Hey FOOLS! I got a chance to talk to writers Ethan Reiff and Cy Voris who have written films like Kung Fu Panda, Bulletproof Monk and Nottingham, which was bought and later ended up being the Robin Hood project Ridley Scott is currently directing, we had a great chat about all the projects they've worked on and I hope you guys like it too. Check it out below.
How did you both begin working together?
Cy and I both attended NYU Film School (he was one year ahead of me). We never met there but had a mutual friend (from my graduating class) who invited us both to his graduation party. We met at the party and discovered we were the only students we knew of from the Film School who were trying to complete traditional Hollywood feature screenplays. We made a deal to get back in touch when we had finished writing our respective scripts. We did that a few months later and attended a Mets-Reds baseball game (I'm from New York City and Cy is from Cincinnati, Ohio), where we traded copies. We read each other's screenplays and were mutually impressed. A short time later I got a chance to submit material to a low-budget producer which -- if he liked it -- could go on to get made by him as a very low-budget film. I invited Cy to work on a project to submit together and we came up with a very long -- something like 30-plus pages -- treatment for an action-horror film set almost entirely in one location. The producer hated our treatment but we thought it was amazing, so... we started turning it into a screenplay together. The title was "DEMON KNIGHT." We finished writing it in early 1988. From the moment we finished writing the script it was always under option by someone or another. The script and a couple of other original spec (written "on speculation") screenplays we wrote helped us get noticed by various people out in Hollywood. That very first written screenplay of ours was finally produced in 1995 as "Tales From the Crypt Presents: DEMON KNIGHT."
Is having a writing partner a help or a hindrance?
A bit of both -- but much, much more help than hinderance. The only hinderance would be in conveying your absolutely singular individual authorial "voice" throughout a piece of work. But if you choose your partner well that may not be such a terrible price to pay in exchange for all the helps that come with a functional, productive creative partnership. In a writing partnership, each and every idea put forward by Partner A must be strong enough to satisfy the creative requirements of the Partner B, and vice-versa. When one partner is feeling under the weather or depressed, the other can help them along, can take up the slack. Also, when and if neither partner feels particularly inspired by the material at hand they can resort to simply trying to entertain each other in order to get the next step of the job done. One other great thing about having a partner is knowing there will always be at least one person around who you can absolutely trust, no matter what.
You've both been involved in TV and film do you have a preference?
Cy and I both started out as movie guys. We grew up loving movies more than TV and started out wanting to make movies ourselves. We are very story-driven guys, so the idea of one big story with a beginning, middle and end comes very naturally to us. And that's basically the classic macro story-telling structure of most American movies. But in Hollywood, even the most successful screenwriters, unless they are also producers or directors, don't get much control over the realization of their creative dreams. Sometimes screenwriters happen to have very good creative experiences on movies produced from their work -- we had an almost purely positive experience like that on the production of Bulletproof Monk -- but those sorts of experiences are the rare exception rather than the rule. Most of the time on Hollywood movies, writers are replaced and rewritten, over and over again. But in the world of American television things are very different. If you are the writer who creates the show -- the way Cy and I created BRIMSTONE (for FOX) and SLEEPER CELL (for Showtime), most of the time you get to actually be in charge of your own production. On those shows we were responsible for everything from casting to the final sound mix. If you like the idea of having some control over your own work, that's obviously a dream come true. Hopefully for us, one day in the not-too-distant future we'll co-direct a screenplay we wrote ourselves and get that same sort of control over a movie.
The journey from Bulletproof Monk to Kung Fu Panda is a line you can follow, but how did you come to write Bulletproof Monk? Are you both martial arts fans?
It's very easy to identify what lured Cy and I to write Bulletproof Monk. It was a man named Chow Yun-Fat! Cy and I were huge Hong Kong movie fans in the late '80s in New York City, when the only place you watch them was at a trio of theaters in Chinatown. We would go and be the only "Foreign Devils" in the theater. But because of Hong Kong's status as a British Crown Colony all the prints came complete with English subtitles. I remember some English film critic at the time giving a perfect description of those English subtitles: he said they were like reading James Joyce on Mescaline. I found his summary profoundly accurate! Anyway, we loved the cross-pollination of genres and the near limitless extremity of drama and comedy (sometimes in the same movie!) that filled those movies with intense life. And one of the greatest single elements in all of Hong Kong cinema was the actor Chow Yun-Fat. One day Terence Chang, a Chinese producer who was partnered with John Woo and based in Hollywood and who had wanted to do a project with us for some time, invited us out to dinner with Chow Yun-Fat and his wife, Jasmine. We went and had an incredible time, regaling Yun-Fat with tales of his cinematic greatness which we knew firsthand spanned all genres, not just the pistol-packing action movies some most Americans were familiar with but also straight character-driven dramas and flat-out slapstick comedy. We had seen him deliver masterful performances in every type of film imaginable during our days of going to see double-bills at those New York Chinatown theaters at least once a week. We even did impressions of his most memorable scenes from some of those movies. Anyway, at some point during dinner the producer pulled out a copy of the comic-book "Bulletproof Monk" and showed it to us. He explained the real reason he had invited us to dinner was because he wanted us to turn it into a title role for Yun-Fat to star in. To be honest, if they had pulled out a comic called "Toilet Bowl Plumber" and asked us to turn it into something for Chow Yun-Fat to star in, we would have said yes. So we went off and read the comic, in which, ironically, the Bulletproof Monk himself was much more of a legendary off-screen presence than a flesh and blood character of the present. Then we worked up a pitch for a movie version. Then, together with the producer Terence Chang, and with Chow Yun-Fat attached to play the title role, we went out and sold the pitch to MGM. To answer the rest of your question, Cy and I are both martial arts movie fans but in truth I would say we are bigger fans of the movies of the Hong Kong "Renaissance" of the Eighties (everything from "A Better Tomorrow" to "Zu, Warriors of the Magic Mountain" to "Chinese Ghost Story" to "Chungking Express") than of kung fu movies in particular.
