CS Weekly Archive > From the Trenches > 11/09/07

Sibling Rivalry:
Fred Claus' Dan Fogelman and Jessie Nelson

By david michael wharton

Producer and writer Jessie Nelson tells CS Weekly how a bedtime story for her daughter made its way to the big-screen, and how screenwriter Dan Fogelman expanded that bedtime story into a holiday tale of the black sheep of Santa Claus' family.

Fred Claus began its trip to a movie theater near you one night as producer/screenwriter Jessie Nelson was putting her daughter to bed, and the little girl asked if Santa Claus had any family. "I thought, wow, what a brilliant question," says Nelson. "I thought how hard it would be to be Santa Claus' sibling, because he's perfect, generous, jolly all the time. What would that have been like?" She used the idea as a launching pad for a bedtime story, and the idea continued nagging at her until she realized it might be great fodder for a script. As the story of Santa Claus' older, black-sheep brother began to fill itself in, a late-night viewing of The Godfather provided the final element she needed to crack the tale. "Initially I'd called it Bob Claus or Joe Claus, and then I saw Fredo from The Godfather," says Nelson. "Every family has a Fredo. So he became Fred Claus as an homage to Fredo."

After meeting with numerous writers, Nelson tapped Dan Fogelman (Cars) to script the story of Fred (Vince Vaughn), Santa's (Paul Giamatti) disreputable big brother who reenters the world of his North Pole family after a run of bad luck, even as St. Nick himself is facing an eating disorder, marital problems, and even a possible downsizing at the hands of Scrooge-like efficiency expert Clyde (Kevin Spacey). Here, Jessie Nelson and Dan Fogelman talk with CS Weekly about humanizing Santa Claus, willing movies into existence, and Vince Vaughn's "over commitment to the absurd."

Jessie, did you ever consider writing the script yourself?
Nelson: As a producer, if I thought I had been the right writer, I would have hired myself. [laughs] I thought it needed someone who more naturally understood how to create a big comedy, a really big family film. Dan's samples were sent to me, and he was working on Cars, and I immediately had an instinct that there was something about his voice that could just knock this out of the ballpark.

Fogelman: Jessie did a lot more in terms of the writing than a typical producer. She had a comprehensive outline that we expanded on. But it was more than just the idea of Santa Claus' brother.

Dan, what was your angle or "in" to the story when you first met with Jessie?
Fogelman: I thought it was a great concept. I loved the idea of taking the idea of Santa Claus and all the things that go along with that Christmas fable and humanizing it a little bit. What would happen if the North Pole was a real place and Santa Claus was not just Santa Claus, but also the CEO of a very old-fashioned company. That all seemed ripe with possibilities, most of which were in Jessie's original treatment. We always think of Santa Claus as this big, fat guy, and why would he be so fat? He's under an insane amount of stress and he's a stress eater. That just seemed so perfect to me, the idea that here's this mythical, larger-than-life creature, but trying to treat him very real. What's the affect of being Santa on his marriage and his weight and his stress level?

Were there other Christmas films that you looked at or were inspired by?
Nelson: We weren't necessarily thinking about other movies, but I love that my husband watches It's a Wonderful Life every Christmas and sobs through it, that there are themes in it that speak to him so much. That's more what we tried to focus on rather than other movies, the notion of what themes could we bring out that would have a timeless resonance? The corporatization of the holiday was something we wanted to investigate a little bit, and the notion that there are no naughty children, that even Santa had a misconception about the holiday.

How much prewriting before diving into first draft?
Fogelman: Our process was different in terms of working together. Normally, you go in and you pitch and sell the movie, then you turn it in at a certain point and get someone's notes. Jessie and I worked together very closely. The movie in its original form was extremely, extremely long.

Nelson: Two-hundred pages.

Fogelman: We had all these ridiculously big ideas, and it was hard to pick and choose. Jessie, I think at one point I sent you the first hundred pages.

Nelson: Act one, the first hundred pages. [laughs] That was the biggest challenge of this movie, because Dan had so many ideas. In the original draft, the bartender was Frosty the Snowman. There was a group of cheerleaders called the Christmas Spirit. There were so many delicious sub-characters running through, and it was so hard to let them go because they all worked.

Fogelman: It would have been like Lord of the Rings with Santa Claus.

