Grove’s Goldmine – Co-Screenwriter Simon Kinberg

With 20th Century Fox and Marvel Entertainment’s “X-Men” franchise still showing great signs of life at the boxoffice, Martin Grove looks back to his Goldmine of columns for some insights into what’s made the series work so well. Here’s what co-screenwriter Simon Kinberg said about “X-Men: The Last Stand” in May 2006.

Although the one-two pre-summer punch Hollywood was hoping for didn’t materialize with “M: I 3” and “Poseidon”, there’s one on the boxoffice horizon now with Friday’s (5/19) “The Da Vinci Code” and “Over the Hedge” and Memorial Day weekend’s “X-Men: The Last Stand”.

Sony’s “Code”, fueled by superstar Tom Hanks, Oscar winning director Ron Howard and the global controversy over Dan Brown’s book about what may or may not have happened in the early days of Christianity, opens Friday (5/19) and, according to insiders, “is tracking through the roof.” DreamWorks and Paramount’s “Hedge”, also opening Friday, has a dependable core audience in families who flock to computer animated movies. 20th Century Fox and Marvel Enterprises’ “X3” will be driven by its comic book roots and two earlier blockbuster episodes. Moreover, it arrives in theaters May 26, the Friday leading into Memorial Day weekend. Together they should make the second half of May a powerful prelude to the summer.

In particular, thanks to its Memorial Day weekend opening Fox’s “X3” looms as the boxoffice heavyweight Hollywood’s been hoping for. It’s the only wide May release that’s on a holiday weekend launch pad, a factor that typically makes a big difference in grossing potential. The kind of numbers it takes to impress Hollywood’s media and Wall Street observers these days generally aren’t generated on non-holiday pre-summer opening weekends (although insiders are expecting hefty grosses this weekend from “Da Vinci”).

“X3” looks like it has everything it takes to muster muscular ticket sales. It’s a franchise with comic book origins and unlike “M:I 3” it’s following closely enough on the heels of its series’ second episode — which opened May 2, 2003 to $86.5 million. “X2” went on to do nearly $215 million domestically and about $191.5 million abroad or nearly $406.5 million worldwide.

Directed by Brett Ratner, “X3” was produced by Lauren Shuler Donner and Ralph Winter, who produced the first two episodes together, and was written by Simon Kinberg (“Mr. and Mrs. Smith”) & Zak Penn (“X2: X-Men United”). It was executive produced by Marvel Studios chairman and CEO Avi Arad, Marvel Comics chairman emeritus Stan Lee, Marvel Studios production president Kevin Feige and John Palmero, who’s partnered with “X-Men” star Hugh Jackman in Seed Productions.

Back on board for “X3” are the first two installments’ stars — Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Halle Berry (Storm), Ian McKellen (Magneto), Patrick Stewart (Xavier), Famke Janssen (Jean Grey), Anna Paquin (Rogue), Rebecca Romijn (Mystique), James Marsden (Cyclops) and Shawn Ashmore (Iceman). Returning from “X2” are Aaron Stanford (Pyro) and Daniel Cudmore (Colossus). The new film’s cast also includes Kelsey Grammer as a mutant geneticist who after experimenting on himself sprouts blue fur (Beast).

To focus on the making of “X3” I was happy to catch up with co-screenwriter Simon Kinberg, who I spoke to here last summer about his first produced screenplay, “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”. Written while he was still in film school at Columbia University, Kinberg pitched that project unsuccessfully all over Hollywood. He finally sold it to the foreign sales company Summit Entertainment through whom New Regency Pictures then became involved in producing it for release via Fox. Directed by Doug Liman (“The Bourne Identity”), “Smith” wound up starring the super-hot Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who came aboard after Nicole Kidman dropped out due to scheduling conflicts. After opening last June 10 to $50.3 million, it went on to gross over $186 million domestically and nearly $292 million internationally for a global cume of over $478 million.

“We were all very blessed,” Kinberg said about “Smith’s” success. “People really responded to the movie and a lot of us are working together again and are hoping for the same kind of success.”

