Loading summary
Transcript267 lines
- [00:02]
Eric Roth
Tetragrammaton. And now I don't want to make this whole thing about death and. But I just the thoughts of like, you know, which I'll repeat. But that comment my mother had made as she was dying when who's a lifetime atheist and communist and didn't believe in anything past this. And I asked her, are you afraid? When she was kind of at the end. And she said she was curious. And I thought, well, that was a good place to start with something, you know. And then you sent me that beautiful poem about that. When we're not watching ourselves, maybe somebody else is watching us as we move, move through something else, you know. And I loved your book, by the way. I have it right behind me here. It'll stay here now forever.
- [01:06]
Interviewer
Thank you so much. I'm so glad you like it.
- [01:08]
Eric Roth
I thought it was beautifully architectured. And then, you know, in all ways. In all ways.
- [01:13]
Interviewer
Are all stories good for the same reason?
- [01:16]
Eric Roth
I think they might be because I think you get to unleash the use of words into ideas. Trying to put the. As a writer trying to put the best word in front of the other. Some people are way better at it than others. You know, just to relate to well known artists. Writer named Dennis Johnson, who I think was one of the great American writers, wrote a short story called Jesus Son that is pretty well recognized as one of the great short stories. And then more recently I've been friendly with George Saunders, who's a wonderful combination of words and science. You know, I tried to sort of compete with them in emails. It's like a joke, you know, it's like talking to a poet. But I think it's how they've learned as the great writers have, or great artists. Same thing with painting or something, being able to put one brushstroke in front of another to, you know, to communicate an idea. So in that sense, I think all storytelling is the same and that's just how good you're able to do it. But I think it's a cliche probably, but probably true that everybody does have a story to tell. It's like I always believe everybody. There's somebody for everybody. Same kind of thing.
- [02:29]
Interviewer
Do stories need a structure and do they need the same structure?
- [02:33]
Eric Roth
I would say neither is true. I think that's up to the artist. It's however they best communicate. I mean, you know that better than anybody with music that somebody will make just a sound and that sound will be everlasting and someone else will do it a different way. I'm pretty Traditional in my structure. Very Shakespearean, you know, not that I'm Shakespeare, but even though I think Shakespeare said the two greatest lines in the English language, exit ghost. You can think about that for a while. But, yeah, I think you need that. What's scaring me with AI a little bit. It's now learned to. It learns dramatic function of Shakespeare. So he knows about catharsis and act structure and it. And that will then use that to obviously, you know, increase its ability to tell stories. But I. I think people can tell stories in any way they can. I think you just do what you think is comfortable. I think one thing I've. I've learned, and I think I learned this, oddly, a little bit from Bob Dylan just by osmosis, that anything's culturally appropriate in a sense that you can use anybody else's work to. If it encourages you, it creates for you something that you hadn't thought about. And then it becomes a wide kind of mass of what bubbles over in you. Something maybe beautiful or corny, you know, or that. I remember I was writing something in. There was an Emmy Lou Harris duet with, like, I think, Lefty Frizzell or somebody, you know, and it was like. It was always very moving to me, and it always kind of just stuck with me. But it helped me to then use that, to appropriate that to not a particular song, but that sound, whatever that felt like, to be able to try to articulate that. So I think there's, you know, haikus and there's. I wrote a movie a long time ago for. And I haven't told this story, so not that much for Kurosawa. And he had asked me to help make an Anglo character in his movie called Rhapsody in August. And we talked through a translator, but he'd sent me the script, which was translated, and it was like a haiku. I mean, it was just so beautiful. Just an ant on an ant hill. And however he was describing things, and it was really, really quite lovely. And then I realized I wrote in this kind of Jewish intellectual, psychiatric kind of prosy. You know, it was so. So different from what the beautiful way he was explaining things. And. And, you know, any artist will do things differently than another, and. But I think they all kind of have to borrow from each other and also have to learn through some experience, you know. So you don't get to be Kandinsky or something without spending the time, you know, learning to be candid. Ski. And you don't get to be Rick Rubin without learning how to be you
- [05:34]
Interviewer
on the psychological Note. Have you ever done therapy?
- [05:38]
Eric Roth
I have some. Not much. I had done it individually for a while in like. Like late 60s, early 70s. I found myself kind of straying with my married life, let's put it that way. And I did a lot of hallucinogenics, all kinds, you know, with privately and also with, like, people like Jerry Garcia and stuff. I mean, in other words, lots. Lots. Lots of, you know, acid tests and everything else. And so, yeah, I had one psychiatrist I found was very enlightening, let's put it that way. And my problem is I get too hung up on kind of the style of the. Of the psychiatrist. But they've been incredibly helpful. Then I became psychologists, obviously, when they started just prescribing drugs. She was pretty amazing. Yes. She was not. She wasn't intrusive at all. Very sensitive. And I thought she led us in great areas. Yeah. So that's psychiatry to me.
- [06:37]
Interviewer
How did you connect with a police psychologist?
- [06:39]
Eric Roth
Somebody made a recommendation, just her being really strong and. Yeah, I mean, she was really unobtrusive and let us kind of fight it out, you know, where we had to, and love it out where we could. And it was important. Yeah, she was a great facilitator that way. Have you done much psychiatry at all?
- [06:59]
Interviewer
Done a lot of therapy of different kinds?
- [07:01]
Eric Roth
Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And I think it's important. Yeah.
- [07:05]
Interviewer
Been helpful.
- [07:06]
Eric Roth
Yeah. I think that's part of what. When I sort of introduce myself to you, that I want to go back to that in some form or fashion, whether it's with a Orthodox rabbi or, you know, a shaman.
- [07:19]
Interviewer
You know, what motivated you to reach out in the first place?
- [07:23]
Eric Roth
Oh, well. Oh, no. This is why. Because I've been having these kind of incredible. I call them the porch sessions. You know, these guys during. I don't know why. Right before, I guess more during the pandemic, people just started coming over, want to sit on the porch and talk. And we could talk six feet away. And I don't know. I think it's more. They were like Old Man Roth, you know, what does he have to say? And all these people just started showing up. You know, it's like, sometimes announced, sometimes not announced. And they've always been, I'm sorry I didn't tape them. Even though I understand. Since we have a ring camera. They're all on there. And I was talking to Judd Apatow, who we both know together, and a couple other people, too, who love you, James Gray and a few other people, and really kind people and I saying, I've just been enjoying this enlightening conversation about things that I wouldn't necessarily normally think about, you know, and how does it affect my work and my children and everything. And everybody said Rick Rubin. And so it was pretty easy, you know. And then I thought. I figured when I text you, you would just never text back. And I thought that was cool, too, you know, that'd be fine. But you've been very generous your time.
- [08:42]
Interviewer
Tell me about the first time you took a hallucinogenic drug.
- [08:47]
Eric Roth
Wow. First time I was with a group of people in Hate Ashbury, truthfully, which sounds kind of corny. And someone said, try this. And I. I'm always willing to try, you know. And I've had some pretty scary things, but not, I mean, where I never minded, like, the floor opening up, you know, or all of a sudden I was, you know, sitting in a cloud. Or I think I had once experience of feeling like I was having an affair with Time magazine, which was pretty interesting. You know. I don't know what that was all about, but I never felt that I was going to become psychotic, you know, But I could see how it could become psychotic for somebody who has really tremendous fear, you know, and unresolved things and. But I think, you know, from just playing with marijuana and stuff, you know, and having a lovely time through the whatever, you know, the eroticism of it or just the taste of a brownie or some nonsense, you know, but that I always felt it was expansive to my mind. I was never. I never liked cocaine, though. I just don't like that feeling. I mean, I guess I'm more toward. I'm not advocating this anyway, but heroin or something, you know, more mescaline then or, you know. But I mean, I think drugs have a purpose, you know, And I guess it's. I've always been interested in trying to find out what's the limits of what I'm trying to think about, you know, and where all this comes from. I mean, to me, the greatest story where I said to Bob Dylan with the Bob Dylan thing was that in his book called Chronicles, he talks about. He was at the time with Daniel Lenoir, who I'm sure you knew or know quite well. I think he's gone now, but he was struggling creatively, Bob Dylan. And he took a trip out to, like, the Bayou, because they were, I think, working in New Orleans or something, and they went out to Lafayette. He said he had walked into. In his book, he said he'd walked into a gift shop and he Sort of found the secret to everything. It was a card that said world's Greatest Grandpa. And so that somehow put together whatever he was struggling with, you know, And I thought, yeah, sometimes it's the most simple thing. Yeah.
- [11:00]
Interviewer
Do you feel like you're the same person now as you were before? You took any hallucinogens?
- [11:07]
Eric Roth
No, no, not at all. I think the same person's in there, but I think it's been reinformed in a way, you know, that at least it opened up the possibilities of things. But I don't want to emphasize this because my life hasn't been, you know, particularly about that. I mean, I think that's a nice afterthought in a sense. I mean, I'm way more interested in. For me, for. The creative process is really important. And these things I mentioned earlier about what am I. What sources am I taking this from? What I do as a screenwriter is kind of a bastardized form of. It's more of a craft than an art. You can be artful at it, but it's. It's not a novel, you know, to fill a page up. A lot of ellipses and half thoughts, but strong visuals, you know, and. But it's a form of writing, you know, and it's like I've been lucky enough to. People have appreciated, I think, some of the things I had to impart, you know. One of my proudest was more recently with the actor Josh Brolin. I had written a play of High Noon. We were considering that. He was considering, and he was very close and wrote a play of High Noon because they had never had a drama on Broadway, a western drama on Broadway. And I was told that Josh was telling people about. He decided not to do it, but that his philosophy at the time, at least more recently, was a Scott Fitzgerald story, more of an essay, to an extent, about. About life and death and this and that. And he was telling people about it. It turned out. I had written. Was from when I did Benjamin Button. And I had written a speech toward the end of it. It was actually a speech that Nora Ephron asked me, who was planning her funeral, asked me if she could use it. But it's funny how they attributed to Epscott Fitzgerald, who I couldn't hold a candle to, you know. But in this one instance, it's pretty. It's pretty powerful, I think about. Just about life and about how there's no rules or anything, you know, as long as you're not hurting anybody else. And you can. If you're not succeeding at what you want to. You can just stop and change it. You know, it's easier said than done, obviously. But at least you can have. If you have the courage to go and try something else.
- [13:30]
Interviewer
The idea of a Western on Broadway is a really cool idea. I like that.
