Eric Roth: The Screenwriter Behind Forrest Gump and Dune | How I Write

Summary

How I Write — Eric Roth: The Screenwriter Behind Forrest Gump and Dune

Podcast: How I Write
Host: David Perell
Guest: Eric Roth
Date: May 21, 2025

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Overview

In this episode, David Perell sits down with legendary screenwriter Eric Roth—Oscar winner for Forrest Gump and writer of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Dune, and more. The conversation delves deep into Roth’s process, his philosophy for character and theme, the emotional journey of writing, and memorable collaborations with directors like Spielberg, Fincher, and Scorsese. Listeners are treated to intimate stories behind classic films, detailed craft insights, and a candid window into the vulnerability and adventure of a writer’s life.

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Key Themes and Discussion Points

Roth’s Writing Process & The Adventure of Creation

• Rewriting From Page One:

  • Roth begins fresh from page one every day to stay fully present in his material.
  • “It’s a way of keeping myself involved with the material where I’m living it… when I’m done with my first draft…I think I’ve covered it pretty much. And then, of course, after you read it, you hate it.” (01:05)

• The Idea of ‘Erosion’:

  • Revisiting and “shoring up” parts of the script that are falling apart or feeling tired.
  • “If there’s things that need to be fixed and backfills like dirt piled back up... I see mistakes. So when I see something feels tired, I want to make it feel alive, you know?” (01:27)

• No Writer’s Block, Just Adventure:

  • Roth claims never to have writer’s block, describing writing as an adventure and a gift he looks forward to every day.
  • “I’ve never had writer’s block. I love that I get to write. So every day is kind of an adventure in that sense.” (02:14)

Roth’s Distinct Voice and Approach to Screenwriting

• Visual, Human, Emotional Scripts:

  • Roth’s scripts are deeply visual and emphasize the humanity and singular psychology of every character.
  • “I think my scripts are particularly human and very emotional. The characters, all the characters all are singular to themselves… you have to be true to the psychology of a character so that the voices are all different.” (03:32)

• On Research and Authenticity:

  • Extensive research is foundational, especially in getting details right about place or professions.
  • “God is in the details. I mean, you can’t get…if the details are no good, you’re not going to succeed in any way.” (09:59)

• Finding Character Voices:

  • Vivid examples, such as Bubba’s shrimp monologue in Forrest Gump, came from playful collaboration with family.
  • “I would just yell, give me shrimp dishes. And I would type them, you know, as they gave me the dishes.” (13:00)

Crafting Memorable Characters and Lines

• Start with Theme:

  • Identifying the central theme is crucial from the outset—story alone isn’t enough.
  • “At least I start with, what’s the theme of the movie? What’s the movie literally about? … There’s always going to be underneath it.” (14:23)

• Power of Subtext:

  • Best writing conveys meaning and emotion indirectly, often via metaphor or anecdote.
  • “Great writers know how to write subtextually. They don’t write what’s your kind of literal. They’ll say it in like a metaphor or in some other way.” (15:44)

• Memorable Lines and Aphorisms:

  • Roth admits to anxiety about some lines being cheesy—but they have gone on to become iconic, e.g., “Life is like a box of chocolates.”
  • “I liked, sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks, and she’s throwing those rocks at that house. You can’t undo things that happened and made you traumatized.” (31:30)

Emotional Resonance and Personal Connection

• Infusing Personal Experience:

  • Benjamin Button was written during the grief of losing his own parents, shaping the emotional tone.
  • “Well, it was also a personal experience. I lost both my parents while I was writing it.” (22:16)

• Universal Themes of Loneliness & Loss:

  • Roth’s movies repeatedly return to themes of love, loneliness, and the passage of time.
  • “Your movies are all about loneliness… when you really think about us as people. I’m not sure I’m that lonely, but I don’t like being alone.” (71:36)

• Cathartic Impact on Audiences:

  • Perell shares how Benjamin Button made him weep, illustrating the power of emotional authenticity.
  • “I wept about things in my own life. Like, I hadn’t wept in so long. I mean, I cried out to God… you made me feel certain pains that I’ve had around loneliness.” (72:19)

Exercises and Tools for Writers

• Change the Weather Technique:

  • When stuck, Roth suggests changing the physical weather in a scene for a creative reset.
  • “If you…get stuck, change the weather. I think I’ll make it rain—and all of a sudden you look at it differently… it sort of unlocks to me.” (45:55)

• Importance of Time of Day and Setting:

  • The mood of scenes is shaped profoundly by paying attention to time, weather, and everyday details.
  • “I’m big on what time of day it is… something at dawn, you know, or dusk.” (47:03)

Structural and Collaborative Insights

• Three-Act Structure Still Rules:

  • Regardless of subject or style, Roth emphasizes the inevitability of three-act drama.
  • “I don’t care what, who you are, what you’re doing, you can’t break that… state the problem, complicate it, resolve it or don’t.” (35:09)

• On Collaboration with Directors:

  • Working with giants (Fincher, Spielberg, Scorsese) is likened to marriage, requiring negotiation and the search for a “third way.”
  • “As strong as you may feel about something, eventually, it’s the director who’s going to make a decision. And so I like to find…where we both can agree.” (79:12)

• On Influence and Adaptation:

  • Even adapted material often becomes “original” through how he radically reshapes story and character; bad books can make great movies.
  • “A good 60, 70% of the adaptations I do become original only because…bad books make good movies, that’s a slogan.” (04:12)

Dialogue, Simplicity, and Lasting Appeal

• Writing Dialogue:

  • Aim for functional, natural, but dramatic dialogue—“no shoe leather.”
  • “You want to present issues in the scene that they’re trying to work out… it doesn’t have to be, you know, gigantic revelation, but you also want to have the. Move the story along.” (63:55)

• Admiration for Simple Language:

  • Roth envies writers who can say more with less, comparing himself to the likes of Hemingway or Jonathan Franzen.
  • “Those who are really good at it are simple, and they’re Hemingway… Some people just like…they would just come second nature.” (66:54)

• What Makes Films Perennial:

  • No formula, but suspects stories endure by appealing to a “home” feeling and being handed down generations.
  • “I think Forrest Gump survived and continues because I think parents show it to their 11 year old.” (85:05)

Memorable Quotes & Moments with Timestamps

• “It’s a way of keeping myself involved with the material where I’m living it...I start on page one every day.” —Eric Roth (00:40)
• “God is in the details. If the details are no good, you’re not going to succeed.” —Eric Roth (09:59)
• “I think my scripts are particularly human and very emotional. The characters…are singular to themselves.” —Eric Roth (03:32)
• “I’m not a smart man, but I know what love is.” —Forrest Gump (Oscar speech reference, 70:37)
• “If you get stuck, change the weather.” —Eric Roth (45:55)
• “Your movies are all about loneliness.” —Elvis Mitchell (quote cited by Roth, 71:36)
• On Forrest Gump: “Life is like a box of chocolates. Never know what you’re going to get. That wouldn’t be my favorite one… I liked, ‘sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks.’” —Eric Roth (31:21)
• “Every day is kind of an adventure… I’ve never had writer’s block.” —Eric Roth (02:14)

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Notable Segment Timestamps

• Daily writing and starting from page one (00:33 – 02:14)
• On character psychology (05:33 – 06:33)
• Building memorable details (shrimp scene anecdote) (12:08 – 14:19)
• Importance of theme and subtext (14:23 – 19:26)
• Discussing emotional resonance and loss (22:16 – 23:49)
• Three-act structure and narrative catharsis (35:09 – 36:59)
• How to get unstuck: Change the weather (45:55 – 47:03)
• Cinematic openings: feathers, finding “home” (57:45 – 61:03)
• On screenwriting workshops & teaching writers (61:13 – 62:07)
• Dialogue and simplicity in writing (62:49 – 66:54)
• Personal connection to his films & catharsis (71:10 – 73:53)
• Collaboration with directors and writers’ rooms (77:28 – 80:28)

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Takeaways for Writers & Fans Alike

• Writing is as much about the emotional adventure as the technical craft.
• Know your theme, dig into character psychology, and don’t be afraid to make things personal.
• The details—emotional, factual, and visual—are what make stories memorable.
• Collaboration, openness, and humility are keys to longevity and crafting movies that last.

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Final Reflection by Roth

“I love the writing… I go into worlds that I love, love trying to negotiate… What is the story I’m telling? Why is it going this way? Why is it stopping? How can I do this better? Then all these details start filling in and I say, I like this.” (80:31)

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For listeners (and aspiring writers), Eric Roth’s process blends empathy, discipline, daring, and detail—and his stories’ emotional aftershocks linger long after the closing credits.

Transcript

[Interviewer]

Dune, Forrest Gump, Benjamin Button. Eric Roth is the guy who wrote all those screenplays, and he's been nominated for an Oscar seven times, and he won the Academy Award for best screenplay with Forrest Gump. I asked him things like, how do you find a theme? What can you do in your writing to really move people? What's it like to work with David Fincher and Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese? What's that like? Let's begin. The thing I want to start with is you said you were writing today, and you're still writing kind of every day from page one. From page.

[Eric Roth]

Page one? Well, yes. I mean, it's. Sometimes I don't touch page one, but, yes, I always start from page one.

[Interviewer]

So tell me about that.

[Eric Roth]

Well, I just. It's a way of keeping myself involved with the material where I'm living it, you know, in a way that I also sort of. I. I call it sort of a sense of erosion, that if there's things that need to be fixed and backfills like dirt piled back up, that I could see that. And I. I see mistakes, and I see. So when I'm done with my first draft, which could take me a while, but I think I've covered it pretty much, you know? And then, of course, after you read it, you hate it, and then you say, why did I bother doing this? But, yeah, I start on page one every day. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about erosion.

[Eric Roth]

Well, I mean, that's probably not the right word for it, but I. It's like trying to shore up what is kind of falling down. That's how I look at it. So why is this not quite working? How do I make this as close to as imaginative as it can be? Fresh, something surprising, you know, the things you want to have in anything you write, you know? So when I see something feels tired, I want to make it feel alive, you know?

[Interviewer]

Do you ever find that when you're writing it for the first time, you're. You're. You're like, sparkling with enthusiasm, and then you kind of come back to the end and it. And it loses that life? Or do you feel like you kind of know intuitively now when something has life?

