[lounge music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

"On Story" is also brought to you in part by the Bogle Family Vineyards, six generation farmers and third generation winemakers based in Clarksburg, California.

Makers of sustainably grown wines that are a reflection of the their family values since 1968.

[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 on "On Story," we'll speak with Katrin Benedikt, co-writer of the non-stop political action thrillers, "Olympus Has Fallen," "London Has Fallen," and "Expendables 3."

- When you talk about an action movie, it's, you know, it's obviously about, you know, possibly revenge or whatever.

It's about survival initially, right?

So action movies, really, you're surviving something, and then once you survive it, it's also about then finding some meaning in that life that you've survived to live.

[paper crumples] [typing] [carriage returns, ding] [Narrator] A true lover of action movies, Benedikt discusses crafting characters for star-studded casts, and working with genre experts, Antoine Fuqua and Sylvester Stallone.

She details her experiences working for 10 years, to forge a career as a screenwriter, pitching the same story for years on end, and building her portfolio before striking gold with "Olympus Has Fallen."

[typewriter ding] You have an interesting background.

How did you get from the things you were doing, to be writing movies where stuff blows up?

- [laughs] Well, so, I was born in Reykjavík, Iceland.

I moved to the States when I was six.

My mother remarried someone in the US Navy, and that's what brought us to the US.

And then I grew up on a naval base, I grew up with brothers.

There were no princess costumes in my childhood, so it was all about, you know, playing football and running around outside and watching action movies and that sort of thing.

But I actually, after college, started working in employee benefits and pensions and investments and 401[k] plans, and I did that for about 15 years.

And I got to a point where I was like, you know, "Is this all there is?"

I didn't have that passion.

And so I thought, "Well, what else is out there?"

And I decided to take a screenwriting class, because I literally just sat down and I just said, "What do I love?"

You know, I did that thing where you kinda make that list of like, "What do I love?"

And at the time, I was like, "Well, I love movies, I love writing, I love stories, I love reading People magazine."

And so I ended up just signing up for this screenwriting class and fell in love with it.

But, the road to get from that point was a solid 10 years.

From that first class that I took back in 2000, until "Olympus Has Fallen" sold in 2012.

So it was a long road, and basically, a huge sacrifice in so many ways.

- So let's talk about "Olympus Has Fallen," because it was an original, right, from you guys, but has turned into now a series of films that are still being made.

And you had a co-writer.

You guys worked together.

Can you talk a little bit about that relationship, and then how you developed this story and why you took it out there?

- I actually met my former writing partner.

We don't write together anymore.

But we met at that screenwriting class.

And so we just had this passion for writing, and we were writing, believe it or not, we were writing action together.

We were also writing some family and animation together.

So the idea for the whole "Has Fallen" franchise was my former writing partner, because he basically said, "What would be the hardest place in the world to take over?"

And at that time, he was thinking, you know, the White House.

Now this was before 9/11, so at the time the script was initially finished, trying to sell it was impossible, because 9/11 had just happened.

Nobody had the appetite for anything terrorist-related or anything like that, especially here in the US.

- When did it start to actually feel like it got momentum, and what were the things that you feel like gave it that momentum?

- This is a crazy story.

So when we came out to LA, and we were pitching it, "It's 'Die Hard' in the White House.

It's 'Die Hard' in the White House, and it's time for a new one."

And the people that got it, got it.

So when we came out to LA, time is your enemy.

You gotta figure out how you're gonna make it, and it's very expensive to live in LA.

I mean, we drained retirement accounts that we had from our corporate jobs.

We were all in.

And we came out, we were living off of this money, and then the writers' strike hit of 2007, 2008.

And we thought, "Oh my gosh.

The timing could not have been worse."

So what ended up happening after that was I got into a fender bender.

And this girl hops out, and she's like, "Oh my God, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry, it was all my fault."

And we ended up following her to this random mechanic.

And then the car got fixed, everything was fine, but we ended up saying, "There's a movie there.

What happens if an ordinary fender bender turns into your worst nightmare?"

So we pursued that, and that became a script we had called "Cali."

And I'm getting to the answer to your question.

So "Cali" became kind of our new spec, like, sample script, our kinda calling card.

Again, this very low point where I basically said, "Oh my God, we need plan B."

And I remember, my writing partner, you know, he just looked straight at me and just said, "There is no plan B."

And I was like, "Okay, all right, so what do we do?"

So we said, "Okay, what do we have?

