Hey Folks, Harry here.... Ya know... Quint here conducted this interview prior to having seen the film... or having read the script. He went into the interview with Topper Lilien knowing only that he had written something called DUNGEONS & DRAGONS... and Quint is of a generation that well... he wasn't a roleplayer... and as far as I know... has never even played DUNGEONS & DRAGONS... He was about as virgin to the properties as you could get. Figured he'd be the best to handle the material... he'd have a distance and a perspective that was far different than everyone else on site... as the rest of us... at some point had Dungeons & Dragons in our lives. ALSO.... we find out about other films that Topper Lilien is working on like... THE GORY DETAILS for Michael Bay and his film he's writing for Joe Johnston to possibly direct after JURASSIC PARK III. So... without further ado... pull on your rubbers, the crusty Seaman.... Quint is on the thing like a pogostick!
Ahoy there, squirts. Everybody's favorite crusty seaman here once more, this time with a bit of scar sharing with screenwriter Topper Lilien, who, along with Carroll Cartwright, wrote the upcoming fantasy/adventure Dungeons and Dragons. I have to say, I've haven't been beaten so badly at scar sharin' since the good ol' days with Hooper and his creme de la creme. I mean, my Thresher scar and the lump underneath my cap didn't even begin to compare with Topper's multiple baby Dragon scratches and chunks of missing flesh from his calf. Oh well. Can't win 'em all.
Just one more quick note: at the time of this interview I hadn't seen Dungeons and Dragons. I have since and you all should know my feelings on it. Check out my D&D review if you missed it first time around. Now, on with the interview!
Q: HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED WITH DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS?
How did we become involved? Umm. We were brought in... Corey (Solomon, D&D director) had another partner at the time when he had Sweetpea (Entertainment) and he was just the producer and this was about 8 years ago. We, Carroll and I, had been doing a lot of work for Miramax as script doctors. We did back to back movies doctoring. We were kind of like the in house guys for a few minutes there because we were young and cheap.
One of the executives at Miramax we struck up a friendship with and he was friends with a guy who was running Corey's company. Corey and his then partner John Bennett they were interviewing writers and writers and writers. So, they brought us in. It was in April, 8 years ago... so it was in '92.
We went into this interview and neither Carroll (Cartwright, co-writer) nor I had ever heard of Dungeons and Dragons or played it or anything, but one of our scripts had been... you know, Movieline Magazine was saying it was the best unproduced script in Hollywood blah-blah-blah, so we had a little spin on us and we were working. I guess we just had the right stuff.
We thought the job had just gone away, but in August we got a call: "Can you drop everything and fly to Milwaukee to Gen Con, which is the big D&D convention. I'm telling you, that was on, like, a Wednesday and then on Friday we were on the plane.
I think the thing was Corey really didn't want people who were gamers. Corey was a big player. I think he felt that anyone who came from within the world would just bring too much baggage, would be bending over backwards to satisfy all this arcane... You know, because the rules are never-ending. That's the whole industry, the whole thing with TSR is just designing arcane rules and worlds.
Carroll and I were known as dialogue guys and character guys. In fact, we did go up against major... there was one writer. I don't know who it was, but it was some movie like Total Recall or something. There was some guy who had done a big action blockbuster and it was between the two of us. This guy, they had flown him out and put him up in the Beverly Hills hotel or whatever and interviewed him and interviewed him, but ultimately we got the job. It was pretty surprising.
It went on forever! Do you know anything about Corey?
Q: VERY LITTLE.
TL: He was 19 when he got the rights. TSR, the people that make the game, are very protective of their product, or they were. I don't know what the company is like now. Corey managed to get the rights from these guys, which was an incredible feat. When we first came on board, Corey was only the producer and he went on to become the director. It's just this guy with a single mind, which is get this movie made, and he did it.
It should be an inspiration to everyone who comes to your website! Really. I mean, he's from Canada. It's not like he's some director's son or something like that. He made a big budget movie that's getting released through New Line. That's serious business.
Q: AND IT'S SUCH A BIG PROPERTY.
TL: Yeah, a big property. The fact that they got the rights alone. Many people had tried and failed. That was his own little Dungeons and Dragons quest.