[Eric Roth]

I think I've always felt that I knew what had life. I don't know what that is. I mean, this is an odd thing to say, but I've never had writer's block. I love that I get to write. So every day is kind of an adventure in that sense. It's almost corny that I can be a journalist one Day and be a prose writer. I think I'm probably a frustrated novelist because I haven't written a novel, but I write a lot of prose. In my screenplays I always tell this kind of cute story that we were doing. I did a movie, Benjamin Button, and they were doing a read through and they were reading the narration, which was the text. And Brad Pitt said, oh, look at Eric, he's got a prose boner. And I probably did. Yeah, that's the story I've told many times, but I've always got a kick out of it. But I am, I think, a frustrated novelist. So is a little more difficult now because if you're going to write a lot of prose, the scripts are going to be probably longer than people want to see them. So. But to be concise is also difficult, maybe even more difficult, you know.

[Interviewer]

And how do your scripts compare to other screenwriter scripts? Like when you turn something in and people like, oh, that's an Eric. An Eric script. What, what, what does it have about it?

[Eric Roth]

I don't know. You'd have to probably ask somebody else what they find attractive about it, or not attractive. You know, many don't get made to. I think I'm particularly visual. More importantly, I think my scripts are particularly human and very emotional. The characters, all the characters all are singular to themselves. I mean, I believed a long time ago about. You have to be true to the psychology of a character so that the voices are all different. I, I always tell this story too that I. I did a rewrite for a movie that Michael Cimino made called the Year of the Dragon, which was an okay movie and interesting and. But I saw that he had given Mickey Rourke a wallet that had all the ingredient, all the stuff about this particular character's life. And I'm sure Mickey Rourke never looked at the wallet, but he knew in his back pocket was a picture of his supposed daughter. I mean, things. Some things obvious, some things less, you know, maybe a saying that he thought was interesting and put in there, or a old crumpled phone number, but something that. And as a aggregate, it's a life you form, you know, if you're, if you're trying, I don't novelist, poet, anybody. You're trying to make something out of nothing, you know, And. Or in my case, I do. I do mostly adaptations. And even though I think I'd say a good 60, 70% of the adaptations, I do become original only because either bad books make good movies, that's a slogan. Or bad plays make better movies. But adaptations, I think they Give you something to look back at, you know, in other words, even if it's not very good, tell me this.

[Interviewer]

We got a lot to talk about here, but I want to jump back to the psychology you're talking about.

[Eric Roth]

True.

[Interviewer]

To the psychology of the character. Paint that picture for me. What do you mean?

[Eric Roth]

Well, I mean, I think that you have to know something about his backstory, something of hers, what it. What makes this person tick, why are they neurotic or why are they giddy or why are they quiet or what makes them angry. I mean, all those things. You do it as hopefully as. As concisely as you can within the thing, but that everybody should be different. In other words, everybody is different, you know, and so that you can find some pretty unique characters within. I hope my scripts and, you know, obviously good, really great writers stuff that they're. They come with surprises and, you know, curiosity, all those things.

[Interviewer]

So if I think of something like Forrest Gump, I think of his voice, I think of his relationship, relationship with Mom. I think of, you know, how he is dressed. Always very simple. The sort of simple wisdom of the character. So what else is it? As you're building a character and you're.

[Eric Roth]

Kind of beginning to create with him with that character that was from a book. I mean, so it was semi given. Even though the book was particularly farcical. The guy's supposed to weigh 400 pounds. And so I got to take off and kind of. And it was as much about me looking back on my life from that point, which, when I was probably 50, you know, what had passed and that. That started to resonate with people who want to see the movie, because it was all these touchstone moments in all of our lives, you know, at that point, as to. As to, you know, and I was aware of that. I was aware of that, that they. And I. Time is very important to me. Time is of the essence, in a way, and memories and remembrances. But that character I knew less of, you know, but I. I somehow could. I heard his voice. And so I knew, you know, sort of in this simplistic way, because it's a very simplistic movie. I mean, it's not exactly high sophistication, but he seemed human to people. You know, he had two or three things he loved, like his mother, his girl, you know, his girl. He loved Jenny and I guess, God in America or something. And. And also there was a. Quentin Tarantino said this about it, that he felt it was the most ironic mainstream movie ever made. And whether it is or not, I don't know.

[Interviewer]

But why is that?

[Eric Roth]

Well, the ironies of, like, you know, he gets to go to the White House and he meets John Kennedy. And then, you know, Bob added some humor, wonderful humor. Bob Zemeckis is terrific guy and terrific artist. And, you know, you have a picture of Marilyn Monroe in the bathroom, you know, or whatever the. I call them ironies. Maybe they're not quite. Maybe they are ironic. Some of it just, you know, how every. Everybody got shot. You know, he would do those kind of runs, you know, with a movie.

[Interviewer]

Like that Forest and even, you know, Benjamin Button. One takes place in Alabama, the other New Orleans. And how do you get that sense of the Southern accent, the Southern way of speaking? Is that something that you do deliberately research or anything like that?

[Eric Roth]

I. I research a lot. Yeah. I do a lot of research. So the best thing that ever happened was the Internet. I mean, I have in the backyard here, like sheds filled with research books before there was a Internet, you know, But I don't know, it's just a sound you get. But I think it's also the characters, then the actors obviously can portray them in a Southern way. I never thought of it that way. I mean, in other words, I just thought that these people are Southerners. And I don't know if I even know that much about the south, you know, particularly more so in a movie. I'm just finishing a script for now about the Mafia coming to New Orleans in 1890. I'm doing it for Marty, and we'll see what happens with it. But this does kind of embrace the Southern about the sort of the wisteria and the sort of difference in time, the way time kind of moves in the South. I mean, whether it does or not, I don't know. But sort of a Southern way used to be sort of this fake sort of chivalry and gallantry and, you know.

[Interviewer]

But it's in the details that things come.

[Eric Roth]

God is in the details. I mean, you can't get. If the details are no good, you're not going to succeed in any way.

[Interviewer]

And that's going to come out of the. The research.

[Eric Roth]

Research the voice and then maybe things I've lived, even, you know, like Benjamin Button's a good example, because I wanted to do something that was kind of out of the ordinary with it. And. And I had. I remember the scene in P.T. anderson's movie Magnolia. I think it was the opening where I. I know a lot about movies and remember movies distinctly, and I think a young man was committing suicide Jumping out of a window a floor above where his parents lived. And his parents. The father was, I don't know, testing a shotgun or something. So he shot his son on the way down, you know, so. Anyhow, but. So I then got about five of these books, the Darwin Awards, they're called. And that's where I came up with four or five of the characters. There was a man who got hit by lightning seven times. There was, you know, whatever some of those characters were. So I said if I could humanize them and make them seem real and have whatever problems they really have, you know, aside from the sort of extraordinary events that affected them, that'd be interesting. So that's what happened.

[Interviewer]

And I guess the tugboats came out of research and.

[Eric Roth]

But tugboat, yeah. And then I caught. Then I, I. Because I wanted to put it on a tug boot. I had that captain. And. And then I had to find out was there ever a tugboat incident with a submarine, you know, so I guess pretty specific in World War II. And there was. There's a sort of famous thing with which exactly would happen in the movie where the tugboat rammed the submarine, as was coming up, and a number of people had gotten killed. But there was a tugboat, a guy who made tugboats for sale at a little shop, and I think Massachusetts. And he told me all this stuff. You know, he gave me all the information. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, one of the things also is with voice, like, you have this way of bringing the voice out. And the characters, like in. In. In. In. Button the mom, like, she says, oh, you know, that baby's still a child of God. And, like, I really feel like her.

[Eric Roth]

Her.

[Interviewer]

Her soul. But I was thinking about what is the one that I remember the most, that I quote the most? And it's Bubba when he goes. Anyway, like I was saying, shrimp is the fruit of the sea.

[Eric Roth]

You can barbecue it, boil it, broil it, bake it, saute it. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

[Interviewer]

Shrimp and potatoes. Shrimp burger, shrimp sandwich. That's.

[Eric Roth]

That's. That's about it.

[Interviewer]

And I got to know, like, where is that voice coming from? Because it's vivid. Like, that is the God.

[Eric Roth]

I thought about that. And there were. It was. It was with them doing two or three things in their duties as soldiers. Think they're cleaning a floor with toothbrushes and whatever we. Whatever happened when we staged it. And I was just sitting, so I said, I think I'll give, you know, every possible thing I can think of with shrimps, what. What you can do with Shrimp. And I was sitting with my family. We were in a vacation house that we happened to own in Canada. And everybody was sitting around and I would just yell, give me shrimp dishes. And I would type them, you know, as they. As they gave me the dishes, you know, so, you know, so we eventually ran out. I think, you know, I think what I like about that and is not on. It's not. It's not unusual because we'll. I'll find other things that happen like that. And then you, you know, not necessarily do it with my family, but you find that. Well, that's interesting. How do we then, you know, dramatize that and make it feel something that resonates, you know, that it feels like something that would make the thing more special that will be remembered. With movies, I always feel like there's something primal about them that they stick with. They stay with these books, too. I mean, in other words, when you visualize a character. But movies, at least in particular, to some extent, when there are things that stay in your soul, I guess you say, it's not that I search for that, but I'd like to have things that have some become memorable in some way that will then start defining the movie, you know.

[Interviewer]

And how do you think about creating those memorable characters? Is it the voice? Is it the value?

[Eric Roth]

I think it's all of them. All of it. In other words, I think you start with. At least I start with, what's the theme of the movie? What's the movie literally about? It's not. This isn't a story. This is something else. This is about, you know, what is the. Why are we writing? Why are you doing this all together? You know, sometimes it's just a good story, but you need more than that. I think you have to have some thematic about what you're trying to say. There's always going to be underneath it. So that when you have a scene that feels inert that you have to find a way to. To compare somehow utilize it with the theme of the movie. You know, people have different ideas with the themes are. Which is okay if you're sort of somehow oddly on the same page at some point, you know. So, yeah, thematics is very important. The other thing that's important is to try to. And I'm not sure I've mastered it. The great writers know how to write in subtextually. They don't write what's your kind of literal. They'll say it in like a metaphor or in some other way that's saying the exact same Thing. But in other words, they're not saying what sort of evidence, you know, and you get sort of a. It's hard and it's very hard to do that. And really only the great writers can do it very well. Some just do it instinctively, you know.

