" and shall remain nameless, but one good enough to get him an agent. Soon he had his first writing jobs, two kid-friendly adaptations called HOW TO EAT FRIED WORMS and A WRINKLE IN TIME. Suddenly, August was supporting himself doing what he loved most. "Never feel bad about being a working writer," he says, since scale was more money then he'd ever earned in his life at the time.
Trouble was, August was pigeonholed as a kid's writer: "gnomes, elves, dwarves and Christmas" were the only jobs he was getting. August wanted to move on to darker, more adult material, so he penned the wonderfully edgy GO. August based GO on a short script he wrote called X, about a girl trying to pull off a drug deal at Christmas time. In order to make the script feature length, August had "to restart the movie twice," mimicking PULP FICTION's structure. August is continually "frustrated" by GO's also-ran comparison to PULP FICTION (after all, PULP wasn't the first movie to use a circular structure), but he admits PULP made that structure very sexy to Hollywood's money men: "I never could have made the movie without [PULP]."
Now this doesn't mean August disses Tarantino. NATURAL BORN KILLERS was the first script he read where he said, "I have to read it again immediately." In fact, August thought the script was "genius." Ironically, one of his first nine-to-five jobs was working on NATURAL BORN KILLERS the movie, a flick August didn't quite care for. Oliver Stone took the script in a direction Tarantino didn't intend; that's because "Tarantino's movie had a sense of humor and Oliver doesn't." To August, this was a lesson in how a director can hurt a script as much as help it. (C'mon, John, NBK is a blast -- though its high-intensity shock value is better suited to a short than a feature.) Later, August was allowed to "quit" the movie after he was hired to write the novelization of NBK; when it turned out more like Tarantino's original than Oliver's take, it was Adios and Goodbye.
GO impacted August's career "hugely." At first, producers and execs passed on the script, but liked the writing enough to take meetings with August and put him in the running for more adult-themed projects. When GO was released, however, the movie only did lackluster business, opening with 4 million in April '99. Still, as August himself admits, "people in town really liked it, so it didn't really hurt me that much that it wasn't a big success." Sometimes one good burst of exposure is enough to get that all-important heat.
After the buzz from GO, August worked on a project called DEMONOLOGY over at Paramount. It was about two prep school girls who have to save Manhattan from the Apocalypse. August: "And that was a movie I never could have gotten without GO. They never made it, but at least I got the chance to write it." (Instead of making a cool project like this, I guess Paramount preferred to throw tens of millions at gems like BEYOND BORDERS and TIMELINE, pictures which caused Viacom shareholders to lunge for their Tums every time they read the Weekend Box Office.) Nevertheless, as far as August being offered edgier material went, GO "really opened the door for things" -- most specifically, the blockbuster known as CHARLIE'S ANGELS.
With the critical credibility of GO and the commercial clout of CHARLIE'S ANGELS, August was taken much more seriously. So when he brought the manuscript for a book he really loved called BIG FISH to Columbia, and said, "I really want to adapt this book into a movie...they were nice enough to say yes." In Hollywood, one job leads to another, simply because you become a known quantity to the powers-that-be. This is true even if your work doesn't break box-office records (i.e. GO). It's the old Orson Welles dictum (I paraphrase): a writer doesn't have to please the audience to be successful, he has to please the producer to be successful. As long as you can do that, you will keep working.
And how does August work? What is his writing process? August makes it a point not to have any "weird rituals" when he writes, for often that becomes an excuse not to write. (The temperature's too hot, the paper's not white enough, I only write when the Dodgers win, etc.) August writes whenever and wherever he can, even if it's on parking stubs and cocktail napkins; whenever an idea hits, that's the time to put it down. He tries to "use any good available moment to get stuff done." Also, as he explains himself, "I don't write in sequence at all...I just write whatever scene appeals to me to write." (Most unusual...and dangerous, if you don't know where you're going. Maybe that's why BIG FISH seemed so disjointed and choppy.) He also doesn't edit himself too heavily on the first pass through a script: "It's so much easier to edit than to write new material that you just end up being stuck with rewriting the same thirty pages" and never finish your work (excellent point).
If that's the process, what about the inspiration? Here are some of the movies that have influenced August as a writer:
ALIENS: "The best...tightest combination of really, really good storytelling and really good themework...the terror of Motherhood."
CLUELESS: "Really smart...really tightly put together."
THE MUPPET MOVIE: "...[It] knows what it wants to be and...gleefully embraces it." The script for this flick is "subversive and great."
(These movies might not make SIGHT AND SOUND's Ten Best List, but they're refreshing choices nevertheless...maybe because they won't make SIGHT AND SOUND's Ten Best List.)
Does August plan to turn hyphenate and direct? He would love to, but at the same time he prefers the less pressurized world of the writer. After all, "If I screw around and play video games for a week, the world won't come crashing to an end. It does if you're a director." Also, a director works on one movie every two years, while August gets to work on five a year as a writer: "I love that flexibility...the chance to do so many different kinds of things." (One of these is Tim Burton's CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, a remake of 1971's WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY that August has been hired to adapt). Most importantly, directing sometimes requires a different temperament. While writers are always trying to be loved (certainly by the execs/producers who hire them), directors often "need to have to be the a**hole" to get things done.
Here's hoping Hollywood doesn't turn nice guy August into an a**hole anytime soon. (And if it does, hopefully he continues to write cool stuff like GO!)
Responses, comments and general two-cents worth can be E-mailed to gillis662000@yahoo.com.
(Note: For all those who missed my past reviews, I've now archived them on Hollywoodlitsales.com. Just click the link on the main page and it'll take you to the Inner Sanctum. Love them or Hate them at your leisure!)
A graduate of USC's School of Cinema-Television, Tom McCurrie has worked as a development executive and a story analyst. He is currently a screenwriter living in Los Angeles.
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