Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer wings into theaters this weekend, and I'll have more thoughts on the movie soon. In advance of its opening, however — and though busy preparing for a family vacation — writer Don Payne graciously took some time recently to submit to an email interview. To wit:

Brent Simon: So I know you've said that you were a big fan of comics growing up. I read a few here and there, but then mostly got into books, dime store-type serial mysteries, etc. What do you think it was about that form that most appealed to you — the combination of word and image, the fantastical storylines?

Don Payne: I think it was both. As a kid (and as an adult), there’s just something appealing about superhero stories and seeing them told in the unique visual medium of comics. I was particularly drawn to Marvel comics because their characters seemed very real to me. I suppose it’s because (as has been said many times before) the Marvel heroes weren’t perfect — they all had human flaws. Spider-Man was a nerdy high school kid who had trouble with girls, the Fantastic Four were a dysfunctional family with money problems, Daredevil was blind, the X-Men were victims of intolerance, etc. Even as a kid, that made the comics all the more interesting to me.

BS: Was writing a constant for you as a kid, or were you into entertainment more generally, and then gravitated to writing later, in high school or college?

DP: I was always into sci-fi, comics and fantasy, thanks largely to the influence of my older brother. I made up my own comics and stories as a kid. I also did a lot of acting and, by the time I got to high school, I was making movies with a Super 8 camera. By the time I got to college, I knew I wanted to work in film, and by the end of my senior year at UCLA, I knew I wanted to be a screenwriter.

BS: What do you take as the major themes of Fantastic Four? And with so many comics out there, why do you think so many people still care so strongly about it?

DP: I think the strength of family has always been a major theme of the Fantastic Four, and people can relate to that. As much as they squabble and bicker with one another, at the end of the day, they really love each other. Any one of them would sacrifice his or her own live to save the life of any other member of the team. Another thing that’s unique about the F4 is that they have no secret identities. Originally, they didn’t even have costumes. They’re dealing with issues of privacy and celebrity, which other superheroes don’t have to contend with. I also think the uniquely cosmic, sci-fi elements of the comic have made them popular as well. And, of course, the popularity of any dramatic work depends on the appeal of the characters — and all four members of the team are great characters.

BS: Coming on board to a sequel must be a somewhat strange feeling. You know you’re wanted, as it were, because you’ve been selected independent of any carryover loyalty from the first film, but you also don’t have any of that battle-tested shared experience of the franchise. So after being hired, describe the process: Did you meet or talk at all with any of the actors, collectively or individually? Director Tim Story, Avi Arad and other producers? Or was it more just a matter of getting on the same page with the studio, and then hunkering down on something everyone had signed off on?

DP: I did feel like the new kid on the block when I came on board. Pretty much everyone else on the project had worked together on the first film. But the people involved were very welcoming and accepting of new ideas. I had meetings with the studio, director Tim Story and Marvel producers Avi Arad and Kevin Feige since the very start of my involvement on the project — actually, even prior to that — so I knew them all. They had their ideas about what they wanted to see in this film, I had my ideas, and it was my job to put them all together and make it work. By the way, for the record, the official writing credits on Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer are, “Story by John Turman and Mark Frost, Screenplay by Don Payne and Mark Frost.”

BS: The first film was a $330 million worldwide hit, yet was also rather tepidly received in some fan-boy corners, and critically as well. To what degree, if any, do you think studio reaction to the first film helped shape the main narrative choices of the second movie?

DP: There was a learning curve with the first film. I think everyone involved in the production was trying to find the right tone. Now people have a better idea what the strengths of the franchise are, and I think that’s allowed us to try some new things in this film. The inclusion of the Silver Surfer shows that they’re willing to go a little more cosmic than in the first film, which is great.

BS: Not meant as a loaded question, honestly, but rather as a general query offshoot given your insider’s point-of-view — in your opinion is there too much studio emphasis placed on attempted pandering to the Internet-fed, loud (but presumably loyal) core audiences of adapted works, rather than merely investing in the craft of storytelling?

DP: I think everyone involved in a movie wants to tell a good story. I also think it’s difficult to pander to the “core audience,” because the fan base isn’t some monolithic entity. It’s made up of individuals who, while they all share a love for the source material, have many different opinions of how they’d like to see it executed on the screen. You also need to make a movie that has crossover appeal, something that’s going to please mainstream audiences as well as the hardcore fans. On the other hand, if there’s a big consensus on a particular issue among the fans, you’d better not ignore it. It’s not just because the fans make up a large part of your audience — they’re also in tune with what made the material great to begin with. The big things that the fans love are the reasons that the source material is so popular, and that popularity is why the movie is getting made in the first place. So you want those big things to translate to the screen.

BS: Were there any discussions that you recall about the first movie’s performance overseas, where it did, I think, slightly more of its overall business?

DP: I think people realized that the Fantastic Four’s popularity wasn’t just limited to the US audience. I also think that’s why this film has such a global scope to the action — which is a great thing, in my opinion. In the comics, the Fantastic Four weren’t limited to New York, like Spider-Man and other superheroes seemed to be. They went around the world, across the galaxy, and into the Negative Zone.

BS: In your opinion, what makes the Silver Surfer such a good villain, a fan favorite?

