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?
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?
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.”
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
any discussions that you recall about the first movie’s performance overseas,
where it did, I think, slightly more of its overall business?
people realized that the Fantastic Four’s popularity wasn’t just limited to the
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
Spider-Man and other superheroes seemed to be. They went around the world,
across the galaxy, and into the Negative Zone.
opinion, what makes the Silver Surfer such a good villain, a fan favorite?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
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?
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
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.
Surfer, I went up to
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.
involvement on The Simpsons Movie at
all?
all the guys who wrote it, and I think it’s going to be great. I just hope I
can score a free ticket.