[Interviewer]

So walk me through something that maybe started off as explicit where you said, ah, I gotta bake this into the subtext.

[Eric Roth]

I'll give you something that somebody else wrote do. I did a play of High Noon. And so Carl Foreman wrote the original screenplay. And. And only because it's on my mind. There's a. There's a. There's a part of a scene where the. A judge is telling the. Gary Cooper who's. Gary Cooper's now about to leave on his honeymoon and leave this town and what's going to happen. And he's giving an example of what happens with. From Athens, Greece. So he's talking about. He's not talking about him on the bench, this judge. He's talking about something that happened in Athens. So it was about a jurist even maybe. But it was more about what is sort of like gonna haunt this whole thing. In other words, they didn't really get justice. You know, I forget what it was exactly. But when you don't. When you do it through some other whole story about someone burned their hand and. Or really good writers can do it, you know, about what memories are for kids or something. But it's not about what the sort of screenwriting 101 is that people tell you exposition as about what's going to happen, you know, saying. And they're. All they're doing is laying out the story in a certain way. And it's just not very good writing, I don't think. You know, it's. It's a. Television does it a lot. I'm just, you know, more traditional shows. But sophisticated writing, if you can get there is. You talk about things that don't seem. That they may even apply. But then when you think about it, they're just great metaphors. I mean, the great writers. David Mamet can do it. I mean, they do it in their sleep almost, you know, and it's. It's just hard to do. And it's the first thing I like to try to teach writers to try to do, you know, talk about a dream you had rather than tell us that you're upset with your mother. You know what I'm saying? You're telling your brother, I'm upset with my mother. Maybe it's better to do it off, you know, Sort of off center. Yeah, it's a, it's, it's very hard to do it, though. And it's also hard, but. So you don't become pretentious with it. It's tricky. It's just tricky. But it's. Is much better than two brothers exchanging information that they both know. You know what I'm saying? Right. I mean, there was a director I work with, he said the worst line of exposition was, Good morning, Mr. Water Commissioner. Now he. Maybe they could have found a different way to do that, you know, so.

[Interviewer]

Go back to the dream thing. So if you're talking about the dream, explain what makes that such better writing.

[Eric Roth]

I think you're getting two or three layers of things. You're getting. You're getting whatever the information is you want to give the audience about what's the problem or what's happy or emotional between these two people. Then you get a kind of a sort of a fortune cookie aspect of it, some kind of lesson for life if you're able to do without becoming pretentious. And then in the day, you might even find a way that it's surprising because it's not exactly what you thought it was going to be. You know, so you get all. You get a whole host of possibilities within just a. Just one. You know, it can be monologue or it could be just 10 sentences, but you have a way of expressing things in a very more sophisticated way.

[Interviewer]

The question I'm getting at here is do you go on the emotional journey that we go on as viewers sitting in your.

[Eric Roth]

I think I do. Yeah, you do. I do. And I try to do the dialogue, and it's always so. It sounds so bad because I'll, I. First of all, probably every voice sounds the same coming from me saying it out loud, you know, because I'm not an actor, I'm self conscious about actually acting and. But I, I try to think of, will this be emotional? It's emotional to me. Will this be emotional to an audience? And I think I've succeeded a number of times in doing that, sometimes better than others.

[Interviewer]

You know, I mean, on the phone with a friend this morning, he said, there's two movies that just make me weep every time, Gump and Benjamin. But.

[Eric Roth]

Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

And he said the same guy wrote both of those.

[Eric Roth]

Well, yeah, I think, you know, they're, they're similar in certain ways. Some people have taken me to task feeling that they're too similar. But I, I always say, well, gee, Marty Scorsese, you don't mind making Four movies about the Mafia, you know what I'm saying? And even though he's a genius, but, yeah, they're both. I think, in the. All in all, I hope that all my move. Most of my movies are about people and about where people's. How they're dealing with problems and what. What is meaningful to them and where you then start. Feel tapped into how they're. How emotionally they're. They're handling things, whether, you know, and you're moved by it. You know, I mean, I was. I liked, even though it was melodramatic at some point, that the work I did on Star Is Born. I mean, I love. The whole audience was just sobbing, you know, saying, now maybe it's kind of a cheap SOB because the guy's committed suicide. But, you know, it's a. It's an emotional thing. And that movie's really kind of held its own. It's lasted, you know, which is really nice, I think. You know, everything I write, I try to give some human quality to it that will make people feel something.

[Interviewer]

You know, if you're trying to feel something. Are you a coffee drinker? Because I would imagine that could. So that's a strong.

[Eric Roth]

I never stre. Never never drank coffee in my life. That's a strange. I never liked. I never liked the taste of it. I don't drink liquor either, so.

[Interviewer]

Huh. Yeah. Well, that's interesting, because drugs.

[Eric Roth]

I'll give you too many hallucinogenics. Everyone known to man except for ayahuasca. I've never tried that. I guess I should. Okay. Interesting. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So what. So you're sitting up there, and, I mean, certainly you're not always trying to get to some of those more emotional moments, but I think that's what stands out. I mean, for me, I was just get ready for this. And I was. Went into YouTube, started watching some clips from Button, and I just. I couldn't watch them. They just moved me too much.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, I think they were quite emotional. Well, it was also a personal experience. I lost both my parents while I was writing it.

[Interviewer]

That's right.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. So that I was affected by that. And I said, how can I somehow, I don't know, translate this to the audience to. And then David Fincher, who I love so much, he really bent over backwards to try to make this work, which I think is not. Is not the usual movie David would make, you know what I'm saying? But he tried. I think it had to do with maybe the loss of his father, not that year, but. So there's a humanity in David. That's wonderful. And he was willing to take. To go kind of a. Into a different direction. And he's much tougher and, you know, colder in a good way. And so he. He was willing to take sort of the emotional quality of that and make it feel important.

[Interviewer]

Is it okay if I ask questions about the death of your family and.

[Eric Roth]

You can ask anything.

[Interviewer]

Okay, well, I just want to be respectful.

[Eric Roth]

Anything you want to know sexually.

[Interviewer]

All right, well, who knows where we'll.

[Eric Roth]

Be in 10 minutes now?

[Interviewer]

No, but does that show up in Daisy's character?

[Eric Roth]

Like, walk me through Daisy's character. I'm trying to think, because it's a. It's a combination. My ex wife was a big ballet of Maine dancing. Yeah. So I made her a ballet dancer. So that was really important.

[Interviewer]

It's all about the line.

[Eric Roth]

The line. Exactly. And. And then that led to me, to the whole. Which I think is pretty clever, the sliding doors thing with. If the cab hadn't been late, and the thing where she ends up getting hit by a car, which then changed her life because she got her legs where she couldn't use them as ballet anymore. But that once I could, you know, so that was it. I. So I look back and my. My, you know, this is. This is set at a whole different era. But what was a ballet then? It was Balanchine, and, you know, that was the research I did. And then you start looking at the things that could be so beautiful from it. So it. One thing sort of starts going on top of another. So, like, I was writing that I would. I know my wife's name was Deborah, and it's still Deborah. But, you know, I would go to the opera. I mean, the ballet with her, and it was just so beautiful, you know, and the music. So beautiful. And so who is this person who's a ballet dancer? And. And then how does she meet this guy? You know? And then what does that mean? And when she has a child and the child's going backwards, all that stuff, you know, I mean, it's like at the end of that movie, it's just so gorgeous to me when she has that little baby, you know, that's this man she loved, you know, and so what's my name?

[Interviewer]

What's my name?

[Eric Roth]

It's pretty amazing. I love that movie. Yeah, it's. I don't think it's perfect by any means. And I think you probably would now. You could probably make it where it's almost flawless with the prosthetics and Everything. They don't need to probably do a lot of that anymore. I did this little movie called Here that didn't work for anybody except for us. Even though now I think someone told me there's a whole subculture who's kind of embraced this movie is kind of pretty genius and we'll see. But there again, it was about. That was Bob Zemeckis and I wrote it together and he directed Tom Hanks and Robin Wright. And it's about time passing, you know, what happens to a family. And it's just the stuff I'm interested in. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So if you're writing something like that, how did you think of the different layering of time? Because there was a lot of work that happened visually to communicate that, but I would imagine that's hard to do as you're.

[Eric Roth]

It was hard to do. Yeah. We had to really keep track of. And then I realized how hard it was going to be for Bob with all the art direction they'd have to do, you know, keep. What. What's. What's the lamps look like and everything else, you know. But we were. I mean, it. It had its. It had a sort of logic to it, you know, that was in keeping with what the piece was about.

[Interviewer]

And what happened. You found the comic book and you.

[Eric Roth]

Said, no, no, he. Bob. I was. I called Bob. I wanted to do contact 2. I said, is there.

[Interviewer]

That's a big joke.

[Eric Roth]

I know. I said, is that. Is that something we could do, Bob? And he said, well, it's very problematic. The Carl Sagan's estate or the wife or somebody owns the whole thing. It's a little more probably said, but you know what I have this book is how he talks. Have this book here and take a look at this. This graphic novel and see if you think this is a movie. And. And I. And I did. You know, I said, this is great. I love the whole idea of this, you know, that we're. It's all. Wherever you are in some space and time, this is what the lives are that you lead, you know, and that's. This happens to be the one. But there had been all sorts of other people lived in the same house. So it reminded me of City of God. That did a wonderful thing with people who lived in an apartment. And I mean, the whole thing of time and place is amazing. I mean, one of the reasons Marty and I Scorsese get along so well is we both love Proust. Yeah. And so this whole idea of what does time mean? I mean, what. How is it and it's how you can't stop it, you know, so you have to appreciate it in some way. And one is it becomes a big crushing force in your life and to the good, too. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Well, that's what's so unique about Gump Button. Here is we see the, the arc of a life. I mean, here, the, the, the part that melted me was when. Was just when they get divorced and there's been. There's just been so long.