We have fans of our writing."

One of those fans was a guy named Mark Mikutowicz.

He was working for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment.

And we ended up meeting with this junior agent, and unbeknownst to us, he happened to report to one of the partners at Gersh.

And at the same time, through our entertainment lawyer, got Kaplan/Perrone, and all of us as a team, they basically went through everything we had and said, "We're going out with 'Olympus Has Fallen.'"

And that's how that whole thing happened.

So if I didn't get into the fender bender... [laughs] Seriously, if I did not get into that fender bender in Los Feliz when I was feeding lemurs, I don't know if "Olympus Has Fallen" would've sold, because we wouldn't have written "Cali."

With "Cali" got us all that attention, and then getting "Olympus Has Fallen" out there again.

- Sir.

Cerberus has been activated.

- What?

[Malik] NORAD confirms.

- How did it come to this?

We lost Korea and now our nukes?

- It couldn't have broken the code.

- That would be impossible.

They'd be on the bunker computer for days to break three codes.

- He only needed to break one code.

- But we haven't launched any missiles.

[ominous music] - They're gonna detonate them in the silos.

♪ ♪ - How many?

♪ ♪ - All of them.

♪ ♪ - Was the fact that, even at that time, that a woman is attached to this action film a negative at all, or was it an impediment in any way or-- - I will say, it was interesting, because the first time we met Jerry Butler, and this was after the script sold and we were getting together with him, Antoine Fuqua, the director, and a Secret Service agent that was working as a consultant on the project.

So we all get together there, and when we walked up to him to say, "Hey, hi, we're the writers," he had to do a double-take.

Like he literally was like, and it might've been just 'cause, I don't know if we both looked kinda, I don't know if I, me especially, I looked soft, but I'm a girl.

But yeah, he was shocked.

He was like, "Oh, gosh, I didn't expect such like, you know, riveting action to come from--" You know, and that just goes to show, honestly, you just can't judge a book by its cover.

All I did growing up was watch action movies.

So, I mean, "RoboCop," my favorite movie of all time, "Terminator," "Jaws," when Quint's sliding into the shark.

I mean, these are these moments when I was growing up where I was like, "Oh my God," so... - So that didn't stop you in any way from moving forward with that, and how did that relationship, because I think the relationships with agents are a little mysterious.

- Well, a lot of times, they don't get you a job, but they'll get you into rooms.

The manager and the agent, through their contacts, will get you into rooms.

You get into rooms, you make an impression, you have those writing samples ready, and then you're able to, you know, brainstorm with them on any ideas that they currently have or whatever.

So yeah, you are getting your own jobs in a lot of cases.

You know, you also have to take control of your own destiny, to the extent that you can.

[typewriter ding] - Coming out of this corporate financial world and you're feeding lemurs.

[Katrin laughs] And all of a sudden, you're thrown into an actual deal.

You're going to meet with the actor who's gonna be involved with it and the production team, and it's like, "Okay, we're moving forward."

But you have no experience in this.

You do have a Cinderella story, in a way- - Absolutely.

I would say that any movie that gets made in Hollywood is a Cinderella story.

It's a miracle that any movie gets made, because of everything that goes into it and all of the buy-in that needs to happen every step of the way.

What happened with "Olympus Has Fallen" was, when we signed with Gersh, it was October of 2011.

And I remember I, you know, said to my writing partner, "Oh my gosh, we need to get this script out as soon as possible," and thank God, because "White House Down" sold two weeks after.

It was unbelievable.

So once that happened, because we had a competing project with "Olympus Has Fallen," and because Millennium had optioned it at that point and said, "Okay," we were nervous.

We were like, "Are they gonna drop it now?"

And they just decided, "Nope, we're gonna make this movie."

They literally said, "We're starting pre-production now."

And I was actually working a corporate job at this point.

I had gone back, 'cause we were literally down to, I'm not kidding you, like the last $5,000 in the world.

We immediately went to Louisiana, did pre-production with the crew, And some of the unexpected thing that come up were things like, we'd written some things that have water.

They'll say, "Water's too expensive.

We're not doing water.

That has to change."

Oh, okay.

Then, you know, the production designer will say, "We're not building this outside of the White House, so we can't have people coming out of it.

It's gonna be CGI, so people are gonna look ridiculous.

So you're gonna have to do..." So, you know, you gotta change that.

