You’ve written a couple of scripts set in Omaha, Nebraska. “Yeah, you know, it’ll be just like all the other abortion comedies.” So he called up my agent, got it from him, read it over the weekend, and on Monday said, “Let’s make it.” It took a long time-another year and a half-to get the thing made. Laura Dern as Ruth Stoops in Citizen RuthĪre you serious? That’s how you pitched it? Then at lunch in Culver City I bump into this producer who three years ago had made me this other offer, and we schmooze….So the next day we go out to lunch… “Whatta ya got?” “Oh nothing, just this abortion comedy that everyone hates. It involves abortion, etc.” At one point I’d nearly given up on it, thinking, “Fuck it! I’m gonna have to write something now that’s two people in a room, that I can shoot on 16mm reversal film in my living room, just to get something made!” Because otherwise I was gonna fuckin’ shoot myself, if I couldn’t shoot a film.
We started writing it, got together with another producer, and tried to shop it around.Įveryone said, “It’s just too hard. I was going to rewrite that and try to raise a million dollars somewhere, but my buddy Jim Taylor and I got the idea for Citizen Ruth.
The script Universal hated is about an old guy who retires and then realizes how much he’s wasted his life. They gave me money to live off for a couple of years after that. If we like it you can direct it.” The Velvet Coffin: you get a studio deal, they give you money, and you never make a movie. I wrote a script for Universal and they paid me a bunch of money and they hated it. The guy claims to have good taste.īut I didn’t because I took this Universal deal. Actually, he saw a very tiny film Gus Van Sant made called Mala Noche and took the script for Drugstore Cowboy to Nick Wexler, who got it made.
#Nick payne cryptext on windows 10 movie
So, I was offered movies not very good ones, you know, but on a level maxed-out as far as what you could do coming right out of grad school.Īmong the many producers I met was Cary Woods, who made an offer to “come and write and direct this movie for me.” Cary Woods is a former agent who takes credit for discovering Gus Van Sant. On the strength of that, I got an agent and an offer from Universal to write and direct a film. If you make a decent product it all comes to you. It played a lot of festivals, won a lot of awards, and got the attention of agents and producers in Los Angeles. I went to graduate school at UCLA, came out with my Masters degree in 1990 and had a nearly hour-long thesis film that did well in the way you want your student film to do well. How did you sell your script for Citizen Ruth ? Here he talks frankly about his early career. Back in 1997, however, when Creative Screenwriting was lucky enough to interview him, he had yet to achieve the fame he was later to enjoy. Alexander Payne is an Oscar-winning screenwriter, responsible for such films as Sideways, About Schmidt and The Descendents.
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