[Eric Roth]

I thought it was a beautiful speech when she has that cake and she said, I never. Yeah, I never went to Paris. I never got to go to Yellowstone in the summer. Whatever. She gives all the things that we miss out on, you know, and so she finally gets to do them. I, I was also pro. I, I loved a little thing I wrote, which is kind of sappy, but he. We had this kind of Thanksgiving of them together. And he said she. He says they breathe that she was going to bring Chinese food. So I made that up. And then I said, let's see how this works. And I said, let's start. He has thing where he says, let's start a new tradition. Open the fortune cookies first. Which is only so I can get the scene written. And, and you know, he opens one and it says, an old love will come back to you. And she says. He says, is that true? And she said, no. Yeah, but. And I actually was. Then somebody said, maybe that wasn't even the fortune that was in the fortune. Maybe he just made that up. I think I like that you have.

[Interviewer]

So many one liners that are iconic. And let's go back to Button because you're right, we're meant to lose the people we love. How else would we know how important they are?

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, that's. I don't know why these things come. I mean, I'm always nervous about them, that they're going to sound completely pretentious, you know, and maybe they are. One of the things that's interesting about the Button is that I wrote a speech I'm really proud of that's in there about that. Brad Pitt gives about part of a letter he's supposed to be reading aloud to his daughter, even though he's all over the world. And, and he says things like, you know, I don't know, there's no rules to this. If you find that you're. You're not doing it the way you. You wish you were, then you can start all over and all this. And so people have made it into like a plaque. You know, they have it on their walls, but they've attributed to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Oh, really? Yeah. And actually, I wrote it, and it's. But that. Because it's from his short story, you know. Right. Which was actually a magazine article, but it was always funny. It's like, gee, I know he's a better writer than me. This is pretty good, though.

[Interviewer]

You know, I'm trying to kind of bring all these things together. But it's funny because just your presence for down to Earth, and you've written so many lines that are very. That are very iconic, sentimental, valuable to people. But then you keep saying, ah, but I don't want it to almost be cheesy or something like that. You kind of draw this very fine line.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, well, you have to try to be careful. I. I don't think you also necessarily said how to write these things. You know, you. Maybe you hope they'll become something. I mean, Forrest Gump's a little easier because he would speak with aphorisms, you know, about things, and, you know, sometimes there just aren't enough rocks or, you know, stupid is as stupid does. I mean, all the stuff that he said, you know, if they worked for people, they. They become memorable, you know, that was. That was a lucky byproduct is all I could say.

[Interviewer]

You know, I mean, even in Gump, the classic one is, life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. But the book line is, being an idiot is no box of chocolates.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. I don't know why it changed this. You know, I just. I don't know. I have no idea. Just that's what. Just what it felt like to me. Yeah. I mean, I'm not even sure that makes much sense. Life is like a box of chocolates. Never know, I guess. You know, that wouldn't be my favorite one. Even though that may be the most memorable. You know, I still. I liked. Sometimes there just aren't enough rocks, and she's throwing those rocks at that house. You can't undo things that happened and made you traumatized and everything else, you know? But many times I tried to write things that would be met, you know, hopefully would be remembered, you know. Yeah. And for that movie in particular. Yeah. I'm just trying to think what I'm writing now, whether there's. I think there might be some things that are kind of memorable. Some of the sayings. The early Mafia in Sicily had a saying, we do what we must, and I have that a lot. What does that mean? It means that we're going to do what we have to do to sort of protect ourselves, protect, you know, our honor, whatever it is. And then so that it's, it's used a bunch of times, you know, it's like think of the Godfather, the great things that came out of that, you know, it's like, you know, make them an offer he can't refuse and you know, take the cannoli, leave the gun and you know, I mean, it's just so many great, great lines. And I'm sure they didn't think of it that way. They just, they just came out of, you know, what was natural to the peoples language.

[Interviewer]

When you're writing characters, do you find them saying things that you feel like you would have never said or are you like. No, I feel like I got a good grasp of these, these people.

[Eric Roth]

I don't think, I mean, honestly, I don't think they're real, the people. I mean, I'm not sure I'm going, I'm going for some authenticity within their characters, but unless I'm doing something that's more like the insider, which is about real people, I don't know. Otherwise, I, I see it as fanciful in a way. In other words, even though I try to make them feel like they're, that they have a life, they have their issues, they have a whole, you know, body of corpus delicti and all that and they're, there's somebody who exists, you know. But these are, I, I call them the other side of the moon. In other words, that these are, you know, really good movies. Last. But it's almost like there's, I say they're other side of the moon because I mean, it still can feel like Fredo and Michael and the Godfather, you know, where he's saying, you know, when he kisses him, he said I loved you and you know, and don't you ever, whatever. But it's almost like it's gone going, you know, it's like with Forrest Gump, it's even I, if I see it's on television, if I'm flipping the channels, I'll stop and I'll now watch it till the end, you know, so. But I think great movies kind of last, you know, and I guess great literature does and music and all these things that are part of you. But I always felt, I always like this idea that these, these, these people are all living these lies while we're going about ours. That they're real to that extent, but it's all fiction, you know. Yeah. You know, it's not nothing real about them.

[Interviewer]

So use the word fanciful. So how do you. Where does fanciful kind of end and caricature cartoonish begins?

[Eric Roth]

I think you got to be real careful. Yeah, I think that's, that's what you want to try to avoid so that they do feel real, even though you're going in knowing they're not right. That this Forrest Gump to me is Candide, which is a famous play about kind of a guy who's just going through life and what's coming comes and what doesn't come, doesn't come. And it's a little unusual because it's. It always has the same three act or four act Shakespearean structure. I don't care what, who you are, what you're doing, you can't break that. You know, you're gonna. The real simplistic version is you, you state the problem in the first act, complicate the problem in the second act, third act, you resolve it or don't resolve it, what you already decide to do and it doesn't matter. You can stand it on its head, you can do it backwards and forwards. And it always will have three acts you'll come to eventually a catharsis or D6 machina got in a machine. And that's just part and parcel of what it is to dramatize something. I mean, it's always interesting to me. Like I wrote a version of Cleopatra, which I thought I did pretty good job, but I knew the same material that Shakespeare did because they, they really didn't have anything that was contemporaneous with her very little bit. So it's like from a historian 150 years later, but he had the same. These were real people, you know, and it's. Then it's hard to believe because of all the things that, you know, that you think about them. None of that's fanciful, though. I'm talking more about these kind of. What's the word? Even the miasma kind of quality of a Forrest Gump or something. They're just not real, you know, but they take on reality for that two and a half hours.

[Interviewer]

And when you see a character in a book, in a movie that you feel like is wooden, that's hollow.

[Eric Roth]

What's, what's, what's. It's usually, I don't like it. I don't like. I'll even start books where if I don't think the names seem accurate to where they feel like they're invented, I sort of stop reading. Yeah, I mean, I Just I want. I mean, I'm mixture because I want some authenticity. But on the other hand, I don't mind people being, as you say, almost cartoon to some extent, but I'd rather they were felt as. I mean, people cry not because they're cartoons in fries, but people. People embrace them, thinking this is somebody worth caring about, you know? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

This from the beginning of the Curious Case. Benjamin Button, you say, as all things do, it begins in the dark. Eyes blink open blue eyes. The first thing they see is a woman near 40, standing, looking out a window, watching the wind blowing, rattling a window. So what's going on there and how are you thinking about?

[Eric Roth]

Well, I thought about that. That it begins in the dark because it's like somebody being born. Oh, wow. In other words, that's the darkness. In other words, everything begins in the dark. And then that for that, you know, because a baby being born. Then there's the prose that I wrote to put you in the. In the situation of, you know, already blue eyes and a woman in her 40s. So you already know this woman exists. Probably his mother, I guess, and. And then. I guess it's a good cinema moment just because it's just. It's big. But that when she's standing at the window, the windows. Winds rattling it. I like that. I use that a lot. Not the wind rattling windows, but that I like when people in movies have. Their clothes are being ruffled by. By wind or something. It's. It stops time to a certain extent. You know, I. I did that today. I wrote something actually similar. It's about. It was a church wedding that's going on and. And there's sort of a. It's very windy outside, supposed to be in New Orleans, and. And the windows are rattling in the church. And so then the director of choice to how much he wants to make them rattle or not rattle at all. He may think that stupid, stupid, you know, but it will give you. It'll give you a feeling of what's. Feeling of the time and place, you know what I'm saying? So that even in that. That's pretty good, I think, because that tells you a lot in the space of like two sentences, I think I always. I always know the beginning scenes and the end scene. And the only one in any movie I've ever written that changed was in Munich. He moved it. It was, I think, just on the street in Brooklyn, but he moved it to be outside the World Trade center, which was no longer there, you know, when he filmed the movie. So. But otherwise I think it's. I think opening scenes are incredibly important. So you just, you know, bringing the audience in. And then the ending, you have to hopefully get right so that they're. They leave feeling either exalted by what they just saw or moved by it or, you know, that there's still lots to do with the theme of it. You know, the forest, compass, feather about is it destiny or is it, you know, is it just random? You know, and then where's it going to go next? Because everybody has their own life, you know, so those are all the things you think about. And then you have to try to visualize them when you're doing a movie so that they are made clear to an audience what you're saying.

[Interviewer]

So when Brad Pitt makes the joke about prose, he's talking about what we just read.

[Eric Roth]

Yes.

[Interviewer]

Versus just the dialogue.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. No, it's more than that. I mean, many people now will write maybe just two lines. You know, it's. It's. It's. It's Fall in Brooklyn, and it'll go exterior, Brooklyn, night. It's fall. And then they'll go into the scene. Yeah. It may be just a dialogue. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

So that means you're very visual. Is your.

[Eric Roth]

I like to be. I like to be very visual. I like. Some directors don't like it. They think I'm giving. I'm giving too much because I also give tone in it. And they don't. Sometimes they don't like that, which is a tone. I think it should be Be.

[Interviewer]

Her name is Daisy Fuller. She speaks with a Southern lilt.

[Eric Roth]

Nice. Yeah, well, she does.

[Interviewer]

That's exactly what you're saying, Right? Like, that's that.

[Eric Roth]

But the director may. Or the director may not feel. She speaks with the Southern lil.

[Interviewer]

So with the. The dialogue. What are you looking at, Caroline? The wind mother. They say a hurricane is on its way. You've been asleep. I was waiting to see you.

[Eric Roth]

Why.

[Interviewer]

Why start the movie there?