So once the reality came of that whole moment of, you know, you start out with getting initial notes from your reps, then you get notes from the studio, after they buy it, and then we met with Antoine Fuqua and the Secret Service guy, and Gerard Butler, and we got all of their notes.

And then after that, we go to pre-production and we get the production's people's notes, because they have to actually make it happen.

And that was a little surprising 'cause we thought that kinda maybe filtered through the director or something.

We don't get involved with that, right?

Yeah, you do, you get involved with everything, as you should, because you're shepherding that script.

- Was that script largely what we saw with "Olympus Has Fallen?"

- So much of it was changed.

So it was things like when we got to pre-production, and we had the Secret Service consultants there, which were very helpful, and they basically said, "Hey, if we were gonna take over the White House, this is what we would do."

And we had these conversations about it, and part of it was, we wanted a lot of things to be as realistic as possible.

But at the same time, we also don't wanna draw a map for terrorists either, right?

So I read a lotta stuff online where they just like, "Oh, there's a pothole here, there's a pothole there, and a pothole there."

Well, yeah, okay.

You know, it's kinda good that there is, isn't it?

Some of the things that were actually real in real life that we put in the movie, people didn't believe, and vice versa.

But I'll tell you one big thing that did change too.

So our original movie, we wanted it to say something, and what we wanted it to say was, what would happen if terrorists got ahold of the president's son, and he had to make a decision, save millions of Americans or save my son?

When we went to the set, Jerry came up to us, so nice, so great, just perfect for this role.

And he said, "I hope you guys don't mind, but Connor's not gonna be in the whole movie.

We're gonna..." 'Cause we had him in there for the whole movie.

"We're gonna get him out, after like an hour.

'Cause you know, I'm not gonna, you know, 'cause it's just too lumbersome to be the action hero and you have to carry the kid around."

And you know, he made a good point.

So it was like totally different than what we wrote.

When we met Antoine Fuqua the first time, he said, "What is this movie about?"

And I said, "Redemption."

And he said, "But what's this movie about?"

And so he goes, "It's about going home."

- How's your day been?

- Yeah, it's been busy.

It's good, you know?

How 'bout you?

- Yeah, busy.

- Hey, you okay?

- Yeah, I've had to stay a little later than I expected.

- Yeah, me too.

- You're gonna come home tonight, right?

- Yeah, sure.

Got a date, remember?

Hey, I gotta go.

There's, uh, paperwork's piling up.

[Leah] Okay.

[somber music] [Mike] I love you.

- You have a scene in there that's... Well, it's a variety of scenes that are pretty brutal, right, and you know, where they're taking out the people one by one to get the codes.

And to me, that's just, I wonder like, when you first wrote that script to when it actually happened, which was quite a bit of time different, was that something that was in the original script, that section of pulling each one of them out and really like, threatening their life and beating the crap out of them?

- I remember that like with Melissa Leo's character, Secretary of Defense Ruth McMillan, and I know that Antoine Fuqua said, "She's going to get the crap kicked out of her.

It doesn't matter that she's a woman.

She's gonna take it, and she's gonna be a badass."

And that was really an Antoine Fuqua note, that it was gonna be that brutal, and to that level.

And Kang, oh my gosh.

I mean, Rick Yune is amazing.

I mean, best villain ever.

But yeah, those types of things were written, but then they would get, you know, like kind of, you know, ramped up.

And that was definitely an Antoine Fuqua note.

I mean, he wanted to show it that, you know, "I want the audience to feel that this is what it would look like."

It's awful, it's war.

It's a disaster on US soil on every level.

And that's what it looks like.

[Ruth groans] [Kang speaks foreign language] [ominous music] - Madam Secretary, your Cerberus code.

- No!

[thud] [Ruth grunts] [Ruth moans] - Ruth.

[breathing heavily] - Your code!

- You'll have to kill me.

- As you wish.

[typewriter ding] - Let's talk about "Expendables 3," because you've just worked on your original idea, and now you're being handed this franchise, from probably one of the biggest franchise guys out there, Sylvester Stallone.

What was that process like, as far as, how you then had to shift your mindset from, "Here's the way we were working.

Now here's the way we have to work."

- "Expendables 3" was a wonderful experience on so many levels.

To start out with, it was, this is a job that our reps got us.

They said it was an open writing assignment.

They were looking for someone to co-write with Stallone, and, "Do you wanna put your hat in the ring?"

We said, "Absolutely."

They said, "Well, come up with your take."

So if you go up for an open writing assignment or anything like that, they're asking you to come up with, well, what would be your take for "Expendables 3?"

