Cowboys and Aliens Writers Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci on How to Write for Harrison Ford

Last time Movieline spoke to Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, the highly-paid screenwriters claimed their Hollywood heat could be all over soon. Clearly, that hasn't happened: After scripting some of the biggest tentpoles of the last few years, they've got the Jon Favreau-directed Cowboys And Aliens coming down the pike, starring Daniel Craig and Harrison Ford. What was it like to work with Indiana Jones? This past weekend at Comic-Con, I asked them to tell me all about it.

"You know, it's funny for us: to just sit in the room with the guy would have been the greatest privilege on earth," said Kurtzman. "To actually go through the script and talk about scenes and get inside his head and figure out how everyone would work together, I mean, that was a joy for us."

"We hadn't written it for him because we'd never in a million years imagined that we could get him," Orci said. "When he actually showed interest and was there, we wanted to sit down with him and go through it. He's been making movies since we were born."

"It's a little bit like talking to your childhood, is what it is," added Kurtzman. "That doesn't happen very often, so we couldn't have been more thrilled."

Still, Ford has a reputation in some quarters for getting heavily involved in rewrites -- notoriously, he attached himself to Steven Soderbergh's Traffic and required several revisions to his character before leaving the film (Michael Douglas subsequently took on the part). Orci says that aspect of Ford is exaggerated.

"It wasn't that he gave us notes, it was really like rehearsals and sessions," he said. "It's not like he gives you ten notes and says, 'Go away, and find out how to do this!' We sit down and we actually craft the scenes together."

"He has very strong instincts about what he likes and what he feels the character is about, and then you just talk and rehearse stuff," said Kurtzman. "The thing that we love is that sometimes he'll improvise a moment that's so perfect that will end up in the script, and that's a great thing for us."