Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with another interview for you folks. This time I chatted with Mark Fergus, one of the many screenwriters on CHILDREN OF MEN who is currently putting the finishing touches on IRON MAN with his partner in crime Hawk Ostby (who makes a cameo appearance in the interview, by the way) for Jon Favreau. Mark Fergus got behind the camera for the first time with a flick called FIRST SNOW, starring Guy Pearce. Fergus wrote the script with Ostby and turned into Fergus’ directorial debut. It’s a solid little film about a man who is told he will die very soon and what that man goes through as his death approaches. We talk a lot about jumping from being a screenwriter to being a director and a bit about IRON MAN as well. Being the genius I am, I asked the first question… How he decided to make the leap from screenwriter to director… and about 30 seconds in I realized I neglected to switch on the tape recorder. I fixed that quickly, so we’ll jump in about halfway through the first question. Essentially, he began saying he’d always wanted to try his hand at directing and gave me an origin of the script for FIRST SNOW. Enjoy the chat!
Mark Fergus: So we were getting nowhere in the writing game, trying very hard to sell a spec, had all the wrong kind of goals and back in 99’ we just decided… We saw In The Company of Men, Neil LaBute’s first film and was so knocked out by what he did with the writing and really simple directing. I just said “You know, now’s the time, let’s just set some goals for ourselves and try to write something good and go do it.” And then the script ended up kind of changing our lives. It got us a career, a writing job, adaptations and all that stuff, so it ended up having a big impact on us in ways we didn’t even know existed. I didn’t know how the writing business worked, so then for six years we just tried to get it made and had a lot of near misses, but always I just told them right up straight I was going to direct it and if anybody wasn’t cool with that, you know, that was totally fine, but we weren’t interested in dancing around the issue like I was going to give it up at some point and I said I wouldn’t. It was actually pretty cool with most people as long as you were serious about that, not just saying it to play a game, you know? So it went smoother than expected, that aspect of it.
Quint: And how did you find the experience of actually directing?
Mark Fergus: Its just a joy, it was exhilarating, kind of fight or flight all the time, but you’re just on an adrenaline rush… we really thrive under pressure like that. I think we like to be told “you don’t have the time,” and we’ll figure it out. And it was just… you know, the team of people that came to the project, we really felt pretty invincible. You couldn’t screw it up too bad with that kind of team behind you. I find writing to be infinitely harder and lonelier and more agonizing. Directing was just a big family, a big party, ya know, just great energy all the time and writing is just… It’s my favorite thing, but it’s a lot of misery and a lot of… lot more painful than getting out there and directing a movie.
Quint: Is that why writing is your favorite thing, because you have all that hard work and pain, then something you can feel extremely proud of at the end of it all?
Mark Fergus: Yeah, you really feel like you conquered the story, you know? I didn’t conquer it, I just feel like the story exists and you finally found it, kinda excavated it… It’s just the greatest, its that “finals week is over” feeling. You get this tremendous lightness about, and you feel like you really did something, like when you get to the end of a story and realize you got it. There’s nothing quite like that, that I can describe, but I certainly am… well you know, when you’re directing it’s like that everyday, but the writing is just a real personal, sort of great, like the best kind of misery you can imagine. It’s the kind of experience that feels so earned when you get there.
Quint: Now, I’ve spoken to a few screenwriters that jumped into directing. One story I really remember is from an interview I did with Chris McQuarrie about Way of The Gun, which I loved. It got kind of a bad rap, but he told me this story about how James Caan, after a few days just threw him up against a trailer and was like “If you’re gonna direct me, fucking direct me!” Now, I’m not asking if there was a situation like that, but you had such strong character actors in your film and I was just wondering if there was any level of intimidation?
Mark Fergus: Yeah, I mean there was certainly going in. They all really dug the script and then they came to it and we just, we just… I think there was a real sense that we were on the same page intuitively. I like to hire the right people and then really step back and, whenever possible, to keep your mouth shut and let the actor find their path through the scene. Inevitably they would and if they got stuck or got a little bit confused, then I would jump in. I feel like really hiring people who understand what’s going on and then directing becomes a real just simple adjustment type of situation, as opposed to “I’ve got to sell you this story every scene at a time,” with actors who feel like “yeah, direct me damn it!” And I think it’s different. Some actors really need some guidance and I think others and certainly most in our situation, people were… they kind of got it. Like J.K. Simmons came and we had an hour to rehearse his whole part … and that was it. He asked me a couple key questions, we connected. He went out and he nailed it and that was kind of the case with all of the actors on this. I think it was a lot of intuition, we didn’t have time to sort of hash it out or rehearse, but I think they treated me like an equal right off the bat, once we were connected. They didn’t make me feel like the new guy, who had to be sort of coddled along. They treated me like it was my tenth film and I deserved to be there directing them. And they’ve worked with awesome people, so that was a tremendous fill of confidence for me.