What would you do?

And we decided that it should go in the direction of having like the Expendables, and then we'd have this other team of like the Evil Expendables, someone who they really are worried about, that these guys could actually defeat us.

These guys could actually, you know, kick our butts.

We drove up to Stallone's house, and I'm not even a starstruck person, but I grew up watching "Rocky."

I went to high school and grew up outside of Philadelphia, and you know, so to actually be sitting there in Sylvester Stallone's living room is surreal.

So we pitched our idea, and got along with him great.

And it was funny 'cause when we were leaving, he goes, "Yeah, yeah," you know.

He goes, "I think this is gonna happen."

And we said, "Oh, okay."

We walked outside and we're like, "He thinks it's gonna happen or happen with us?

We know the movie's gonna happen, but is it gonna happen with us?"

A few days later, we got the call that we got the job, which we were so thrilled about.

So our take got us in the room and he liked our take, but he kinda already had in his mind what he wanted to do for the story.

And so he wanted to do the young and old Expendables, and he wanted to kinda, you know, kinda show their age and say, "Oh, you know, do we really have it in us anymore, and should we really be in this line of business," and that sorta thing.

[footsteps clack] [nose sniffs] - Amateur.

- Amateur?

[bleep] - Who you calling [bleep], Grandpa?

- Grandpa's about to crush your windpipe.

[ominous music] - What's this, your toy, boy?

- You wanna dance, big guy?

- Hey!

It's just a job.

- Come on, let's go.

- Bunch a has-beens still trying to be hard.

- You're young and you're dumb.

♪ ♪ [knife clicks] [blade slams] [typewriter ding] - We were invited to come to Bulgaria.

We were there for two months.

And we worked with them every day in Bulgaria on the script.

And because that cast was so huge, you know, they were still casting when we were filming.

So Kelsey Grammer was one of the last characters to get cast.

So, you know, the whole time you're writing, they're like, "Okay, they're thinking about this actor."

Okay, and then we write the thing, and no, no, no, now it's Kelsey Grammer.

Well, that's not Kelsey Grammer.

We gotta write it for Kelsey Grammar now.

Like, so it literally was like, we were just changing it.

But the biggest thing that happened was, when we got to set was, they said, "Oh, okay, Terry Crews is only gonna be here for like a day."

We're like, "What?

What do you mean he's only gonna be..." "Well, he just got 'Brooklyn Nine-Nine.'"

So we were like, "Oh, okay, well, he's in the whole script right now."

"Well, we gotta change it."

I said, "Okay, we're gonna kill him."

And then, "Okay, he's dead."

"No, he's not dead, he's just gonna be injured, but he's gonna be in a coma for the whole movie."

You know, we were just constantly making changes the whole time we were there.

We're literally just writing and working the whole time, because we sat there, I think.

I think one of the photographers on set said, "Hey, you guys were here at 7:00 AM in the lobby, and I came back at like midnight.

You guys were still there."

I'm like, "Yeah, that's called writing."

[laughs] "That's how it works."

- Now it's a different writing partner.

And how easy is it to say, "That's a terrible idea.

Let's not do that," or- [Katrin] Yeah, yeah.

- You know what I mean?

Like, it seems like that might be scary.

- Yeah, you don't do that to Sly.

[Barbara laughs] But it was more like we were just literally going line by line.

I mean, it was literally like, "Okay, so this section do this."

"No, I want him to do this little," and then we all would just chime in on what we thought should happen there.

Actually, and I'm bragging a little bit here, but I'm really proud of creating and writing for Galgo, which was Antonio Banderas' character.

When we were on set, Antonio Banderas called.

He's a chatterbox, and I thought, "Oh my God, he is like the sweetest, nicest human," and just so excited, and he was talking about coming to set and all this stuff.

And so when we were writing his character and stuff, I said, "You know, I think it'll be great if he's always talking."

And it's annoying the hell outta Sly.

- I want to be your friend.

- I don't need a friend.

- Yes, you do.

Everybody does.

I-I-I-I don't have any friends.

That's why I know.

But besides my friendship issues, what I really need now is something to do.

Well, not just anything, but what I was born to do.

- Best bet is a one-way trip.

- Excuse me, sir, but one-way trip is better than no way, which is the way I live now.

- Help me with the crate.

- Sorry.

- Well, he thinks he was let go, you know, from his prior team, and in reality, they were all killed except for him.

So now he has survivor's guilt.

