In order to provide this post, I’ve
combined material from two main pieces (FilmCraft Screenwriting: Interview with
David Webb Peoples by Tim Grierson) and (Q&A with David Webb Peoples: A
Reluctant Hollywood Hero by Elaine Dutka of the LA Times). It’s a fascinating insight
and an interesting account of how Clint Eastwood’s Oscar winning film
Unforgiven came to be made and its long journey from script to screen.
'Unforgiven' is one of the great masterpieces of all time. He [David]
believes that having Clint Eastwood was the only way they could get the movie
made, but I believe that the real star of 'Unforgiven' is David Webb Peoples.
You could say that he wrote the best film in two genres. The best sci-fi film
I’ve ever seen is 'Blade Runner', and possibly the best and most literate
Western was 'Unforgiven’ - James Dalessandro
Starting his career as an editor,
David Webb Peoples began writing screenplays in the 1970s, producing a series
of scripts that eventually brought him to the attention of director Tony Scott.
Through Scott’s encouragement, Peoples became involved with Blade Runner
(1982), the seminal science-fiction film directed by Scott’s brother Ridley.
However, one of Peoples’ greatest successes came more than 15 years after he
first conceived the idea: Director Clint Eastwood optioned his script of The
Cut-Whore Killings, eventually turning it into his Best Picture winning
Unforgiven (1992), which netted Peoples a Best Original Screenplay Oscar
nomination.
I started getting into movies in
my late teens, but I didn’t think about movies as writing. In fact, movies at
that time made me think contemptuously of writers. I thought the creative world
was about images. I didn’t have much respect for the written word. I was sort
of a young brat and liked movies from Europe. Somehow, I didn’t think people
wrote those scripts—I thought those images just collected themselves. I was
very naïve.
Instead of writing, I became a
film editor, which was manipulating images. I was mostly editing documentaries,
and in documentaries you are more of a storyteller as an editor than you are if
you’re editing a feature. In a feature, the writer and the director are telling
the story, and the editor is putting it together, which is not to diminish in
any way the editor’s role, because the editor makes it magic. But the actual
storytelling is often more on the shoulders of an editor in documentary films.
I wrote The Cut-Whore Killings,
which became Unforgiven, around 1976. I’ve always been drawn to what are called
the revisionist Westerns instead of the big John Ford movies. I like things
like The Culpepper Cattle Co. (1972) and The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid
(1972), which I consider a masterpiece. But I was also influenced by Taxi
Driver (1976), which I thought was an amazing movie. Paul Schrader just opened
up the world with that movie. When I first started writing, I didn’t want to
have anybody get killed in any script I wrote because I was just so put off by
the unreality. When people get killed in the movies, it’s like in James Bond,
which is perfectly legitimate because James Bond is James Bond, and that’s the
reality they set up. But even in other movies, you kill 10 people and then you
go have breakfast - it’s as if it didn’t have any impact whatsoever. But all of a
sudden I see Taxi Driver and people are getting killed, and the characters maintained
how they would be in real life. But at the same time, it’s an entertaining
movie, and that was always important to me - I wanted to write things that were
entertaining. I didn’t want to write obscure art pictures with little lessons
in them—I wanted to write entertainment. Taxi Driver opened up what
entertainment could be. It said, “Yeah, you can write this kind of stuff and
it’ll be entertaining.”
My wife Janet Peoples and I began
writing together around 1995 as a practical consideration. We've written good
stuff, but it doesn't get made, and we've also written uncredited stuff on
other pictures. But the bottom line is, we have a pile of scripts that are just
not in sync with the times. We haven’t had a lot of success because we tend to
write a lot like the 1970s and early 1980s films we loved. Those movies were
what inspired Janet and myself to be writers. Here was a time when you could
pull out all the stops and write something that was entertaining, that would
dazzle people, that would be enormously successful, and that you could feel
good about. It was a very exciting time, and it’s hard getting those pictures
made now. Clint Eastwood still does really strong, wonderful character movies,
but he’s not going to do everything you write.
I'm not eager to see the movies
that I've written, and I don’t think Janet necessarily is either. It’s not that
we've never seen any of them, but if you write a really good script, that is in
itself an accomplishment. That was something I picked up from William Goldman:
I’ve never met him, but he has always been one of my mentors. He was able to
make the script itself a finished thing—you could read it and see the movie.
That’s what Janet and I are doing, and when other people make the movie, good
for them. That’s great, but the part that we did is on paper. It’s an enormous
thrill to see Unforgiven and to see the performances—the magic those actors put
into those parts is a pleasure to see. But I didn’t do that. That’s what they
did.”