[Eric Roth]

Sometimes it's good to start at the end and then you can go back and tell us why they're there. You know? I don't know. That's a good question. Felt right, I guess.

[Interviewer]

Tell me more about the theme. Themes of. You find the theme, you bring out the theme, and you kind of come back to it over and over again. And once again, the. The. The core tension that has shown up the thread through all of this conversation is making a lot of these things simple and explicit, but not. But teetering at the edge of going too far. Cartoonish, where you're just you almost pollute the whole thing and cheat it.

[Eric Roth]

Well, a lot of people don't, like Forrest Gump, for instance. They think it's saccharine or that's not real emotion. Erzat's emotion, which is fine. I mean, it's like just the way the ball bounces, you know, Like, I think Killers of the Flower Moon, which is one of the better movies I think I wrote, is about justice, inevitably about justice, how these people didn't get any justice. You know, in other words, they. And you could probably say 14 other things, but that was always on my mind, you know, justice, justice. Yeah. I mean, in other words, what. What do we do to them? You know, never mind man's inhumanity and all that, which is. I mean, I think it's just almost complicit with the whole thing. But what about just one moment of justice? You know, I mean, it ended originally. Maybe it's still there where somebody says, you got justice, and he says, there's no justice. He said, a jury's just as likely to find a man to. To sentence a man for kicking a dog more than he will for killing an Indian. You know, so you get a sense of the. It's a. It's a long history in America. It's tends to. Gone through a lot of stuff, you know, and this. This. I'm very interested right now because of High Noon in vengeance. Is that a male characteristic? I'm sure there are females who also want vengeance. But what does that. What does that mean? How. What does that mean about anger and everything? So I'm interested in that. And this thing I'm writing with for Marty right now is about kind of what we were brought up to be. We end up being, in a way, I'm not sort of necessarily, but these people were brought up in 1860, 1870, and Sicily, and they went uncertain, but they're part of a mafia, and. And they believe in what this is, and they're not going to really ever get out of it. And they do what they have to do, or we will do what we do we must. Right? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

There's a discipline about the questions, a discipline about the themes. You know, like, you could take, oh, we're just gonna do a simple theme and. And. And somehow it feels shallow or flat, but it seems like. Like my brain doesn't work like this. I can't take a very simple theme and just keep going. Like I think you can. It's like you have, like, a faith in the theme and just the ability to kind of stick with it.

[Eric Roth]

That's what the movie is eventually about. Yeah. And that. So if I get in trouble with the scene, I'll say, how does this apply to the theme of the movie? And I can go far afield or be close to home with it. It. But to find it interesting as to. What are you saying? Relating to what this movie is supposed to be about so that you don't try not to go too far afield.

[Interviewer]

What is it that I read about if you do get stuck? Change the weather.

[Eric Roth]

Change the weather.

[Interviewer]

Tell me about that. I like that one.

[Eric Roth]

It's very simple. I mean, it's like if you. That's as close as I get to writer's block, is that you're stuck. And I just think, well, I think I'll make it rain. And all of a sudden you look at it differently. You know, it feels like a Sunday afternoon in the rain. Or you make a snow. Whatever you want to do. I always go to the rain, it seems. But all of a sudden you have people acting slightly differently. And it sort of unlocks to me or always unlocked me as to where I can go with this now. You know. You know, they're putting on coats, they're going out, they're. Or putting on a hat, whatever it is. You know, I just try to think. What I wrote recently I really liked about. Oh, I was very windy. Supposed to be very windy. I got in trouble with the scene. I was writing this thing for Marty and I decided I'd make it really windy where they are. And people's hats are all coming off. So you have a whole. I mean, I would like to have 50 hats like a swirl. Yeah, they're all swirling around. Think that looked like pretty good, you know.

[Interviewer]

So the weather. There are other ones that you can.

[Eric Roth]

No, I don't think. I don't think I ever did it too much, you know, But I'm big at. I will say that that is a corollary that I'm big on what time of day it is. So I like. If you're doing something that kind of feels melancholic, maybe have it at the. Late in the day, not right before evening or maybe something at dawn, you know, or dusk. You know, it's like he used to put in the scripts between. This is a saying from between the dark and the daylight, when the lights begin to lower comes a pause in the day's occupation, which is known as the children's hour. As Lillian Hellman. So you get a sense of five o' clock on A street in Brooklyn and about people or mothers are about to call their kids in for dinner, and there's this pause that kind of. Everybody. Everybody's doing. No one's doing anything that may be of any importance, but it's like something that you can almost touch, you know? I love that.

[Interviewer]

Well, what's cool about your movies is that the moments that really move us as viewers are just kind of everyday moments, which means that I would imagine there's got to be a sensitivity to life that you have.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, I think I do, but I don't think I'm as good as. There's a writer now. Now, Jack Thorne, okay. He wrote Adolescence along with this. That other writer, actor, and he's done five or six things, and he's quite extraordinary at doing the most basic things within dramatic situations. And I'm not sure I'm as good as him that way. It's kind of a very moving thing he did about. He's big on disabled rights. And he has a thing that was on, like, Brit box or Acorn TV. The. About a girl, a little girl who's like 15, I think, who has, I think, muscular dystrophy. And she's doomed and becomes a battle between her parents. About one. One parent wants to do everything to keep her alive and. And he thinks anything. You know, she's in a coma now, and the father wants to pull the plug, basically. But he then does such normal, human things within that. That's really quite amazing where it's not always about what the drama is. And, you know, like, I just. I just liked one little moment where he got in a car and someone got in with him. He's driving to work, I think, and the guy offers him a stick of gum and he says, no, thanks. He said, yeah, you need it. You know, so it's just like, you know, he had bad breath. You know what I'm saying? It's like. So it's like he was able to put this humanity in there. It makes you like the characters more and understand them better.

[Interviewer]

You feel like it's important for every character to be likable or.

[Eric Roth]

No, no, no. I think. I think it's. Well, look, villains make great movies. You know, if you can find a great villain, you. You're in good shape. No, I don't think they should be likable. I think you should potentially understand why they are. What. What makes them tick. Even if. If you may not always understand it. I mean, I'm not sure I understand psychopaths or something, but you can get close to figuring something out. It gets a little more complicated when people have kind of normal lives where no one's putting their hand in a oven or something, you know, where you're getting hurt, where you're traumatized so bad that you want to lash out and kill somebody. You wonder, for instance, about those. And smarter person than me would have to tell me. Those two boys at Columbine who had seemingly a pretty normal life and decent parents, you know, they worked at a pizza parlor and this and that. Why did they decide to go shoot all these people? People. And I don't know the answer.

[Interviewer]

Said that a few times. What makes them tick?

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. What makes them tick? Why. Why are they who they are? Yeah. I mean, you're going to start understanding when you read enough about a sociopath. Right. What's. What's. What's caused it, possibly. And who are they? What psychopaths. But when somebody does something surprising that's not within what you expect, you know, so that it. That makes really interesting characters, you know, I brought in. I'm not. I'm not sure how this is going to work, but in this same Marty movie I'm writing that the lawyer who takes charge of things for our. Our. Our hero or quotes, our main character is a small person. He's like a great Southern character, you know, and so we'll see how you.

[Interviewer]

Got all these Southern characters.

[Eric Roth]

Well, this is New Orleans.

[Interviewer]

Two movies.

[Eric Roth]

No, I got this other one's New Orleans. Yeah. It's nothing. This was just. There was just a great historical interest inches in 1890 that happened, and that's just where it was, you know. Yeah. You know, the killers of flower Moons in Oklahoma, you know, you go where it takes you. I don't think you have a choice about it. You know, every and every. And then people act how they're, you know, they were brought up. Then you know, why did. The Native Americans were sent to all these Catholic schools, you know, and had their hair cut and all this stuff. I mean, so you start building up with the details what these people might become. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

You know, so you got the beginning of the movie planned out. You got the end of it planned out. Now in the middle. How much surprise.

[Eric Roth]

Middle seems like a great big blob. I have no clue. And then, then I get me, you know, it's like, what's the next three scenes? And I always want to leave the day of writing with a scene I basically licked so I don't have to go straight fight with it the next day. I can make it something, hopefully that'll, you know, soar or not, but at least you'll feel like this is something that's great or good. And I. I'm going to go approach that the next morning when I woke up. So you're not afraid of, you know, what am I facing here? And so I always outline, just with one word, like, five scenes in a row, you know, wedding, shootout, whatever, you know, I'm saying. So that's it. And then it starts taking hold of the story, you know, you want to tell and where you're going, and as you get to the last act, as to what you know, where you're going to end this thing. So you have to try to start building on what is the tension? What is the movement? What do you want to say about the people? What happens to them? How do they feel? You know, so in the beginning, you start to. You start exploring who they are, and they may surprise you or may not. And then the middle, you want to sort of do things to me that you're not as sure as you were in the beginning as to who they were. And maybe they're doing things that are even, you know, exceptional or something that confuses you in a way. And then you're back to try and now finish that. Finish the whole tale.

[Interviewer]

You know, as a writer's thinking through scripts, what I'm seeing is there's the character dimension, there's the theme dimension, there's the plot dimension.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, for me. And dialogue. You have to say what you're saying, and then you also have what it's going to look like visually and sound like. You have to also get back into what the, you know, the music of the piece is and what is the dialogue like. I mean, there's all. There's all the. Agrees most of us, and then. Or you can be just very simplistic and write a story that has maybe even a great theme. And you don't have to have all the stuff that I go into, but that's part of what I enjoy, you know, and some people do it almost effortlessly, closely. You don't have to fight. Fight it at all.

[Interviewer]

You know, you talk about what it's going to look like. How have you expanded, refined, honed your visual palette?

[Eric Roth]

I don't know. I always had a pretty great visual mind as to what I think would make a good scene, you know, in other words, what. What would be memorable about New Orleans, for instance, and what would be great. I'm not going to tell you what I did but it's pretty great. Yeah, it's really great. I mean, I think it's something that's almost expected, but unexpected. So that I think is something that's. Be very special that people say, oh, yeah. Remember the scene when they did X, Y and Z? You know, and then there's things you learn that you didn't know. I didn't realize they had a streetcar already there in 1890. Actually was, I think, founded in 1840. And so how do I use a streetcar?

[Interviewer]

Do you go to New Orleans?