He misses these guys, and I thought it was interesting to have him be really funny, but have this backstory that was really sad.

And I actually really like that moment in "Expendables" when Sly asks him, you know, "Why were you let go from your team," and he's like, "I wasn't let go," and he explains the story, and then Sly repeats their names, remembering them, and said, "You know, I was listening," and he said, "Thank you."

And I thought that was a really good moment.

- That is a challenging film, I would imagine, writing, just because there were so many characters.

And were there ever points on that where you guys discussed that, like, how that was gonna work, and how to really develop all those characters?

- I think the difficult thing was trying to show these characters with any depth.

And that was hard.

And I'm not even convinced that we had the time to really do that.

But the montage sequence was huge in introducing all the younger guys, and we needed to do that montage, 'cause it was a very quick way to say, "Ooh, boom, boom, boom, here's who they are."

But the most challenging thing was giving those shining moments to the existing stars like Jason Statham.

So, you know, he's used to having those moments where he shines, 'cause he's a phenomenal actor and he's a great action star, and having time to give him his due.

- So you just pull the plug and that's it?

- Just did.

- Yeah?

Well, it doesn't work that way!

- What?

- We've been through the mud, [bleep] the blood, and I've saved your [bleep] more times than I can count.

You owe me a shot at the son of a [bleep] that took Caesar down.

- We're not doing that.

- When I joined, I joined for the whole ride.

- I know you did.

Ride's over.

[somber music] [typewriter ding] - So it feels like things are going well, right?

And then the opportunity for "London Has Fallen" happens, right?

Like, it felt good to have "Olympus Has Fallen" do so well.

You know, what was that process afterwards like?

- We knew pretty much the first night with the tracking numbers, and we got a call from Mark Hill saying, "Hey, it's gonna be a huge hit."

We were so incredibly thrilled.

Like you can't even imagine.

I mean, even just starting from when you're driving around LA and you see billboards for your movie.

I mean, we pull the car over.

"Oh my God, I gotta get a picture.

This is crazy."

But when that happened and we were told we were gonna do the sequel, so we already had this idea, and I was thinking, you know, what about the G8 or the G7, depending upon which year we're talking about.

But you know, that's an event that, oh my God, that's a worldwide event that everybody would know.

So we said, "Oh, we should do it in Brussels, It'll be like the G7."

And then they got back to us, said, "Great idea," but we get tax credits in London, [laughs] so we're doing it in London.

Okay, we're gonna do London, all right.

So, you know, you then just gotta pivot and say, "All right, so what's gonna happen in London?

All right, we're gonna have the prime minister.

He's gonna die, mysterious circumstances, what happens?

It's gonna be a funeral.

Everybody needs to, you know, get there, you know, all the heads of states are gonna gather with short notice, which is also a lotta tension and stress for Secret Service and protective details."

And so we kinda went that route.

- So what happens then, because here, you two create this character, Mike Banning.

I mean, now he really is IP, right?

And now Gerard Butler probably has something to say about what Mike Banning should do.

- Absolutely.

- So how did that next step work?

Because I think that's an interesting transition to, well, we kinda don't own this thing we put out into the world anymore.

- Oh, I mean, it happens a lot, you know, where you might start off with the franchise, even if you create it and go a certain way.

When you sell a script to Hollywood, not a book, but a script, you're, in essence, in order to sell the script, to get it set up, you're transferring your rights to the studio.

And that's part of that legal process.

So it isn't yours anymore.

On "London Has Fallen," it made sense to go from the domestic to the world stage.

That totally made sense.

Keeping Mike Banning badass, keeping him moving forward in his life.

Because I think when you talk about an action movie, it's obviously about survival initially, right?

So action movies, really, you're surviving something.

And then once you survive it, it's also about then finding some meaning in that life that you've survived to live.

And that's kinda where he goes, with, of course, having the baby on his way, realizing now how important it is to have that time for his wife, and for family and for balance, and things like that, which I thought was really a great thing to introduce.

You know, you have to have those moments where people can pause and catch their breath.

So that's important, of course.

But I think at the end of the day, you're still wanting to develop these characters at the best that you can in an action movie, which, of course, is challenging more so than I think in other genres.

And it's just about pacing.

And I think once you write it, when you go back to read it, you'll have a feel for it.

[typewriter ding] [Announcer 1] You've been watching a conversation with Katrin Benedikt 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.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [projector clicking] [typing] [typewriter ding] [projector dies]