Quint: How early in the process did Guy Pearce come in?
Mark Fergus: Pretty late actually, I mean we had had a lot of near misses with financing… with actors… and that throughout the history of it we always wanted him. Finally the planets aligned after five or six years. It was kind of like almost going to happen, then it went back to pretty much square one every time it didn’t happen. So we felt like, when he got involved, boom, ya know Bob Yari decided to get involved. He made an offer to Guy, we met and it was a great experience. Then the thing just kind of galloped from there. I figured we’d just have to wait, put in our time here and eventually some sort of circumstances are going to click together and we’re going to get a shot at doing this, and if not, we’ll go back to our Neil LaBute plan that we had and just try to go do it for Christ’s sake… stop waiting around for the pieces to come into place. It was a little ripe you know… picture’s seven years in, you start to say “OK, maybe we misjudged the passion for this thing getting made, because we want to just do it.”
Quint: How was Pearce as a collaborator? Was he very much hands on or did he change up your original character at all?
Mark Fergus: No, he just feeled it out, he really needed to make it his own. We did a lot of dialogue work to kind of get him comfortable… He’s a master at accents and American accents, but there are certain words and phrases that I think he just couldn’t feel natural saying or it just didn’t ring true for him. So we did a lot dialogue work. We did a lot of layer work on the character, but essentially the structure of the thing stayed really intact and I made it clear that he was really free to question anything or dive into anything or rework anything that he couldn’t make truthful for himself. He really just needs to know that he can do that with a director and once you get past that level of trust, its totally collaborative and there’s nothing either of us can’t say to the other. There’s no threat or, you know, “you’re changing this!!” or whatever… its just completely like, “if something’s been bugging you or you have an idea, just fire away,” because we’re looking for the best here and I’m not looking to be the guy in control, because that’s a waste of time and you miss out on great stuff if you’re too busy covering your ass, making sure you look like the director all the time. It’s a tremendous waste of energy. He’s an amazing actor to work with. He’s the hardest worker, but he also trusts you and if you treat him with the respect he deserves as an actor, you just have nothing but great vibes all the time. You’re always trying to push it to the next level and I don’t know who wouldn’t want that from someone like Guy Pearce, you know?
Quint: Yeah definitely. I’m always curious, especially with first time directors, what aspect of the process they love the most.
Mark Fergus: Yeah.
Quint: Some people it’s casting, some people it’s production, some people it’s editing, some people it’s writing, some people it’s the last minute rewrites.
Mark Fergus: Yeah, I think all the editing was a joy. That was where we also had the most conflict, in terms of having to try to maintain the original vision you had. It went through the fatigue and through a lot of voices firing at you after the fact. That was a real… I felt that was a lot like writing. The whole thing felt a lot like writing… like it was just another stage of it. Directing always felt really natural as an extension of writing to me, which is why I think the writing is really the hardest part and then directing is sort of an exhilarating, chaotic state and then you go back into the quiet again to edit and that felt like rewriting the whole thing again. But I think the real joy was just working with actors, because I love how brave they are and how its so much intuition and not intellect… and that’s something they really taught me – to trust your gut a lot more than you trust your own head, because your head is too busy bullshitting you. Your gut, your stomach… that’s the shit that’s really telling you what’s what and actors keep reminding you of that. Like don’t explain something to them, give them an idea that gives them a diving off point for something exciting or unpredictable to happen. Because that’s such an unknown quantity, that’s the exhilarating part of movie making for me. These great actors, you have no idea what’s gonna happen next with these people and you shouldn’t be trying to control it too much, because you’re gonna miss out on some amazing stuff if you just say “This is what I want, so just do it like this…” you’re gonna kill all these incredible talents that could be giving you so much more than you thought you wanted…. That’s a joy, to just let go of control. You know, as a writer you want to control the results of everything and then directing you just let… you know the structure’s solid, so you can dive into the unknown a bit and see what happens and you’re always glad you did.
Quint: Cool. Are you finding it difficult now to trust anybody else with your work now that you’ve directed?
