John August

Go

Are characters based on people you know?

Go, QandA

As a writer, do you worry about everyone in your life thinking characters
are based on them?

–Dari

Surprisingly, the issue almost never comes up. I guess that means either,
(a) everyone in my life has already accepted that something they say or do
might someday end up on screen, or (b) they’re angry and repressing their rage.

A writer is inevitably going to borrow ideas from real life, both consciously
and unconsciously. With me, it’s dialogue. I’ll hear somebody say something
perfect and immediately jot it down on one of a hundred tiny slips of paper.
(Probably half of the time, I’ve actually misheard what they said, the same
way song lyrics seem much more poetic when you can’t quite make them out.)

But I’m pretty careful to never completely base a character on somebody I
know, especially not a close friend or family member. It’s just not worth the
potential grief.

Of the scripts I’ve written, GO was closest to using actual true people and
events. Tiny (played by Breckin Meyer) was inspired by Anthony Satariano, the
sports editor of my high school paper, who was a white kid talking black way
back in 1988. The food poisoning from shrimp at a Las Vegas buffet happened
to my friend Wende in 1993, while the hotel room fire is a possibly apocryphal
story related to me by my friend Tom
Smith. (No, it didn’t happen to him.)

It’s worth noting that of all these incidents, the only one I asked permission
to use was Tom’s, probably because he’s a writer himself, and might have been
saving it for one of his own projects. He was gracious enough to let me have
it.

Another factor which reduces the "Is-That-Based-On-Me?" tension
is that a lot of the projects I work on already have some form of source material,
be it a book, a TV show or whatnot. For example, my screenplay for BIG FISH
involves a lot of my experience watching my father die, and my frustration
at trying to get to know him. But the fact that it’s ultimately based on Daniel
Wallace’s book makes it easier for my family and everyone else to get some
emotional distance, and differentiate the movie-dad from my actual dad.

Was Go written on-the-fly?

Go, QandA

While listening to Doug Liman and Steven Mirrione’s
commentary track on the GO DVD,
they went through numerous scenes that weren’t in your original screenplay,
but rather scenes they had you write in production.
I was wondering what percentage of a film would you say is original material,
and what percentage is threaded during the filming process? Have you ever had
to rewrite a scene you loved with something you felt was lesser for the purpose?

–Brian

This is yet another example of why writers should always be on the commentary
track.

What’s unusual about GO is how little did change from the first script to
the final movie. It’s pretty easy to see what scenes were
new and old by looking at the deleted scenes on the DVD. We went back and reshot
several parts, including
the "branching-off" scene at the supermarket and the finale in Gaines’
apartment. On paper, I much prefer the Gaines’ apartment sequence as
originally scripted. I thought it was smarter and much more in keeping with
the spirit of the movie.
Unfortunately, it just didn’t turn out very well when we filmed it, which is
why we went back and did the simpler version that’s in the movie now.

The other
changes made during filming mostly involved production issues, such as
the names of the hotels we were using, or legal clearance problems. (For
example, Confederated Products was originally American Products, but we
couldn’t get permission to use that name.)

The sequence of Go

Go, QandA

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."

More on becoming a co-producer

Go, Producers, QandA

How did you come to be a co-producer on GO?

–David Demchuk

Although Columbia Pictures ultimately released GO, they weren’t the original
buyer of the script (in fact, every studio in town had passed on it, feeling
the subject matter was too dark). A tiny company called Banner Entertainment
read the script and wanted to make the movie, but since they didn’t have a
lot of money to put up front, they offered a few things a studio normally wouldn’t.

First, they guaranteed I would be the first, last and only writer on the project.
Second, they would give me the right to buy the script back if the movie hadn’t
gone into production within 18 months. Finally, they would keep me on board
as co-producer.

The various flavors of producer credit (executive
producer, associate producer,
co-producer) are tossed around a bit too easily in Hollywood, and all too often
they’re given to people who don’t really deserve them, such as an actor’s mananger.
In my case, I actually earned my masters degree in the film producer’s program
at USC, so I was weirdly well qualified for the job.

For the first week or two, I just sat quietly in meetings, happy to be there.
But ultimately I got highly involved in every aspect of the production, from
hiring Doug Liman to direct it to scrambling for funds when our foreign financing
fell apart (I had just made a deal with Columbia’s sister studio, Tri-Star,
which is a large reason why the movie ended up there). During production, I
was on-set from call to wrap, and sat in on five months of editing. It was
an amazing experience.

In total, there were five producers on GO. The three "full" producers
were Paul Rosenberg, who had set up the script and given me my first two jobs
in the business; Mickey Liddell, who ran Banner Entertainment; and Matt Freeman,
who worked with Mickey and brought him the script. The other co-producer was
Paddy Cullen, who oversaw the physical production, including the budget, schedule
and insurance.

Looking back, it’s hard to imagine making the movie without all those people
doing their part. While GO had some unique challenges, every production needs
its good cops and bad cops, peacemakers and war-bringers. A writer can go off
and work by himself, but a producer needs to lead dozens of other people. It’s
a very different set of skills.

Since GO, I have co-executive produced a television series, and signed on
to produce a big-budget monster movie that I’m writing at Columbia. But even
on projects where I’m "just" a writer, the experience of having produced
is a tremendous advantage in anticipating the needs of the filmmakers.