- [13:34]
Eric Roth
Thank you. Yeah, I think it's a pretty powerful play that. The play itself is very powerful. It's about the blacklist, really. And the movie was. And Gary Cooper and all, and sort of American iconography of the whole thing. And it's about guns and, you know. But I think I made it hopefully a contemporary way. And I mean, you'd appreciate this, since this is your metier anyway, is I'm trying to put some contemporary music in it so that it feels. And the songs are all apt. I mean, there's that Ry Cooter song Across the Borderline. And then somebody you know quite well and I actually know, knew earlier than you. Johnny Cash song, which was from Nick Lowe, the Beast in Me, which he used on the Sopranos. Yeah. When I was younger, I was asked by the cabaret department at William Morris. I was a client of William Morris, and I was pretty young to travel with a bunch of artists. And they were all just kind of basically jerking off, wanting these little video ideas. You know, there was no MTV then or anything. And so I rode on the buses with Johnny, with the Cash family. And that was really interesting. And then Van Morrison was singing with his back to the audience at that point. And then, of course, great Jerry Garcia, you know.
- [14:52]
Interviewer
So how much do your experiences work their way into your work?
- [14:57]
Eric Roth
Well, I think they do, but I try to make it what. I think it's more about what the feeling is than the experience itself, necessarily. I mean, the best kind of writing, which I still don't think I've mastered in any way, is subtextual writing, which is probably true about music, too, or certainly about filmmakers. I know. I think Marty Scorsese is a great subtextual filmmaker because he. Even in, like a Taxi Driver, all of a sudden there'd be some graffiti on a wall that he decided to show you. But the graffiti didn't say anything of any value. It was just a sense this is an art and this is part of the city, you know, so he expressed a lot that way. But, you know, the worst kind of writing is kind of Ernie the Explainer, you know, it's like, Good morning, Mr. Water Commissioner, that kind of writing. So you want to try to find a way to have someone articulate what their most intimate concerns are through some other story about something, you know, if you're creating it, fine. Or if it's a true story, it comes from life. And that says the same thing. Without having to do this kind of thing with big headlines, it's a hard thing to do. I think the, I think the great musicians do it. I mean, I think they do it through. The lyrics are just spectacular. You know, where they. They don't necessarily talk about what they're talking about, but you know what they're talking about.
- [16:26]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
As nutrition science advanced through the mid 20th century, researchers began to understand that modern eating patterns, limited variety, processed foods and time constraints could leave small but meaningful gaps in daily micronutrient intake. Today, large population studies confirm that approximately 90% of adults fall short on one or more essential vitamins or minerals. AG1 was formulated in response to those findings. Each daily serving provides more than 75 vitamins, minerals and whole food sources sourced nutrients, including vitamins A, C, E, B6, B12, magnesium, zinc, selenium and iodine. A scientifically developed formula backed by nutrition research and delivered in forms the body can readily access because utilization depends on absorption. AG1 also contains probiotics to support gut health and digestive function, helping the body make effective use of what it receives. AG1 contains no gluten or dairy, uses no genetically modified ingredients or artificial sweeteners, and is suitable for a wide range of dietary approaches including plant based paleo, keto and low carbohydrate diets. Available in single serving packets for when you're on the go. Manufactured under strict quality controls, every batch of AG1 is tested to confirm its composition, nutrient levels and the absence of contaminants, ensuring reliability from one serving to the next. It's no wonder AG1 is trusted by the world's top athletes and experts. What was once a futuristic concept, daily nutritional support in a glass, is now the result of applied science. Learn more@drink ag1.com petra do it today.
- [18:39]
Interviewer
When you're adapting a story, how do you decide what's important enough to keep and what you can let go of?
- [18:46]
Eric Roth
That's a great question because you know, every book that's been given to me, I sit and I read it, right? And I start underlining what I think. This could be dramatically interesting in this. And all of a sudden the whole book literally is underlined. So now, now what do I do? You know? But I think he also gives you a sense of what you're very smart about as to what you're not going to use, because you, you can start Coalescing things into where one dramatic moment takes care of four or five. Now, I always warn the author that it might not seem akin to what you wrote, but it will be, in other words. So I hope, you know, I hope it will make it better, if that's possible. Or at least it will. It's just a different form. Because I guess my calling is I'm a dramatist, I guess. Right. Hopefully some humor along the way, but that if I'm able to somehow express the human condition in an honest way and somebody could take something from it, just even in its entertainment, something as farcical as far as Gump or something, you know, which was silly at its heart, but there's something was constant about it. And then there are, I think, some more sophisticated movies like the Insider that I did, and a few others that. That I think articulated things that were important, you know, society.
- [20:06]
Interviewer
Tell me the story of the Insider.
- [20:08]
Eric Roth
The Insider was a. A guy who wanted to basically get his pension. That's all it was. He was going to retire. His wife was a daughter of a tobacco farmer. He was a very complicated man because he was scientist, legitimate scientist, had a PhD in something, chemistry or something. But you wonder what he was thinking. He was working for the tobacco company, so he was sort of advocating, you know, the poison that they were putting out there. And he knew all about it, knew what was wrong. He could tell you in a second about the blood brain barrier. And I happened to smoke at the time, so I was aware of it. I couldn't talk to him, though, because he was under a kind of a hold from the government. He wasn't allowed to talk. So we had to create kind of a guy in whole cloth. I mean, who was this man? But the first thing I remember saying, what kind of guy is a tobacco scientist? He didn't want really very much. He just wanted to retire and wanted his pension, wasn't even very much. But when they said, we're not going to give you your pension, he said, well, I'm going to start talking about what's wrong with this industry, you know. And he was pretty brave. He was a pretty brave guy. He was a very prickly guy. When I finally did get to meet him, anyway, that was a story, and it dovetailed with 60 Minutes, the television show. They did a report on him and then they squelched it because the tobacco companies didn't want it. But also the government was kind of involved. And it became very complicated with the personalities. Mike Wallace, the interviewer, the great journalist, because I think he was a great journalist. He was unafraid. And so they tried to not run the story, which made the producer nuts and said, what about the integrity of cbs? And so it became a lot about honorability, you know. And I remember Mike Wallace calling me journalist. There was a man named Lowell Bergman, whose story it was. He was a producer of the thing. He was very brave and he was a great reporter. And he is yelling at me, Michael Wallace. Well, what makes moral. What makes Lo Bergman the moral fucking arbiter? And this and that. So I just wrote it down so it's in the movie.
- [22:26]
Interviewer
Wow, that's great.
- [22:28]
Eric Roth
Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't have said it. Couldn't have said it any better, you know.
- [22:31]
Interviewer
Yeah. How often does that happen where real life works its way into the story?
- [22:36]
Eric Roth
If you have real life people and this happened in this Killers of the Flower Moon, where we imagine various things that we wanted the Osage to say, you know, and then there was no way I could say it as well as. Or Marty or anybody else could say as well as the real people. I mean, we can give them. We could give them sort of the ideas we want maybe them to express. And then they turned it into what was affecting them as human beings and their life stories, you know, So I could have never written that. My kid from Brooklyn, you know, I have no clue. The only other instance that comes right off the top of my head, it would be on Star is Born. I said to Lady Gaga, let's just sit down here and talk and I'll write dialogue for you from what you're telling me, you know, so if you see. And Bradley did the same thing, Cooper, and like the scene in the parking lot where they're just sitting sort of bullshitting. Well, most of that's written, but it made her comfortable, you know, so that when the real person shows up, they have, you know, either limitations or abilities that you don't even know. And she's an interesting human being because the thing that was so striking about her, we were doing a read through and the songs were in there. There was no need for anybody to sing them. Bradley Cooper would just sort of talk them through. But she started singing and God showed up. You know, I'm sure, you know, that she has something amazing. Yeah. That you can't. So you have to work with, I think, who the person is. I mean, old story. Russell Crowe was not. He didn't understand certain things about his character and the insider. So Michael Mann had me fly down to Louisville. He said he won't come out of his trailer, all that nonsense. And so I went in there and did Rick Rubin with him and said, is there a way we can find a happy medium here? And I explained the scene again to him, and he said, I'll try it eventually. And Michael, the director is just trying to avoid having a continuing fight with him, which wouldn't have been very productive.
- [24:36]
Interviewer
Let's use that case as an example. When there's a log jam like that, what's really going on? What's it really about?
- [24:46]
Eric Roth
I think he had fear. He was afraid. In other words, if an actor feels he doesn't understand it, whether he's right or wrong, I mean, you need to find a way to articulate to them what you intended. And that doesn't mean you end up with the exact same thing. The Insider again. I got a call one morning from Al Pacino saying I had written like a page and a half monologue. And Al said, I could do this with one look. And I said, let me ask Michael. I have no problem with it. And so Michael said, let's shoot it both ways. And they left. The look in all the words I wrote were out the window, you know. Cause he could do it without, you know, without necessarily. And I feel that's fine.
- [25:25]
Interviewer
As a writer, that's something that you can't account for or prepare for. An actor who can get the story across without saying the words, there's no way to prepare for that. There's no way to write for that.
- [25:36]
Eric Roth
No. Except for, I think after a while you get the experience of that. Certainly less is more if you can, you know. Even though I think there's some great monologues. And then as some directors just go like this, you know, cut. We'll take it out. Because I had a thing recently on a. I think a pretty particularly beautiful movie that I just finished called Here. We'll see if it works. It might be a disaster. It's all set in one room, over 100 years in a house. And the camera's locked off, so there's no coverage. It's just one angle. But the stories are beautiful of other people that live there. And so you don't know what to anticipate, you know. But I know I feel the storytelling is very solid.
- [26:19]
Interviewer
How did that come about?
- [26:20]
Eric Roth
Bob Zemeckis, the director, Forrest Gump and I have a nice relationship over the years. And I've done some other work for him. And he called me and he felt, it's a graphic novel called Here and the artist grew Everything from this point of view, everything was one way. Through a window. Well, not through a window, but you see a window in the back. So he said, you have the right melancholy for it. So maybe I do. I don't know. But I also have a sense of my mortality, which is what it's about eventually. So I could write that. And then he put in some. He's very humorous and kind of farcical and lovely and. But it's about everything because the dinosaurs walk through. Because anything that happened in that property, marsh, birds, and it's quite beautiful. We'll see. Maybe it won't work. I think the tone is right. I start crying like a baby in the first five minutes. But I think it was because the Rachel Portman music was on it. That was really beautiful. So I don't know, but we'll see.
- [27:21]
Interviewer
How do most projects originate? Does it usually start with you getting a call from a director or what are the different ways that a project will happen?
- [27:32]
Eric Roth
I think there's every one you can imagine. You know, like we did one recently, I did with my son called Walt Grace. It's from a John Mayer song, an old John Mayer. I don't know if you know the song. John loves it. And I didn't know John, but my son asked me, do you think this is a good idea for a movie? I said, it's great. It's about a guy who is kind of trapped in life. Doesn't have a great relationship with his wife. He has one kid that does love him. One kid doesn't or doesn't have a good relationship with them. And he has kind of a Groundhog Day life. He designs wings for, like, Lockheed. It's supposed to be set in 1967. And he decides to build a submarine in the basement, which I don't know how he's going to get it out of there. But in ours, it's like an outbuilding, a garage. And sure enough, he takes off in a homemade submarine where he's got, you know, propellers are made of fans and from the ceiling. And he's gone to the junkyard, and it's spectacular. So there's a. There's also a feeling. Yellow submarine with it, I think. But it's quite lovely. I think we have some people who seem to want to do it actually now. So we'll see. And John Mayer will do the music, I guess. But. So that's one way it came. Things come. Others are just books sent to me, you know, would I be interested? And it's really about the subject. And then directors Denis Villeneuve asked me to rewrite Arrival, which I did. And then. And then he asked me to do Dune, you know, so we had a relationship, and Dune was a little complicated for me because it wasn't my favorite book ever written, but it was an interesting assignment as to how to make this the best. And I tried.
