[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - The best response you can have to a payoff in a thriller is someone goes, "Oh, right, I forgot, of course..." [multiple voices chattering] [Narrator] On Story offers a look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

All of our content is recorded live at Austin Film Festival and at our year-round events.

To view previous episodes, visit OnStory.tv.

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[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] [piano gliss] From Austin Film Festival, this is "On Story."

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers, creators, and filmmakers.

This week's "On Story," "Jurassic Park" writer, David Koepp.

- If you let yourself be defined by a success, then you must also let yourself be defined by the failure.

And the truth is, you are neither your successes, nor your failures, but rather the sum total of everything.

[paper crumples] [typing] [Narrator] In this episode, the critically-acclaimed writer of "Jurassic Park," "Mission Impossible," "Panic Room," and "Spider-Man," David Koepp, talks about jumping between genres, and working with fame director, Steven Spielberg.

[typewriter ding] - Was storytelling always the passion that you had?

When did you kind of think about writing as something you wanted to do as a living?

- I started acting in high school and I loved it.

I was a lot of high school plays.

And I had been writing, I started writing little stories when I was like 12 years old, that were usually about, you know, some kid who was misunderstood and, you know, then had some adventure.

And then it would become about a 14-year-old who was misunderstood and had an adventure, and an 18-year-old who, you know, women didn't understand, but he went off and had an adventure.

And those were always fun to write, but they were just for fun.

And in high school I would write short stories and things.

So it was always something I wanted to do.

You know, I was always very into suspense stories, Hitchcock movies were a very big deal for me as a kid.

So I was into suspense and horror, and James Cameron was...

I think I was 22 when "Aliens" came out.

And so as Spielberg had been to me, for my, you know, late teens and early 20s...

I mean, between the time I was 14 and 18, the seminal movies were "Jaws," "Close Encounters," "Raiders of the Lost Ark," and "E.T.," I mean, it's just this incredible run.

You can't be my age, and have wanted to be a filmmaker or a screenwriter, and not been massively influenced.

- How did you, I guess, find that first real step with your peers, in getting something on the screen?

- Everything that has ever advanced me has been because I wrote something on spec.

So the first thing that I had worked on, that it got made, was called "Apartment Zero," which was a small independent movie.

It was an idea that an Argentine director named Martin Donovan had, and he -- I did an internship in film school for sort of a disreputable gig.

You know, we represented some foreign titles for sale, and we bought like, B and C movies for distribution in foreign countries.

So like, I actually got to go to film markets, which was fascinating.

And buy, you know, we buy like, "Sorority House Massacre III" for Belgium, you know?

So I met Martin who had an independent film he was trying to... my boss was trying to help him sell it.

And Martin and I hit it off, just 'cause we were so different.

I was a 24-year-old, you know, small town kid from the Midwest, and he was 14 years older than me, and from, you know, Buenos Aires, and it was just a great clash of styles.

So then we got money together, my boss helped us, you know, raise a little money, we raised some on our own.

We ended up putting in our own money in classic, ill-advised fashion.

And we made that movie for about $1.2 million.

- Senor LeDuc!

- Senor Sanchez-Verne found mice in his apartment.

- Well, traces, actually.

- Don't tell lies, now you've been going on about these mice all the time.

We think the whole building may be infested.

- There are no mice in my apartment.

- But you can't really be sure, can you?

We think the exterminators should do the whole building.

- Mice work in mysterious ways.

- No, dear, that's God.

- So that was my first movie, by no means a profitable venture, but it's a very good movie and it got some notice.

And more importantly, I developed confidence and experience.

- What was the seeing that movie on the screen with an audience for the first time like?

Was that the first time you had an audience of unknowns watch your work?

- Oh yeah, it's amazing, it was... And again, I was very young when I started, I'm... My story's not...

It's hard to like me when I tell it, because particularly for my 20s, things...

I was just this [bleep] for whom things fell together and worked extremely well, and you know.

And trust me, later in life, I would suffer mightily, and I've had terrible things happen to me, so it's okay.

Major flops and disasters would come later, and those are also worth talking about, actually more worth talking about.

- Well, I don't wanna talk about a flop yet.

We will [laughs].

But I do wanna talk about one of the earlier movies in your career, that's one of my favorites, which is "Death Becomes Her," which is so weird, and so cool, and so different.

And something like, we wouldn't ever see today.

I'm curious how a movie like that comes together, what that pitch looks like?

- So that was the other script I wrote with Martin Donovan.

We'd done "Apartment Zero," and I'd then gone off and done this movie, "Bad Influence."

And I had this idea, I wanted to do four horror stories, set in an apartment building, you know?

And each place had a different horror story in it.

And I'd come up with this one, I had this idea that this woman was a witch who had developed, you know, something where she couldn't be killed.