DP: There are many, many reasons. First off, he’s not merely a villain — he’s a conflicted soul, a tortured individual. He’s noble and selfless, having sacrificed himself to save his home planet and the woman he loved by agreeing to serve Galactus. And yet, in doing so, he’s also taking part in genocide on a cosmic scale. So there’s a real complexity and moral ambiguity to his character. And if you’ve read the comics, you know he’s ultimately not a villain at all, after his sense of compassion is reawakened. He’s also got the power to manipulate matter and energy, and he’s a silver guy who rides on a flying surfboard. So that’s pretty cool.

BS: What was the hardest part of the overall writing experience? Coming from more of a comedy background, did you find crafting action scenes with the potential for swirling special effects mind-bogglingly difficult, or was it a sort of cathartic, left-field release?

DP: I think the hardest part of the job for any writer is to reconcile the various visions and ideas of the director, the studio, the producer — sometimes even the actors — with each other and with your own. It’s a collaborative process, but the writer is the one who’s got to make it all work in the script. I also had the added pressure of this being a big franchise film featuring a superhero team which I cared about a great deal. As a fan, you want it to be something that, if you had no involvement with the movie whatsoever, you’d come out of the theater thinking you’d just seen something great. I actually kind of stumbled into a comedy career. I got my MFA in screenwriting at UCLA and wrote a lot of non-comedy scripts while I was in school. I only wound up in comedy because that was the first break I got in the business. I’d written genre stuff before, so I always loved writing big action/special effects sequences. And, of course, I think if you spend years reading the visual medium of comic books, you get a good background for writing action sequences.

BS: So here’s a fun one. When you’re laboring on a script like this one, where secrecy matters and what not, and pesky reporters and writers (like me last year) are all angling for some minute scoop (be it about character, content, cameos, design or tone), do you have to sign a lengthy and detailed non-disclosure confidentiality agreement, or does Rupert Murdoch simply appear via teleconference, mutter “We know where you live,” and shoot you a stern stare while casually burning stacks of $100 bills? That is to say, I know you and many other folks take the (quite reasonable) blanket position of not talking about anything, but do studios like to explicitly spell out what they don’t want discussed?

DP: No one has ever come to me and said, “You can’t talk about this.” But some things are just common sense. You don’t want to spoil the details of a movie you’re working on. You want it to be experienced in the way that movies are supposed to be experienced — in the theater when it’s finished.

BS: I received some reader-submitted questions, a lot of which centered on the movie’s PG rating, so a couple queries there: was that rating part of a studio mandate, based on discussions and/or some sort of research tied to the first film’s performance, or was it a little more vague than that, meaning a borderline call that the MPAA just happened to find not deserving of a stricter rating?

DP: I have no idea why it got a PG rating. There was never any mandate that I ever heard of to limit or modify content to get either a PG or PG-13 rating — certainly not in the writing process. There are some pretty intense action sequences in there, more intense than in the first film, so I was a little surprised by the rating, to be honest. The bottom line to me, though, is whether a movie is good or bad, not what its rating is. To tell you the truth, I think some of the hullabaloo I’ve seen online about the rating brings up an interesting issue. A lot of the comic book purists — the ones who would like to see as literal a translation of the great Stan Lee/Jack Kirby works onscreen as possible — are the same ones who are worried about the film’s PG rating being a negative. But the comic book stories as written by Stan and Jack never included anything that would have been the equivalent of a PG-13 rating. They were written to include a young readership. It’s more in keeping with the spirit of Stan and Jack not to forget that audience. And I’m not talking about dumbing anything down for kids, but making a movie that can include them and spur their imagination and sense of wonder — like the comics did for me and for so many other fans out there. And, hopefully, the movie will introduce a new generation of kids to the comics as well.

BS: Another reader expressed appreciation about the character of Silver Surfer making his way to the screen, but wanted to ask about the message board speculation of Galactus being teased as a cloud/vortex, and not being true to the comics’ form everyone knows Galactus as. Your thoughts/comments?

DP: I can’t talk about Galactus in detail, but I will say this. Whatever his onscreen manifestation is, it doesn’t preclude any form he might take on in any future film. Galactus is a being who wields virtually limitless, godlike power over matter and energy. I think he could assume any manifestation he so chooses.

BS: Finally, how much on-set writing work (or, conversely, slack-jawed, good-time loafing) did Rise of the Silver Surfer entail versus your feature writing debut, My Super Ex-Girlfriend?

DP: On both projects, my time on the set was severely limited because of my full-time job at The Simpsons. (I’m now a consulting producer on the show. I only go in two days a week, which frees up a lot more time for me to do feature work and to actually see my family.) On Super Ex, I was able to get out to the set New York for about three weeks during production. The director, Ivan Reitman, thought I’d be bored, but it was my first experience on a movie set, so every minute was fascinating to me. For Rise of the Silver Surfer, I went up to Vancouver for a couple weeks to do some rewriting shortly before the start of production. It was a great experience seeing this amazing production apparatus gearing up to make the film. After production started, I kept in touch via e-mail with director Tim Story on the set. He would send me requests for little fixes or alternate lines of dialogue when he needed them, and I would turn them around pretty quickly.

BS: And hey, any involvement on The Simpsons Movie at all?

DP: None. But I know all the guys who wrote it, and I think it’s going to be great. I just hope I can score a free ticket.