[Eric Roth]

I've been there. I mean, it was on Benjamin, but. And I've been there a few times. Yeah. And other things. I went. One of my first jobs was to rewrite a Paul Newman movie. I was very young and they sent me down to Louisiana. And I always tell this story, but I. I bought a new pair of corduroys and had a faux leather briefcase and walked on the set. And Paul said, our savior's here.

[Interviewer]

You're right.

[Eric Roth]

I was like, literally 19 years old. It's like a kid. And. And it's always exciting, you know, that you. And it's exciting to hear what people. You know, it's exciting to see the movie, hear what the characters are saying, how they interpreted what you wrote, what these genius directors I've been lucky enough to work with, how they envision these things and make them much more, I think, in most cases, more interesting than you imagined it was going to be. Not all cases, but in many, many, many. And then it becomes this whole thing that's an entertainment, you know, And I don't have a. I mean, I think you can do the same thing on a streamer. You know, this show, adolescence, just because it's contemporary right now, is amazing. The writing, the acting, so that it just makes you think about things that all of a sudden you hadn't thought about and care about things you might not have cared about.

[Interviewer]

So. Place like New Orleans. Do you. Are you a note taker in terms.

[Eric Roth]

Of a little bit not, not. Not crazy? No, no. I'll write what I think is the highlights of something, you know, that will remind me what I need to do. You know, like, I'll just write tension. Somebody will say they think we need more tension. All right. Tension. So I'll know where it came from.

[Interviewer]

All right, so let's talk about beginning of Forest Gump. There's nothing but blue sky A legend appears A lot of this is true and we see a feather lighter than air Floating like time passing slowly floating by. It's interesting how you wrote that. Lots of commas. The cadence of that sentence really matches the cadence of that scene. And we see it's over a city. A breeze catches it, moving it here and there above the city. Now, I saw another version of this intro, I swear, that said Savannah explicitly. Maybe that was a later one.

[Eric Roth]

Probably later. Because then when they decided where they're going to shoot it.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. Because that's. Now, the feather is the beginning of the movie, the end of the movie. So that's explicit, deliberate.

[Eric Roth]

Huh.

[Interviewer]

Why a feather?

[Eric Roth]

Because I think you can decide that somebody put it there or it's just floating around in a breeze. Yeah, that. That I do. With the theme of the movie. Yeah. So that. And where is it going to go next and all that, you know. Yeah. That was smart. I think. I think so.

[Interviewer]

So what makes for good intros, like, is if. If I'm sitting down, I'm ready to write a movie. Like, what should I be focused on? A good intro?

[Eric Roth]

Oh, gee, I don't know. I think it depends on how you want to get the audience into the same thing of writing a book. Why do you. What. What's going to compel people to want to read past page two? You know? Why? You know, it's like the great ones are. It's the best, you know, worst of times. The best of times. You know, you say, oh, or, you know, call me Ahab. You know, all these great moments that start things that you say, gee, I want to find out more about this. And so that's what I try to do in a kind of literary way, try to bring people into the environment, you know, sight, sound, etc, and have you start feeling also that you've found a home.

[Interviewer]

Found a home?

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, that you want to. That you feel comfortable where this is. It might be uncomfortable to you, but you feel like this is somewhere you want to try to. You'd be willing to live for two hours, you know what I'm saying? Or it might be something that's frightening to you, that you'll say, I want to see what this does to me for a couple hours. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's important in some of these movies, when I say find a home, is that you feel comfortable that you're in with Forrest Gump. You know, you find that he's. He's comfortable to you, that he. He's compassionate in his own way. And Benjamin Button, they actually. It is a home, and they have borders and people and there's noise and life going on. You know, we. We almost. We. We almost did this, which I found was kind of lovely. And David decided eventually not to do it. But we were going to end the first Benjamin Button with. With the end credits were going to be supposedly by obituaries from various newspapers of all the characters. It's spectacular what he had drawn up and everything, you know, from wherever they, you know, the Times Pikiun, I think was a New Orleans newspaper. Or if they'd moved, you know, like a man killed by hit by lightning seven times, you know.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Eric Roth]

That kind of thing. And it's kind of great. So you have these kind of whole lives that you feel like you've now experienced, you know. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

When you're teaching the writers workshop, what do you feel like the writers don't get that you really need to impart on people?

[Eric Roth]

I think part of it's just somebody's, I don't know, ability to just tell a story and try to encourage you to join it and be as a benefit and everything. I mean, it's like I was thinking of a script that I didn't like one of the writers had and I think it was. It made you feel like you're not going to ever. You're not going to be part of this. Somehow you're. It pushes you away. And if you can get people to come in and be a party to it and, you know, they don't have to like it even in a way. I mean, you want them to love it, obviously. You want them to be charmed by it and moved and all those things. But you have to make it so that. I think that's why I say they feel like they're home.

[Interviewer]

Well, here, I mean, I'm just looking at this now. You can see there's a lot of prose here.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, that's too much. They would never let that happen again. How many pages is that script?

[Interviewer]

Well, this is just one page.

[Eric Roth]

No, I'm just saying how many pages? The whole script. Oh, yeah.

[Interviewer]

Let's see. This is 260something pages. It says cherry revision. So maybe this is a compilation.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. So you're gonna have half scenes. There's no way in hell. 266 is, you know, it's a minute a page. So 60 into 260 is a four and a half hour movie or something, Right? That's not happening.

[Interviewer]

No, that's a compilation.

[Eric Roth]

No, that's a compilation of stuff. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How'd you improve your ability to write dialogue?

[Eric Roth]

Well, I don't know if I ever was good or bad at it. I mean, I Just. I just write what I think I want them to say. And, you know, and also the director will change a lot of it. Or, I mean, the most. The most impactful one for me was on the movie the Insider. I had written like a page and a half monologue that I thought was pretty damn good. Pacino called me that morning before he was going to shoot it, and he said, I can do this with one look. And I said, really? I said, let's call Michael Mann, see what Michael says. And Michael said, let's shoot it both ways. And in the movies, one look. So he didn't need all the words, you know, but sometimes I'm trying to find ways to describe things that maybe I go overboard or something, you know, or maybe an actor can then take it, make it their own. Make it their own way of speaking. And as long as they're able to impart what you're trying to say, I don't have any big feeling about it. Right.

[Interviewer]

What are the things that you're thinking about, sort of the axioms, the principles as you're writing dialogue?

[Eric Roth]

Well, I mean, I think you have to carry the scene. You want to present issues in the scene that they're trying to work out or they're romancing about or whatever, so that it becomes. I mean, so it becomes valuable. You don't want to just kill time. What they call shoe leather, you know.

[Interviewer]

Why is it called that?

[Eric Roth]

Because it's just wasting time walking around. Yeah. You want to have something. It doesn't have to be, you know, gigantic revelation, but you also want to have the. Move the story along. So, you know, like, if you have a character, say, will you marry me? All of a sudden you're into something that could be way larger than what you had anticipated, you know? Right. Like this thing I'm writing is the woman he's in love with is the daughter of his rival, like Romeo and Juliet, in a way. And. And it's dangerous, you know, so when. As they get closer and closer, it becomes more fraught and wow. And eventually the father says, you're dead to me, you know, so. And eventually he may even kill her, you know, so anyway, so it becomes just more dramatic, I hope.

[Interviewer]

So simple, your stories. Right. Like, I can just hear that and I can see it, and I. There's a discipline to simplicity. I think that.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, I wish I had more of it, in a way. I mean, some people can really write simply and with such sparse prose and sparse language, but says the same things with so. So many less words. Than I use. You know, I'm less sophisticated using language as I wish I was. I mean, but that's. That's just. Some people just like. I'll say I'm mixed about in some of his works, but like Jonathan. What's his name?

[Interviewer]

Saffron.

[Eric Roth]

No, I. Him I know quite well. We did Extremely Loud. Incredibly Close. Yeah. No, he's a good writer. Very good. I was thinking more of a, you know, who wrote Crossroads and Connections? Jonathan. What the hell's his name? It's ridiculous, but he. He probably writes the best sentences. I mean, I don't know if he spends time looking up words because he uses words I've never heard of, but they seem to come naturally to him. Jonathan Franzen.

[Interviewer]

Jonathan Franzen, yeah.

[Eric Roth]

But it's natural to him. And when you read his, you sort of gush because you go, oh, my God, how do you write this sentence? And then here comes another one, you know, they're a mother. Unbelievable. You know, the big deal is with a writer is that you have to put one word in front of another, and you hope you're putting the right words in the right way. And that's the best lesson you could get. And those who are really good at it are simple, and they're Hemingway, or they're, you know. You know. So some of the. Just. Those writers would just come second nature to them. I don't know what makes it bubble up inside of them, you know?

[Interviewer]

And what is it about rewriting that that feels laborious to you?

[Eric Roth]

Well, you've had the adventure of trying to create something new, so now you're just trying to improve what you've already written, which is fine, but it doesn't feel so adventurous, and it's a little more. Feels more like work.

[Interviewer]

I think that's revealing that you just said the adventure of creating something new. I think that that tells me a lot about how you write.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, I think it's true. I think I've lived my life that way. Yeah. I've had a lot of children. I've had more than one wife and things, and. And I think a great adventure. And sometimes I haven't behaved the way I should have, but. And I've learned what I've learned and decided not to take lessons from what I've learned and all that, you know. But that's with writing, too. In other words, trying to create something that will. People say, wow, you know, this is really. It might be too big, might be too expensive, might be all sorts of things, but they'll never Say they're not interesting or a good story.

[Interviewer]

I don't know why I had the. Maybe it's because we're in San Juan. I just had the image of someone who's just, like, surfing a giant wave, and you're kind of like, I don't know, I'm gonna go. And you kind of, like, come back up and you're just on this wave, and the entire time you're like, we're just gonna stay on this wave. And I know that if I can stay up, the whole thing's going to go. But the fact that you're calling it the adventure of trying to figure out something new, I think just says so much about what it is that you're going for and the kind of unfolding. But then you do also know what your destination is, because you start with that end in mind.

