Script Apart with Al Horner

Richard Kelly, the visionary writer-director of Donnie Darko, dives deep into the film's intriguing origins and complex themes. He discusses how Y2K fears and suburban puritanism influenced the narrative, revealing that Frank the rabbit is a benevolent guide rather than a villain. Kelly also contrasts the initial draft with the final film, emphasizing Donnie as a unique superhero figure. Excitingly, he hints at plans for a large-scale sequel, sparking curiosity among fans eager to explore more of this cult classic's mysteries.

Where to begin describing today’s guest and his lengthy list of accomplishments? Eric Roth is the Academy Award-winning writer responsible for films like Forrest Gump,  The Insider, Munich, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and 2018’s A Star Is Born. At 77-years-old, Eric is as potent a storytelling force as ever: last year, he delivered a sci-fi epic so huge, you’d have had to have buried your head pretty deep in the sand of a distant sand planet named Arrakis to have missed it. Dune, co-written with director Denis Villeneuve and previous Script Apart guest Jon Spaihts, achieved the impossible. It translated one of the densest, most complex and widely beloved science-fiction novels of all-time into a thrilling blockbuster spectacle that somehow remained true to its source material. Timothée Chalamet starred as Paul Atreides, young prince of the noble House Atreides, as an intergalactic battle erupts over control of the deadly, inhospitable desert planet. Author Frank Herbert wrote the book as a warning about society's tendencies to “give over every decision-making capacity” to a charismatic leader. Eric, Jon and Denis did a terrific job threading that insight into a “chosen one” story that challenges and interrogates that narrative template. For many, the film felt like the moment that theatrical cinema felt “back” after the closures of the pandemic. In a captivating conversation recorded earlier this year, Eric told us all about how the film’s towering sense of scale was achieved, how the opening he originally envisioned for the movie would have bankrupted the entire production and what keeps him hungry after all these years. Next on the docket for Eric is a collaboration with Martin Scorsese, penning the upcoming Killers of the Flower Moon. There’s no slowing down for this veritable titan of the screenwriting universe.This episode contains spoilers for Dune.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Greetings, Script Apart listeners. Your mission today, should you choose to accept it – listen to the one and only David Koepp regale us with fascinating stories and insights from an astonishing three-decade career in Hollywood. Having written movies totalling over $9bn at the box office, David is a giant of the screenwriting world. Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Carlito’s Way, Panic Room and War of the Worlds are just a few of the iconic films that David has penned over the years, making the decision of which movie of his to cover today a tricky one. We threw the question over to him to decide, and his pick of the bunch was 1996’s masterful Mission: Impossible – a Tom Cruise espionage epic that spawned five blockbuster sequels, with two more now on the way.David’s Mission: Impossible was markedly different to the most recent instalments in the series. His adaptation of the 1960s TV series was a lean, patient spy slow-burn that had action and excitement, but thrived on tension and paranoia. It followed Ethan Hunt, a secret agent framed for the murder of his friends and colleagues following a botched mission in Prague. It’s full of the sort of storytelling smarts that is commonplace in David’s work, evident in everything from his 1989 debut Apartment Zero to last year’s collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, the Covid thriller KIMI. In this wide-ranging conversation, David tells me about the chaos that submerged Mission: Impossible at multiple points in its development, the explosive prison break scene that was cut from his screenplay for budgetary reasons, the artful exposition that’s a regular feature in his storytelling (seriously, study the Mr. DNA sequence in Jurassic Park if you don’t believe me) and how he approaches screenwriting versus his work as a novelist. Last month, he released Aurora, his second novel, about a solar flare that knocks the Earth’s electrical grid out and sends society into disarray. It’s soon to be made into a movie, with Katheryn Bigelow.This episode will not self-destruct in five seconds – but you should still hurry to listen to it, because you don’t want to miss David’s incredible stories and advice for emerging writers. This was a one fun. Enjoy.