Zach Helm came out of Chicago Theatre School of DePaul University and was drafted by Fox 2000 program aimed at recruiting new writers for the big screen. One of the first things Helm came up with was Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, which drew the attention of Lindsay Doran (award-winning producer of Ghost and Sense and Sensibility, among many others). While the script lingered in development limbo for years and Helm honed his chops drafting and polishing scripts for big studios and television, he came up with another story idea that piqued Doran's interest and over several years the two cultivated a script that, when circulated, drew attention from every mover and shaker in Hollywood.
But having spent so much time watching material he loved be killed or mutated, Helm was determined to not let this script go unless circumstances were absolutely right. And so the up-and-coming Mandate Pictures won Helm's confidence and the chance to bring Stranger Than Fiction to life, allowing Helm to be part of the process that eventually selected Marc Forster as director. It was an idyllic scenario that Helm definitely doesn't take for granted, for he views his success not merely as the result of hard work but also the reward for sticking to your guns about the work you want to do.
To motivate himself, Helm wrote down the rules he would begin to play by, which boiled down to maintaining his creative integrity no matter the cost. This "manifesto" in tandem with the excitement over Stranger Than Fiction when it came out as a script resulted in huge hype for Helm. But he is the first to point out that what should matter least to an artist is what other people say.
Helm (center) with producer Lindsay Doran and co-star
Emma Thompson on the set of Stranger Than Fiction
I am intrigued by this manifesto of yours that I keep reading about.
I'm intrigued by the manifesto I keep reading about. (Laughs)
Does the manifesto actually exist?
It does, in a way. It's certainly not the document that it has been made out to be. I think it's getting more hype now than the Magna Carta and getting probably a little too much credit. After finding myself in a position where I wasn't doing my best work and wasn't happy with the approach that I was taking to work, I just gave myself a few rules, a few tenets to try to follow so that I could keep my head above water and keep a clear mind and do the best work I possibly can. What's so funny about it is that it's no different than what any sort of artist does at a point in their life when they want to make a change. I just wrote mine down. The trick is that it's my manifesto; what I wrote down isn't necessarily the right path for other screenwriters. Everybody should have their own personal manifesto. This was me documenting a sea change in my career.
Thinking about the audience for this piece, which is a majority of independent filmmakers who probably came into their art with this kind of mentality, they're could be reading this saying, "Of course you have to think that way!" To them, a manifesto like yours seems the most obvious thing in the world.
That's a really good point. I think that we're just now reaching a point where we can begin to look at independent filmmaking in the same way that we have looked at studio filmmaking or vice versa. And I sense personally, if you want to wax philosophic about it, that there is more control now in the hands of the filmmakers on every level than there has been in quite some time and there's a certain responsibility to that. As brash as it may be for someone to say, "I'm not going to let you tell me what kind of movie I'm going to make," it's also very healthy artistically because I perceive this medium as an art form. I perceive it as imperfect and I perceive it as an organic sort of being and because of that, it has to create its own rules in a way. It has to constantly be willing to change and reinvent itself and reexamine what's important. And because of that you are going to find more acceptance of real artistically-inclined filmmakers and an acceptance of their values at a higher level, which I think is great.
That could be exactly what the medium needs in order to become more widely recognized as an art form rather than a commercial venture. It needs to have that kind of integrity and not just always be about box office numbers.
Exactly! It's a checks and balances and there's a healthy discourse in a way. I always find it hysterically anecdotal that the most successful independent filmmaker is George Lucas. How you define independent filmmaking is now becoming also very broad. And for us, it's not as though we had a meager budget for our film; we actually had a very healthy budget for our film, but we were able to do it with a healthy budget while sort of waylaying creative control to the studio and because of that we were able to make the film that we for the most part wanted to make. If I went to twelve people, and you can imagine those twelve people are major studios, and I gave them the basic premise to Stranger Than Fiction, and they said "We love it go write it," and in twelve weeks I wrote Stranger Than Fiction, they would spend that twelve weeks thinking of what that movie would be because of the way that they make films. It would just be a very different film than the one that I would turn in. And the problem is that then that's going to make them unhappy, because they're not getting what they want, which is fair, and it's going to make me unhappy because the movie that I'm trying to make isn't being able to be seen for what it truly is. So for me, it's about avoiding those false expectations and just letting the product be the product.
I imagine that if you were to do that and go around with that system of pitching you're going to be crippled to some extent by thinking about those expectations as well there's no way it's going to be a free process for you.