- [29:06]
Interviewer
You know, it's one that's been attempted many times over the years, and.
- [29:11]
Eric Roth
Yeah, there's been history. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tricky. I think you did a good job. I think it's. My problem with it was I'm being a little too honest, probably, but that there's a character named Duncan Idaho in it. Now. This isn't a translation. I mean, we're supposed to be millions and millions. I said, where does this name come from? You know, I understand it's a translation of whatever you want, Jam O Jackass. But it's not. So I always. But I think it's a prodigious book because he invented a glossary and a geography and everything else, and it was a surprise. I mean, I think Star Is Born was the most important movie in the more recent times. Not because it's a great movie. I think it is a good movie. And. And certainly I love the fact it put me more in touch with the young people, because young people really seem to enjoy it, even though it's an old story. But it made me feel vital, you know? And so I was in my 70s, so I said, you can still write that, huh? That, I think, gave me a. You know, I'm not saying I was done, but it did so well. And then all of a sudden, they figure, I know something still. You know, it's just ridiculous.
- [30:18]
Interviewer
Is it different writing for a theatrical release versus something that's going to be watched on a streaming service?
- [30:25]
Eric Roth
Well, that's a great question, because I have tremendous guilt about. I began House of Cards, so Fincher, who's my best friend, I guess, in the world, one of the more loyal people you would ever meet, and I hope you have a time to meet him. He decided to do it with me. And I had actually been aware of it from earlier when we had seen the English version that Pacino and I and Michael Mann were going to make, make it as a movie, because it's just Richard iii. It's like, you know, you think these guys are so tough. Watch me go in this room and fuck them. And then he'd go in the room and fuck them.
- [31:01]
Interviewer
How's the English version? I've never seen it.
- [31:03]
Eric Roth
It's the same thing basically. It's just that the guy is not. He never wants to go past the station in life. He is, which is sort of the whip of the party, in other words. And he's going to just manipulate everybody. You know, it's, it's succession in that way, I guess. Or succession is that, you know, and, but it caught on. I, I wanted to sell it to HBO figuring we just get water cooler conversation like the Sopranos or something. But people started benching it, you know, and all of a sudden these eyeballs became available and I'm not happy about particularly the results. You know, I still fortunately get to write movies that are. That doesn't mean they don't go right on streaming, but they start at least with the idea. But the only one, I think if there hadn't been a pandemic, I think Dune would have played for quite a while. But with the pandemic, people just sat and watched at home.
- [31:57]
Interviewer
Is there any benefit in that idea of binge watching or episodes that you can tell a story over 6 hours, 10 hours, season after season, as opposed to having to get it into a two hour film?
- [32:10]
Eric Roth
I've just been presented with that and I'm not sure the answer. It's the same Dennis Johnson. I thought how come they haven't done a movie about the guys who came home from war, right? Because every other era has done the best years of our Lives, a movie called the Men that Marlon Brando was in Coming Home, of course, famous one about Vietnam. So they haven't done that for this war, these wars, the Afghanistan, Iraq stuff. And the guys are obviously in bad shape. And so I, I was going to write that and Spielberg came to me with something else and I started conflict. And the head of the studio said, why don't you sell it to hbo? So I did. And he said, they said, who do you want to write as Dennis Johnson? They didn't know who he even was. And I said, I'm getting him. And he wrote five of the most amazing scripts are called Unarmed. Everybody in, it's an amputee or a burn victim. And the only triumph of is one guy to walk across the street to leave. And it is so spectacular. And it's all written, as I say, in this subtextual way. And we're close now. Kathryn Bigelow might do it, but it's important, I think, and we get to use all. We would have all disabled actors, disabled veterans and disabled civilians. And I think it'd be Pretty incredible. I mean, years ago I was gonna do Cuckoo's Nest and my agent said, they'll never make it. Jack Nicholson was not involved. And so. And I was friends with Michael Douglas, really good friends. And so I went off to do a movie called Onion Field, but then they got Jack Nicholson and I went, oh my God, I fucked a dog here, man. But I did come back and do rewriting, which was nice, but that has the same tenor of this, the black humor and anger, you know, so I'm hoping that we'll be able to do this. We'll see. You know,
- [34:05]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
so much of today's life happens on the web. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy using one of Squarespace's best in class templates. With the built in style kit, you can change fonts, imagery, margins and menus so your design will be perfectly tailored to your needs. Discover unbreakable creativity with Fluid Engine, a highly intuitive drag and drop editor. No coding or technical experience is required. Understand your site's performance with in depth website analytics tools. Squarespace has everything you need to succeed online. Create a blog, monetize a newsletter. Make a marketing portfolio. Launch an online store. The Squarespace app helps you run your business from anywhere. Track inventory and connect with customers while you're on the go. Whether you're just starting out or already managing a successful brand, Squarespace makes it easy to create and customize a beautiful website. Visit squarespace.com tetra and get started today.
- [35:35]
Interviewer
From the time you finish a script and you're happy with it, how different might the movie be than what you're visualizing when you're writing?
- [35:44]
Eric Roth
They all vary. I mean, I think sometimes events take over. I'd say the movie is different from what the original was with Killers of Flower Moon. I think it might be a more important movie. I had leaned into the western nature of it, and then Leonardo decided he didn't want to play the hero. And he was right because he was worried that I'm going to be the great white hope here, you know, saving the Native Americans. And that's what the book was. And it just happens to be fact. But so we went away from that and they did that. Marty did his work and saw the movie. He always was. We always tried together to get the culpability of everybody, that people would just walk over dead bodies, you know, in other words, what is that all about? I mean, there's even a great trailer about saying, who is the wolf? You know, and that's the metaphor, right? You can spot the wolf, don't worry. And I think they leaned into it the right way. And so that the movie doesn't have that sense of having to do what sort of the white guy saving everybody. But it's not done in a kind of. I don't want to put her down, Rachel Maddow. But it's not done with headlines, you know, it's done with great taste. I think Marty's. He's an extraordinary artist and I would work with him. When we're going to work again together, I'll work to the end of time with him, you know. But he's not always faithful to what you did. So you have to have pretty strong ego, you know.
- [37:10]
Interviewer
Well, that's what I wanted to ask about, about not being faithful. Are you ever surprised by the direction it takes? And do you ever come around to think, oh, this is actually better than what I had originally envisioned?
- [37:21]
Eric Roth
For sure. For sure. And I also think things have gone where they haven't gone as well as they could have, for sure. I did a movie called Lucky youy that I never understood. I found out why later on that the director had Alzheimer's, but I never understood why he wanted to do it. I figured, oh, he's going to come in and do something about. It's about a love story set in Las Vegas with a poker player and Drew Barrymore and Eric Bana. And I thought it was pretty good. And I actually took it from. There was a movie that Elizabeth Taylor did with Warren Beatty called the Only Game in Town, and that was about her playing basically a hooker, even though they don't call it that. They didn't call it that then. And he's just a degenerate gambler. And at the end of the movie is quite beautiful, where he's sitting on the curb and water's running down the curb. And you figure he's just dead broke, man, he's got nothing left. And she comes, sits beside him and he sort of says, that's the way it goes, you know, if you're gonna be a gambler. And he starts taking out $100 bills and making them into little boats and running them down the river, right? So guess it worked out. But that was supposed to be the feeling of it, you know, what is luck and all that. And it didn't work. It was just no good. So I don't know. I guess I was disappointed. But I think you have to rely on. The director's going to realize something, you know, you have to hope they have something. I mean, I have a sort of philosophy that. And I've worked with everybody, that you have to take a third way. You know, there's your way, there's a director's way. And the director's always going to win. One of the stories I tell occasionally is I did a movie called this was the Onion Field, actually. And I wrote a. I thought a great scene. And the director kept saying, it's not working. And I said, yeah, it's really great. Just shoot it. And he said, you know what? I'm going to go the other way. I'm going to leave it in the script and not shoot it. And that was the end of that conversation. It wasn't very kind, and I don't think it was very brave of him. But that's the way it goes, you know. So you gotta figure out a way to be part of what they need to articulate what their vision is, you know, and they're the boss. And when this is a film by. I don't think it's bullshit. I think it's their film. It's like a musician. And it doesn't go any other way. I think, you know, did a movie called Mank, which was about the guy fighting for credit with Orson Welles, you know, on Citizen Kane. And he set the ball, no question. He set the boat off with the right architecture and the right journey. But director's got to take it there, you know? And if you don't get there and get to the right place, you're. It's not worth seeing.
- [39:56]
Interviewer
Do you do a lot of research for the projects?
- [39:58]
Eric Roth
Tremendous amount. I like every God is in the details. You know that. Yeah, I do. But everything. I think everything I read at that point is all grist for the mill, you know. And that's why I'm Back to at 78, particularly, what are the things that are going to define. So I'm doing a thing called Rendezvous with Rama, which is an old Arthur Clark book that they've made. It's not that they made 2001 out of. It was written around the same time, same philosophy. And I have an astronaut that's been helping me. And he said when he went out of the spacecraft, he just laid back like he was in a bath and looked up at stars, you know. And so I said, okay, so if I can get that feeling. Because I think the feeling of this particular piece really dovetails to the things I've been thinking about. That the thing that comes and interrupts these people's world doesn't have to have a reason. It might just be God. And some of the people who. Who are like, kind of religious believe in this 21:30, that Jesus showed up sent by God from the planets. And he just showed up and, you know, Palestine or Israel, wherever you'd like, and did what he did. And then they crucified him. He went back up to the planets, you know, and that he's still doing that, you know, so everybody adapts, you know, to whatever their era is. But I think this overriding sense and I. I don't think you can escape it. You get a particular age. Doesn't mean you have to dwell on it to where it immobilizes you, but I think it spans your horizons, you know, and that's a good way to
- [41:40]
Interviewer
say it, I guess, when you're writing, let's say, a monologue for character, how important is the content of what they're saying versus this is a great line.
- [41:52]
Eric Roth
I mean, you would like to be, say, presidentially, that you just want to put the. No, no, I know, but I'm sure you.
- [41:58]
Interviewer
There's no right answer. I mean, there's only your.
