CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 09/07/07

A Hunting He Will Go:
The Hunting Party's Richard Shepard

By DAVID MICHAEL WHARTON

Writer-director Richard Shepard shines a darkly comic light on a serious subject with The Hunting Party, about three journalists hunting a notorious Bosnian war criminal.

Richard Shepard made a splash with 2005's The Matador, a dark comedy about the chance meeting between a traveling salesman and a lonely hitman. After years spent working on smaller films, Shepard suddenly found himself in the position where people were asking him what he wanted to do next. The one film he kept coming back to was The Third Man. He loved the idea of telling a story in a postwar environment, and was keen to play with mixing genres in the same way he had on The Matador. He saw the perfect opportunity to fulfill both of these desires in a 2001 Esquire article entitled "What I Did on My Summer Vacation." Journalist Scott Anderson's article followed a group of war reporters in Bosnia as they decide over drinks one night to try to track down the fugitive war criminal Radovan Karadzic. Though The Hunting Party is only loosely based on the specifics of the article, the idea of journalists hunting a war criminal proved to be right up Shepard's alley. In the film, disgraced war reporter Simon Hunt (Richard Gere) reunites with his friend and former cameraman Duck (Terrence Howard) and a rookie reporter (Jesse Eisenberg) in hopes of finding a war criminal neither the UN nor NATO can. Last week the writer-director took a call from CS Weekly, and here he tells us about doing justice to the real events, writing without outlines, and how sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction.

How much has the story changed from the article it was loosely based on? I know you made the crew of journalists smaller.
I wanted to meet the real journalists, and I did, and I said to them, "I will tell the story, but I'm not going to tell your story." I wanted to have the freedom for creating new characters for any myriad of reasons, including that I didn't want to have to be so specific as to tell their stories and backgrounds. There was enough research to do on what really happened to them, let alone who they were, so I needed that freedom. Also, from a writing standpoint, I needed a younger character, because I needed somebody to ask all those dumb questions that seasoned journalists would never ask each other. They wouldn't need to explain any of the stuff that I needed explained in the movie. One of my goals was to make a movie that you would understand even if you walked in having no idea what happened in the war in Bosnia.

Was there one element or character that was your starting point for the script?
It was pretty much just learning everything that had happened there. My going there and interviewing people from the UN and NATO and the Hague. That was hugely important when I first started writing the script. The last few of scripts I've written, I've written without an outline. So all I had was what really happened to the journalists. But past that, I just needed to find a way into the characters and into how I was going to tell this story. Eventually I did find it, but it took a number of drafts. I now prefer to write a first draft before I write an outline or treatment, and almost use the first draft as an outline. Ultimately, I will let my characters take me where they want to go. I always found when I was writing an outline that it was saying it goes from A to B, so that's what I'd do, but sometimes the characters wanted to go to C first. Sometimes the characters want to go get a drink, and I want them to be able to go get a drink, even though that's not what was supposed to happen. I know where they need to end up and I'll make it work, but I like to let the characters lead me.

When [The Hunting Party] came around, the financiers were a little nervous to hire me to write a script before I did an outline, but I said, "It worked for me on The Matador, and I've got to have faith that it's going to continue to work."

Also, my first official draft is really like my fifth draft. I do a lot of rewriting before I show it to anybody. I show it to a group of friends who are very critical and give me a lot of hard notes, and I get it to a place where, by the time it's going to the studio or the producers, it has been truly vetted. I've worked out the kinks. I mean, you only get one chance to make a first impression. I know I sound like a deodorant ad, but it's really true.

And it goes all the way through shooting as a director, shooting and cutting it. When you're editing, you get all this pressure from the studio to see the movie before contractually you have to show them. Meanwhile, you're showing it to friends and getting feedback, but a lot of people fall into the trap of saying, "People are liking the movie, I'll go ahead and show it to the studio." I held out till I had tested in front of a paying audience, because I knew I was only going to get one chance for Harvey Weinstein to decide he either liked my movie or didn't like my movie.

How did adapting a property based on real events different from writing an original spec?
It was different in that I had a responsibility to the journalists to make sure that even though I wasn't telling their back story, I was telling a story that happened to them, and I wanted it to be as true to what happened as possible. That's why I say in the beginning of the script, "Only the most ridiculous parts of this are true." At the end of the movie I actually point out what's real and what I made up.

It was also about a serious subject, even though the movie has got black humor in it and is an odd, odd tale. There was a responsibility, just as a human being, not to fuck that up. I can't say it was a walk in the park, but the journalists were really helpful and read a lot of early drafts. Even though the three lead characters aren't them, they're infused with who they are and have their attitudes.