Exactly. It's funny...we were just at the Toronto Film Festival and Sony, who is distributing the film, has been very supportive and really cleared a path for us to talk about the movie that was really great. This one interviewer without giving, hopefully, too much away about the ending was sure that I had been co-opted by Sony to make it happier, to make it a little more Hollywood. I realized that it's such a cynical sort of point of view, the idea that we were trying to make a lighter, more digestible version of a more aggressive movie because it's not overly morose. And I had to sit there an say, "No, that's it! That's what I wanted!" And what's so funny is that we perceive independent filmmaking to be that. It had to fight for so long to sort of be different and survive outside the studio system that it has to be so different and so bold and accosting. And it's so funny because there are so many movies that prove us wrong. I can't think of a film more lyrically enjoyable than Capote. I can't think of a film so outrageously funny as Little Miss Sunshine.
I guess there's some notion that as a genre, independent film focuses on what's more true and truth is a lot more bleak or messy or ugly.
Exactly!
As if that's what really human nature is all about. But the irony of something funny actually being quite the opposite is very apparent in Stranger Than Fiction. The whole time, the characters are doing that tightrope walk between comedy and tragedy. And even as I found myself laughing, it was kind of like, "I think I could burst into tears at any second!"
Absolutely. The whole film is predicated on a debate between comedy and tragedy and keeping that suspense as to whether his life will ultimately be a comedy or a tragedy.
Which is the way we all go through life.
Exactly! I personally think it's a matter of perception. I think any life, when you lay it out in chronology, you can think of it as a great triumph or a great failure. I always think about how young Shakespeare was when he died and how this might be incredibly tragic because there could be a hundred more plays that could have been written, not to mention the sonnets. But at the same time, how are you going to look at a life that has given us so much, has been such a touchstone of literature, and perceive that as being a tragedy? So, it's a very interesting filter to keep switching, particularly for an audience. And it became incumbent upon us then, as much as we could, to try to make those moments of comedy really, truly funny moments of comedy, and then immediately go to moments of tragedy that might be very, very heartbreaking. If we're lucky, that's how audiences feel as they travel through the movie.
Let's talk about the process of getting this tricky film made. You decided, "I'm just going to write this for myself and then try to get it made so that the process is as complete as possible for me," is that correct?
Yes. The idea was that after years of not having any of my movies made, that's all I really wanted and the budget of the movie or how much money I was paid or any of that didn't matter. It just was important to try to make a good movie that was it. And so in order to do that, it meant that we had to get the script in really good shape, so Lindsay Doran, the producer, and I actually took years to fully finish the screenplay.
Tell me how you how you hooked up with Lindsay in the first place.
I had written another movie and she was the producer of that. We were in development and just stayed in development with that movie. (Laughs) Lindsay is one of the best script editors in the producorial field, I think. She's really insightful and smart and very candid and really tries to understand what the best version of that script could be and then really helps to get the script to that place. So I knew that wanted to work with her again and I had come up with this sort of goofy idea and I told her about it. She said, "It's great...I dont know that that's a movie." Then, over the next couple of years, I worked on it. My process is just that I don't really write in order. I don't have a set number of hours that I write a day; I sort of write when I feel like it. And in exploring it, the theme sort of just popped out at me. Knowing what those themes were or finding the things that I really wanted to try to talk about, I began to shape the script in that way.
Then we felt like we had the script in good shape and thought that we should go out to the filmmakers and try to find somebody who could direct it because we thought that most people wouldn't be interested or understand it unless there was a visionary attached to it. All of a sudden, this company Mandate, who had up until then really been known for making horror films and Harold and Kumar, said, "We really wanted to your movie." I think we both were a little skeptical. But we met with Nathan Kahane and Joe Drake and they're very honest, very frank, and very smart. The idea was that they would not own the script they would only option it and we would have six months to find a director and then maybe six to nine more months to start principle photography and if at any point it was breaking down, we would just get the script back. So that gave Lindsay and I all this sort of power to collaborate with Nathan and Joe and find the right director.
You could say that's a writer's dream to be involved on all of these levels.
Yeah! And not only to be part of that but to feel included in that way is important. We talked to 30 directors about the script and I can't imagine a better way to find out about your script and potential rewrites than to sit with 30 filmmakers and talk about what works for them and what doesn't work for them.
During that process, how did you keep from altering your script too much? It comes back again to expectations and outside influences. How did you resist all those forces and all this input?