- [42:00]
Eric Roth
I think there. I get. Yeah, but I mean. But I think it's kind of narcissistic to think only dwell on what you think will last. You know, maybe the whole speech will last and it's more important that way. But I don't know if I really think about it either way. I mean, I think I try to write what's human. It's just what I do. Someone called me a sappy dog heart. I try to write that will be remembered. I like the fact that I built a legacy of things that I think I chose pretty well. You know, not always. We've had some monster failures, but I think pretty well. And I still think I continue to choose pretty well. And I. I mean, I have other issues. So it gets more complicated. So my mother was very tough on giving love. And so I always felt I needed some validation, right? And I still do. And my wife says to me, 80 years old, you feel like you need validation. You need, like, an Oscar nominee. I saw. I said, I don't want to, but it's like, I want to go call my mom said, look at my report card. You know what I'm saying? So there's your psychiatry again. It's like, yeah, I'm like, I don't know if I'm getting over it or not. I don't know. Yeah, I'd like to.
- [43:11]
Interviewer
That's an interesting thing, though. When our parents pass away, who do you call, you know, when you get good news? You don't have that. That feeling.
- [43:19]
Eric Roth
No, no. You don't have that thing that you could just share, you know, that you really love sharing, you know? Yeah, I think that's true. I guess. I think they do with my wife, maybe, you know, she's a. She's a doctor, and she's pretty supportive, but she doesn't quite get this world I'm in, you know, she. This is different, you know, she. She relies strictly on science. Whatever you say, it's got to be accurate. You know what I'm saying? You can't just make it up. I remember Fincher being angry at me because. And Benjamin Button. I had some silly speech about. With Brad Pitt in the middle of the night at the hotel. I gave her some bullshit about how you have to steep tea and this and that, you know, And David said, this is such nonsense, you know, and he left it in.
- [44:07]
Interviewer
Have you ever had a mystical experience?
- [44:10]
Eric Roth
I think 1. It ended up pleasant. It wasn't pleasant. I had had cancer a couple times in my life. I've been very sick a lot, but I cancer twice. And the first time I was just 32, and it was directly from my grandfather, colon cancer. And in those days, they just bombarded you. I mean, they just didn't really quite know, you know. And I remember laying in bed and. And I'm not religious, and I'm certainly not Catholic. And an angel showed up and sort of form of a nun kind of. And. And she says, time to go. And I said, I don't really want to. Want to go yet. And I love my wife and I love my kids, and can we just forestall this, you know? And she thought about it. I said, okay. So. I don't know. That was my wish fulfillment, you know, but it felt real. It felt real beautiful. I mean, the other thing, the other side of it, the bad side of it is when I. I think when I get afraid or I don't want to see certain things. I imagine rats are going around. I see a rat run across the ceiling or something, you know, something weird like that. That's about as mystical. I haven't got. I think I feel more mystical when I'm writing, that I can feel what imbues me, you know, what makes me sore and at least makes me feel like I'm soaring and. I don't know. I wish I could say I did. Mystical. I'm not sure I completely believe in Magic. So I wish I did. So, I mean, I think that's. I'd like to learn how to.
- [45:40]
Interviewer
Honestly, when you've had that feeling of soaring while you're writing, is it just that the lines are coming? It's like, oh, this is good, this is good, this is good. Describe it.
- [45:49]
Eric Roth
It feels like you've. I love to go swimming in a lake in the summer where it's just cold and feels like you're coming alive, you know? And that's what it feels like. And you don't have to judge it. And you don't even know because it's so corny the way I do it. I say out loud, the dialogue and the worst acting known to man, that voices never change, you know, any of that. And yet you feel like, wait a minute, you're not Mozart. This isn't coming right to you. You only have to erase a fucking note, you know? But you do feel like you're imbued with something. I don't know what it is. And I guess that's a creative spirit that you. And if it works, it's great. Even if it doesn't work, if you can try it out, why not, you know?
- [46:30]
Interviewer
Do you always write dialogue out loud?
- [46:33]
Eric Roth
Pretty much. I have this. I say just characters. It's so bad, it's embarrassing.
- [46:37]
Interviewer
So you'll basically act it out for yourself.
- [46:41]
Eric Roth
It's less acting. I sort of almost whisper it, you know, like to see. I don't know why. Just to see if it feels right, I guess. And I also learned a long time ago, there was a director, Michael Cimino, and he had prepared a wallet for Mickey Rourke. So Mickey Rourke knew where he came from. I'm sure Mickey Rourke never looked at the wallet, but it had a fortune from a fortune cookie in there, a picture of his daughter, his draft card and this and that. And his point was that every single character has to have their own voice. Every single character has to have their own psychological makeup, that they came from something, they're going to go somewhere. And I. I took that to heart. So I think that's a big key about how with the dialogue kind of thing, that everybody sounds different and interesting and doesn't have a follow B and says something off the cuff. And I mean, in other words, where you try to make it as real as possible.
- [47:34]
Interviewer
Do you know all of that about the characters before you start? Or does their character come into focus as you're writing?
- [47:42]
Eric Roth
As I'm writing, pretty much. Unless there's something so defined for them in A book or something where you don't want to make the audience go crazy, you know? No, I think like this one I'm writing with, this Rendezvous with Rama. It's a thing called that. That I've slowly kind of made this commander, the ship into somebody that was not really there and whatever I felt he should be, you know, and you just start describing things like, you know, I think I wrote that he has. He's very taciturn, but he has a great sense of irony or something, you know, so wherever that took me, you know, that was my first impression of him. And then a lot of. It's just. What I will say is that I think every movie I wrote, except for Munich, began and end with the exact same scene I wrote. Almost everyone. Yeah.
- [48:32]
Interviewer
And do you start with the beginning and the ending? Is that typical?
- [48:36]
Eric Roth
Typical. Always want to know where I am to begin with and where I end. The middle is a big mess. Have no clue, which is, I think, part of the fun. You get to take a journey, you know, and discover people and things and things you'd never expect. If you do it well, great. If you don't do it so well, it's not so pretty, but it's. Yeah, I mean, I think it's wonderful. And then I'll find that I'll really struggle over the first, like 25, 30 pages or 20 pages, and think I'm just not going to get through this. And all of a sudden on page 70, you know what I'm saying? And then you're done. Something unlocks something, and I never fight it. Which I think is what happens with people with, like, when they get this fear of continuing, you know, in the blank page and all that stuff. Writer's block. I just change the weather, in other words, make it rain or snow. And all of a sudden you look at it differently, you know.
- [49:25]
Interviewer
Do you always change the weather for story, or do you ever do something to change your condition, to allow the change?
- [49:31]
Eric Roth
I think I do both. Yeah. I think that will lead me to do something differently. Yeah.
- [49:37]
Interviewer
Like might you go for a drive or, you know, do something different instead of just sitting at the desk?
- [49:42]
Eric Roth
That's exactly right. No, that's exactly right. I'm very hidebound and kind of this has to do with, I think, with being born in the late 40s and being a 50s and 60s kid and that. Look at it as a job in that way. I mean, I formally go to work. I get up, you know, whatever time, same day, as it's gotten earlier, as I'VE gotten older and try to do the Marshall McLuhan thing, stretch out the amount of hours available. But this came for a little bit from John Cheever who I'd read got up at 7 or 6:30, got dressed, puts his hat on, his tie on, his suit on, took the commuter train into New York, had rented a small basement, I think basement boiler kind of room, place under apartment building where he worked from, took his pants off, folded them really neatly, sat in his underwear, took his hat off, wrote, wrote, wrote, wrote. 12 o' clock chime went off, got up, went and had a three martini lunch, came back, wrote till four, put the suit back on, went to the computer, you know, took the computer trade home. And so he felt that was a job. I mean there's a lot, a lot of artists do that. A lot don't, you know, So I don't think there's no rule for it. The same way you asked about how do you approach these things and what would you, you know, is everybody's different how they did? I think I'm sure you find every musician you work with is different.
- [51:01]
Interviewer
You know, can you work on more than one project at a time?
- [51:06]
Eric Roth
Try not to. But the good news would be if they start dovetailing where you're rewriting one and starting another, I have the next year pretty well laid out. After that, we'll see. You know, in a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something
- [51:25]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
different, something clean, something precise. Athletic nicotine. Not the primitive products found behind convenience store counters. Not the aggressive buzz that leaves you
- [51:39]
Eric Roth
jittery, but a careful calibration of clean energy and focused clarity.
- [51:44]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Athletic Nicotine the lowest dose tobacco free nicotine available.
- [51:49]
Eric Roth
Made entirely in the usa.
- [51:52]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
No artificial sweetness, just pure, purposeful elevation. Athletic nicotine is a performance nootropic. Athletic nicotine is a tool for shifting mindset. Athletic nicotine is a partner in pursuit of excellence. Slow release, Low dose, Gradual lift, Sustained energy. Soft landing, inspired results. Athletic Nicotine More focus, Less static. Athletic Nicotine More clarity.
- [52:24]
Eric Roth
Less noise.
- [52:25]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Athletic Nicotine More active accuracy.
- [52:29]
Eric Roth
Less anxiety.
- [52:31]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Athletic Nicotine from top athletes pushing their limits to artists pursuing their vision. Athletic nicotine offers the lift you've been looking for. Learn more@aintocraticnicotine.com Tetra and experience next level performance with athletic nicotine.
- [52:49]
Eric Roth
Warning. This product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [52:56]
Interviewer
Does the breakthrough moment happen at the beginning of a project? Like let's say you're asked to adapt a book, you read the book and as soon as you have an idea of, this is my way in. Is that the big breakthrough or does it happen later?
- [53:11]
Eric Roth
It can do either. Like, I read a book called Damnation Spring. I was looking at the book that I assumed it was gonna be about something. It quite wasn't. But I'm gonna make it about what I thought it was gonna be.
- [53:24]
Interviewer
That's great.
- [53:25]
Eric Roth
I thought it was about. Yeah, I thought it was gonna be about Moby Dick with the redwood trees. It's about a logger and his sort of cantankerous kind of guy and cutting down trees. Cutting down trees. And it's not quite the story. And I wanted to make this guy be tall as redwood as his Moby Dick, you know. And eventually, I don't wanna give it away, but what I think he does with this. But I also like to. Or as I say, God's in the details. I love to go off on tangents. Like I want to do what a life of a tree is and why do trees survive nuclear holocausts and how do trees have their roots joined together and all these things we just don't see or know about. You know, there's a book called Overstory the Spectacular that way about sort of like short stories about trees and things you never thought about. And so I love that. So that's part of the, you know, the excitement of doing something new. And then there are other times you just kind of founder along and then all of a sudden something just hits you and you get it, you know, and you at least you think you get it, you know, you don't know until it's all said and done and then you have to give it to somebody else and all that stuff. But once you write fade out and you just feel pretty good for about an hour and then you think you fucked the whole thing up and you think you could do it all over again.