And then her husband, who despises her, kills her, but she doesn't die.

So not only do you have now a bad marriage, but you have a bad marriage in which you murdered the person, and they're still there to give you a hard time about it.

Which I thought could be quite funny and so did he, so we started working on that, and then we realized, "Well, [bleep] the other three stories, we got, you know, this is fun."

So we wrote it anticipating it would be maybe a $5 million movie.

We thought "Apartment Zero" was sort of Grand Guignol, and we thought this might will be along the same lines, but funnier, and an Indie for about $5 million.

So we went out looking for producers, and help, and things.

And at the time then, I had started working at Universal, 'cause they were gonna make "Bad Influence," but they wanted to make it into a comedy, and I said, "No, that's a thriller, let's leave it alone."

And they said, "Say, I like this."

Casey Silver at Universal said, "I like this kid's moxie, he said 'No'."

So he hired me to like, an overall thing.

And I said, "If you want funny, I got a funny one."

And so I sent him that, and they bought it.

They bought it never intending to do anything with it, 'cause it was so weird, but they thought it was cheap, and funny, and maybe.

So then it was at Universal, and we did a draft, and got it better and changed some things.

And you know, but it was still very bizarre.

And they sent it in a pile of scripts to Bob Zemeckis, because he had just done the last two "Back to the Future" for them.

And they desperately wanted him to, you know, quickly do something else.

And of all the stuff he read, I think this was the last one they were hoping that he would do.

Because Casey called me and said, so he said, "So good news," he said, "there's a director who wants to do your movie, it's Bob Zemeckis."

And he said it was such disappointment.

[laughing] Like, "You've really screwed us."

We wanted him to do "The Babe," which they had.

And anyway, so Bob came in and you know, to lapse into Bob's vernacular, it turned into this thing that just... "I don't know.

I don't know, but it's gonna be great."

And then, so it ended up having far more resources and much bigger actors than we anticipated, but it was just...

I love that movie because it's so bonkers.

- Ernest, Ernest!

You pushed me down the stairs.

[screams] [thunder crashes] [intense music] - Stay away from me.

- You bet I will, animal, psycho!

- Don't come near me!

- Wife pusher.

- Don't come near me or follow me.

Don't come near me, or follow me, or talk to me.

- I don't intend to.

I just have to make a telephone call.

- Well, I kinda wanna just go back to something you just said, which was the moxie of saying, "no," what's your take on how on, now, and I guess back then as well, when to stick to your guns, when to compromise?

Like how did you navigate that in order to retain your own voice, but find your way in the industry?

- What defines you as any kind of popular artist is, "When am I saying no to something because it's not a good idea, or it's not right for this?

And when am I saying 'no' to something because it's just not mine, it's not my idea?"

This pertains more to notes.

And sometimes you reject stuff 'cause it's just not your idea, and you just get cranky.

I have a 48-hour period of rage after hearing any notes.

And then, you know, and I just gotta wait it out, and then I get through it and I'm like, "Oh actually, that's not such a terrible idea."

And then conversely, when are you saying "yes," because it's actually a good idea?

And when are you saying "yes" because it's easier than fighting?

And those are tough questions that you have every single day from the moment your script gets out of the house, with the larger world.

But I think saying "no" to a studio in that case, it wasn't that hard for me because I didn't have any money at the time, and they were offering money, but it was a well-written thriller.

And I'd heard that from a number of sources, you know, that it was working, and they wanted to make it a buddy comedy.

And I just couldn't see a way to do it.

I just didn't...

I was like, "I hear you, and I bet that would be a funny buddy comedy, I don't see how to do it."

So it's very binary.

If I see like, "Oh I couldn't...

I have an idea how I might do that," great.

If I don't, you're just gonna bang your head against the wall.

- So back to "Death Becomes Her," how does that actually perform?

- That was my first, yeah, studio movie, definitely by far the biggest.

I'd done those two Indies, "Bad Influence" and "Apartment Zero".

"Death Becomes Her" did fine.

The previews were disasters, because it's a black comedy, and they just don't test.

- Hold out your hand.

[whimsical music] - Ow!

What are you nuts?

- Watch.

[David] Because it's just too dark, and people are like, "Yeah, ah, no, that was... Oh yeah, no, I love that, but no, you can't do it."

And then they were... Again, Universal was surprised, 'cause it came out and it actually opened well.

And I remember like, "The Variety" reviews said, you know, "Daring, bonkers, and way, way, way over the top."

[laughs] [dramatic music] - Check okay?

- Fine.

- And we were like, "All right."

So, but then it held on, you know, 'cause it has a distinctive character to it.

[typewriter ding] - What doors does that open?