What's funny is that if we had gotten on the phone and you said, "I really like the movie, but that one scene didn't really work well for me," I would literally go back, look at that scene, and try to figure out if you're right, is there something there, and fix it. I'm a notorious tinkerer. So I had made a pact with myself and Lindsay and Nathan and Joe to not touch it, to just let it go. I'm not so precious about the words I am in that I want them to be perfect, but if there's a sense that something isn't working, I'm usually the first person to get in there and try to fool around with it. So it's a dangerous proposition to meet with that many people with that many opinions, but you have to be honest with yourself. And not to digress, but I think that's one of the most important facets that I've learned in making a film: it's so important to be honest with ones self about whether or not something's working, whether or not something should move in a different direction. It can only lead to better work.
In film, it may be less clear than in other art forms simply because it's so collaborative. While painting or being Shakespeare, it's a very singular process, but then in the cinematic art form, you've got producers and editors and directors and others so it can be hard to be honest with one's self when it's not simply one's self that is involved in bringing the piece to fruition.
Exactly! But we went through the process and found Marc [Forster].
Why was Marc the right fit?
Well, Marc was the right fit because he talked about the details and the details were so important to us. If you see the film, Marc has paid great attention to the details and even added, visually, details into the story. It was really enlightening to be with him in that here is a person who is so good and has made a name for himself for being able to pull great performances out of actors and to be able to change his cinematic style was a great faculty. But he's also human and he was very interested in the more human aspects of the story and finding the comedy and the tragedy in it while really focusing on the little things that are making the story what they are.
Were you then obliged to hand it over to Marc or did you collaborate with him a lot after that? Did you have anything to do with casting or assembly of the final product?
I was present for casting; my opinion was asked for, which is already such a rare case. But Marc had said very early that he wanted to shoot the script. He didn't want to change too much; he didn't want to make changes for actors. He wanted to shoot that script and because of that, I felt comfortable not trying to exact my positions and my values onto his process. In the same way that I was trying to afford myself the opportunity to do my best work by giving myself space, I wanted to give Marc that space as well. Honestly, Marc doesn't need me to tell him how to, where to put a camera, how to direct a movie, what a scene should look like or who to cast. (Laughs)
When all was said and done and everybody was in their roles, was it at all remotely what you had imagined? Does your writing process involve thinking about actors or performances as influences?
Yes and no. I didn't expect the cast to be so great. (Laughs) Honestly! I didnt know exactly who we would attract with a piece like that and I tend not to use voices of working actors while I'm writing. And so when these names started coming up, I thought, "Oh, that's a great idea," and then a little voice in the back of my head would say, "I don't think we're actually going to get them..."
What about Will in particular? It could be considered such a different thing for him, but then at the same time, not really...
Yeah, I know! That's so funny. You have to understand, we just came back from this experience where there were so many journalists and some really want to love you and pet you and it's great, then there are some who you think, "God, you just really want to nail us, don't you? You jerk!" (Laughs) So there's all of this pressure on Will about, like, "Do you think you're able to handle a serious role?" and all these things. The truth of the matter is it's still a comedy. If we're a civilization that adores Peter Sellers for doing both Pink Panther and Being There, then there should be no problem accepting Will playing Ricky Bobby and this role! He has the right soul, which is what you see in the movie. There's something about Will that can be very simple and pure and innocent.
And completely empathetic it was amazing how easy it was to grasp onto him and to let yourself go with him in the story.
Yes and that's a real intangible. That's the thing that people try to talk about or try to explain when you're casting, but there's no way that anyone can actually explain it. But you see him in the movie and you go, "Okay," and that's it you go along with it. And I think that Marc has done a really good job in that he's maintained the tone of the movie in such a way that you never expect Will to have some sort of moment where he gets to do a schtick. You just feel it's never going to happen so you go with it. I think it's so strange how we think as if comedians and actors are two different things sometimes and it really sort of frustrates me.
It could speak to an obsession with needing everything to be classified into tidy little categories. We're afraid to let those barriers break down because it confuses people.
Totally. It's almost the existential question: if Will Ferrell is a good actor, then what am I? (Laughs)
But on a very practical level, then a company like Sony is wondering, "How do we sell this? It's coming after something like Ricky Bobby but it's directed by the guy that did Monster's Ball... What kind of a trailer are we going to cut?" Thinking like a producer or a distributor, those categories help.
It's such a tough thing, because you build expectations with audiences in the process of trying to attract them to your movie and it's the exact same thing that we were talking about in regards to my scripts for the studios. You tell an audience that you have this kind of movie and then they wait for weeks and get excited about what kind of movie it is and then they show up and it's not the movie they thought. There could be great disappointment in that.
Tell me about the studio process and the years that you spent working on other people's stuff. Obviously it resulted in the infamous manifesto and the decision that you were going to do your own thing. But what were some of the other lessons that you learned about the craft of screenwriting or about collaborating as a filmmaker that that were very valuable from of that process?