Fred's dialogue is very much Vince Vaughn's style, so were you writing specifically toward him?
Fogelman: He was always our archetype kind of dream person to get. He is one of the biggest guys out there, so you can never assume you're going to get him, but he was definitely in mind for that type of character. Then, once Vince was officially on board, he really has an unbelievable handle on his voice and his comedy, so it was fun to watch him turn things and use the script as a bit of a blueprint. We worked on it with him, and he did a lot on his own. It's not just improvisation, it's a lot of his own writing and development.

Nelson: You think with Vince that he's improvising, but in truth he improvises in rehearsal, and then you script the improvisations and he memorizes them and then embellishes them even more when he's acting. He's really carefully constructing a character and taking each scenario as far as he can go. He has this term, "the over commitment to the absurd." He really has a writer's mind and brings a great gift to the script, and also to the other characters, because as his character's shifting, everybody shifts, and he doesn't want to be a ball-hog. It's a really interesting process for writers to watch him. Of any actor I've ever worked with, he has the most writer's mind.

Do you typically outline before writing or just jump into a first draft? Also, do you revise as you write or just finish and then go back?
Fogelman: I don't tend to outline much, but because it was Jessie and I working as a team, it was almost necessary, because otherwise I wasn't getting all of her ideas. I write very quickly. I just hole up in my house for a couple of days and write a whole screenplay, just pound through it and then figure out what's not working afterwards. When you're doing a big movie for a studio, you're forced to outline initially because they want to hear what the story is, and they want details. Adding to that in this case, working with Jessie, it was something I wanted to do. I wanted to frame it out with her and get her opinion. Since this, on other things, I've actually started outlining more heavily. When we were done, it was a very quick process getting the studio onboard. Because we did so much work ahead of time, it was a pretty polished draft when we delivered it.

Nelson: That said, even though we did have a pretty strong outline, so much changes when a writer starts writing, and you never want to hamper that. We had a very good experience with Warners. They weren't married to the outline or rigid with us. They allowed it to evolve in a good way. It was enough outline to know how to bring the movie home, but not so much that it restricted us. I'm like Dan in that I normally don't outline that much, I like the freedom of finding it as I go, but since this movie, I've begun to outline a little more and appreciate what that can give you. I think every script you find in a different way. This one, that was the process, but a different movie, there might be a different process. You have to approach each piece of material with a fresh sense of what the process is going to be and let it reveal itself to you.

What's one piece of advice you wish someone had given you when you were first starting out?
Nelson: Two pieces of advice for me. There's this great quote by Hal Ashby that films aren't made, they're willed into existence. A lot of us have scripts that don't get made for five years, 10 years, 11 years. If at any point you give up, it will never get made, but as long as you keep willing it forward, that weird fluke can happen. A lot of new writers think if a script doesn't get made in a year or two then there's something wrong with the script or them, or they should give up. It's a game of keeping the plates spinning. You might be writing something new, but always keep that other one moving forward as much as you can. I also think there's something about having the courage to write a bad first draft, just get something done and on paper, and then you can start revising and making it good. So many new writers get stuck trying to make a scene perfect, so they can never finish anything.

Fogelman: What writing in this town is, whether you're successful or trying to be successful or somewhere in between, is walking that line between getting too excited when anybody tells you it's great, because that doesn't necessarily mean that when the next person gives you an idea, you go, "No, that other person told me it was great, so I'm not changing anything!" But at the same time, not being so devastated when you believe in something and other people might not. It's rare that you go with 10 people to a movie and every person walks out having the exact same reaction to it. That's even more so for scripts, because you don't have the actors for it or the director's vision, so I think you're never going to get a true consensus on a script. So don't get too high when somebody says something is great, because that doesn't mean you won't have to make any changes, and don't get too low when somebody doesn't see it the way you do. And as Jessie's done in her whole career, you can still will things to happen and believe in it strongly enough that you can make it happen, inevitably.

Nelson: All you need is that one yes. You can get 250 nos, but if that one, key component says yes, then the whole thing can come to life.

David Michael Wharton is the managing editor of CS Weekly and a contributing editor for Creative Screenwriting. He likes to think that he's not the Fredo of his family.

Fred Claus courtesy Warner Bros.

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