I guess what's... First of all, like where are you headed from here, now that you have this under your belt?

- Spielberg, Steven Spielberg was looking, like, I gotta add his first name, was looking for a right... somebody new, and frankly cheap, to take a crack at "Jurassic Park," because they'd tried a couple drafts and it wasn't working, but he knew he really wanted to make the movie.

So they said, "Will you read this and meet with Steven, and tell him how you might do it."

And I said, "Okay, but as a favor."

[audience laughs] So I read it, and you know, it's a remarkable book, and it's dense with science.

It's a really daunting adaptation, if you read it, you're like, "Ugh, I get when they're running around eating people but this part where the guy talks about math for 12 pages is tough," but I had some ideas about that.

And so I went and met Steven, and pitched my thoughts and ideas to him on it, and that got made.

And this is where the story... see, this is the nauseating part, 'cause you know, so then that gets made, and it's the biggest movie of all time, and I was 29 years old.

- For both "Carlito's Way" and for "Jurassic Park," you are adapting for a force diploma and Spielberg.

I mean, what kind of pressures are you under for that?

Is this something where you are feeling confident in yourself?

- It's a lot, you gotta feel like you belong in the room, and you don't yet.

You know, so Brian is very disarming immediately, and he's also quite fatalistic and funny, and dark, as you might imagine.

And so I found it easier to work with him immediately.

Steven, it's fabulous to work with him, we have done since then many times, but it's hard to get over, again, my formative years were all his movies.

So to feel like you gotta be... you deserve to be in the room, and that your viewpoint is valid and important, it requires some egotism that's hard to come up with right away.

The biggest thing that I think I brought was, how can I reasonably structure this?

What character should be combined or eliminated?

At what points should these fabulous set pieces, that you have in mind, occur?

And who should be in them?

You know, and what do they say to each other?

I did feel that it was important that there'd be humor in the movie, so I tried to bring that in, but not to such an extent that it was gonna ruin the suspense or horror.

So in that regard, Jeff Goldblum was extremely helpful.

[gentle thud] - Anybody hear that?

It's a... [gentle thud] it's an impact tremor is what it is.

fairly alarmed here.

[dramatic music] - Come on, come on, come on, we've gotta get outta here.

Gotta get outta here, now, now, right now.

[dramatic music intensifies] Start the engine.

[thud] [engine starts] [dinosaur roars] [dramatic music] Must go faster.

- Movies that come together and turn out to be memorable and stick around.

And "Jurassic Park" certainly is one of those.

They're lightning in a bottle, and they're not just because one person was... did something brilliant.

It's 'cause there were seven or eight people who all were at the very top of their game, and they were with the right material.

So on that, obviously, Crichton started the whole thing, and he's at the top of his, you know, science-thriller imagination.

Steven, you know, flexing his ridiculously powerful, visual storytelling muscles.

And the, you know, three actors who... Laura Dern, Sam Neill, and Jeff Goldblum, who are all doing some of their best work ever.

- What does that type of success look like when you have a movie that is to that level of a phenomenon?

What does that do to you?

[audience laughs] - That's a heads-up question.

I won't say it's not fun, [laughs] it's a lot of fun.

I remember I was in New York, 'cause we were shooting "Carlito's Way" when it came out, and I walked down to the Ziegfeld.

You know, this was the old days, when you hear about grosses, if you know, Sid from the studio calls and says, "The grosses are good, kid."

So I walked down to the Ziegfeld on Friday night to see how it was doing, and there was, the guy came out and said, "The 7:00 showing of 'Jurassic Park' is sold out."

And this big line of people goes, "Oh."

And I was like, "All right, that's really promising."

And he said, "Also the 10:00 showing of 'Jurassic Park' is sold out."

And they went, "Ah."

And he said, "Tomorrow night, 7:00 and 10:00 shows are also sold out."

And I thought, "Oh, that's good, I know I'm new here..." And then it was, of course, good, and then it held on really remarkably.

So what it does is, it [bleep] you up because there's wonderful things that come up, of course, you know, there's money, industry prestige, the ability to work on other things.

Chance to maybe pursue some of the stuff that, you know, some of your original stuff you wanna do, and that's great.

And of course, everyone who worked on the movie together loves each other.

You know, if you have a flop, you see each other, you act like you owe each other money.

[audience laughs] But you know, so there's all that.

And you know, but life will not continue that way.

And a lot of what's, I think, important to happen to you in your teens and 20s, is you need to have significant hardship, so that you're ready for it when it comes later in life.

And because professionally, and at that time personally, everything was going so relentlessly well for me, I had to learn later in life how to deal with adversity.

And so I think, you know, there's, "What doesn't kill you, makes you stronger," right, it may also weaken you to the point where you die.