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Script Apart listeners, fortify your minds – this week, we’re joined by Michael Waldron, the screenwriting sorcerer supreme behind Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Directed by Sam Raimi, this latest Marvel blockbuster is superhero storytelling with the handbrake off. A cosmic adventure packed with inter-dimensional chases,  one-eyed squid monsters and motivational talks from zombie corpses, this 28th entry in the Marvel Cinematic Universe well and truly lived up to the “madness” of its title. The film follows surgeon-turned-superhero Stephen Strange as he attempts to protect a young hero, America Chavez, with the power to open portals between locations in the multiverse. It’s a journey that sends the wizard on a horror movie-descent into darkness and violence, as familiar characters from the MCU make shocking lurches into villainy. Wrestling all of that into some kind of coherent story would be challenging for any writer. Luckily, Michael was pretty well-prepared for such a task, despite having been roped into the project at the last minute following the departures of original writers Scott Derickson and C. Robert Cargill. Michael had prior experience bringing complex sci-fi concepts to life with a lightness of touch, having written for the hit animated series Rick and Morty. He was also on the Black List a few years ago for a genius spec script called The Worst Guy Of All Time, And The Girl Who Came To Kill Him. That screenplay contained a lot of the unrelenting momentum and time-hopping shenanigans that we see in Strange 2. It also helped, of course, that he was the head writer on Loki, the Marvel series that introduced the multiverse concept in the first place.Michael told us how the darkness of the Covid-19 pandemic helped him craft that second act surprise. We also discuss how hard it was to balance the terror and tragedy of a certain witchy character in this movie, and address the meaning of the question “are you happy?” that Doctor Strange is faced with again and again in Michael's screenplay. Even superheroes, it seems, experience dissatisfaction and feelings of “what now? Is that it?” The film is out today on Disney+ so be sure to watch it before you dive into this spoiler special.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week on the show – an animated tale that puts the “panda” in “pandemonium.” Julia Cho is the co-writer of Pixar’s incredible Turning Red. The film follows a 13-year-old Chinese-Canadian girl called Mei, who transforms into a giant red panda whenever she experiences strong emotion. What at first seems like a curse quickly becomes an opportunity for Mei and her friends, who are able to secretly raise money for tickets to see their favourite boy band, 4*Town, live in concert. That is, if the teenager can find a way to deal with her loving but protective mother, Ming.Being a Pixar movie, it kinda goes without saying that Turning Red is packed with laughter, emotion, spectacle and sublime animation. But Julia and director/co-writer Domee Shi’s film broke new ground too, not just for Pixar but for Hollywood at large. It took a subject matter seldom addressed in mainstream movies – female puberty – and approached it with a cultural specificity that was utterly joyous to watch.I had the pleasure of chatting with Julia about the difficulties and opportunities for change presented in the writing process on Turning Red. We talk about why the question “what if?” is such a vital storytelling tool, the significance of the film’s early 2000s backdrop, and why Julia and Domee refused to hide behind metaphor when it came to talking about periods in the movie. This is a very spoiler-filled conversation covering every plot point in the film all the way up to its exciting ending so if you’re yet to watch Turning Red, it’s probably best to do so before listening on. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today on the show, we’re overjoyed to be joined by the talented Hossein Amini, writer of 2011's cult smash thriller Drive. Based on the 2004 James Sallis novel of the same name, and directed by Nicolas Winding Refn, Drive told the story of a stuntman by day and getaway driver by night, whose dual lives collide after he strikes up a friendship with his neighbour, Irene (Carey Mulligan). From there, Hossein’s screenplay submerged audiences in a dangerous, hyper-stylised LA criminal underworld, strapping viewers into the passenger seat next to a captivatingly unknowable protagonist, simply named the Driver (Ryan Gosling).If you’ve read the novel, you’ll know that Hossein had quite a task taking the lyrical, very interior prose and plot of the book, and turning it into a movie. Luckily, the Iranian-born storyteller is a bit of a master when it comes to adaptation: from 1997’s The Wings of the Dove to his 2014 directorial debut The Two Faces of January, Hossein relishes the task of taking a story from page to screen, adding a subtle sprinkle of his personality and past to the recipe along the way.Across an engrossing chat, Hossein explains why Drive is in fact a fairy tale. We talk about what the film expresses about our culture of violence, why an early draft of the film featured the death of Irene, and how his storytelling habits were shaped by a childhood in the shadow of his parent’s divorce and the Iranian revolution. We also get into the meaning of The Driver’s Scorpion jacket, how the film’s iconic elevator sequence came to be, and the writer’s dark, gritty vision for the upcoming Obi Wan Kenobi TV series that he worked on briefly before stepping away from the project.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