- [54:47]
Interviewer
What's typical length of time that you'll work on a script?
- [54:50]
Eric Roth
I used to work about a year. I've cut that down just because I really want to get more things accomplished with limited time. So I think it's like five, six months now probably. And that's probably shorter than I would rather, but I think I have to. And then I made the script shorter too. I used to do really long, like 180, 90, 200 page scripts.
- [55:10]
Interviewer
Do you think in going from a year to five or six months for a script that the scripts have gotten better or worse?
- [55:18]
Eric Roth
I think it's the material, you know, probably some of it is just better because I think I've learned how through experience where. How to say things which I before tried to say in 17 different words and now could say twice. And also have a certain obviously technique about how to tell who people are and identify their personality. But. But every. Every single thing I write does. Does sort of give the same problem. How are you going to articulate this the best possible way and how you can tell the story? And is the story going to mean anything? I want it to mean something, not to just fill up space, you know.
- [55:55]
Interviewer
Is every great movie about something bigger than what the story of the movie is?
- [56:00]
Eric Roth
I think so. I think so. I think it's something that's lasting. Yeah, I think you've done something of value. I think that's true. I hope that's true.
- [56:09]
Interviewer
Is the theme of the movie the same as the moral of the story?
- [56:13]
Eric Roth
Well, that's interesting. Well, I happen to write toward theme and I think theme is most important rather than story. Most people completely confuse story with theme, but I think you also have to. But you have to know what the thing is eventually going to be about.
- [56:27]
Interviewer
Tell me what the theme is. That's why I'm asking. Is the theme the moral?
- [56:32]
Eric Roth
I would. I'd say that's a little facile. I think it's more than that, Rick. I think it's. I think it's what make something profound and not profound. And it's not for me to judge what's profound. You know, I'd rather proofs were alive to look at that, you know, But I know on Killers of Flower Moon, Marty wanted to do this culpability about people being culpable with this destruction of these people. And how do we do that? And so it's really interesting to figure out how to do that. And I knew that made this thematically more than just this murder mystery kind of thing, has made it about the sort of sadness and the destruction and the quality of what human beings do to one another. The worst part and what could be the best, you know, what's justice and all that. I mean, in other words. So I think it become. It becomes where you'd like to make it feel profound. I mean, that's a. That's pretty arrogant. Make you think you know what that is, but at least you to yourself, you feel like I've really said something
- [57:32]
Interviewer
here, you know, can the theme always be reduced to a couple of sentences?
- [57:37]
Eric Roth
Should. Should, best of all. Yeah, I think should. Yeah. I guess that's another thing I've really learned was, you know, everybody's kid about less is more, less is more, less is more, less is more. You know, I think. And I would like to learn more about that, you know, I think still I probably overload my life and things I do, but maybe sitting and being quiet is fine too. You know, my wife says that, you know, she says don't take somebody not answering you on a text meaning anything. It's just silence, you know, and she's great that way. And, and I think, I wish, I wish I could get that, you know, that's. It goes back to that validation. What the hell? They didn't answer me back, you know, and the silence is what I'd love to get to, you know, I think that's, that's what I think I'd like to lead to. And maybe that seems a little cliche about wanting how you want to end things, but I'd rather end quiet, you know, in a certain way. Otherwise it's just the noise, man, it just seems too much.
- [58:37]
Interviewer
Do you watch a lot of movies?
- [58:39]
Eric Roth
Yeah, I watch like every day almost. And I like, I'm gonna go today. I go like once or twice a week. Yeah, I love them. I mean even if I don't like them, I like something about it. I like sitting in theater, big screen. I like something, you know, 40ft. I mean not that I don't watch movies on television, my phone like anybody else, but yeah, I love to. I love that moment where something really moves you or a sound. I mean I remember in all Quiet in the Western Front last year there was a sound of just music. I'm sure it was music as they were going into battle or something. It was so profound. I mean it was profound. I'd use too much, but it was, it just soaked into your inside you and your vertebrae, you know, it's like that sound was so powerful. I mean I'm such a wish. I guess if I had two things that I didn't do in life. I wish I'd become a novelist, but I was always afraid. And I wish I had the ability to do music because I think musicians, as I said to Greg are the most non judgmental people. I don't know if you feel that way but non judgmental carry their art with them. Don't really care much mostly about race of anybody. Just want to want that music to sound, you know, and it's, it's just transcendent to me. I don't know really how to. I wish I could describe it, you know and you know, and you know
- [60:01]
Interviewer
how there's always a grass is always greener. I know that actors always wish they were musicians and most musicians wish that they were actors, really.
- [60:09]
Eric Roth
Is that true? I didn't know that about musicians. I never. I knew. I never knew a musician wasn't basically, except for whatever their, you know, problems with drugs or whatever else, trying to recreate experiences and get that feeling all the time. I never knew they wanted to be actors. I thought they were pretty happy with what they did. You know, if they're successful, if you're not successful, it's a whole different world.
- [60:29]
Interviewer
Have you ever been asked to work on an adaptation and read the book and just felt like, I don't see a way into this?
- [60:36]
Eric Roth
Well, I've done it slightly differently. I've started it and I realized I can't do it and I sent the money back. I've done that like five, six times. And not because of the quality of the book. It just didn't. I just. I thought I saw something in it that I just didn't ever see. And then I never thought it went. Went where I'd like it to go, I guess. Which might be just my arrogance. Not the books. Yeah.
- [60:56]
Interviewer
And then the other way around. Are there ever times where you'll see something that you think it's either not good or doesn't have much potential and then it turns into something really great without your involvement?
- [61:06]
Eric Roth
Yeah, most times, actually. But the famous quotes are bad books and bad plays make great movies. So. Yeah, because they're sort of, you know, sort of people ignored them. And I would get, far as Gump, that I mean the book to me. I mean, rest his soul, the man who wrote it. But it's just farcical, you know, sort of silly. And I'm not sure I made anything more than silly, but at least it had a heart to it, you know?
- [61:33]
Interviewer
Was it a popular book before the movie?
- [61:35]
Eric Roth
No, not much.
- [61:36]
Interviewer
And how did you come to the book?
- [61:38]
Eric Roth
I came to the book through. I worked with Tom Hanks on what turned out to be a really bad movie that we had a whole different approach to, which was called the Postman, which was a post apocalypse thing that I tried to do as Candide with. He had four mules and he said they were called John, George, Ringo, and I don't know, Sarah, you know what I'm saying? And it was funny. It was supposed to be sort of like Lilliput. It was like Gulliver. And he's in this, you know, dystopian world and he's supposed to Be an ex postman. And so it had this kind of whole tongue in cheek look to it. And also I liked it. I don't know if it was any good, but then 10 years down the line, Kevin Costner made a very serious movie out of it and I won a Razzie, which means you made the worst year movie of the year. So, yeah, I don't think you can quite know, you know, but it has to. I mean, to me, especially now, it really has to speak to me in some way that I feel like it can be additive to it, you know, there's no point in just retyping it.
- [62:48]
Interviewer
So did Tom bring you the book? Is that how it started?
- [62:51]
Eric Roth
No. The woman who had the book of the Postman also owned Forrest Gump. And they had tried a couple scripts with the author and somebody else at one of the studios. And she says, what do you think of this? And I said, well, I like the way it transports you over the years and his kind of constant belief in God, the girl Jenny and his mother. You know, it's kind of interesting, and him being challenged, which we couldn't do anymore. But I thought maybe I could say some things about how I felt about where I grew up and how I grew up and what the turmoil was in the world and. And then the director's a stick in your eye kind of guy, but equal opportunity stick in your eye, and he doesn't care if you're Democrat, progressive. He puts, you know, Marilyn Monroe's picture in the bathroom in the White House, that kind of thing with the Kennedys, and he just didn't care, you know. And I think the thing struck a nerve, though. And even though I don't think it's funny how that movie lasted, boy, it's kind of amazing, you know, people really, really grew to that. But you don't know. You don't know. But as long as it occupies. It occupies sort of the most important part of your life in that way, I mean, equal with your children and wife and everything. That's. That when you get up, you can't wait to go. I like to. I like to be able to know what I'm going to write the next day, so not to be anxious about it. So I. I won't. Won't write that, but I'll just sort of, you know, sort of scrap it out and then be ready to write it the next day. So I know I have something to start with, you know.
- [64:29]
Interviewer
Yeah, I have almost the opposite, I think. I like having a schedule where I'M showing up to do something, but if I think too much about what it is that I'm doing, then I'm already working on it before I get there, and then it undermines it.
- [64:42]
Eric Roth
Wow, that's interesting. Yeah.
- [64:44]
Interviewer
Keep a distance from the work when I'm not in the moment with it.
- [64:49]
Eric Roth
Nice. I love that. I mean, I. I would be afraid of that. I would be afraid I wouldn't be able to get back into it or something. I don't know. That wouldn't carry over.
- [64:58]
Interviewer
Yeah. I like that feeling of coming to it new.
- [65:01]
Eric Roth
I love that. Wow.
- [65:02]
Interviewer
Every day. Like I've never seen it or heard it before.
- [65:05]
Eric Roth
Wow. Wow. But I do. See, I'm so hidebound that I'm opposite of you completely is that I read from page one every day. Wow.
- [65:13]
Interviewer
I think there's something to that, though, because context really is everything. And if you understand the flow of the information, I imagine it would be easier to continue it than to just pick it up where you left off.
- [65:25]
Eric Roth
Yeah. So it's like I just was looking here that I want him. I'm going to put into this particular Rama thing that I want him. His opening line to be. I am a navigator. So I love that. What that could mean, you know, it's a great line. Yeah. I haven't thought about it, you know, and then all of a sudden I said, well, that unlocks a bunch of, you know, what this guy wants to do. And. And I have a thing with him where his wife supposedly had died and he went back in the service and. But people live. They can live to 140 and such. It's supposed to be 2130, but anyway, she said, you'll see me in your dreams. And he hasn't seen her in his dreams until he gets into a certain part of this alien ship they get into that has a water feature to it. And he gets in the water and all of a sudden it. It opens up all these other things, like an hallucinogenic kind of thing where he starts, you know, seeing her. And I think it can be beautiful. I think it'd be beautiful. Sounds great.
- [66:19]
Interviewer
I like also someone saying, you'll see me in your dreams. It's beautiful.
- [66:22]
Eric Roth
Yeah, I saw. I said somebody said that in a song. I think, I think. I think in a song. Yeah. Yeah. I get a lot from the music. One of the ones I took was. I don't know the group's name. You probably know where he says over and over, I can't take my eyes off of you.
- [66:39]
Interviewer
Yeah, It's a really famous song.
- [66:40]
Eric Roth
Yeah, I just love that it's a standard.
- [66:43]
Interviewer
So there's so many different versions of it. I'm not sure which is like the.
- [66:46]
Eric Roth
Oh, okay.
- [66:46]
Interviewer
The original.