How much of your Kung Fu Panda story made it to the film we all got to see? Was the tone the same?
Pretty much the entire story of Kung Fu Panda and nearly all the characters -- Po (we used to describe him as the ultimate kung fu fan who was also the least likely kung fu hero in all of ancient China -- of ANY species!), Shifu, Oogway, Tai Lung (named for the Hong Kong action star of the Seventies & Eighties) and the entire Furious Five -- plus the classically ancient Chinese world of the movie came from us, from our original story treatment and the various drafts of the screenplay which we wrote. But there's only one scene that's close to exactly as we wrote it ourselves, which is the opening dream sequence. Though when we wrote it, it wasn't the opening. Almost all of the dialogue and jokes and the relationship between Po and his adopted Duck dad -- all of which was absolutely awesome -- was written by the writing team that received the screenplay credit for the movie. Lots of times writers in Hollywood complain about movie credits being unfair and inaccurate but in this case I would say the credits on the movie were perfectly accurate and very fair. Cy and I came up with the story, the characters and world that served as the backdrop, but the other guys took it from there. They did a great job. But they couldn't have done it if we hadn't done our job first.
Dreamworks Animation are moving forward with a second, and you could assume a third would be likely as well, Kung Fu Panda film. Did you both layout potential paths for Po and the gang or was it all Dreamworks Animation?
We worked on Kung Fu Panda for one full year, during which we wrote the original treatment and then 3 substantially different screenplay drafts. Some of that material made it into the extra DVD released with the movie, but I doubt any of our stuff will make it into the sequels. Still, it's not impossible. Dreamworks Animation owns it all outright and are certainly free to use if however they want to. They have a lot of incredibly talented people over there, including the other writing team from the original movie.
The jump from Kung Fu Panda to Robin Hood, or Nottingham as it was originally titled, is a bit of an unlikely one how did the idea come about and what sort of tone did you both write for Nottingham?
One thing about Cy and myself is that we have written a wide variety of material. Everything from the very family-friendly Kung Fu Panda to the at least somewhat disturbing terrorist drama Sleeper Cell, with various other material such as Bulletproof Monk and Nottingham somewhere in between. For Cy and me personally, Kung Fu Panda was about our love of and respect for martial arts movies and Chinese culture. Nottingham was about us both wanting to see a new and different version of a classic old story retold. The truth is the movie Ridley Scott made doesn't have all that much to do with the script we sold to Universal, in the midst of a bidding war with various other Hollywood studios, about 3 years ago. Our script was told from the Sheriff of Nottingham's POV (thereby the title), and Russell Crowe signed on to play the part of the Sheriff, who was the hero of our screenplay. There are a few things remaining in the movie which had their origin in our script, like including Eleanor of Aquitaine (mother of Richard the Lionhearted and Prince, later King, John) as a key character in a Robin Hood movie for the first time (at least that I know of), plus the movie would never have been made to being with if Russell Crowe hadn't signed on to play the Sheriff in our original script. I guess for us, without having seen the movie, it's a mix of triumph and frustration. Triumph because we got the ball rolling that led to a massive Medieval period piece being made with an excellent cast by arguably one of the greatest directors in movie history, but also frustration in that the world will never see the original movie we wrote. But we did get paid, so I'm not complaining. Once they bought it, Universal had the right to do whatever they wanted with our script.
Was Ridley Scott the sort of person you could envision making your film?
I think if you write a good historical movie, particularly one set in the pre-gunpowder world (it's a long time since "The Duelists"!", you would have to put Ridley Scott on the "A" list of potential directors.
The Eleventh Hour is sadly no more, do you think it will ever get a second series?
Nope. Virtually no chance of a second season for the US version of "Eleventh Hour." Once an American TV show is cancelled by its network it is pretty much dead for good. With all the hundreds and thousands of network shows in history, you can probably count on the fingers of one hand all the shows that somehow managed to survive cancelation!
Aside from not enough people watching Eleventh Hour what do you think is the reason it wasn't as well received as you'd hoped?
Well, the truth is that Eleventh Hour was the second most successful new show of last year's TV season here in the US. It was watched every week by at least 11 million and sometimes as many as 15 million viewers (average was about 13 million). It wasn't a smash hit but it was rather successful with the audience and its audience was loyal and showed up to watch every week. But CBS is the most successful broadcast network in the USA when it comes to 1-hour dramas and Eleventh Hour just wasn't successful enough for CBS to choose to bring it back for a second season.
What's next for you both?
We're writing a TV pilot for Warner Brothers, plus we've got some movie projects in the works that we think are very cool. One really good thing about our partnership is that we never run out of original material -- at least not yet anyway!
Thanks so much for your time.