What effect did “Smith” working so well have on Kinberg’s career? “It does things on different levels,” he replied. “Emotionally as a writer — because most of us writers are fairly insecure neurotic people — it certainly makes you just a tiny bit less insecure. Especially because ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ was an original script and an original concept that pretty much every studio had passed on at least once, there was a level of validation that came with the commercial success of the movie. And professionally it certainly put me in a different place in terms of the hierarchy of the Hollywood studio system. People, I guess, believed I could write a movie that would appeal to a broad audience. And before ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ I’d really never written a movie that had been produced, let alone one that had been produced and found success in the world. So it put me in a different place professionally.”

Asked how he became involved in writing the third film in the “X-Men” franchise, Kinberg explained, “I came on to ‘X3’ in September or October of 2004. When Bryan Singer left the movie to work on ‘Superman Returns’ he took his writers with him so there was no director and no writer and no script for ‘X3.’ The studio called me because we had worked together on ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ and we’d (also) worked together on ‘Fantastic Four’ (directed by Tim Story and starring Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis and Julian McMahon). I’d worked with the Marvel guys and with 20th Century Fox on ‘Fantastic Four’ and we’d just finished that movie. They called me once Bryan left and asked if I had interest in writing ‘X3’.

“Marvel — Avi Arad and Kevin Feige — knew that I had interest (in the franchise) because, actually, in the first meeting I ever had with Marvel about four or five years ago when I was still in film school they asked me what my dream project would be and I told them that my dream of all dreams would be to write an &rlquo;X-Men’ movie. They called me and said, ‘I think we’re going to make your dreams come true.’ So I came on to the movie in the fall of 2004 and shockingly nine months later we were shooting the film.”

The speed at which things moved didn’t really surprise him: “When I came on to the movie I knew they would happen quickly because the studio had put a flag down in the summer of 2006 for the release of the movie. I don’t know if at the time they knew it was going to be Memorial Day weekend, but they certainly knew that it was going to be the summer of 2006. Very quickly, as happens with these summer movies, they found what they thought was the best date for the film.” It’s a good indication of “X3’s” perceived strength that no other studio is going up against it with a wide opening.

Clearly, there were some big differences between “X3” and “Smith.” “It was very different in a number of ways,” he noted. “It’s different tonally. Obviously, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ is a more comedic and a little more hyper real movie than ‘X-Men’ despite the fact that ‘X-Men’ has mutants with superpowers and ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ has real people. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ operate on a slightly hyper-real, at the very least, plane whereas (with) ‘X-Men’ the tone that Bryan Singer created for this franchise is a very realistic tone, a very grounded tone. So that’s different. And, obviously, ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ is a two-hander. There are two characters in the movie. There are some supporting players, but almost every single scene has Brad in it or Angie in it versus ‘X-Men’ where you have 12 to 15 real substantive characters you need to service over the span of a two hour story. And to me the big challenge of writing an ‘X-Men’ movie was servicing all those characters and servicing all those separate subplots and not losing any of the strands.”

Looking back at the writing process, he told me, “What I did first was I worked with the studio and with Marvel on crafting a take for the movie. We all knew that this was going to be the Dark Phoenix story because Bryan set it up at the end of ‘X2’. It also happens to be my favorite of the ‘X-Men’ runs in the comic book history. So I was especially excited to deal with the Dark Phoenix saga. It’s the story of Jean Grey, Famke Janssen’s character, coming back from the dead imbued with far greater powers than she’d ever had — and powers that she, herself, cannot control. And it’s really about her friends the X-Men — essentially, her family — having to come to terms with the fact that their oldest, dearest friend may not be what she once was and having to deal with the potential that she may be evil.

“So what you have that I’ve never really seen in a superhero movie before is one of your heroes coming back as a potential villain. It was unique when it was created in the comic book 20 or 30 years ago and I do think it remains unique in terms of movie franchises now. In the comic book Jean Grey comes back as this intergalactic, planet destroying creature. And, obviously, the tone and the universe that Bryan created in the franchise doesn’t really allow for intergalactic, interplanetary warfare. It’s a very human and earthbound franchise. So the challenge was finding a way to articulate the Phoenix saga in this realistic context.”