- [66:48]
Eric Roth
This one was not somebody group I knew. But he says it like 30 times in a row, you know, And I use that in this thing I did with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright where he first time he looks at her, he says, I can't take my eyes off of you. So I know that's a good romance lying.
- [67:06]
Interviewer
How does poetry work its way into your work?
- [67:11]
Eric Roth
Well, I'm really well read and I'm really interested in what the words are, one in front of the other, you know, how do people. Why do people put these in this order? And some are so much better at it than others, you know, and that the poetry, to me, I think, is a sense of feeling that it's the same sort of soaring you get and then starting to believe that maybe this actually is poetry. I don't know if it is, but you start feeling like it could be, you know, which is pretty freeing that you. You're now writing something and. But that can either dovetail or it can conflict with the director. Some love you to try to be as expansive as you can be with prose and poetry. And others don't like it. I mean, they feel like it inhibits their process. And for instance, David Fincher is, as I say, I think he's a savant in some kind. He's just a genius, but he likes things really logical. He wants me to follow away and like that. And you have to explain to him why it isn't. And I like that too. I mean, I think that really presses you into rethinking what you thought you could do. Sort of willy nilly, throw out there, you know, to the universe. And for him, he needs to understand it and that it makes some sense what you put and it adds to something else, while others are much more gracious and saying, go for it. You know, Marty. Marty's that way. Marty will let you. If you want to write the movie backwards. Let's try it, you know, let's try it. Yeah, the directors are interesting people.
- [68:47]
Interviewer
Tell me about the different styles of the directors you've gotten to work with. How different are they? What do they expect from you and what they're like to work with?
- [68:55]
Eric Roth
Well, Marty is. Marty's very generous during the writing process. A little more reclusive when he's about to go make it. So he then takes over, I think he inhabits the movie then that. I think it's part of my job to have them understand the movie that they're gonna make, oddly, you know. In other words, this is what I can tell you. I think it is. And whatever you can add to that would be amazing, you know, if you have a point of view. Fincher's rough. We argue like crazy, but he has something in mind that I want to try to get to for him.
- [69:27]
Interviewer
Tell me about an argument. Like, what's the kind of thing you would argue about?
- [69:30]
Eric Roth
He would say to me. He'd read it back to me. He said, this makes no sense. And I said, what do you think? Everything you say to make sense, that's how we'd have an argument. And he says, well, that's just your writer and you thinking you're going to bring out words that going to, you know, somehow attribute back to you get very personal. He also. I know he knows. He knows things about me with the validation stuff. And he said, oh, you want to win an Oscar, Whatever it is. But no, we would. I sat behind him during Mank, and he would turn around, what do you think? And I'd say, well, I don't know, David. And he said, well, you're wrong about that, you know, but we kind of fight it out and get to where we. I mean, we always love each other. He's the most loyal man I know. Most loyal man I know. So he's that way. Denis is very visionary. He said that he felt that I was the kind of. The spiritual quality of Dune, you know, because I. I got that hallucinogenic, you know, that whole tribal thing. And early, I worked with a man named Bob Mulligan, who did Kill a Mockingbird. He was very generous guy. Those guys in that era were very sort of Playhouse 90, if you remember that. Or television.
- [70:42]
Interviewer
Yes.
- [70:42]
Eric Roth
That's what they were steeped in. And I'm not talking about deep theater. I'm not talking about Glass Menagerie or something, but they got telling drama, dramatic stories from stage plays. In a way, they were television shows. Stuart Rosenberg was another one. He did Cool Hand Luke, and he. He was. Introduced me to Paul Newman, who I became friends with for life. I was. I walked on the set when I was, like, 19 or 20 with my. They needed rewriting and went down to Lafayette, Louisiana, and I bought a new pair of corduroys, and I had a new briefcase. And Paul said, our savior's here. I don't think so. But we were friends for life then, you know, and I. I stay friends with a lot of these people. I like to maintain relationships with them. I think they all expand my universe, I think, you know, and in the main, a few are a little toxic.
- [71:37]
Interviewer
You were saying about scripted versus ad libbing earlier when you were talking about Star is Born, and in a way it sounds like it stemmed from an ad lib. You got them to talk to you and then you organized it and refined it. But it starts with an ad lib.
- [71:55]
Eric Roth
No, you're 100% right. And I think it started more with Bradley Cooper first directing assignment. And not really. I'm not saying he doesn't know music, but it's not his life. He wanted to portray a character that he created. I suggested him he should use Sam Elliott's voice. That's the huskiness that he kind of has there. So I think I was going along, I rewrote that. I mean, because what they gave me I just didn't like. And I said, I have to start from scratch. And I said, I'll do it really fast, but we'll do it together. So at three in the morning we were changing, you know, but there was that ad lib stuff you write. It was. Or the improvisational, probably better than ad lib, improvisational quality of it. But also it had an accuracy because Lady Gaga knows what that life is. Bradley maybe doesn't know it to that extent.
- [72:44]
Interviewer
I was going to say, other than the dialogue, how much descriptive writing do you do in a script?
- [72:51]
Eric Roth
A lot. A lot. Probably too much. Probably too much. But I think it's. Some directors like it because it establishes a tone. It gives kind of wonderful, I think, visual possibilities. I just wrote. I realized I was reading a thing I'd written about James Cook, the navigator, the explorer, and I was writing something about that he had docked his ship somewhere in the Antarctic and letting the men have Christmas Eve celebration. And they got cold and they went down below and he stayed up and he sang. He started singing Silent Night by himself. But I thought, I love that. But I said, I don't know if I have the boat, right? And so I looked at the boats and I forgot they had those oil lamps. So I put the oil lamps in, you know, and they're rocking. And I said, that somehow refers to it. And then we cut from that to the spaceship in 2129. That's kind of a junky ship. It's supposed to be a workshop, but it's very sterile and the people inside are very sterile and they're like monkish, almost because they go for seven months without doing anything. And they're supposed to be putting these beacons up on asteroids to warn people about the asteroids coming. Anyway, it's quite different than the oil lanterns, so I love that. Yeah. So I do put a lot of pros in there, but I think it's my. My downfall in the sense of. Because I want to be a novelist, so this is the way I can do it. People still let me do it. They don't let most other writers do it anymore. But I think it does impart to the director what I think it's going to look like. Some get annoyed. Say, why do you have to just talk so much?
- [74:33]
Interviewer
So I said, okay, in an adaptation, how close do you feel like you need to stay to the original material?
- [74:40]
Eric Roth
Depends on how good I think the original material is, you know? And then there's the other side of what does the audience expect? And I don't know that somebody's there. Somebody's. You're looking at somebody.
- [74:53]
Interviewer
No, I thought I saw. I saw a feather out the window. Strange.
- [74:57]
Eric Roth
Oh, I love that.
- [74:58]
Interviewer
It's like I thought it was.
- [74:58]
Eric Roth
Oh, that's not strange. That's Forrest Gump.
- [75:01]
Interviewer
It was a bird, but it was just a feather. So maybe it was a bird holding a feather, but I couldn't see the. I could just see the feather. It's like. That's strange.
- [75:10]
Eric Roth
That's interesting. I like that.
- [75:12]
Interviewer
It was beautiful.
- [75:13]
Eric Roth
I just put up a hummingbird feeder yesterday. I'm a big hummingbird person. Beautiful. And yeah, I had up my window at the. Where I lived in Malibu, in the colony there. I had a window that I didn't look at the beach because that's too distracting to me. I was looking at a tree, and these hummingbirds just kept coming and coming. And my parents died that particular year, and somehow my mother somehow related to me. Hummingbird. And then I put it in Benjamin Button, where David let it stay. Where Brad Pitt's on the sea, like the Atlantic Ocean. And he's just been. He was on a tugboat and got crashed by a submarine, which was true story. And he was on now like a. A boat that he was safe. And he looked down, he saw a hummingbird come up out of the sea. And he said, how did that get here? And I know how it got there. It's like a Robert Hunter lyric. Right? Like, where did that come from? So, yeah, that's the adaptation part of it. Yeah.
- [76:12]
Interviewer
Are you superstitious?
- [76:14]
Eric Roth
I am to a certain extent. Are you?
- [76:17]
Interviewer
I don't think so. I think.
- [76:19]
Eric Roth
I think I am.
- [76:20]
Interviewer
I may have been at times. I don't think I am right now,
- [76:23]
Eric Roth
but most people don't think they're superstitious, even though they're superstitious about things. It's kind of funny. They think that's science in some way. I like to gamble, so I play horses, so I'm superstitious about that a little bit.
- [76:36]
Interviewer
Do you go to the track on a regular basis?
- [76:38]
Eric Roth
I go once a week and I sit with guys who are 800 years old.
- [76:42]
Interviewer
What's the first time you went to the track?
- [76:45]
Eric Roth
My grandfather. Little Russian man, barely spoke English, spoke Yiddish, and I spoke Yiddish at the time. And he would take me. He had four loves in his life. He loved boxing, which I did. I fought and he loved the horses. I'd go with him when I was like 6, 7 years old. He loved baseball. We'd go stand on an apple box at Ebbets Field. Old. And he loved fishing. And I still love fishing.
- [77:07]
Interviewer
So did you grow up on the East Coast?
- [77:09]
Eric Roth
Yeah, Brooklyn.
- [77:10]
Interviewer
I wasn't. For some reason. I thought you grew up on the West Coast.
- [77:13]
Eric Roth
Bedford stylist till a certain extent. Then I went to high school out here.
- [77:18]
Interviewer
Has there ever been a window where you've stepped away from horse racing or has it been a continuance since 6 or 7 years old?
- [77:25]
Eric Roth
I think I stayed with it the whole time.
- [77:27]
Interviewer
It's amazing.
- [77:28]
Eric Roth
Yeah, but I. But I liked. I liked. But that's. That would. That would be superstitious stuff. I like all sports. I guess so. But I think I am superstitious to a certain extent about some things. I'm not OCD about it, you know, I won't count steps backwards or anything, but I think I am. Yeah. I'm interested that you're not. That's kind of interesting, but I'd love to know what you think of magic and stuff, you know, it's just close to superstition.
- [77:52]
Interviewer
Well, I believe in magic, so. I don't know.
- [77:54]
Eric Roth
I think you might.
- [77:55]
Interviewer
Yeah.
- [77:56]
Eric Roth
Yeah. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what someone can't remember who told me this, believes in a thing called manifestation. That if you manifest things, you can make them come true. And maybe that's true.
- [78:08]
Interviewer
Well, I think we do.
- [78:09]
Eric Roth
Yeah, I guess we do.
- [78:11]
Interviewer
We envision these lives and they've appeared and it's unbelievable. Doesn't make sense.
