##Who are you and what do you write?
We are Marianne and Cormac Wibberley (aka., “the Wibberleys” which is how we are now credited). When we first meet people in the business, sometimes they ask if we’re siblings. No, we are a married writing team. We’ve been married for decades and have been writing together almost as long.
Our most well known credits are the two National Treasure movies, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (with John August), and Bad Boys 2.
We are currently producing a project at Fox and writing the film adaptation of the video game Uncharted for Sony. Our daughter is a big fan of the game, so if we screw it up, we’re dead meat.
##Where and when do you write?
Everywhere. Anywhere. Because we’re married, there is no separation of work and personal life.
We have three dogs: a Jack Russell and two rescue German Shepherds. Our Jack Russell is easy, but the two German Shepherds run our lives.
They hang out in our office, and our writing schedule is geared around their schedule. We walk them at least two miles a day, and a lot of that time is spent spitballing and brainstorming while watching for cats, motorcycles, squirrels, skateboarders, other dogs, and the dreaded ninja cyclist.
Yeah, sure, they look nice, but they bite. If we’re on a deadline, we get stressed. And when we get stressed, they get stressed and then bad things happen in the house.
As for our process as a writing team, we do actually sit in our home office and write everything together. Not a word gets typed without us both agreeing on it. This means a lot of our time is spent trying to convince each other why his line of dialogue or her bit of action is better. We pitch feverishly, act out scenes badly, and when all else fails, we draw pictures to convince the other how awesome his/her idea is.
Here are some other things we keep around the office to inspire us.
A prop gun from our first big movie, The 6th Day.
Han, Chewbacca, Sundance & Butch, and…a couple guinea pigs:
##What software do you use?
The most important software we use is coffee. What is our favorite Keurig cup flavor? We have it narrowed down to four (but suggestions are welcome).
For screenwriting, we use MovieMagic Screenwriter (but we know how to use Final Draft as well).
Other software: iBooks, Kindle, and Dropbox. We just started using Pages, which is a surprisingly easy yet powerful word processor that you can use on your iPhone and iPad. We also like it because it uses the iCloud without us having to think about it.
##What hardware do you use?
We are a Mac family. We have Mac laptops, a desktop, iPads, and iPhones.
But really the best piece of hardware we use are these giant Post-Its. We started using them recently instead of index cards so we can stick our ideas and story beats to the wall, cabinets, and bookshelves. No corkboard necessary.
We outline using Post-Its and keep the three acts up on our wall while we outline and write the script. The cards are constantly changing, however. Most times, by the time we get to the third act, the story’s been rebroken a dozen times.
##What (if anything) would you change?
We’d like to be able to enjoy our time off, but instead, we just worry. If the phone’s not ringing, it means they hated the draft. And if we’re not trying to write something new, then we worry that like sharks who don’t swim we’ll die.