As things worked out, Kinberg co-wrote the film with Zak Penn, whose credits include “X2”, “Behind Enemy Lines” and “Last Action Hero,” his first script that he sold at the age of 23. “What ended up happening, which was certainly a unique process for me and one that turned out to be pretty wonderful, was that while I was writing my first draft the studio decided (to hire an additional writer) because the movie was really hurdling toward production,” Kinberg said. “What they and a lot of other studios do now with their big movies, especially when they have a release date (they must meet), is hire a writer to write simultaneously a separate draft of the movie.

“They hired Zak to write a different draft of ‘X3’, the idea being that they would eventually combine what they would determine to be the best aspects of both scripts into one script. They’d done that on ‘Fantastic Four’. I know that a lot of other studios have done that, especially with their sequels. When you have an established franchise with established characters and an established tone you can get different writers to write separate screenplays and you can conceivably combine them because they’re working on the same template.”

Things, however, worked out quite differently with “X3”. “What happened in this case was that Zak and I contacted each other,” he said, “and sat down to meet, saying, ‘Instead of actually writing two separate drafts why don’t we see if our sensibilities and our writing styles are similar enough or complimentary enough to, literally, work together?’ And inside of the first five minutes of meeting Zak I knew that would be the best way to proceed (because) our sensibilities are so similar when it comes to this universe and this particular Phoenix story. And also because he’s an incredibly collaborative guy and I just thought it would be a whole lot of fun to work with, essentially, a writing partner, which I’d never done before. So we did.

“Because the movie was moving so quickly, it was only advantageous to have a partner to write faster (and) that is what happened. Zak and I really co-wrote the screenplay. Our credit on the film is not the word ‘and,’ but an ampersand like a writing team. And the thing that in addition to the idea of taking on a writing partner that was unique for a movie of this scope when it comes to a sequel and a precious franchise to a studio was that we would really be the only writers on the movie. (With) most of these big summer tentpoles that are coming out, when you look at the title page of the script there are eight, 10 or 12 writers. And that was certainly true of a couple other movies I worked on. But on this movie it was really Zak and I.”

The fact that Kinberg and Penn were there from start to finish, he added, is something he believes “really helped the movie. Matthew Vaughn was the first director hired to direct ‘X3’ (after Singer left). He worked on the movie for a couple of months. He worked closely with Zak and I on the script and then he left the movie for personal reasons. And then Brett Ratner was hired. Really, I think the best continuity in the process was Zak and me because we lost one director and another director came on a month and a half before shooting started. So I think we were pretty valuable in terms of having a shorthand and a fluency with the script that a director who hadn’t been able to live with it as long as we had could (not yet have).”

As for how working with a writing partnered differed from working solo, Kinberg observed, “I found all the way that it’s different (and) more advantageous in the sense that I had a sounding board that I never had before. The way that Zak and I worked was that we would outline every scene together. Then we’d split the scenes up and we’d go off and write on our own. Then we would trade scenes and revise or discuss each other’s scenes and just keep going with that process. We would constantly be writing or rewriting each other, so much so that I can’t tell you who wrote what piece of dialogue in the film. So having a sounding board was unique and also having an ally in development, preproduction and production is valuable for a writer. Usually the writer is in some ways the last voice heard and when you have somebody standing next to you you’re just a little bit louder.”

Did they work face to face or by e-mail? “We worked both (ways),” he replied. “When we were in production I would say we worked more by e-mail because one of us would be up in Vancouver a lot of the time and one would be here in Los Angeles. We tried to maintain a fairly constant presence on the set (with) one of us or the other, which we managed to do.”

