The irony isn’t lost on me that I’m posting this interview on the first week of the writers strike in Hollywood.  This was conducted a few weeks ago and I’ve been so busy writing my Region 2 DVD reviews that I haven’t had time to write it up.

Both films were a met with mixed critical reaction and largely overlooked by the general public because they had a catch that captured the attention of the press. K-19 was over shadowed by Harrison Ford’s Russian accent and the press had a field day hammering Oliver Stone’s Alexander because of the lead characters sexuality. Personally I think Alexander is a great film and as far as recent sword and sandal epics go I feel that it’s the best-yes even better than Gladiator! It’s okay, I can already hear you shouting and screaming, I still can’t wait to get my hands on the Final Cut!

Kyle comes across as a normal guy and he seems to enjoy the writing process. I also quizzed him about some of the films that he’s working on. I didn’t even know that he was writing a remake of Warren Beatty’s Parallax View for Tom Cruise before I started researching and he’s pretty frank about where the film is on the development slate following Cruise’s split from Paramount.

Anyway, enough of my crazy ramblings, here’s the interview. Enjoy.

Q: How did you first get interested in writing?

Christopher Kyle: I began writing short stories and poetry when I was 13 or so, just as a hobby, with no thought of doing it as a career.  Then my high school drama coach (I was actor then-- the highlight of my acting career was playing Felix in "The Odd Couple" when I was 17) encouraged me to enter a playwriting contest.  I came in third, which meant I got $10 and the opportunity to see my play performed in Muncie, Indiana.  The experience of seeing my work on stage convinced me that there could be no better life than that of playwright.

Q: Who are your writing heroes?

Christopher Kyle: Dead ones: I've always been fond of the German playwrights, especially Brecht and Wedekind.  Also Pirandello, Beckett, and American playwrights of social conscience like Arthur Miller and Clifford Odets. Living ones: Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill, and more recently, Conor McPherson.

Q: What inspires you? When you have an idea how do you develop it before you put it down on the page (screen)?

Christopher Kyle: When I'm not working for hire (i.e. screenwriting), I often find an image or situation will implant itself in my head unbidden.  For instance, a driver falling asleep at the wheel and almost running over a man on the side of the road.  If the image doesn't go away after a while, I begin to think about who the people are, how they got there, etc.  Then I take a lot of notes, sometimes dozens of pages over years, before I start to create any firm idea of how the story will be structured.

Q: When starting to write a script do have the entire idea planned or do you just type away and see where the script takes you?

Christopher Kyle: With a play I make a very loose outline of where it's going to go and just dive in.  With screenplays I do a much more detailed treatment because there are deadlines and one can't afford to drive into a cul-de-sac.  Of course, one often finds interesting things in cul-de-sacs...

Q: What are the challenges of writing a play, considering that you are restricted to one location?

Christopher Kyle: I have never thought myself restricted to one location.  Plays are wonderful in that you can simply have a character say, "Isn't Bulgaria lovely?" and all of sudden the audience is in Bulgaria.  The sorts of plays that restrict themselves to one location are often (though not always) boring to me.  I find the challenges of WRITING a play are few; theater is open to all sorts of formal experimentation and imagination.  The challenge comes in PRODUCING a play because there is so rarely any money to hire actors and build sets and publicize the work...

Q: Rewriting is a huge part of the scriptwriting process. How do you keep ideas fresh and interesting as you are working on them?

Christopher Kyle: Rewriting is huge part of any writing, I think, and I actually prefer rewriting a scene to staring at a blank page.  The hardest part of writing a script is getting out that first draft.  Once you have that, once you have some raw material to manipulate and revise, it starts to get a lot more fun.

Q. You’re quite a prolific writer, how many ideas are you working on at    anyone time?

Christopher Kyle: I know writers who are good at juggling several scripts at once, but I don't think I am one of them.  So I try to be actively writing only one thing at a time.  But I am always making notes and outlines and looking for new material while I'm working on whatever script is on top at the moment.

Q. How did you first get involved in writing films?

Christopher Kyle: Through playwriting.  I had two plays produced off-Broadway at Playwrights Horizons and after that I began to get interest from Hollywood-- not so much in the plays themselves but in me as a writer.  One of the projects that came out of that period was K-19: The Widowmaker.

Q. What are the main differences in working on a play and working on a film?

Christopher Kyle: Well, they are similar in the sense that both tell stories dramatically-- that is in the present tense.  But plays are driven primarily by the spoken word and movies are driven primarily by images.  Dialogue should be a last resort in most movies; audiences understand and remember information much better if you can find a way to show it to them instead.  But in a play, where we may be seated in the back row of the balcony, we have to listen, and the story unfolds largely through conversation.  Of course there are exceptions-- talky movies and visual plays-- but I think the generalization holds.  As a playwright, I always reminding myself to cut the dialogue and find pictures to say it better when I'm writing a movie. The other big difference is the amount of control the writer has.  A playwright is involved throughout the production process, with contractual approval of director, cast, and designers-- and not a word can be changed without his or her permission.  In Hollywood, of course, the writer is a hired gun, generally ignored once the script moves into production, and often fired and rewritten by others.  But the pay is better. 

continued on page 2 --------->

Page 2 >>>