[Eric Roth]

Well, yeah, but also, I'm helped along by. Since, as I said, I do a lot of adaptations. I know what the material is to. Unless I'm creating something. I mean, I think a lot of the things I've written are strict adaptations to some extent, even though I. I play with them in major ways or they're almost all original writing. Like, Benjamin Button was just a bad short story that Scott Sugar wrote for. For. He needed some money for Collier's Magazine. And. But what it was, obviously, I didn't come up with was the idea of ASO and aging backwards, which is profound, you know.

[Interviewer]

Really?

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, it's profound. The closest I came to that in my own writing was I had someone else write it and we'll see if it ever gets made. But I had someone write about 10, 15 years ago. So I woke up and I said to my wife, I had this idea. I said, what if. What if I died? You woke up and you found I'm dead and you happen to like me, and you're. You're grieving and you are with a priest or a rabbi or somebody who could give you some consolation. And you say. And he says to you. Or she says to you, what could I do to make your grief feel, you know, easier to you? And. And she says, I would like to spend just one more day with him. So I had a thing written about a 24 hour. It comes true that this guy who was dead all of a sudden came back to life and they had. He had 24 hours left to live. And what was their relationship and what did they get to solve, and what did they get to. It's pretty great.

[Interviewer]

That's beautiful.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, it's really beautiful. And as the time compressed, you know, as you in your last hour, and she knows that he doesn't know it and, you know, things that she wants to accomplish in that. Those moments, it's pretty beautiful. I don't think it's as profound as aging backwards, but there's something to it that I think was quite touching.

[Interviewer]

Eric Ross Gump, you know, when you won your Oscar, at the very end you say, I may not be the.

[Eric Roth]

Smartest man around, but I know what love is. I sure do. Thank you.

[Interviewer]

And Forrest Gump says, I'm not a smart man, but I know what love.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, well, that was. I did that because of that. And I do. I did know. I do know what love is for me. I mean, as I say, I have a lot of children, so I know when they love me, and I. I love them. And I have many, many, many people in my life, so I'm surrounded by love as best as possible. So. Yeah, he was saying it quite differently because he's saying that he's not intelligent, but that he knows love it.

[Interviewer]

You know, I mean, I think that's, that's, that's, that's what we see in, in, in a lot of your movies is, is. Is that feeling of love. I mean, to go to extremely loud and incredibly close. You know, it's losing your father. Oh, my goodness. You know, it's like a sense of just like aching grief and separation, and you really feel the pain of that. And there's something about the way that your movies.

[Eric Roth]

Well, you know, I was, I think it was Elvis Mitchell, you know, that is. No, he was, he was a New York Times film critic. And then he's been a. He does, like, re. He does for npr. He has radio interviews. Radio with a lot of entertaining film people. And he, when I. And he's a friend and he said, your movies are all about loneliness. Yeah. And I think it's true. They're about when you really think about us as people being. And, you know, I'm not sure I'm that lonely, but I don't like being alone. I'm not great with that. But, yeah, loneliness is probably a driving force, so it might be a driving force for my characters.

[Interviewer]

What was wild is after I finished a Rewatch button and after I finished it last week, I wept about things in my own life. Like, I hadn't wept in so long. I mean, I cried out to God. Like, it just. It fully. I was on my bed and I mean, I practically had to wash the dang the dank pillow case. Because I just. You made me feel certain pains that I've had around loneliness and, And. And sadness and feelings of just emptiness in my life. And I just. Something about that movie just brought it up and I just. I. I just wept. I. I wept. So, like, you know, that's good crying.

[Eric Roth]

Was it cathartic?

[Interviewer]

You're not in. Well, well, well, that's the thing, you know, when you're just weeping and you're just like. You're completely out of yourself. Like, afterwards, it is really nice. And there's something about the shedding of tears is a kind of catharsis. And you know what's strange is it feels really good to cry that much. Because there's no resistance. Yes, there's no resistance.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. Once you can do that, it's important, I think, you know. Oh, wow. Wow. Well, I'm glad that it affected you that way. Yeah. Love that.

[Interviewer]

Well, what's wild is that first the movie affected me and then it influenced. It showed me something about my own life.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. That's nice. Yeah. Well, then maybe there's some truth to it. Maybe I hit on the truth. I don't know. But you're not a truth to you anyway. I'm sure there's other people say it's ridiculous, you know.

[Interviewer]

Yeah. I just can't even imagine what you experience writing these. These movies. Emotionally.

[Eric Roth]

I move by. I move by them and they. A lot of come out of my own life, you know, things that are painful to me or how I can experience them. And I mean, it's a lot. Yeah, it's a lot. I. I was at. I was at a panel discussion and at the Writers Guild, and I think I had been nominated for Writers Guild Award. Anyway, that's who the people were. And the moderator said, started by saying, I want to be Eric Roth. And I said, okay, well, you've had to have had cancer three times. You have to have been divorced a few times. You have to. Had some other tragedies and children things. And so it was like, after a while, I started. It was laughable. You know, everybody's like, laughing because everybody's, you know, has their own stuff, you know, so you may want to be successful in some way, which I am, but it's not. I'm still me.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel like going through those things makes the grief, the suffering so much more real in your. In your films?

[Eric Roth]

I don't know if that. I don't know. I don't. I can't speak to that. I mean, you'd have to. I mean, we have this thing I'm doing with Ben Affleck, which is really interesting. He wanted me. He calls me, he says, I want to do a Mank Room. I said, what are you talking about? He says, you know that movie Manky wrote and. Well, actually, David Fincher's father, we. We. We helped it out anyhow, and I was a producer on it, and. And I said, yeah, that's how they did Writers Rooms. And they did. That's how they did movies in the 30s and 40s, whatever. They would. You know, they'd bring in great writers and they pay. Overpaid everybody, and they'd sit around in the studio, say, we want a movie about a vampire. So they'd figure out a vampire movie, go away and write anyway. He says, yeah, that's what I want to do. I want you to find me. If you're willing to do this, find me, like, four or five writers, and you be Yoda, and let's put together a room. And I'm probably going to pay just basically minimum. So which. Which made me then my ability to get all the writers I would have maybe liked, even though I ended up great writers. They were all TV writers because they hadn't. You know, they were. They were pretty. Well, they're pretty successful, like showrunners and stuff. So we had a room of four, and I think we got maybe three really good scripts. Four, which was great. And now he wanted to do it again. So now we have eight more writers. And so I'm like Yoda to them, and I like doing that, but everybody's different, you know? Yeah. So you. You learn from everybody else. And on Fridays, every week, for the duration of our first room, anyway, we had a salon, and I'd have. Fincher came in, and Michael Mann and David O. Russell and Bradley Cooper and Rob Reiner and spectacular. But there was no cameras, no nothing. Just them talking to the writers and then some guests we had. But the thing that was most consistent about everybody, authenticity. So they wanted authentic. You can be in the most sort of unauthentic Marvel movie, and they wanted that to be authentic within that realm, you know? And so that was the. That's almost everybody. It's sort of amazing that that was the key thing for everybody. So whether that's true or not, I don't know. But that's what it might be, right? Yeah.

[Interviewer]

What is it about collaborations that you've really been drawn to? I mean, you've collaborated with the most insane group of people. Spielberg Fincher, you're talking about Bradley Cooper. We've talked about.

[Eric Roth]

No, it's. It's insane.

[Interviewer]

Michael Mann.

[Eric Roth]

But I think I learned. I'm not stupid. And I learned that directors, for me were the key to get movies made, so that I. I linked up with directors, having liked my material, so I was a leg up on that. I wrote a movie for Kurosawa. Yeah. Called Rhapsody in August. Yeah. I've worked with the best actors and best directors in my. And for the 60 years I've been at it, you know, there's a bunch of people I wish I had worked with, you know, probably. But. Yeah. And each one's different. You know, it's a marriage, though. You have to be willing to get married.

[Interviewer]

What'd you learn from Spielberg?

[Eric Roth]

Some things I won't say, but I'll say he has a incredible sense of entertainment also. Being able to portray things, you know, with that. That. That are childlike in. In some ways, and. And the entertainment value of his work is incredible. He can do what I call Rube Goldberg. He can do, like a maze of things, you know, he can have. I think. I think his Saving Private Ryan had a thing and where someone got shot on the thermos and blood was dripping and something else. I don't know. He can do that. In other words, something. He can reach for a box of cereal and 12 other things happen.

[Interviewer]

Right.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. He's a. He's very talented that way. He's very quiet. He's. He's a lonely sort of man in a way. Nice man, you know, but he lives in his own world to some extent. Every. But they're all different, you know, everybody's. Some are more generous, some are less generous, but it's. It's a marriage. You have to find a way to negotiate in a way, because as strong as you may feel about something, eventually, it's the director who's going to make a decision. And so I like to find what I say is like the third rail or the third way, where we then both can agree on what we'd like it to look like, you know, and that doesn't always happen, you know, Sometimes I'm disappointed and sometimes I'm thrilled and, you know, so I continue to work with directors as much as I can. I work with Denis Villeneuve again, and that's right. Yeah. Yeah. I work with the Marty again, I hope. We're just getting pretty old, both of us, so we'll see. And I. I'd like to. There's a few new directors I like maybe to work with, you know, but they're all there.

[Interviewer]

You said to me in the kitchen, I always enjoy the writing. I always enjoy the writing.

[Eric Roth]

I love the writing. Yeah, I like every damn. I enjoy it.

[Interviewer]

And is that because of the topics that you choose? Like, part of it?

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. I go into worlds that I love, love trying to negotiate.

[Interviewer]

And what do you do? You just wait for the pitch. Wait for the pitch. And then you kind of like, find the fat pitch and you just kind of go for it or like.

[Eric Roth]

Well, I. I have an idea of what I want to write. What this. What's the gold in the thing? And then it is true what you said, though. I key as, you know, going back to page one, I. And I know the first time I go and write it, it's not right. And I. What is the story I'm telling? Why is it going this way? Why is it stopping? Why am I. How can I do this better? Then. Then all these details start filling in and I say, I like this, you know.

[Interviewer]

Okay, tell me more about the details.

