If you’ve seen any of the CHRONICLES OF NARNIA movies, you’ve seen the work of screenwriter Chris Markus. He and his writing partner’s early script, YOU KILL ME, was produced in 2007, starring Ben Kingsley, Tea Leoni and Luke Wilson. And they have an Emmy for THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS. In other words, sometimes the credits speak for themselves. YII will only add that we hope Chris’s dry wit translates well below. We think you’re in for a treat.

Current project:  I’m working (with my writing partner Steve McFeely) on THE FIRST AVENGER: CAPTAIN AMERICA for Marvel Studios. We also just adapted a short story into a script for Ira Glass of “This American Life.” It’s called WENCELAS SQUARE and is swell.

 

College & degree: Rutgers University, 1991, B.A., English; UC Davis, 1996, M.A., Fiction Writing

 

First job in the entertainment industry: Only a few weeks after I arrived in L.A., a wonderful woman of rather questionable judgment hired me to be a file clerk at New Regency Productions. I then parlayed this plum assignment into a position as Second Assistant to the Vice President of International Distribution. While this might not necessarily seem directly applicable to a career as a writer, it was actually tremendously instructive. Not only did this job give me enough money to buy large tubs of peanut butter (a young writer’s best friend – not whiskey as certain schmucks might have you believe), but it taught me a great deal about the real infrastructure of Hollywood. I got to loiter around the Warner lot and soak in the fact that these fancy movies are made bit-by-bit, piece-by-greasy-piece by actual, honest, not always disturbingly attractive human beings. Also, that glimpse into international distribution taught me a valuable lesson every writer should know: no matter how big of a bomb the producers say your movie is, no matter how deep in the red they say they are, money is still being made, often in Southeast Asia. Stick them for every penny, junior.

 

Big break:  My writing partner’s boss liked one of our scripts enough to show it to an agent friend of his. This agent subsequently “hip-pocketed” us. This development encouraged me to quit the above-mentioned clerking job and take a real stab at writing full time. Do not confuse, however, a big break with financial independence. I lived for at least the next two years on credit card cash advances, the kindness of strangers, and peanut butter.

 

Eureka moment:  I’ve spent my whole life not wanting to do things. It’s hard to narrow down. Due to circumstances too dull and convoluted to relate here, we found ourselves – with that initial agency – being pigeonholed as extremely wacky comedy pitchmen. The agent insisted that this was what he could sell us as best. So we did our baggy pants clown routine around town until the neighbors complained about the nightly torrents of weeping and the gnashing of teeth. During this time, however, we had written a small script that resembled neither an old episode of Scooby Doo or one of the lesser Police Academy films. It was about people; we liked it. Another agency approached us and said, you should be doing more like that. Get yourself off the wacky horse. And, eureka, we agreed.

 

Career path:  We’ve been lucky enough to generally be able to alternate between big and small projects. It’s fascinating to be part of the huge team making these blockbuster-y movies. We’ve traveled the world and gotten to see these massive deployments of people and equipment and, yes, money. It’s been a rare opportunity to go to movie school. At the same time, working on those behemoths has bought us the ability to occasionally work on much smaller movies. The demands on a small, human-scale script are different from an epic, and it’s a refreshing change of pace to spend all day writing about two people in a room as opposed to two armies on a battlefield. It’s my fondest hope to be able to fancypants between these two for the rest of my career, long may it wave.

 

Worst job (or day) in entertainment industry:  There really haven’t been that many truly bad days. There have been moments that felt very adult, and not very much fun. More often than not, they involve firing. Either us firing someone or someone firing us. Both have happened. Neither feel particularly great, but both of them are part of the job.

 

Best job (or day) in entertainment industry: Every job and day has had its good side. Some were more for money than for art, but it really is pretty ridiculous that I get to do this for a living. That said, working on THE LIFE AND DEATH OF PETER SELLERS was a very fulfilling experience. We got to immerse ourselves in the work of a mad genius. We had the opportunity to get enjoyably experimental with structure and tone. It was our first script to actually get made. And we won an Emmy. So, all in all, not a bad job.

 

Typical day in your current job:  I rise early, drink a lot of coffee. Steve comes over and we talk about what superheroes can and cannot do, what is it exactly that makes them superheroic rather than merely heroic. Then lunch. Then a great deal of throwing out what we wrote the day before. Then some actual writing. He leaves around 5:30. I walk the dog. 

 

Best thing about your current job:  We get to work with a character who has been around for almost seventy years. Just being a part of that continuum of writers and artists, adding our little bit to that epic arc of storytelling – it’s very nice.

 

Worst thing about your current job:  What am I, stupid? It’s my current job. There’s nothing worst about it. It’s lovely. (A lesson to young writers everywhere.)

 

Brush with greatness:  I was on a balcony at the Cannes Film Festival. I turned around and Roman Polanski was standing about three feet from me. For certain legal reasons, that’s an experience you can’t get in Los Angeles. It made me feel like I’d snuck into the grown-ups’ party and, any minute, guards would come and toss me into the street. Happily, the gendarmes did not arrive.

 

Secret of your success/advice to the newbie:  Never show anyone your first draft. Finish it. Stick it in a drawer. Go do something else for a while. Then come back and reconsider the whole thing with as dispassionate an eye as you can manage. Cut out anything that doesn’t tell your story. Make sure it’s as good as you can make it (if you finished it yesterday, I guarantee you it’s not). Make sure it’s spelled correctly. Then show it to people who know what they’re talking about, not to get work, but to get advice on how to improve it. When they give you advice, listen. When they give you notes, try them out. Don’t reject everything because it’s not part of your “vision.” Outside insight isn’t just helpful, it’s essential to the health of the thing. It’s why cousins don’t marry. You don’t want a backwoods, cross-eyed, hemophiliac of a script, do you? I didn’t think so.

 

Next move:  Primarily, I just want to keep writing, and keep getting better at it. I want to keep a balance between big and small projects, between the “artistic” and the commercial. We’ve talked about directing, not so much because we’ve always wanted to direct, but because we’re interested in seeing how one of our scripts would work when placed directly on the screen, unfiltered by another person’s point of view. TV is an interesting path and one I’d like to explore. It seems very fulfilling to be able to follow characters for longer than two hours, to see how they evolve over time, without wrapping things up with a bow. On a personal level, I’m having the house painted and thinking about another cup of coffee. Then, later, I fully intend to walk the dog.

 

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Tags: Chris Markus, First Avenger: Captain America, screenwriter, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Life And Death of Peter Sellers

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009 at 9:45 pm and is filed under Industry Pro - film, writer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.