May 19
United We Stand
Written by Dylan Callaghan
X-Men: The Last Stand scripters Zak Penn and Simon Kinberg never knew they'd work together on the final installment of the hit 20th Century Fox franchise, and they certainly never dreamed they'd finish it together. We had never met before X-Men 3, explains Kinberg, who burst into the biz with last year's Mr. and Mrs. Smith (his thesis at Columbia Film School). The studio did something that studios do with large, tent-pole movies on a tight schedule, which is, they hire more than one writer to write different drafts simultaneously and eventually hire another writer to cut and paste that together and another and on and on.
But this time the two writers decided to meet. Perhaps due to what they had in common, including the fact the more veteran Penn, who worked on the previous X-Men film, also burst onto the scene in his first try with Last Action Hero (he shared a story credit along with then-writing partner Adam Leff). The two found new strength as a duo and went from expecting at best to see only vestiges of their work in the final product, to authoring the film from draft one to final cut. They spoke with the Writers Guild of America, west Web site about their rare good fortune, why freedom in writing is overrated, and why the most important aspect of the X-Men franchise isn't the action but the characters.
We all know X-Men is a successful franchise. What sort of fresh, unique things did you guys want to do with this installment?
Simon Kinberg: The thing that excited us the most about this movie was the chance to do the Dark Phoenix saga. The thing that's different is that the villain they're dealing with [Dr. Jean Grey a.k.a. Phoenix] used to be a friend and a lover, which is a very different emotional conflict than the first two. At the core of this film is a character who is fundamentally schizophrenic rather than fundamentally good or fundamentally evil.
Zak Penn: I would add that normally when you work on a sequel, not only did the last movie suck, but pretty much this one is going to suck too, 'cuz most movies suck (laughs). With X-Men you have a very unusual situation where each of the movies has been getting better. So when Simon and I got together to talk about this, it wasn't, Goody, what do we get to do? as much as, We better not screw this up because this franchise is headed in the right direction.
Both of you guys have a strong pedigree in the tent-pole actioner world-- is there a particular appeal as a screenwriter, to working on these projects?
Zak Penn: There's no inherent appeal in writing a tent-pole actioner. I have to say, I don't think X-Men totally belongs in that category. I realize that people put it there, but I think it's a lot closer to working on something like Lord of the Rings. These comic books are considered literature by a lot of people. My family doesn't feel that way [but] they're just wrong. They haven't read the source material. It's really heady, important stuff. I've worked on some tent-pole movies and, it's like, How do I do my job and get out of here. It's really not like that on X-Men.
I didn't mean tent-pole actioner in a pejorative way.
Zak Penn: No, I understand and
I'm just saying, Simon and I have worked on a lot of tent-pole actioners, and there isn't a lot of appeal as a writer to working on those movies. You think there's going to be something fun about it, and usually whatever good you write gets squeezed out in the process. It's a good paying job, don't get me wrong, but it's not a lot of fun.
Simon Kinberg: I think the thing that's distinctive about the X-Men franchise is that it's truly a character-driven franchise. The appeal to me as a writer is that you get to write a whole lot of really interesting dramatic dialogue for actors like Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, and Hugh Jackman, and a bunch of the world's greatest actors. If it was just about explosions and special effects, you wouldn't get that caliber of actors to do the movie.
Briefly, give me an idea of the way you guys worked together here on your maiden voyage as a team. Did you discover your respective specialties or did you just take it case-by-case?
Zak Penn: There was so little time. We were thrust into an incredibly high-pressure situation, so we had to learn on the go. We literally couldn't tell you who wrote what 90 percent of the time, or how we did it. Sometimes we split up scenes, sometimes we rewrote each other's scenes, sometimes we wrote it sitting together. I've worked with a lot of writing partners-- we used a grab bag of every approach to writing with a partner.
What percentage would you say you did physically together?
Simon Kinberg: Zak and I started outlining together, which is really one of the most important parts of the process, in January or February on a film that was going into production in August. By February, March, we were writing the script and spending a lot of face time together for those first few drafts. Then once the movie went into production, we sort of tag-teamed being on set.
You guys seem to still be getting along. Given the fact that this film was so high pressure and you didn't really know each other very well, were there any dicey moments?
Zak Penn: It's weird. I've had writing partners where we were at each others throats. [Working on this film], we were fighting with other people so often about what should be happening, that I don't think we had one disagreement during the movie.
Simon Kinberg: I don't think there were any two people involved in this movie whose sensibilities were as aligned as Zak and mine, and that helped us a lot.
Has your respective work punching up other writers' scripts informed your original screenwriting, or is it a different beast?
Simon Kinberg: I think it's a very different muscle. In my experience, which is more limited than Zak's, you have different muscles as a writer. On the best jobs you flex all your muscles. That punch-up muscle is really useful when you're on set and an actor comes to you five minutes before they're about to shoot the scene and says, I don't like this line. Come up with a better one. You have to be able to work quickly on set.
Zak Penn: Also, when you write an original script, you're pretty meticulous about it; you're never right and you keep rewriting and rewriting. You are forced into a situation where you have to make decisions quickly-- which is true of punch-ups and working with a partner-- quite often that forces you to be more creative. The most torturous part of being a writer is sitting there with endless possibilities. Possibilities suck (laughs).
Freedom is overrated.
Zak Penn: Yeah, it's totally overrated. That's another good thing about a writing partnership, because you are forced to compromise and decide and in a lot of ways that's a big relief. Writing a spec, for me, can be really torturous.
How do you guys feel like this film stacks up to the others and in general?
Zak Penn: I know this is a really lame answer, but it's impossible for me to judge a movie until I'm sitting in the theater Friday night when it opens, watching it with a bunch of fans. If you call me that following Monday, I'll give you my blunt opinion. As a writer you're so far inside the process that you're not a good judge of your own material.
Simon Kinberg: I agree, but I will say this. At the end of this, we won a lot more battles than we lost and that's a pretty rare thing for screenwriters on a big studio movie; just the battle of being the first writers and the last writers. We were the continuity on this movie. That was a victory for writers in the studio system. There were a lot of issues and conflicts and battles waged, and we won a lot of them. We didn't win all of them, but this is a movie with a lot of points of view, and I think our point of view is a pretty strong one in the film.