Q: YEAH, I READ A LITTLE ON HIM ON THE NEW LINE WEBSITE. THEY SAID HE GOT NOT ONLY THE FILM RIGHTS, BUT ALL THE MEDIA RIGHTS, TOO AND HOW UNHEARD OF THAT WAS.
TL: Yeah, well, he's a tenacious guy. I think this is going to be the beginning. He's someone who's going to be around for a while. Not to say that he's an easy guy to work for. I mean, to his credit, greatly to his credit, he knows what he wants and that's what the whole writing of the script was just about Corey getting what he wanted.
The interesting thing was because he was a neophyte, he had never plowed a script before... it's kinda like when you're trying to lead an orchestra and you don't read music, you know. So, he knew what he didn't want, but he couldn't tell me what he wanted because he didn't have the experience or the language.
So, our process writing the script for him just went on and on. I mean, it was pretty great. We worked for a lot of different types of people and Corey, for my money and for Carroll's money, he's one of our favorites because it was just a total trip. It was a rollercoaster.
We decided after a certain point Dungeons and Dragons was never going to happen. It didn't seem likely. They had a couple of flurries way back when James Cameron was going to produce it, Stan Winston was going to direct it, then that would dissipate.
It's been a lot of fun, the whole screenwriting thing. It's a lot of hard work to get going and then you never know if you are truly going. I'm knocking on wood right now. The thing is, what we've been doing lately we have really enjoyed. These are all good projects and they stand a likelihood of getting made and they've been fun to write. It's really nice having Dungeons and Dragons coming out because that will open up a whole new world to us, in terms of how we're perceived by the studios.
Q: SOMETHING A LOT OF D&D FANS WILL WANT TO KNOW IS WHAT YOUR BASIS FOR THE STORY IS. LIKE ARE YOU TAKING MORE FROM THE GAME OR THE CARTOON OR...
TL: You know, we never saw the cartoon, but what happened though was we had to run it all through TSR, the company that makes this stuff. We went out to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to work with the source people, the people that make the literature for the D&D world.
The thing was with Corey... We had the job officially since September and now it's like January. We'd bring him a story and say, "How about this?" Then we'd work on it for, like, a week. You know, this is the first step to any script developing. You got to start somewhere.
So, we'd go through it for a week and then we started fleshing out and adding characters. Then, on day 8, inevitably he would say, "You know, I think this sucks!" Then we'd just get suicidal. I think Corey understood this about us. Some writers are real pre-madonnas. We will go back to the drawing board again and again. Carroll's really good at that.
If you're working as a professional, if you're writing spec scripts, that's a whole nother deal, but if you're out there chasing assignments and stuff, then the job really is to bring your skills to the table, but satisfy the people that you're doing the job for as well.
So, Corey would reject these stories, then we'd come back, we'd strap it on then come up with another one. Then we'd work on it for 7 days, then bring it in and he'd go with it. Then there'd be the phone call that evening. "You know, I changed my mind." It kept going on and on.
But we went to Lake Geneva, we finally came up with a story. Everybody. We flew to Chicago and the night before we were gonna go in and see all the people at TSR, this whole big panel of writers. Corey, it's like 11 at night, we're in the hotel room with this 20 page treatment we've come up with, he just suddenly says, "You know, I think it sucks." We just flipped out.
Then he and Carroll stayed up all night. John Bennett (Corey's ex-partner) and I we just said, "Forget this, man!" and we left. Carroll and Corey came up with this really shabby thing. We had breakfast and everybody was trying to tell US the story.
Then we all go in and there are like 6 of the TSR writers there and we started pitching them this thing. AND the company lawyers and the company brass... We get 15 minutes into it and there's nothing left to tell! There's no middle, there's no end and all these expectant people looking at us. Finally, we just said, "OK, we have to confess. We're empty handed." It was hysterical.
So we all came up with a story with them. They were really a great bunch of people. They were excited! They said, "Great!" They didn't have to do their normal jobs. Here we were providing them with a bonafide distraction. So, we spent 5 days with these guys, sequestered in the TSR headquarters in the middle of the Wisconsin winter. We came up with a story and they were having the celebration, like, Saturday night because we were leaving Sunday, with all of them. Then Corey, totally true to Corey Solomon, suddenly just says, "This whole thing sucks." And we threw it out.
