Don't tell David Koepp that scandal is good for box office.
The screenwriter (Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones: The Return of a Legend) and director of this week's Premium Rush told Movieline that speculation that the media scandal involving Kristen Stewart, her Twilight co-star and reported off-screen beau Robert Pattinson and her Snow White and the Huntsman director Rupert Sanders is somehow good for business is "a cynical response" to the situation.
"The people involved in any kind of scandal like that might want to respond, Who gives a shit? I didn’t say you could eat my head. You know?" Koepp told me.
John Kamps, his writing partner on Premium Rush, agreed: "I think historically scandal has never done well for movies."
When I asked Koepp what he made of the media frenzy surrounding Stewart, Sanders and Pattinson, he replied: "I think it was sad for all involved."
Koepp was hired by Universal to write a script to Snow White and the Huntsman but explained that he departed the project on friendly terms because the producers wanted to pursue a different direction. "I felt like there was a good path with her, but they wanted to explore a different thing I had no ideas for," said Koepp, who told me he couldn't picture SWATH 2 without Stewart and, therefore, "couldn't follow through."
Koepp observed that the proliferation of social media has made it difficult for just about anyone, not just Twilight cast members, to maintain privacy. "In the past — in the long past now — actors were able to keep their private lives much more separate," the filmmaker said. "Now, no one really has a private life. I don’t think it's just actors. I have teenage sons and they’re of the social media generation. That sort of living out loud is just weird to me.
"I can’t understand why you would want so much of yourself revealed to just anyone, because it is inevitably — inevitably — a target of derision. It’s impersonal, but hurtful," he said. "You see people really get hurt by Facebook attacks. Particularly in the junior high sort of level."
Noting that "Hollywood kind of is junior high," albeit with more money and drugs, Koepp added: "There’s a lot of pain out there for people who are exposed. I feel very bad for actors in that regard. I think it’s a suckie part of the job and, when people say, Well, you asked for it — no they didn’t.
"They asked for a bunch of other stuff and were willing to make a bunch of other sacrifices," he said. "Just because you’re in the public eye doesn’t mean that you agree that there will be a complete abrogation of decency."
Nell Alk is an arts and entertainment writer and reporter based in New York City. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Manhattan Magazine, Z!NK Magazine and on InterviewMagazine.com, PaperMag.com and RollingStone.com, among others. Learn more about her here.
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