Excerpt from FilmCraft:
Screenwriting edited by Tim Grierson © 2013 Taylor & Francis Group. All
Rights Reserved.
Try as he might, Berkeley-based
screenwriter David Webb Peoples can't distance himself from the Hollywood
scene. With three high-profile films on the screen simultaneously, he's been
besieged with calls from the press asking him to discuss his work--and from industry
types offering him more.
His revisionist Western
"Unforgiven" is being mentioned as a probable Oscar contender. A
recently discovered "director's cut" of the 1982 cult favourite
"Blade Runner," has just been reissued. And his dark comedy
"Hero," directed by Stephen Frears, opened last Friday.
Question: "Hero," like
"Unforgiven" and "Blade Runner," takes place in a world of
moral ambiguity. Heroes and villains are presented as flip sides of the same
coin.
Answer: I've never succeeded in
writing "good guys" and "bad guys"--and, believe me, I've
tried. A lot of entertainment revolves around them. As politicians have
discovered, if you can devise a bad guy, people will listen. Others are far
ahead of me when it comes to moral ambiguity, though. "Silkwood" was
a hell of a script. Karen wasn't a saint. She didn't pet dogs and wasn't easily
sympathetic but, thanks to the screenwriter, you respect what's good about her.
Same goes for Paul Schrader's Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver."
Q: "Hero," ironically,
comes on the heels of "Unforgiven," which you wrote back in 1976. Why
did it take so long getting that project off the ground?
A: Francis Ford Coppola optioned
it in '84. He took it around, but couldn't get financing. Clint picked up the
option in 1985 and said he was making it "next year" a couple of
times. The year before last, my wife was at the Telluride Film Festival and
Clint walked on stage. He was overwhelmed by the scenery, he told the audience,
and figured it was probably time to make his Western. I was thrilled.
Q: Ever wonder what "Unforgiven"
would have looked like had Coppola been at the helm?
A: Francis would have done it
brilliantly as he does everything else, but it's hard to imagine anyone making
it as straightforwardly and uncompromisingly as Clint. No studio would have
made it that way--dark, moody. With a lot of voices, things generally end up
becoming blander and more accessible. "Unforgiven" was Clint Eastwood
saying "This is what I'm going to do . . . get out of my way."
Q: You never set foot on the set
and had no one to "protect" your words. Yet the script that was shot
is said to be virtually unchanged from the original.
A: That's true. I didn't meet
Clint in person until he invited me to see the movie at Warner Bros. But he and
I were enough in sync that he didn't feel it necessary to ask for rewrites. One
of the stars, Francis Fisher, told me that this was the first time she saw a
shooting script that was entirely in white. Most of them are multi-coloured,
full of blue and red pages or whatever representing various changes
in the screenplay.
Q: Westerns are said to be out of
favour--and this one wasn't a shoot-em-up tailored for a mass audience. Were
you surprised with the response?
A: I was surprised--and happy for
Clint, who is long overdue in getting respect he deserves. Though he's
perceived as a commercial icon, he's made bold and terrific movies.
From October 5th, 1992 -Elaine Dutka - LA Times Staff Writer - All Rights Reserved.
Eastwood on the script:
I bought the “Unforgiven” script in 1980 and put it in a drawer and
said I’ll do this someday its good material and I’ll rewrite it. And I took it
from the drawer ten years later and called up the writer and said I had a
couple of ideas and wanted to rewrite some of it, and he was fine with that. I
told him I might call him because I wanted him to approve my changes. So I went
to work and the more I tooled with it, the more I realized I was killing it with improvements. So I
went back to him and said that I had been working on these ideas and I really
felt I was wrecking it, so I was just going to go with it the way it was.
Frances Fisher who plays
Strawberry Alice in Unforgiven said "that was the first time I saw a
shooting script that was entirely in white. Most of them are multi-coloured,
full of blue and red pages or whatever representing various changes in the
screenplay."
As an interesting footnote, Richard
Schickel's book Clint Eastwood stated that the star's rapt interest appalled
his then story editor (and Josey Wales screenwriter) Sonia Chernius. She said
of the script - "We would have been far better off not to have accepted
trash like this piece of inferior work," she stated in a memo. "I
can't think of one good thing to say about it. Except maybe, get rid of it
FAST."
1 comment:
I would very much like to contact David Webb or possibly his agent. Any idea how I can get some contact info on either???
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