When I mentioned to him that Lauren Shuler Donner had told me about how they shot for six weeks at night in terrible freezing rain in Vancouver, Kinberg agreed, “That was pretty brutal. I have to say I think I suffered that a little more than Zak did. There was about a month to a month and a half of shooting outdoors nights (for) the finale of the movie. It’s huge in scope — a massive battle sequence — and needed a month and a half of shooting. And stupidly we had set it outdoors at night. When you write in a script EXT. ALCATRAZ - NIGHT you don’t feel the pain of the rain. And then suddenly when you’re out there and it’s night and it’s Vancouver in November, you’re hating yourself for not having written DAY. I suffered through that. I suffered many colds. It was pretty brutal.

“But the truth of this movie is, and Lauren alluded to it, that the people who were making the movie from top to bottom — from the movie stars, the director, the producers down to the people who had worked on the first two movies, whether it be craft service or the gaffers — are so enamored of this franchise that, truly, there’s so little if any ego on the set of this movie. Despite the freezing rain, despite the long nights, despite the difficulty of the shoot, it was a real pleasure to come to every day.”

Kinberg emphasized that he’s found on movie sets that the way people behave is influenced from the top down: “And Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Famke Janssen, Patrick Stewart — they’re just really good people, genuinely. And there is a summer camp vibe to making these movies. It feels very egalitarian and very enthusiastic. And Bret brought a lot of that (to the film), too. One of the many things that Bret brings to a movie is boundless energy and enthusiasm. And even when we were shooting 14 hours in the rain, Bret was never complaining. Brett was never looking for a way out. He really was soldiering through and he was really leading through example with that enthusiasm and with that energy that’s really infectious.”

I asked him about whether writing a movie that from the get-go is meant to be a big high profile project affects how he works and whether he rejects ideas as not being big enough for such a big scale film. “No, actually,” he replied. “I tend to find my problem is that I come up with ideas that are physically and practically too big and that I have to scale down, partly because I grew up watching these kind of movies and grew up on comic books. In comic books it costs nothing — just a little bit of extra ink — to move the Golden Gate Bridge. In a movie, it’s millions and millions of dollars. So I tend to dream and write pretty big, but I approach it not from that side. I approach it from the smaller side. I approach it from the side of character.

“One of the things that really appealed to me about writing ‘X3’, which was (also) the thing that always enthralled me about writing ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith,’ is that it’s a very character driven movie. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ was really just about a marriage in crisis — executed through bullets and bombs and car chases. But at the core of it it was really about two people trying to make their marriage work. And really the only conversation we ever had with Brad and Angie and Doug Liman was, ‘How is every scene in this movie, whether they be in a car chase or a conversation, servicing the marriage?’”

In “X3”, he went on, “as in the first two movies (in the franchise) we really focused on character. I’m very proud to say there are a surprising number of sit-down dramatic dialogue scenes in this big superhero summer movie. So we really approached the film from the standpoint of, ‘What do these characters want? How do we continue and complete the relationships that are set up in the first two movies? And what is emotionally at stake in the film?’ One of the reasons why the Dark Phoenix story was so rich in the comic and, I hope, close to as rich in the film is how complicated emotionally the story is for the characters — how complicated it is to have to deal with a friend of yours losing control (and) how difficult the decision is to keep trying or give up on someone you love.

“We really approached the Phoenix story from that standpoint — from the standpoint of, ‘What if you had a friend who was losing themselves to drugs or losing themselves to any addiction or losing themselves to insanity?’ In this case, it manifests as losing herself to superpowers, but the metaphor of that is rich and could be expressed in a lot of different ways. One of the things that Bryan did brilliantly in the first two movies and that we absolutely tried to do in this film was use mutancy as a metaphor for just being different. Whether that be being gay or Jewish or black or female or whatever it is, that metaphor is one of the reasons why the comic book had such a broad audience and why the films have as well.”

The other plotline in “X3”, Kinberg added, “is about a ‘cure’ for mutancy. Obviously, that is very loaded politically. If you think about people still thinking that there could be a cure for homosexuality. That was a metaphor we were conscious of as we were writing the script and as we were shooting the movie. And I think it’s one of the reasons that a lot of the actors in the film were excited by the script. They saw that it could be politically charged. It could say things about the world rather than just be a movie that blows things up in the middle of the summer.”

