Did you originally write GO as an out-of-sequence story,
or was that something you and Doug Liman changed after the script was written?
–Chris
Although there’s hardly a trace of it left in the script, the deep underlying
story of GO originated from Alice in Wonderland. Even before I came to L.A.,
I’d been pondering ways to stage a modern Alice centered around a rave, with
a white Volkwagen Rabbit to get us into the action. (The White Rabbit would
ultimately become the Mazda Miata that Adam and Zack drive, and the Cheshire
Cat is still there, though now he speaks telepathically to Mannie.)
Fortunately, I never wrote that script, because it would have been horrible
– clever for the sake of being clever. But those Alice thoughts were still
rumbling in my head when in 1994 an aspiring director friend asked me to write
a script for him to direct as a short film. What I wrote was called "X," and
detailed a supermarket checkout clerk’s attempt to pull of a tiny ecstacy deal
at Christmas. My friend never got around to directing it, but other friends
would read the script and ask questions: who was Simon, and why was he going
to Vegas? What’s the deal with Adam and Zack? Are they cops or what?
I knew the answers, so two years later when I had the time, I wrote out the
full version as a feature. The first section, "Ronna," is the short
film script, almost verbatim. Rather than wedging all the new plot into the
first section, and ruining its tension, I started the movie over twice, each
time following a different set of characters. It became one story told in three
parts.
Inevitably and frustratingly, GO gets compared to PULP FICTION. While I think
they’re vastly different movies, the truth is, I don’t know if GO could have
been made without the success of Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary’s film.
While there had been plenty of non-linear movies before it (RASHOMON, MYSTERY
TRAIN, NIGHT ON EARTH), none had the kind of popular acceptance PULP FICTION
did. By the same token, GO
wouldn’t have worked told "straight."