- [78:17]
Eric Roth
No, it makes no sense. But you're able to inhabit them, you know? And that's how I feel about characters I write, I'm able to inhabit them, even though I may not know much about them, except for this psychological thing that everybody has is different, you know. And some things I don't understand because I don't understand the person, but I try to make him not understandable and to some extent. But then you find that the character may understand himself better than you think he did. Those kind of things. I think there's a reality to writing these things, you know.
- [78:44]
Interviewer
Is it harder to write for women?
- [78:47]
Eric Roth
Probably is, but I haven't found it to be. I mean, I think they all have the same properties. I mean, I don't know. Then we get into whole sexual conversations with themes, and I don't know if men or women. I don't think men or women are the same that way, particularly. But I think I've written a lot of good women. I mean, I think that they, you know, I. I think I wrote a beautiful character with Cate Blanchett and Benjamin Button where she's a ballerina. You know, I thought it was pretty lovely and. But I always infuse these things with time. Like in. That was like sort of the sliding doors idea, where if something didn't happen, another thing didn't happen, another thing didn't happen, then she wouldn't have been hit by a cab, that kind of thing. And I love that. I love the randomness of things. And I do the same thing with Forrest Gump, you know, Is he just flying around or is it destiny? I don't know the answer to any of that. So maybe I believe in magic. You're probably right. You know.
- [79:38]
Interviewer
Yeah, I remember in Forrest Gump, I don't know if they were reenactments or actual old footage used. Do you remember?
- [79:45]
Eric Roth
Those are old footages, yeah.
- [79:47]
Interviewer
Did you write it in the script that we're gonna use this footage from
- [79:50]
Eric Roth
this event in some cases, I didn't. Some. They researched what would happen. Like I had, for instance, his. He's supposed to have been an All American, and with the University of Alabama, they won the national title or something. And so he went and visited Kennedy, you know, and I have him visit him. John. Lyndon Johnson, as a veteran from Vietnam, and he gets shot in the butt and Lyndon Johnson makes a joke out of it. The interesting thing about that was that that was all brand new technique. The only one who had done anything like it was Woody Allen and Zeligan. So Bob sort of perfected this, but if you look at it now, it's so rudimentary, it's still silly, you know, but he's always. This thing here has a whole longer conversation for us about. Basically about AI. But this first, this deep fake stuff where they. The movie will have Tom and Robin Wright off stage, say, hi, mom and dad, this is Margaret. And he'll walk into the living room and they'll both be. They'll be 22 years old. Tom will look like he's right out of Big, and she'll look like she's out of Princess Bride. So I don't know the morality of all that gets really tricky. I don't know how. I'm also curious how this will affect music.
- [81:06]
Interviewer
Had you seen Zelig and realized, I can use this technique in Forrest Gump? It's a really radical idea. This guy can be in these different places and we can use actual footage.
- [81:17]
Eric Roth
Yeah, I'm pretty visual. And I thought, well, I think we can do this. Yeah, I think if someone knows how to do it, yeah, we can put him in that scene. And even worse, no one's quite done it. But I could put words in people's mouths. They never said so John Kennedy could have said, I love Hitler. You know, I'm saying to him, whisper it to him. And it's. Obviously you're taking liberties there, but, you know, we had whatever he said and he laughs and this and that. So they linked it to something that was part of another all American ceremony. And then they just put him in there, you know. Yeah, I don't know how I envisioned that. It just happened, you know, just something that came out of the blue.
- [81:57]
Interviewer
It's a radical idea and I think it's as significant in the long term success of the movie as anything else about it.
- [82:06]
Eric Roth
Oh, no question. No question. Yeah. Oh, I think so. And that's magical again.
- [82:11]
Interviewer
Yeah, we just had never seen anything like it before. And that idea of seeing a fictitious character in a familiar real world situation is very interesting.
- [82:23]
Eric Roth
Yeah, it's very odd. And there was a. Do you remember the comedian on the radio, Phil Henry? Yes, yes. He did all those kind of different voices. He was kind of nasty, a little racist. But somebody called me and said, you need to listen to Phil Henry tonight. So he's announcing Forrest Gump is dead. So. So I said. I joined in and I said, hi, I'm the writer of Forrest Gump. And yeah, we're sad to say. And I see Quentin Tarantino just did that with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. The character that Leonardo played, he said was dead. That he had died. So sometimes. Yeah, it's confusing. What's real, what is.
- [83:03]
Interviewer
And what are your all time favorite movies? As a fan?
- [83:08]
Eric Roth
I love a movie called Amor Chord that Fellini made. It's like a dream 2001 is probably my most favorite. Godfather 2, probably the ones that are traditionally, you know, that most people would. I was talking yesterday with somebody I used to, when I was young, much younger. I loved the movie Giant. Thought that just summed everything up for big movies. And I watch it again. It's not very good, you know, but there's that James Dean being heroic and climbing up and getting oil and Elizabeth Taylor and there's something very American about it. I'm very American in my own way. I love things about America that are. I think it's very moving about people who put their lives in jeopardy. And then there's an ideal that we used to have. And I hope we still, I don't know, we have a very rural place in Montana and I'll talk to these guys and we have completely different points of view and fortunately we'll be able to get over them, you know, just so we can have other things to talk about. But it's just, it's a shame the country is so divided about the things that we all care about. I don't know what. That's all. I don't know what's happened, you know, there's so much hatred and racism and everything else, you know.
- [84:22]
Interviewer
Are there any things that you firmly believed when you were young that now you've gone 180 on?
- [84:29]
Eric Roth
Yeah, I think. Well, my parents were both dyed in the wool communists. I was a red diaper baby. I can't tell you the number of times we stood in the rain to free the Rosenbergs. And I think their intentions were all good, but they forgave the same fault to those people that, you know, you'd have to forgive all sorts of things. And my dad was a communist till his dying day, you know, and he thought even Stalin was pretty great, you know, so those are, those are things that just don't resonate anymore that way. I think as American Communist Party members, they probably had some good beliefs about sort of socialism, you know, that you know, who. How can you help people? And I think that was good. The other thing is this. Since I've had. Had cancer and stuff, I'm not afraid of dying, but I am, I am so interested in what I thought was kind of constant. And they're not, it's not anymore about as you get older. What are these things that come Toward the end of things and what can you expect and what you can't. And I think I probably earlier on felt, well, maybe it's X, Y or Z. I even thought the other day, we were in London, outside of London, in this beautiful old cathedral, 9th century or something, and I said, what if it was all true? That maybe all this was. There was a Jesus? I mean, maybe that. Nevermind. That maybe all Buddhism, whatever it is, that all what we think is just, you know, made up mythology. But what if something is true? I mean, maybe it could be. So why not? Why not open your mind? I remember Tom Hanks once yelling at me. We were having. He was a evangelical, I think, early on in his life. And we were talking about religion, and I was saying something kind of atheistic and kind of adamant about it. And he said, how do you know? You know, And I said, I don't know. I don't know why I think I know. And I think that's the big difference. You know, you assume you know so much, and then all that's your ego, narcissism and all. And then you find out you are wrong about many things. It's like, you know, I used to love to. This was before TSA and all, but I. I followed Joan Didion in the sense of. I was actually friendly with her and John. But she would sit in airports and write about people as they came off of planes. That's how she would design characters. And I did that for a little. And then you realize, well, you're wrong about these people. You know, you have certain ideas you can't create. Yeah, yeah, It's a fantasy. Yeah, yeah, it's fun to do, but you're just always surprised. You're judging a book by its cover, and you figure this tattooed beast. And then all of a sudden they start talking about Keats or something. You know, it's like, what the hell? I love that. I remember we were. Tupac Shakur came in to actually read for Forrest Gump to play Bubba. I had. I didn't know who he was. And he. Then he was renting a house in the colony, and he was sitting on this stoop, and he said, Mr. Roth. I said. I came over and I said, how are you? And I knew he was Tupac Shakur at that time. And he said, you don't remember? I had tried out for that. I said, why would you try out for that? I said, I don't know. I wanted to try something different, and I want to find out who I was. And this and that. And there you go, book by the COVID you know. And then here's this great artist. Yeah, great, great artist. Yeah.
- [87:50]
Interviewer
Did you ever see Unforgiven?
- [87:52]
Eric Roth
Oh, yeah, I love that movie. Yeah. I love the writer David Peoples. He wrote Blade Runner also.
- [87:59]
Interviewer
Wow.
- [87:59]
Eric Roth
He's amazing writer. And then I rewrote him on Munich. And I know him quite well. He's about my age. He's an incredible writer. There used to be a whole world of screenwriters that were only screenwriters, not writer directors. So there's very few left. But Bo Goldman was probably one of the better writers ever. He won an Oscar for Harold and Melvin and for Cuckoo's Nest, we call both sides of the plate.
- [88:26]
Interviewer
One of the things that was interesting, I remember when I saw Unforgiven, I bring it up because up until then, in a Western, you expected the good guy was a clear cut good guy and all of the attributes he had was noble and the bad guy was the bad guy and he was evil. And Unforgiven broke that mold completely.
- [88:45]
Eric Roth
Yeah.
- [88:46]
Interviewer
And it feels like maybe everything changed since then. That idea of just the good guy versus the bad guy. Maybe that became obsolete with that movie.
- [88:57]
Eric Roth
I think it probably did. I mean, to some extent, except for their big act super action heroes and, you know, so I don't know. You know, those were the black hat and the white hat. You wear the white hat, you're the hero. The black hat you're not. I tried to write a movie for Clint Eastwood, a western, his last western, and Bradley Cooper got me involved. And he said, the only thing I don't want is you to do a sequel to the Unforgiven. And I said, I get that. So what I did was invent him as an ex outlaw. That this supposed to be 1906 at San Francisco, right after San Francisco earthquake. And he's a kind of policeman in Chinatown for that era. And somebody comes back because he had been an outlaw in the olden days, who he supposedly killed the person's father. And he came back and stabs him and this and that. And then he says he's dying and they have this whole journey to take him home. And what happens along the way, these people. And Bradley Cooper plays his son. But the big point of it was he was completely full of shit. He had never been an outlaw. And he created this whole myth for himself. And so when you have to. When he had to get in trouble kind of at the. Toward the end of this, he got himself out of it by being brave and he didn't have to make up a story. But I love that. I love the whole idea that. So did Clint. He said, oh, my God. The idea of just pretending you're somebody and everybody giving you, you know, your props for that turns out to be feet of clay, you know. Yeah.
- [90:27]
Interviewer
But then it turns around. It's beautiful.
- [90:29]
Eric Roth
Yeah, that's what I did at the end. I turned it around for him. Yeah. Yeah.
- [90:33]
Interviewer
Would you say every story is a love story?
- [90:36]
Eric Roth
Yes, 100%. Yeah. I mean, I think. What is the only thing we can't define? Love. I mean, it's probably the most primordial, important thing there is. Probably. Right. I don't know if you can define. I can't define it. Maybe other people can.