It’s not often you encounter a movie as staggeringly original as Everything Everywhere All at Once. The latest film from our guests this week, writer-director duo the Daniels, is surreal, hilarious, heartbreaking  and full of mind-blowing action – occasionally involving characters with hot dogs for fingers. We mentioned it’s original, right?The film follows Chinese-American laundromat owner Evelyn, played by Michelle Yeoh, whose business, marriage and relationship with her daughter are simultaneously crumbling. As if that wasn’t enough chaos for the character, one day she’s thrown by the revelation that she’s not the only Evelyn that exists. It's revealed that an infinite array of Evelyns exist, occupying different parallel universes. One is a movie star, another is a Kung-fu master, so on and so forth. What happens from that moment on, is too manic and complex to describe here. Just trust us when we say it's one of the most joyously inventive sci-fis in memory.For this spoiler conversation, we met up with Daniels in person – that’s right, the first ever IRL Script Apart! – to talk about their wildly different original opening to the movie, and early plans to use a narrator, quite possibly to be voiced by Susan Surandon. We go  deep into the meaning of the “Everything Bagel” at the heart of this movie, the scientific theory that fed into the film's plot and the conditions under which they'd consider making a Marvel movie.Do be sure to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once before listening in – this is a spoiler conversation covering all of the film's major plot points in detail. Don't let us ruin it for you. Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com.Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jon Spaihts, co-writer of Prometheus, discusses his bold take on the Alien franchise, introducing existential contemplation and freaky robots. He delves into original draft ideas like Jesus as an alien in Alien: Engineers and the collaborative process with Ridley Scott. The conversation explores the intricate universe of Alien technology, character development in Prometheus, and hints at exciting future projects in the sci-fi genre.

We're back – and this season, we're covering TV shows as well as movies! Joining us today to kick off Script Apart season three in style is none other than Michael Schur – co-creator of shows like Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Rutherford Falls, and  a key creative force on The Office during its early seasons. Michael's most personal work, however, is undoubtedly The Good Place: a hilarious, philosophical probing of what it means to be a good person that ran for four seasons between 2016 and 2020. It starred Kristen Bell as Eleanor, a self-described “Arizona trash bag” with an insatiable crush on the wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin, who dies and finds herself in an afterlife that may not be all that it seems.It’s the kind of show that could only have been created with the freedom afforded by Michael's  earlier small-screen successes – you hardly notice it while you’re watching because its jokes are so sharp and its plot so pacy, but The Good Place really did say “fork you” to a tonne of TV conventions. In this in-depth exploration of The Good Place's creation, we dig into into the screenwriter's vision for the show, how he crafted the jaw-dropping twist in its season one finale, why his original pilot screenplay doomed The Beatles to the Bad Place (sorry if you’re listening, Paul and Ringo) and what recently compelled Mike to write How To Be Perfect, a New York Times best-selling book that built on the themes of The Good Place. It’s a riveting and revealing chat with plenty of laughs along the way, as you might expect of someone with Mike’s resume. This is a spoiler-filled conversation that touches on plot points from all four seasons of The Good Place, so be sure to have watched the show before tuning in – we don't want to be sent to the Bad Place for ruining the series for you.Script Apart is hosted by Al Horner and produced by Kamil Dymek. Follow us on Twitter and Instagram, or email us on thescriptapartpodcast@gmail.com. Support for this episode comes from ScreenCraft, Arc Studio Pro and WeScreenplay.To get ad-free episodes and exclusive content, join us on Patreon.Support the show Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Bob Gale, writer of the iconic Back To The Future, reveals the radically different first draft of the film, including a time-traveling fridge instead of the DeLorean. He also discusses how elements from his original screenplay were used in Forrest Gump and Indiana Jones 4. The podcast explores the staying power and cultural impact of Back To The Future, the development of Marty's character, the significance of Hill Valley, script changes, the evolution of Biff Tannen, and the decision to use a DeLorean as the time machine.