Mark Fergus: Well, certainly like the stuff we’ve been working on… Like CHILDREN OF MEN when I found out Alfonso (Cuaron) was gonna direct it, I was like “shit yeah…” because we knew this is gonna go somewhere really cool now. It’s got a shot at being something real special. We’re working with (Jon) Favreau now on IRON MAN and so the people we’ve been writing for of late have been so great that you just feel like “what can I learn from these guys?” and there’s so much we have been learning from all of them, but certainly like our own little projects, I feel I wouldn’t be able to let one go anymore probably because after you do one on you own… I can’t go back now… directing is too much fun and too great to see how you can protect your writing… not really protect it… Writing the script is just one stage of it and then you make it and then you edit it and then you follow it all the way… There’s something beautiful about getting to follow it all the way to the curve and get it out into the world as close as you can to what you originally intended. That’s what every writer kind of wants, but directing… I think a lot of writers want to direct just to protect their script and I don’t think that’s necessarily the right reason to want to direct. You’ve got to be willing to actually shred your script. If you want to make a good movie, you really got to let go of a lot of your precious text or whatever the hell you call it…
Quint: Yeah…kill your babies…
Mark Fergus: You got to be willing to kill it and something better will come out of that and that’s… it’s much more fun than just trying to protect your words.
Quint: Yeah, well I visited Favreau a couple months ago in the IRON MAN production offices…
Mark Fergus: Yeah, that’s where we’re sitting right now….
Quint: Oh yeah?
Mark Fergus: Yeah, we’re in the office just reworking a little bit of dialogue for the guys. We’re just sort of here, if they need us for the first two weeks…
Quint: Well, he talked very well of you.
Mark Fergus: Cool, yeah it’s off and running… and he’s just… that guy knows what he’s doing. It’s so awesome to watch a guy in total control of this massive operation and just say wow. He just sets the tone, which is intense, but really focused, calm, good humor… he just has everybody loving to come into work… It’s his job to set that tone and its just such a fun place to be working on a film, but he’s man… There’s no surprise when I look at his career and, in 2002, when I met him, first I was like “wow, there’s no kind of mystery about why that’s happened to him, it wasn’t some kind of fluke. This guy gets it so completely…” and we’ve learned just working with him is free education in so many ways, so we’re just soaking it up… and great sort of stroke of fortune that we got to work with him.
Quint: From what he was telling me and from the art that he showed me it seemed like it’s a big movie, but it also seems so grounded in reality and you can see that as well with the casting.
Mark Fergus: Yeah. I love that balance, because it’s a simple human story bottom line, kind of like CHILDREN OF MEN when we look back at similarities between that and this. There’s so many in the character sense and he never forgets that this is a movie about a person going through something. It’s not about a suit or a bunch of technology or a bunch of cool amazing set pieces, that it’s about something going on with a person and he’s got such a grounding in that that I think is so important, because you have got to give a crap about what’s going on.
Quint: Yeah.
Mark Fergus: And I think Robert (Downey Jr.) is gonna just go crazy. He’s gonna take this to someplace really exciting, so we were over the moon when we heard again he was going it. We were so excited.
Quint: Yeah.
Mark Fergus: Think I read about it on you guys first. I mean, I don’t know if you guys ran it first, I remember just reading it (on AICN). I hadn’t gotten a word out, I just jumped out of my chair… I was not expecting that. It was such an amazing bit of news.
Quint: Well it’s a great move. Stark is such an interesting character and to have an actor of the quality and the depth of Robert Downey Jr…. It’s one of those things where once you hear about it you’re either… ya know there’s some people that are resistant to the idea of him playing Stark…
Mark Fergus:Oh yeah. Yeah.
Quint: But I personally can’t see anybody else in the role now.
Mark Fergus: Yeah, he just… absolutely. I mean physically ya know… but certainly the guy can flesh it out, all the layers that are possible with Tony, this guy’s gonna bring him out. I just didn’t realize how funny he is. He’s so funny and all this great stuff, you could play it really one note. It’s gonna be something really rich and I think all the casting so far has been fantastic and unusual, a little bit off-center, but feels totally right.
Quint: Favreau also mentioned that he actually had the first film, the casting, everything structured in such a way to tell the story like a three part story, a trilogy.
Mark Fergus: Yeah, yeah I hope so. I certainly hope they’ll invite us back to be involved in that.
Quint: You think they’re going to wait and see how it performs before they give you the go ahead to begin work on the next two?