- [90:56]
Interviewer
How far can you stray from the archetypical Hollywood movies? Happy ending, romantic tension, conflict. Are those rules to follow, or can you break those rules?
- [91:08]
Eric Roth
Well, I think you can break any rule, but I think you always will end up, oddly, with the same Shakespearean structure. Like, the perfect example is Pulp Fiction. He told the story backwards and forwards, but he still had to have a beginning, a middle that has a beginning that states the problem. The middle that exacerbates it has a catharsis which leads you to the ending. And so I think it's harder to do that. But I think as we modernize things, like the great Charlie Kaufman would do things like Adaptation, where he's adapting the adaptation and making it part of his life and his brother's life, or an imagined brother or. I mean, so it's wonderful complications. Or Sunshine of the Endless Spotless Mind, all that. And. But you still have this. I always found, at least even the nose, I could tell you the structure of them, you know, So I think that's a constant. I guess it has to be. Maybe it has to be. But the ending stuff, I think the only truth about. I think in love stories, that you should end where things are not resolved. That whether they feel either brokenhearted, very rarely are happy love stories. You want to have a bittersweet ending where somebody can't resolve it and you can't bring it to fruition. Whether someone dies or someone leaves or you want a sort of wish fulfillment, hoping that they in another world, I also believe. So here's magic. I believe that Francis Coppola and I were talking about this, that great movies just continue, great books, plays, music, whatever inhabit you. And it's like they live on the other side of the moon and they're all continuing their lives. That the Godfather people are all out doing whatever they do and whatever movies you love, and they're there and you can always just go pick them up and put them back in your pockets, you know. And I love that idea.
- [93:07]
Interviewer
It's beautiful.
- [93:07]
Eric Roth
I started. I was once gonna. It didn't work out too well, but I did Cat in the Hat and I started that he was one of these kind of magical creatures that lived on the other side of the moon and would get a phone call, we need your help kind of thing, you know. But the only thing I loved about that script was. I think it was a good script altogether. But I rhymed every word like a Seuss book, you know. I love it.
- [93:32]
Interviewer
Was it going to be animated or.
- [93:33]
Eric Roth
No, no, no, no. It's live action. And they ended up doing a really, I thought, bad movie with Jim Carrey, just over the top stuff. But what I made, it was primal that the mother was pregnant and the children were very jealous and afraid of what was coming into the house. And so the thing one and thing two, you know, all this stuff, Thing one and all that. It's kind of great. Yeah, it's kind of fun.
- [93:58]
Interviewer
Tell me about the old days in New York, the experimental film world.
- [94:02]
Eric Roth
Oh, I love that. I was very part of that. I was going to NYU Film School and I gravitated down to. Oh, actually as an English major to begin with at Columbia, but gravitated down to this. Everything was an Alphabet city, you know, below St. Mark's Place. And Bob Downey Jr. Ed M. Schweiler, all these people doing these things. And a place called the Millennium Film Workshop, where you could just move around rooms. And was this in the 60s, like 68, 67, 65. Yeah, that whole era. Andy Warhol, you know, some of his people were there. I knew some of them. I know Moriarty and a few other people, but I knew Bob Downey. I worked for on like four movies. They were all insane. Bob Downey Senior and. But all these really interesting artists. But it's interesting how they just disappeared. I don't know. Some just got old, obviously. But they were a continuation, I think, a lot about. From, you know, Jack Kerouac and all that. Cassidy.
- [95:04]
Interviewer
Beatniks.
- [95:05]
Eric Roth
Yeah, yeah, beatniks, basically. That's like Bob's in Hero's mother was a beatnik. You know, she always wore black and that whole thing.
- [95:13]
Interviewer
How has the movie business changed over the course of your life?
- [95:17]
Eric Roth
Well, the loss of theaters. I mean, the idea that not to watch a movie in a theater is the most important thing after that would Be. There used to be personal relationships. You may not even like the people, but you sort of knew everybody. There was a lot less content providers. There were probably seven. Whatever the big studios were, was it
- [95:35]
Interviewer
just a smaller business overall?
- [95:37]
Eric Roth
Smaller world? Felt like a high school. Now it's a big high school. You sort of knew your place in it, what you wanted to get to, all that. But, you know, if I just had this happen recently that if somebody decided not to do a project of yours, saying, I'm going to pass on this. Right. And they would call you up and tell you why, you know, and. Or it's just not for me. It's not my. Even if that simple mind. Not my cup of tea. But we. I appreciate you trying, you know, that kind of thing. Now you never hear from anybody. It's just your agent says they're not going to do it. You know, the personality. That's me. That's how I felt.
- [96:15]
Interviewer
I mean, it feels like less of a human business.
- [96:18]
Eric Roth
Yeah, exactly.
- [96:19]
Interviewer
More commerce than.
- [96:21]
Eric Roth
Yeah. The rallying cry, which is a sad. Is that everybody says nothing matters. And that's. That's a tragedy to me. I'm sorry. I think it should matter, you know, what you're doing, what you're saying. Even if it's not my cup of tea, it doesn't matter. You know, write the best action movie, write the best Star wars, whatever you want to do. It's just. I don't know. I don't know what I don't know about the younger people. The way I wish I. My son's young. He's a. He's a director now, and my other son's a wonderful writer, and they have different looks at things.
- [96:56]
Interviewer
When you're writing a character, do you typically have an actor in mind to play it?
- [97:01]
Eric Roth
Not mostly. I don't know. I don't like to do that too much sometimes. I mean, it's part and parcel of the deal. Like, I knew Tom Hanks was going to be Forrest Gump, so he was great because he could go in and pitch the thing. He said, I'm sitting on a bench and I'll do all that stuff. As an actor, I would prefer. I have a general idea. General idea. And then you got to get more.
- [97:22]
Interviewer
Is that a common thing for an actor and a writer to get together and put something together and then pitch that as opposed to coming from a director?
- [97:31]
Eric Roth
It feels to me like it is. I don't know anymore, you know? Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. Yeah. But I still do I'm like, when we're done here, I'm going to zoom with Jeremy Strong, that actor, and we have, I think, a pretty great idea, but maybe we'll figure it out with him. I'll be glad to do it with him, you know, but it's. It's more unusual with actors. Actors are good because they're only busy for, like, four months out of the year or, you know, and then they have time. Directors are impossible because they, you know, it's a year and a half of their lives or whatever. Two years. And so you. If you don't get it done, you ain't seeing them for two years. They'll be just something else, you know?
- [98:10]
Interviewer
Yeah. And it also seems like they're so in for two years on a project that after it, it's like they're not even themselves.
- [98:19]
Eric Roth
No, that's absolutely right. It's. I mean. I mean, I had opportunities to direct when I was younger, and I made a decision. I'd rather stay with my children. You know, that's not this. I'm so heroic. But that's what I decided, because you're gone. You're just gone. You're missing their lives, and they know it, but something else more important to them.
- [98:38]
Interviewer
Did you always want to be a writer from the beginning?
- [98:41]
Eric Roth
Pretty much, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've toyed with one point. I said, I think I want to be doctor, which was ridiculous. I can't even add 6 and 8. And said, I think I'll go back to school and take all those courses, the organic chemistries, all that, and then go to some bad medical school like Grenada or Yankton or something, you know? I mean, what I admire about your life, as little as I know about you, is that you, at least, are experiencing so many things. And I wish I'd experienced more things.
- [99:11]
Interviewer
Well, I am now. I didn't for the majority of my life.
- [99:14]
Eric Roth
Oh, you didn't?
- [99:15]
Interviewer
No. I was sat in a dark room for 18 hours a day for 30 years.
- [99:20]
Eric Roth
Oh, my God. I'm sorry. Or I'm not sorry. Whatever. You probably learned a lot from that. Yeah. I would never have that discipline.
- [99:28]
Interviewer
No. This is a new adventure. I realized I can do my work anywhere, anywhere, and I might as well do it in a beautiful place. And I first had that revelation when I started working in Los Angeles versus New York, because even though I would still work all day, it felt like I was on vacation compared to being in New York.
- [99:46]
Eric Roth
I got you. Wow. Well, my sort of regret is so, like, juvenile. It's like romantic, right? I wish I had had that romantic year in Paris with whoever, you know, or just on my own or, you know, I never did those things. Or, you know, London, whatever, you know, Ireland. And it's not going to happen, you know, so all of a sudden it can. I mean, it would just be.
- [100:10]
Interviewer
It'd be a different one. It would be the different version of a romantic year in Paris. You can do that.
- [100:15]
Eric Roth
Yeah. No, you're right. You're right. No, you're so right. I sort of wish I had done when I was 30, you know what I'm saying? I don't know why. It just would add to my experiences. I always wanted my life to be like a Jack London. Flyleaf of his novel. He said he was a fisherman and whatever else. He went to Alaska and all that stuff, you know, and that's creating a personality, I guess. I'm not.
- [100:39]
Interviewer
You know, it all worked out.
- [100:41]
Eric Roth
It all worked out exactly. If I. I would just get that in my head, you know, because there's too many small things. It's like my mother would say to me, don't sweat the small stuff, you know, and she's so right. And I sweat the small stuff. Still, though, it's like, I wish I could stop this nonsense about things that don't matter, you know, I'm a little better with it. I'm a little better with it.
- [101:02]
Interviewer
It.
- [101:03]
Eric Roth
I had a whole thing. I won't mention what it was, but this whole weekend I was, like, kind of upset about something, and I realized, this is so stupid, but in the world. And then you get yourself into a situation where I was mad at somebody and then they texted me and should I ghost them and all that whole thing, you know, it's like, so petty, so juvenile. Oh, so juvenile. So I did.
- [101:30]
Interviewer
That's amazing.
- [101:30]
Eric Roth
For the moment. For the moment. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton is a podcast. Tetragrammaton is a website. Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.
- [102:16]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
What may fall within the sphere of
- [102:17]
Eric Roth
Tetragrammaton Counterculture Tetragrammatin Sacred geometry.
- [102:23]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Tetragrammatin the avant garde.
- [102:25]
Eric Roth
Tetragrammatin Generative art.
- [102:27]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Tetragrammatin the tarot. Tetragrammatin out of print music, Tetragrammatin Biodynamics. Tetragrammatin Graphic design. Tetragrammatin Mythology and magic.
- [102:39]
Eric Roth
Tetragrammatin Obscure film. Tetragrammatin beach culture.
- [102:44]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Tetragrammat. Tetragrammatin. Esoteric lectures.
- [102:47]
Eric Roth
Tetragrammatin off the grid.
- [102:49]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Living Tetragrammaton.
- [102:51]
Eric Roth
Alt. Spirituality.
- [102:52]
Sponsor/Advertisement Voice
Tetragrammaton.
- [102:53]
Eric Roth
The canon of fine objects. Tetragrammatin. Muscle cars. Tetragrammatin. Ancient wisdom for a new age. Upon entering, experience the artwork of the day. Take a breath and see where you are, Drone.