[Eric Roth]

Well, the details just pop up when you're doing, you know, like 1860 Sicily, you know, and. And then you start reading about, well, they were fighting for citrus. Who was going to control the citrus crop? And the. The winner was eventually this one family. And as I love this detail, as a. As a sign of their victory, they put a lemon on top of their. Their gate. I mean, it was a high, tall gate, but a lemon on top. And that was. That made them the victors. And I don't know. And so I had a scene where, in this thing, I have a scene where our hero, or I'm not sure he's so heroic. But anyway, the lead in the movie is. Is wants vengeance on a rival don. And he. He comes sneaking into an opera. And while the opera is going, I have him slit his throat. And the, and the, and the. And the guy whose throat he's slitting is a guy who passed himself as kind of a singer. So he's doing a baritone with the opera singer. Yeah. So that was pretty good.

[Interviewer]

Wait, so how in the world, like 1860s Italy. Like, I wouldn't even know how to think through character. I mean, I guess you can read a lot, but there's.

[Eric Roth]

I read some, but also I just envision. Well, let's say it's an amphitheater. So it was outdoors. I did it. Yeah. Because they had outdoor amphitheater. It's supposed to be a small kind of town. And he sneaks behind this Guy, this kind of rotund guy who's sort of full of himself and unscrupulous guy. He probably deserves to get killed, if you believe in that stuff. And he has. And I have him cut his throat. So what I did then was because that wasn't enough for me, I have that the opera singer is the only person who saw him at his throat. So he has this for the rest of our movie and he becomes a slightly instrumental character because the whole group of them are come to New Orleans because they. For various reasons they brought all these Sicilians to New Orleans. And that's where the mafia started in America. But. Yeah, but this guy knows that he cut this guy's throat and he has that on him in a certain way. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

How deliberate are you about cultivating inspiration? I mean, we've talked a lot about. You mentioned Proust. You read a lot of novels, you watch a lot of movies. There's thousands of references you can pull from. Is that something that's deliberate or is that sort of a.

[Eric Roth]

That's delivered. I mean, but it's also. I'm so. I like to even quote things that. Because I'm just so moved by them. So I like to use them. Like that Lillian Hellman thing I said to you. You know, I think I'd use that in a couple scripts, but because I loved it. This is so textual and everything else. And, and I mean, I've quoted other things or use them where I'll give credit. I mean, I don't plagiarize them. I'll say and so. And so said, you know, or describe something and it. I just think it makes it more. I think it makes a richer reading experience for the. For the reader, you know, because most people now just read the dialogue, they avoid resting the reader.

[Interviewer]

So as you're trying to shop the film.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, you have that also. So you have to. Do you have to make a script for a reader for somebody to say, oh boy, I see this. I can see why I would want to make it. Aside from whatever their judgment is about the commerciality of it with expenses and how long is it going to be? All those things, you know, earlier you.

[Interviewer]

Were talking about things standing the test of time. How do you think about making something perennial?

[Eric Roth]

Well, I think you can't know, but I think certain things, like I think Forrest Gump survived and continues because I think parents show it to their 11 year old.

[Interviewer]

That's what happened to me.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah. So their 11 year olds love it. And you censor out the little bit of Sexuality in it. Right, right. You know, or just say, I actually.

[Interviewer]

Didn'T realize until I was preparing for this that Forrest Gump's mom had sex with the principal. So I learned that this morning. And I was like, I've seen that movie like five times.

[Eric Roth]

I know. Yeah. Somehow Bob and I laugh. We can do something for you, Mrs. Gump. Anyhow, I had no idea. Yeah. So. But anyway, I think that's why that's persistent. You know, Benjamin Button. We'll see. I think maybe, maybe the loveliness of it will make. Persist, but I don't think you can know. And certain things last and certain things don't. I mean, I could tell you that I think Star is Born has really lasted and it's outlasted the movies that like the movie that won Best Picture, the Green Book. I'd say I defy anybody to have the same feeling about. They may like Green Book or whatever, they like it. But I think Star Is Born, though, because the music and Lady Gaga and all that makes it still feel very fresh, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure about Dune, whether it'll last away same way. I don't know Dune 1 and 2. I don't know.

[Interviewer]

Did you write Dune 2?

[Eric Roth]

No, no, I. I told him I had other worlds to conquer, which was funny, I thought.

[Interviewer]

How do you think about the premise? Like, is that something that you're looking for a lot? Because that's what you found with Benjamin Button. We been talking about character.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, the premise. I think the premise comes along with the. When you're adapting something. Right. So there's something in it that I'm about. I'm going to do a Sydney Sweeney movie. Oh, wow. Yeah. She found this wonderful short story called I Pretended to be a Missing Girl. So the premises of a. A sort of down and out 20 year old sleeps around and drug, like drugs or alcohol and sees on a motel lobby poster for a missing girl, amongst other posters. And the girl kind of looks like her and she says, I think I'll go sort of scam this family and get some money from them and get the hell out of there. So she goes to the family and knows enough about the girl and learns enough about her to where the parents want her back so bad that they're convinced it is her. And she's going in to meet her younger brother who's like 9 years old, and the younger brother says to her, run, run as fast as you can. And it's spectacular what happens.

[Interviewer]

So when you hear a premise like that. What is your thought? Is it like that?

[Eric Roth]

I love this. Is.

[Interviewer]

Was it juicy? Is it that you can do something with it?

[Eric Roth]

It's juicy. It's. It makes me it also, I was interested in doing something that I could get made rather quickly as I'm get. I'm 80 years old, so I mean, I'm running out of time here. So I thought with. With her being a big movie star and this kind of idea, which I think I could build on, I already said, well, it shouldn't be just this girl's missing photograph there. It should be hers too. So in other words, we know that she's a missing person and have her. Then maybe I'll do it right. That's. Probably start the movie and they'll have her go park out in front of her home and you'll see her mother and father and she'll eventually leave. You know.

[Interviewer]

Now, as you think about themes for that movie based on what you said.

[Eric Roth]

I'm not sure what that is yet because I don't know. That may just be a pot boiler, you know, some things are just Hitchcock movies or something, you know, so I'm not sure. I'll probably find something in. I want the. I know I want the villain, which is the father, because he actually has his daughter in the basement. But I want him to be so evil that. But he's intelligently evil, like Silence of the Lamb. So he's a great kind of. You have this dynamic between these two people, you know, I know that. That's. That's what I know so far.

[Interviewer]

And is your writing. You're still writing on that program that gives you no access to the Internet. That was invented by the Egyptians, right?

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, it's a DOS program. Yeah, that. The worst part about it is it runs out of memory at like 40 pages or something. 40 pages. Yeah. So you know, at least you've got an act written. So. But you better, you better, you better print it out or it's going to go away is a problem. Because once all of a sudden I'll say too much memory or something overloaded memory and it'll make pages disappear. So you don't want to get there, you know? Yeah, but I'm just. I'm. This is superstitious. I'm probably just. I should probably learn how to use final draft and call it a day. But.

[Interviewer]

And then what do you do? You print and you just.

[Eric Roth]

I print it and then my assistant.

[Interviewer]

Retypes it based on your edits.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, well, I have edits and Then we'll edit together and I'll keep going through it till I'm going to turn it in and she'll retype it. Because I. I do. I do the. My movie program is the bulk of the writing. But I'll also. Because it's, you know, when you're a writer, I say most or 24 hours a day, it's on your mind. And so I'll. I'll. I'll like put an email. I'll write a scene in email or in text and just on a scrap of paper or something, you know, so it's always. It's always evolving in some way, you hope, you know, or you think of something. Oh, my God, I gotta put that in. I realized they had left out something in the script. It was a little tiny thing, but so I had to run back and I wrote myself a note so I didn't forget it, you know. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

And how much of what you write comes out of your own life, conversations that you have?

[Eric Roth]

Not that much, I don't think. I mean, it depends, probably if. Depends on the milieu, you know. In other words, with something that's more. I wrote not a very successful movie called Lucky you, which is a poker player. I know a lot about gambling and so I could put a lot of stuff I knew in there, but that was because of the subject matter, you know. I also had a television show on called Luck with David, My Lovely David Milch. And that's about horse racing, which I know a lot about. So I could put all sorts of stuff in that, you know, you feel.

[Interviewer]

Like you learn more from the successes or the failures.

[Eric Roth]

I don't know. I think it's a. It's a. It's a different question you'd have to ask a different writer because I've had so many movies made, I mean, and that I'm not. And a lot, A lot of things that were not successful that it becomes, I don't want to say less important, but not as important in a certain way that the writing is equally important to me or maybe even more important, that I can create something that's new and different and explores areas and all that that I love about it. And if it doesn't work, then I, you know, I probably miss something, which is fine. And I don't have the same ego that way in it now. I just love to do the work without questioning what's going to happen with it, even though I still care. And it's sort of meaningless to have a screenplay that's not Going to be film. She'd, you know, it's just going to go on a drawer. So I don't know. That's a great question. What you learn from when you made mistakes, I'm not sure. If you don't try to start attributing those mistakes to others, it's a good, cheap way out, you know, to an. To a director or the actors didn't do the right or they didn't cast the right people. And I don't know.

[Interviewer]

Do you feel like the market for movie popularity, the Oscars, is efficient? And what I mean by that is, if you were to take your most popular movies, how much does that correlate with what you feel are the best movies?

[Eric Roth]

Oh, my movies.

[Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Eric Roth]

I think. I think each year is different as to what I would say is a movie maybe I would have rather have written. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but that's something that's not in my.

[Interviewer]

But do you feel like the. The movies that you're known for that are the most popular, are those your best movies, or do you feel like there's these other movies that either didn't get picked up, they didn't do well? We were like, dang, that was a darn good script.

[Eric Roth]

I have a few of those. I have a pretty ridiculous batting average, so. For getting movies made. So I don't have that many scripts that haven't been made. So I can't hearken back to that. I mean, I'm batting I don't know what. Pretty high. It's gone a little less as they make less and less movies, you know. Yeah. So it's harder to get to me.

[Interviewer]

I love the line from Button. They're at the funeral. She taught me to play the piano and what it meant to miss somebody. Very you line.

[Eric Roth]

Yeah, that is. I like that line. I think one of the lines I remember from that movie, and I don't remember exactly what he said was, when the tugboat captain's dying, he says, you can rail at God and something like that. And he says, when it comes to the end, you have to make peace. Basically. That one I like. Yeah. Yeah.

[Interviewer]

Thanks for doing this.

[Eric Roth]

Thanks for doing it. Good time. Thank you. Lovely question. It's a really good job. Thank you. Yeah. This is better than the normal one.