When I talk to directors about directing, I told Kinberg, I typically ask them about the greatest challenges they faced during production. Reworking that question to ask about the challenges screenwriters face, Kinberg commented, “Not the freezing rain! I think the biggest challenge for writers working in the studio system is to both protect what they think is precious in their script and be open enough to compromise and negotiate their vision of the movie. Because at the end of the day, the screenwriter is not the final author of the film. It is a tricky negotiation to both fight valiantly to the death sometimes for the things you know are necessary to make the movie good and be able to let go of the things that you may love, but are not necessary or critical to the film.

“And knowing the things that are the lifeblood of the movie and the things that are just your favorite little darlings is tough. Having that critical perspective is in some ways the biggest challenge of being a screenwriter. I’ve been lucky to be able to be on the sets of movies I’ve written, which is very lucky. But even so, I’m still not the final author of that scene. So part of the challenge for a screenwriter is caring about what you write deeply and desperately and yet also being open to compromise and collaboration. It’s a very different challenge than being a novelist or even being a journalist, to some extent.”

Another key challenge to him as a writer, he noted, “is that with every movie I think I learn how to be a better listener. I think it’s really critical for screenwriters to be good listeners because usually the actors understand the characters as well if not better than you do as a writer because they actually have to inhabit those characters. They really are seeing the movie from that character’s point of view. When I write I try to see every scene from every character’s point of view, but I’m not living in the shoes of that character in the same way that an actor is. One thing that I’ve found in being around sets is the more I spend time with actors (and) the more I talk with the actors about the characters, the richer the characters become. That is a different process than sitting in my pajamas at home in the middle of the night writing the script. It’s a much more interactive process.

“I think I became a writer because the interactivity is something that I’m not quite as good at as (I am at) sitting in my pajamas in the middle of the night writing. So learning the craft of collaboration has been a challenge and has been very rewarding for me. When I look at ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ I can see Brad and Angie and Vince Vaughn’s input in every single scene. There are so many wonderful little moments in that movie that are things that we either discovered in rehearsal or in discussion or literally the actors just created the day of shooting. And it creates a greater texture for the movie. I’m very proud of the script of that film, but I’m prouder of the movie because I think the movie has more texture in it than the screenplay did. And I think that has everything to do with the actors and with Doug Liman.”

Kinberg and Liman, by the way, are continuing their successful collaboration. “I’m starting a movie with Doug Liman in about a month and a half,” he said. “It’s called ‘Jumper.’ I’m producing it and am in the process of rewriting it. It is to superhero movies what ‘Bourne Identity’ was to the James Bond movies. It is a superhero movie about a teenage boy who discovers he has the power to teleport. But it in a sense deconstructs a lot of the rules and the cliches of superhero movies. Doug is someone who, I think, loves working in genre films, but only because he likes to unravel a genre. He likes finding the humanity inside the genre and playing with all of the conceits in the constructs. So this is really just a movie that’s a coming of age film about a boy in an abusive home who has to learn to deal with his past and grow up. But it’s told with the metaphor of this crazy superpower.

“I find it very exciting to work with Doug because he is someone who is so tireless with challenging genres in a way that I think James Cameron did and still does. Doug is a very different kind of director. Doug is really all about, ’What is the human story that I can tell on this massive stage?’ He, as much as anyone I’ve ever worked with, really pushes me to think through character (and) to say, ’What is this movie about fundamentally and emotionally? And now let’s find a way to express that with huge visuals and big action sequences, but let’s make sure that the visuals and action sequences are simply expressing that human story. So ‘Jumper’ is this story about a kid who can teleport and yet we never talk much about the action sequences and the superpower. We really talk about, ‘Emotionally, where is this kid at any point in the story?’ We’re going to shoot that in a couple months and the plan is for it to come out next summer (from) New Regency, which produced ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’. 20th Century Fox is distributing it.”

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