Nicholas Kazan: Laughter in the Dark

SR: How have you dealt with the awards, nominations?

NK: The ego is a monster that lives inside all of us. Everybody's had rejection by loved ones, teachers, employers. We all feel like we've been treated somehow unfairly. We're all starved for acclaim. Awards have nothing to do with my being in my grubby little office writing my script. I have to always remind myself that it has nothing to do with my work. And not to enjoy it too much. Not to expect it, hope for it, think about it. I'm happy about it, but-

SR: But you still have to clean out the cat-box.

NK: Exactly. Barbet and I would call each other up and read the bad reviews, howling with laughter, just to keep each other under control. You never know when you're doing the work. I saw the rough cut and thought, "This film is in the toilet." I thought some critics would like it, nobody will go to see it, my career's over. I think that's why I started taking on these other jobs, Mobsters and Gladiator, to at least be working on something. They kept cutting it, they put music to it, and the [final] film was just the good stuff.

SR: Are these multi-million dollar script sales we keep reading about affecting you?

NK: If writers are paid more, then maybe they'll be listened to more. My wife has a theory that people who are not creative are terrified of the act of creation. The only way they can deal with their fear is to denigrate it. Witness some men making fun of pregnant women and women in general. Women have the power to create something out of nothing. They're the vessel of the miracle of life. Likewise, writers of original screenplays create something out of nothing. Everyone else in the film business is, at best, a magician or alchemist who changes something into something else or someone who fulfills someone else's impulse. The writer is God. He takes nothing and turns it into something. That scares people.

SR: Yours is one of the few distinct "voices" in screenplays, yet now you're working in more commercial arenas with Mobsters and Gladiator.

NK: Sometime I'd like to make art films, weird films. In wanting to make Hollywood movies, I have to find ways to express that artistic part of myself and also send the audience out of the theater satisfied-movies that are emotionally satisfying to a large group but still leave questions for people who want those.

SR: On both Gladiator and Mobsters, you've rewritten other writers.

NK: I didn't think the writer of Gladiator [Lyle Kessler], which is about a young white kid who happens to have a big punch who fights in illegal clubs, should be fired. I called him up and said, "I love your script and I'd like to rewrite it, but if you don't want me to, I won't." He said, "I'd rather you do it than somebody else." Mobsters was in desperate trouble. It was an interesting collection of scenes, but there was no thematic content. I didn't feel badly because they wanted to send it out to actors in a month. If I hadn't done it somebody else would have. I got some of "my" stuff in, though. There's a great scene where Luciano and Lansky, best friends, are talking and they have this long conversation about whether Luciano wants to fuck Lansky's girlfriend. It's the kind of scene you've always wanted to see.

SR: I can see the appeal of Mobsters for you. The myths, the sex, the blood-letting...it's almost like a ritual.

NK: This is a movie about revenge. On a certain level, we all wish we could go back and find that high school teacher who insulted and humiliated us and kill him and not suffer any consequences. Gangsters get to fulfill their fantasies in this way. They kill their mothers, girlfriends, the people they hate, someone who trivially insults them. And they're completely ca-ca. I had to rewrite the script so quickly, but at first, I didn't want to change any of the scenes because [the original screenwriter] Mike Mahern had done so much research. Luciano, Siegel, and Lansky [played by Christian Slater, Richard Grieco, and Patrick Dempsey] are reasonably accurate, but Frank Costello [played by Costas Mandylor] is completely inaccurate because he was the inspiration for Vito Corleone and, if I'd portrayed him as he was, he would have been competing with Luciano. When they made gangster films in the '40s, they were meditations on the truth. It's a cinematic fantasy.

SR: Do screenwriters peak and burn?

NK: I hope I don't. People write from an unconscious drive. If you completely express that drive and have nothing left, well....but I really like different kinds of people and I have a lot of energy. I love stories which seem true.

SR: When did you write the much talked about script for Punk Daddy?

NK: There was a period of about four months when At Close Range got set up at UA and they were talking about big-name writers, that is, not me. So, I did a very quick draft of Punk Daddy because I felt, well I need to get this out of my system, so I'll just write Oedipus as a comedy.

SR: You were going to direct that. What happened?

NK: We were in preproduction. Hemdale was supposed to finance it and John Daly, who told us casting didn't matter, didn't like who we cast and pulled the plug. I had cast an unknown, scary kid as the son and Joyce Van Patten as the mother and Robert Morse as the father. His reading was so funny, so touching. Once I came back and rewrote that, I felt it was out of my system. When people approach me about father and son stories, I have no interest in it. I mean, you can't get past Oedipus as a comedy.

SR: You've directed a short and plan to do a feature this year. What should we expect?

NK: It's so much fun. I was a cheerleader on The Professional Man because it would be just the way I saw it, just the way I heard it. And it was there, on film, forever and it was there forever, not just there on the page. It's the difference between masturbation and sex with another person. You're really doing the scene, with other people, and it's there. Creating something is the most fun.

SR: Any trepidations about invading your father's arena?

NK: I was nervous about that the first day. As long as I'm focused on doing it, I'm fine. I knew that if the first thing I directed was Punk Daddy, I was really going to get those questions. I'd still love to make the movie, but I think it's a young man's film. I used to get these ecstatic calls from young executives about the script and then they'd give it to their bosses. I know a reader who got fired for recommending it. Don't you realize what this means? It means that this is very powerful material. It disturbs. That means it should be made.

SR: Will you now only direct?

NK: Oh, no. If I can write other people's movies and direct, I can tell so many more stories.

Stephen Rebello, the author of Alfred Hitchcock and the Making of Psycho, wrote this month's cover interview with Christian Slater.

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