Then we came up with something else working with TSR and working very closely with Corey. A lot of it was reading Joseph Campbell, watching all the good movies and the bad movies that had been made, you know, from Star Wars to Conan to... what was that awful Ron Howard...?
Q: WILLOW?
TL: Willow. Yeah. It wasn't awful, but it kept getting worse. And Indiana Jones for that matter. This was the direction that Corey was heading. Then it almost fell apart for the umpteenth time. We went and saw Kathleen Kennedy who was interested for a few moments in possibly producing it with Frank Marshall, I guess, and she said, "I really like it, BUT..." That's just what everyone will say in every office no matter where you go with anything. It's always... BUT. I like it, BUT. Change this, change that.
Corey, I think, really didn't understand that, you know. When you first start out you listen to everyone because you think everyone knows something that you don't know. Then after a few years you begin to realize that no one knows anything. Corey figured this out. If you can just pitch your way through, you'll get what you want. Not by just sitting there, looking at people saying, "I really like it, but... Can you change the lead character... to a woman?" Or whatever.
Finally, we got something we all agreed on. Then writing it was easy and fun. We just rewrote and rewrote and rewrote with Corey. Then he went off and tried to get it financed. In the interim there were other scripts. What happened was he came close a couple of times with Cameron and Stan Winston. There were other things that almost happened, but didn't. I think he got frustrated and he brought another writer on, who wrote a completely different draft. Ultimately, the financiers kept coming back to ours. They kept saying, "We'd rather make this one." So, we were lucky there.
We've been in the other boat, too, so I know what it's like. BUT what TSR did, to answer your question because I'm rambling... just steer me back on track if I start to babble... they sent us truckloads of material. We invented our characters. We invented our world because they are going to run a product line based on the movie. So, for a while they were the horse and we were the cart. Now it's kinda switched around. But everything had to conform with their standards and their rules, so we read all their materials. Just the low level stuff not the advanced. Not the hidden worlds or whatever they are. Just the normal stuff, but it's reams and reams.
Carroll always used to say, "It's like if you were an alien and someone said to you, 'Write a story about Earth. Here's the Encyclopedia Britannica,'" That's what it was like. Corey just said, "Well, we need a story about Dungeons and Dragons," then TSR said, "Oh here! Here's the UPS truck!" That's what happened. They'd just pull up everyday with new stuff.
At first we just loved it. We were going "Great, great! We're going to keep this stuff! This is cool, man!" But after a while it was like, "No! We're not home!" You just had to read it and read it and read it. I still have so much of this stuff sitting around. But that's what happened.
Then we'd write stuff and call up... we made a couple of buddies up in Lake Geneva, we'd call up and say, "Can you do this if you're at this level...?" They'd say, "No, but..." They'd always tried to make it work for us. They'd always find a way to make whatever we were trying to do work.
The bottom line is: if you try and put that into a script it would just be so boring and so mind-numbing. So you just end up absorbing it, then throwing it all away. 'Cause if you had to explain that to an audience everytime someone was about to do something people would just be falling asleep.
There's probably a lot of D&D people who will be outraged and start picking it apart, but those are people that shouldn't be going to movies anyway.
Q: SO THEY SHOULD JUST STAY IN THEIR PARENT'S BASEMENT...
TL: Exactly! Playing their computer... I mean, the point of the story is to reach a large audience. It was really to just do a big, old fashioned event movie! I mean, we've seen the thing, not with all the special effects, and it's pretty great. It really is like one of these Saturday... which I think Spielberg did so well with Indiana Jones, it's like one of these Saturday matinee things. I think it'll be something that a certain group of people will see again and again. I think it's going to do pretty well.
Q: I'VE SEEN A FEW OF THE TRAILERS... THEY'VE BEEN ADVERTISING THIS MOVIE LIKE MAD ON TV AND...
TL: I haven't even seen the trailer or the ad.
Q: YOU HAVEN'T SEEN ANY OF THEM?
TL: Well, I... um... I don't know if you want to put this in your interview, but I don't even have a TV. I'm kinda out of it on that level. I don't go to the movies that much. It was playing on the Adam Sandler movie. I'm sorry, but I missed it.