But bad, you know, tough things that happen to us, and struggle that occurs, does make us not only a stronger person, but a more empathetic one.

And that learning for me was to come later, and it's harder when it comes later.

So Hollywood success is...

I moved out of Hollywood in my mid-30s, and have been in New York since.

Which was very helpful, because it's a very one-topic town, and when you're up, it's great.

And when you're down, not so much, and it's not good for you.

So learning to look elsewhere in life and that there are other aspects of life and that if you let yourself be defined by a success, then you must also let yourself be defined by the failure.

And the truth is you are neither your successes, nor your failures, but rather the sum total of everything.

- Right on.

[audience applauds] - I've had therapy.

[audience laughs] - Well, so it seems that at that point, you... obviously with "Jurassic Park" but then with "Spider-Man," and "Indiana Jones," and "The Da Vinci Code," and "Jack Ryan," you've become someone where people are gonna just hand you franchises and trust you with the franchises.

- It depends.

They're not the most fun way to spend your time.

They're really hard, especially doing... if it's not the first of something, like the firsts that I did, of things that went on to be, you know, franchises or multiple movies like, you know, "Jurassic" or "Mission Impossible," or "Spider-Man," those are a great deal of fun, because there's no guarantee it's gonna work, there's no preconceptions.

Comic book movies were, you know, that they were... that was slumming.

I mean, the idea that Sony was gonna spend a hundred million dollars on a comic book movie was insane.

The "X-Men" came out while we were shooting, I think.

And it was a big, you know, it was like, "Hey, wait a minute, if you take it seriously and write these characters as sensitively as you can, these can be quite popular and good."

- Was that already your approach when you were writing "Spider-Man"?

- Yeah, we wanted to... My pitch, 'cause I did have to pitch on "Spider-Man," they were very, you know, particular.

And so I had all these boards of things I liked from the books, that I, you know, comic books, panels, and storylines I wanted to follow.

And I went in and I said, "Here's the thing, I wanna take..." 'Cause the customary thing to do was get the origin out of the way, in as little time as possible, you know, and have a happy ending.

And I said, "I want it to be about 45 minutes before he's actually 'Spider-Man'.

And he and MJ can't be together at the end, it's gotta be heartbreaking."

- So where are you going after you graduate?

- I...

I wanna move into the city and hopefully get a job as a photographer, work my way through college.

What about you?

- Headed for the city, too.

Can't wait to get out of here.

[sighs] - And then I had like the storyline I wanted to do with Harry, and you know, the love triangle and stuff.

But I said, "That's the thing, you gotta... if you hire me, you gotta sign on.

It's gonna take forever for him to become 'Spider-Man', 'cause we gotta just love this guy desperately.

And see, understand him, and feel his pain.

And at the end, there's no way they can be together, 'cause then it's over, and you don't want it to be over."

- You know, what occurs to me, when you're saying that, is that this sounds a lot like the first stories you were writing as a kid, of like, the misunderstood kid who has trouble with the girls, and finds it, and the misunderstood teenager, and things like that.

- There's a reason we, you know, identify with those people, who doesn't feel misunderstood?

So yeah, to write a teenager who didn't feel like he was getting the understanding or attention he deserved from his peers, and particularly women, was not far a-field for me.

- Curious, looking back at your career now, if there's a specific character, a specific scene, a specific moment, that maybe you're most fond of, most proud of?

- I directed this movie called "Ghost Town" that -- [audience member applauds] Oh thank you.

that is a very sweet and heartfelt, because I wrote it in a period after I'd gone through some difficulty, and I had fallen in love, and was to marry this woman that I've been married to now for 20 years.

And that story came out of that era of this... John Kamps, my co-writer, often and on that, and I wanted to write a story of someone who was truly, truly awful to people, and slowly awaken his better nature.

And there's a moment at the end, it has an ending, he's a dentist, and this is...

The woman he's in love with, Tea Leoni, had a terrible tooth problem throughout the movie.

At the end, she's come back after a long time and sees him.

And he is sitting in his thing, and very heartfelt, tragic story between them.

And she says, "It hurts when I smile."

- It hurts when I smile.

[mellow music] [David] And he says, "I can fix that."

- I can fix that for you.

[David] Which I just thought was lovely.

I got those.... And it was so nice getting Ricky Gervais, who brilliantly plays the guy, to that moment.

I think I ran 10 minutes of film on him, just that last couple lines, until there was one that was lovely.

[typewriter ding] [Narrator] You've been watching a conversation with David Koepp on "On Story."

On Story is part of a growing number of programs in Austin Film Festival's On Story project.

That also includes the On Story radio program, podcast, book series, and the On Story archive, accessible through the Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.

To find out more about On Story and Austin Film Festival, visit onstory.tv or austinfilmfestival.com.

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