Well, the most valuable thing that came out of those years was I was able to support myself as a writer while I learned filmmaking and screenwriting. I didn't go to film school; I went to a theater school and when I first began writing screenplays I had no idea what I was doing. So there was a certain on-the-job training and I was incredibly fortunate in the people that I was able to work with during that time. I was able to work with actors on developing projects for them, I was able to work with Bob and Harvey Weinstein on projects for them, I was able to work with Steven Spielberg and Jim Carrey on a project and none of these people are that bad at making movies, you know? (Laughs) Despite the fact they have their own specific processes towards making films, there's something to be learned from that. I was able to work as a sponge and I was also able to this may sound so strange fail privately. I'm going through a crisis right now because I've never had to deal with a public perception of my work on such a grand scale. I know there are going to be people that are going to not like the movie, there are people that are going to love the movie, there are people that think I'm ripping other people off and that I'm the sort of Hollywood-ized version of much better writer or filmmaker. And ithat's an insanely tough thing to deal with whereas before I was able to write a bad script or a pretty bad script or a pretty good script and no one knew about it. The analysis was mine and I could learn from it and move on; there wasn't a microscopic investigation of who I am as a human being.
But then you've been afforded the time and the process to come to terms with what was most important. Maybe you had hit to a wall and be forced to recognize what really matters to you, but if this is what really matters, then who cares what people think?
That's exactly what I said last night. I was coming back from Toronto on a plane with Dustin and his wife Lisa and Lindsay Doran. Both Dustin and I were saying that these things he's had a forty-year career and I've had, so far, a forty months' career and we were both saying that even after the compliments or all the handshaking of everyone telling you congratulations, it still feels weird because what matters most is the actual audience, the actual people who are going to pay the money to come see the film, and the artist yourself. But between us there are so many people! And that's not to say that's a horrible thing, it's just awkward as an artist. That's really the crazy thing. I keep worrying that I'm going to turn into like Terence Mallick and disappear for a decade...
Well, if it works for you then why not?
(Laughs) Yeah, it works great for him!
There's nobody telling you what you have to do. You've figured that out yourself as well. You're about to direct Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, is that correct?
I just finished turn in my director's cut last week.
So again, Stranger Than Fiction was a nice little preparation for that because writing is one thing but directing is another - you're totally responsible for it when it flops.
Yes. (Laughs) Exactly thanks very much for that!
I'm just helping to prepare you now. (Laughs)
Yeah. Stranger Than Fiction was a really nice preparation for that, to spend time with Marc and to go through this with a really good sort of training ground a little bit for me. Mr. Magorium's was the very first script that I had written; no one had produced it for years. Mandate, again, financed it independently, but in this case, it's a family movie. It's a big kids' silly movie in the vein of the old seventies Disney films, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Mary Poppins. And nowadays, you have to spend it feels like at least a hundred million dollars in some exotic foreign country to make them so for us to have pulled it off was really great. The thing that has been really spectacular about it, other than being able to work with Dustin again - which was really, really fun - was that it again allowed me the creative sort of cushion to make a movie that is ultimately about death, which is something I think most studios would refuse. And they did! I mean, they had the opportunity make the movie before and they all sort of said, "That's a bad idea. What kids wanna see a movie about death?"
But then there's Bambi.
Yeah! Every good kids movie is about death! If it doesn't happen quite literally, it's there, looming. So I don't know. I'm not gonna inspire you with theories about it I went and made my own little movie.
There you go! To close everything up let's talk about writing, and writing about writing, which is what Stranger Than Fiction is also about. How much of you is in Emma Thompson's character Kay, the author, in this film? How much of her daily agonies do you go through or is this just an extreme you don't identify with?
Well, it's hyperbole based on what I go through on a daily basis. To write about someone who has writer's block is perhaps the best cure for writer's block. Any time that I was stumped, I would immediately switch from writing about Harold's story over to Kay's story and transfer all my emotions and frustrations onto her and then concoct these crazy scenes on how one overcomes writer's block and to try to find the levity in that. It would be ultimately very satisfying. I'm not very strict with myself about writing. In fact, I always joke around that if I write a really good joke, I just take the rest of the day off because the rest of what I write is not going to be as good as that joke. And so there are certainly elements of me in that. There's elements of me, of course, in the whole film in every one of those characters, from Anna's tattoos to the office job that Harold has to the love of literature that Hilbert has. It was a really great way to express myself and at the same time look at myself, you know? I think that if you are really lucky as an artist, you not only are allowed the opportunity to hold a mirror up to the world, but to yourself.