But all my friends have seen it. People are calling me up back East... are you on the West Coast?
Q: I'M IN THE MIDDLE. I'M IN AUSTIN.
TL: So, that's where you guys are! I guess I knew that. God, there's a lot going on down there, huh?
Q: OH YEAH.
TL: Why don't you get your fucking gun and go over to the Governor's Mansion and do us all a favor! Solve this thing. (laughs) Well, you might be a Republican then...
Q: UH, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY TOO MUCH ABOUT THAT...
TL: Oh, OK. Good. I'll be looking for it in the headlines tomorrow! Oh, it's so depressing! Seeing all these guys are back. They really are like vampires. Dick Chaney! He IS a vampire? How did... He had heart attack and he's out of the hospital? What did he do? He drank a Democrat's blood.
Anyway... Austin huh? See, that's going to be the Dungeons and Dragons sequel. We're going to send all the guys... Marlon Wayans... and they're going to go to the White House to straighten out George W. and Laura.
Q: IT'S PRETTY FUNNY, I WAS OVER AT HARRY'S HOUSE ON THE ELECTION NIGHT. HERE WE ARE WITH THE CNN WEBSITE UP AND LISTENING TO THE CNN BROADCAST ANNOUNCING GEORGE BUSH WINNING AND WE'RE BOTH STARING AT CNN'S FLORIDA PAGE AND NOTICED THE COUNT WAS TOO CLOSE TO CALL ABOUT AN HOUR BEFORE THEY DID... SORRY ABOUT THAT, NEW PHONE.
TL: See, this is what George W. Bush will do to us all! So, what happened? You were watching the site...
Q: YEAH. AS ALL THE CNN PEOPLE WERE SAYING IT WAS OVER, HARRY AND I WERE LOOKING AT THEIR OWN WEBSITE SAYING, "NO, IT'S NOT!" IT WAS GREAT. THE CNN PEOPLE WERE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHY AL GORE WAS DELAYING HIS CONCESSION SPEECH. HARRY AND I WERE BOTH JUST SHOUTING AT THE COMPUTER GOING, "THAT'S WHY! HE'S WAITING ON THE FINAL COUNT!"
IT WAS FANTASTIC. HARRY HAD THE LIVE FROM THE GOVERNOR'S MANSION WEB BROADCAST UP IN ANOTHER WINDOW. SO, WE GOT TO SEE ALL THE PEOPLE STANDING IN THE FREEZING COLD RAIN. IT WAS ABOUT 4:00 AM WHEN THEY SAID, "WE WON'T KNOW TONIGHT, SO YOU Y'ALL GO HOME." HARRY AND I WERE LAUGHING AT ALL THE DRIPPING WET, FREEZING COLD REPUBLICANS AS THEY WERE GOING HOME WITHOUT A VICTOR. AT LEAST AT THAT POINT.
TL: He is going to win this thing, right?
Q: SEEMS SO. IT'S PRETTY DEFINATE.
TL: Uh, that's so depressing. It just breaks my heart, but you know what? Gore deserves to lose. He didn't run a good campaign. Then again... it's just like what I do. I'm terrible at pitching. You gotta go into the studio and tell some guy with a 30 second attention span an idea for a 2 hour movie in 6 minutes. That's the big difference between doing that and being a writer. I just gotta figure campaigning, presenting yourself basically as a product, is a lot different than having substance and actually governing.
But yeah. It'll be an interesting 4 years. Especially in the movie business. People will start writing movies with substance because there'll be something to rebel against. Anyway, D&D! D&D!
Q: SO YOU JUST CREATED YOUR OWN UNIVERSE WITHOUT HAVING TO BASE IT ON ANY SET STRUCTURE...
TL: Ahh... we created the world and the characters, but the one thing that D&D is really big on is the social hierarchy and how it works. When we first started writing the script, Bosnia was going on, for instance. LA had just recently had riots, so a big thing in the script is that it's this society where magic is basically what money is in American society today... and skin color. Whatever. So, if you are born with magic, with the ability to perform magic then you're instantly... well, you're George W. Bush. You go to Yale. You go to Harvard Law, whatever.