Do you like to power through and get a first draft down first or revise as you go?
It's kind of a combination. I do a lot of notes before I start writing, in terms of character and things I want to have happen. I'm not just starting on day one, writing "EXT. BOSNIA." There is a bunch of work, but it's not outline work, it's thinking work. I try to write five pages a day when I'm writing my first draft. They tend to be pretty awful, but it's just about barreling through. I tend to spend the first hour or so in the morning rewriting what I had done the day before, and then continuing to go. A lot of times earlier, I would spend so much time on the first 15 pages that you zap your strength out of it. I like to get a draft, even if it's just pretty shitty. Just so you have it, so you can read it and see it as a whole picture. Like, "Wow, this takes forever to get going," or, "God, in the middle it just lags," which is a perspective you don't have unless you get all the way through it. It's always much easier to rewrite than write, so even if you're going to rewrite the entire script, every single line of it, at least you've got something to hold onto and know which of your instincts worked and didn't work.

Was it always your intention to be both a writer and director?
I wasn't someone who was directing music videos or something like that. I was always writing. The way I was going to be a director was to write something that people were going to want to finance, and then they'd be stuck with me. And in a way, that's kind of how I've run my career all the way through. Even when I was making little, independent films, it was because of my belief that this was my script and I was going to make it, and that ultimately allowed me to grow as a director.

I love both processes. I love being alone, typing, writing, creating my own world in my fantasies, as much as I love the pressure of being around hundreds of people and having to make a decision at the second, which is what directing is. I like both worlds, and they complement each other. After I've directed a movie, all I want to do is go write and be by myself, and after I've written a script, the idea then that I can go make it is great so I can get the hell out of the house, because I've been alone for six months. Some people don't have it in their way to be a director if they're a writer. They just like to write and they don't want that other type of pressure. Thankfully, that's the case, in a way, because otherwise a lot of good directors who can't write would never get a script.

When you write, are you already thinking ahead to the directing part?
Not really. I try not to think about it in terms of the logistical things, because that can kind of cramp you up. Every time I've ever directed anything that takes place in a car, I always say, "I'm never writing another scene in a car." And yet suddenly I'm writing a road movie where they're in a car for half the movie. So, if I was actually thinking about the logistics of how nightmarish it is to do car stuff, I wouldn't have even been able to do this movie.

Any advice for up-and-coming screenwriters?
First of all, tenacity. And second of all, do the work that you need to do, to not assume that just because your husband or roommate or wife thinks your script is good, that it is. If you meet people in the business, take advantage of that. Ask them to read your stuff. Ask for the most difficult notes you can get. You don't have to listen to it all the time, but you have to hear it, because it's so hard to get a script bought and made, and even optioned. And it's so hard to get an agent. All these things are difficult. You have to be really surgical and really smart about what you do, and if you happen to have a connection to, let's say, an agent, don't send them the first or second draft of your first script. Don't. Because she won't ever read another script of yours again, and she's not gonna buy it. You're just screwing yourself.

You've gotta be tough on yourself. You've gotta do the work. You've gotta assume that your first three or four or five drafts aren't ready. You've got to get people to read it and really listen to them. And then you've gotta just be ballsy, because at the end of the day, you're going to get a lot more nos than yeses in your career, and if you take the notes too seriously, you'll just never keep going. You've got to keep writing. If the first script doesn't sell then the next one will, and if that doesn't sell then the next one will. Eventually, it will, if you're talented, but a lot of people give up before that happens. You've got to be willing to go for it and to spend the time and see what happens.

A good script is a good script, and if it's good-if it is good-that script will be found. That's the little rainbow at the end of whatever. You're not doing it for nothing. If you produce something good, it will find a home somewhere. You just have to believe in it.

David Michael Wharton is the managing editor of CS Weekly. He recently teamed up with several other reporters to try and find his car keys, but NATO has since intervened.

The Hunting Party courtesy The Weinstein Co.

From the Trenches
Working screenwriters discuss in their own words a particular aspect of screenwriting, from the mechanics of writing to the personal and professional impact that writing has had on their lives. > VIEW ARCHIVE

The Big Picture

Features that cover all aspects of screenwriting, from our "Seven Best" lists to analysis of old favorites and new classics. > VIEW ARCHIVE

Weekend Read
Film, book, web site and technology reviews from a writer’s perspective. How can these items help a writer on his or her journey, or make that journey more enjoyable? > VIEW ARCHIVE

DVD Review of the Day
DVD reviews from a writer’s point of view. What aspects of this script and features of this DVD illuminate the writing, development, and storytelling process? > VIEW ARCHIVE