Mark Fergus: Well… let’s just say that we’re just hired guns on this one. We hope that we get to work with these guys again. We’re all happy working together, but we don’t think too much about that ahead of time, because we just want to get through this one, but certainly I see this material as being so rich for planting seeds, for a whole bunch of conflicts to come, a whole bunch of characters to come, its all kind of a game laid out for that and really naturally. I know the comics have such a huge history… the number of villains… the number of suits… the number of stages in Tony’s life. I think the thing is tremendously ripe to flesh it out and always have somewhere to go. I sure hope they get their shot to get involved in that. We’ll see… we’ll just have to kick ass…
Quint: [Laughs] Everything seems to be lining up man, I mean there’s not a more interesting comic book property to me that’s in the works. I mean DARK KNIGHT might be one…
Mark Fergus: Yeah, it’s really complex and interesting human story. There’s so many great layers of irony it and certainly relevant to modern trends and events in America and world history. It’s scarily relevant, unfortunately, in a lot of ways and so that… it’s just a really rich, it’s like a crazy novel or something. This whole series, it speaks to us for sure and I think that’s why they invited us on.
Quint: What are you working on after FIRST SNOW comes out?
Mark Fergus: I read a couple things I love and am chasing to try to do really intimate small kinda character pieces and if not, if those are hard to get… you know, projects come with baggage, we could always just go back (to our work.) We have something close to being done, which is another fate/identity idea that I think could be done on a similar scale of FIRST SNOW. Just go that route again and really try to keep it small, so you can really do it the way you want. All our stuff, what we like to write is pretty contained logistically. It’s just character stuff and I think the good actors that we were able to work with, we’d love to chase after some of them again with a cool piece of material that they might want to do and take it somewhere new. We love the idea that fate is certainly… we love the idea that fate is just the other guy, the person who’s acting and all the people acting upon your life are your fate… so we’re all kind of responsible for each other, we kind of love that. That other idea where fate has nothing to do with the gods… there are no gods… there’s just us… So we want to write a similar kind of story in that vein. It’s coming along really well, its just it’s a really hard one to crack when you got work to do for hire, because you got to take care of your employers first and then get the time, sort of lock yourself away to do these. We’d love to get another shot, because it was really fun and it’s just kind of a nice way to do it… change up… do one for them, do one for yourself and try different things, you get to work with great people like Jon and always be pushing… putting on different hats and seeing where you can take your career.
Quint: I always end all my interviews with this question, but what’s your favorite dirty joke?
Mark Fergus: My favorite dirty joke?
Quint: Yup, well it could be clean if you want to…
Mark Fergus: [laughs] Favorite dirty joke? Well shit, my favorite joke is one that takes 20 minutes to tell but it’s a… [To someone in the room] Hawk’s (Ostby) here… he’s gonna give me a short one…
Quint: [laughs] Cool…
[A long pause, then Fergus laughs, as he hears the joke]
Mark Fergus: Oh yeah here, I’ll put him on. I know this one, it’s an excellent one… I’ll put Hawk on.
Quint: [laughs] Alright…
Hawk: Let’s see if I can pull this one out… This guy, he meets his friend and goes “Man, I was so wasted last night, I blew chunks…” He goes “oh well… you know, hey yeah that’s ok, it happens, it happens…” He goes “Chunks is my dog…”
Quint: [laughs] Perfect!
Hawk: Yeah… there’s not a lot of setup, I need to do a longer setup…
Quint: Haha, that works man…
[Hawk passes the phone back to Mark]
Mark Fergus: The humor of the operation… yeah yeah he told me that one the other day and I was caught off guard. Yeah I know, there’s a great joke a guy told me from South Africa when I was in college and it took about 20 minutes, but when he got to the end it was actually the funniest joke I’ve ever heard, but it takes a master storyteller to actually pull it off… it’d take about a half hour. But the reason it’s so good, is because it takes so long to tell… but, I’ll have to find that guy…. I’d love to just see that perform that on camera… but what some good ones you’ve heard…. That’s an interesting question, I’ve never got that one before…
Quint: Some people think it’s immature and childish and it certainly is, but I like it.
Mark Fergus: Yeah, I definitely appreciate that. Yeah, you guys are great, I mean the site is like, damn, its one of those…. Everybody goes on it everyday basically…
Quint: Cool man, I appreciate it…
Mark Fergus: I met Harry once, down in Austin… back when we wrote the script originally. Very nice guy, but yeah… you’re doing alright out there [laughs]
So, yeah. Thanks for taking some time and checking in… putting us out there.
Quint: Good luck with the film and make sure to give Favreau a big, sloppy kiss for me.
Mark Fergus: Will do, yeah! He’ll be screaming for us in a minute I bet…
There it is. Thanks to Mike for attacking the transcription on this one. Great job, man.
FIRST SNOW hits limited markets today, hopefully expanding in the coming weeks. I also got a chance to talk to Guy Pearce about the film, so look for that interview to hit over the weekend.
-Quint
quint@aintitcool.com