If you don't have magic, like the protagonist, Ridley, he's a thief, then you're just always going to be... there's a feeling. A very low feeling and that's where you're at. Satire works in the existing D&D literature because everything is classes. What class are we in? What level are we in? But it also works for the world at large.
It's a real Joseph Campbell... you know. The most insignificant guy in the world ends up being the savior of the world.
Q: I HAVE TO ASK THIS FOR ALL THE HARD CORE GEEKS OR ELSE THEY'RE GOING TO... GOING TO COME AND KILL ME.
TL: (laughs) I hope you put your questions in, too! (laughs)
Q: I'VE TOLD A FEW OF MY FRIENDS I'M DOING THIS INTERVIEW AND ALL OF THE ONES THAT ARE THE HARDCORE D&D PLAYERS ALL ASK THE SAME QUESTION AND THAT'S WHAT SET OF RULES IS THIS MOVIE BASED ON, IF ANY?
TL: Uh, Queensbury... no. I don't know. I don't know the answer. This "set of rules" do you mean advance D&D? Or...
Q: APPARENTLY THERE ARE MULTIPLE SETS OF RULES IN BOTH REGULAR AND ADVANCED... I DON'T KNOW.
TL: Again, there will be people... I saw A Perfect Storm with a deep sea fisherman. A guy who had worked on commercial fishing trollers. You don't see a movie about a catastrophe in the open sea with a guy who's been through them. You know what I mean? Because he's looking at all the ILM stuff and going, "Oh, that's ridiculous!" or George Clooney, some Hollywood actor trying to look like a Massachusetts fisherman. He was just sitting there laughing.
There will be people who will enjoy D&D for just those reasons. They'll go and say, "Oh, you can't do this! You can't do that!" But the bottom line is the manufacturer, TSR, now like a Hasbro company, they have run this all through their process, their meat grinder as it were. In fact, they will probably make a new set of rules just to accommodate the movie.
Q: SO, THE MOVIE IS IT'S OWN SET OF RULES.
TL: Yeah. My understanding of it, and you might know better, but they had their heyday in the '70s or early '80 perhaps? I don't know, but they hit a dip for a while. I could just be totally speaking through my butt on this one, but I believe they did hit a dip and the game's influence and popularity started to wan.
This was a very big thing for the world of role-playing games, for the company itself and for all the people involved. What they would like to do is get a whole new generation interested in role-playing games. Just tell your friends that whatever the rules are, they work. If they don't work for them, you wait 'cause they will. The rules have been changed. Tell 'em we made the rules! If they don't like it, they can come see me! No! Go see Corey, 'cause Corey's the director.
But Corey... he was deeply, deeply into Dungeons and Dragons. Believe me, he's very well aware... but the other thing is you cannot make a movie and hope to entertain with it if you're going to be identifying arcane... you know what I mean? Well, the big thing is The Dragon... and The Maze... The Thieves Guild! All this stuff will be recognized by all the gamers. The thieves guild is way cool. And Jeremy Irons. He is so out there!
Marlon Wayans is really great in the movie. I think a lot of the gamers will be upset with Marlon Wayans because he's bringing this kind of this modern edge to it, which I thought was a really cool on Corey's part casting him. We never wrote him as a black guy. That was Corey's idea. I think it's a really great idea.
You know how sometimes these movies can be really self-important and almost dreary? I think Corey recognized that there had to be humor in this. And Lee's really good, too. Elwood, the Dwarf. As for the rule thing. The New Line site... they were calling me and Carroll last week and going, "What level are the spells that Damadar throws?" I was like, "I don't know?!?! Come on, you know?" I can tell you what page it happened on in the script and what scene it was. Does that answer the question? I don't know!!!
Q: YEAH. YOU DID A LITTLE CYA FOR THE HARDCORE GUYS. YOU CAN SAY, IT WILL BE THE RULES... JUST WAIT.
TL: There's actually a new game coming out. Probably in time for Christmas.
This guy, Don Wetsell... I really encourage you to go to his website. It's
DNDmovie.com. Anyway, he tells me that the novel just came out. The Dungeons
and Dragons The Movie novel. He said it was very well done. TSR, they're
very good about these Fantasy books. We read a bunch of them.
Continue yer reading at this location my loyal leaning ears!!!! Part II is where the Dirty Joke be!
