Hot is an easy word to associate with Scott Z. Burns. And not for the obvious reasons.
Okay, maybe some of the obvious reasons. Burns is currently one of the hottest screenwriters in Hollywood these days. His quirky adaptation of The Informant! drew a lot of attention when the film hit theaters in September. This came on the heels of his work as a co-writer on the third installment of the Bourne franchise -- The Bourne Ultimatum -- which many argue is the series’ best. As a result, Burns skills are very much in demand and he’s got writing projects all over town. And this doesn’t count his directing and producing efforts.
Burns’ heat began in advertising where he was part of the team that created the “Got Milk” ad campaign. He then segued into television, writing for the ABC series Wonderland.
The pivotal moment in Burns’ film career came in the car one day back in 2000. A segment of Ira Glass’ This American Life came on the radio. The topic was The Informant: A True Story, a book written by journalist Kurt Eichenwald. It told the tale of Mark Whitacre, a biochemist with Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), a multibillion dollar food-additive corporation, who became an informant for the FBI. Burns couldn’t stop listening. He was transfixed by Whitacre’s story.
“I drove right to the book store to get the book,” says Burns during a recent phone conversation. “I wanted to option it.”
Sunday, November 8, 2009
But two television producers, Howard Braunstein and Michael Jaffe, had beaten Burns to the punch. Was he deterred? Burns went to the duo and convinced them to give him a shot to pitch it around town as a feature.
“I said, ‘I’m not sure what you’re going to do with it,’ remembers Burns. “’But give me a month to see what I can do.’”
A month was all he needed. Sure, Burns got a few passes. What film project doesn’t? But his efforts soon found the property at two places -- Mirage Enterprises, Sydney Pollack’s company, and Steven Soderbergh’s Section 8 Entertainment. Both filmmakers wanted to do it.
“Not too luxurious a position to be in,” jokes Burns.
Burns decided to team with Soderbergh. It was the beginning of a a seven year odyssey.
“The bad news is that it took seven years,” says Burns. “The good news it that it gave me seven years to develop a great relationship with Steven.”
Soderbergh was just finishing up Erin Brockovich. Michael Mann’s The Insider, an expose about the tobacco industry, had also recently hit theaters around that time. So neither Burns nor Soderbergh had the urge to create another whistle blower movie. They agreed The Informant! should be a character piece.
“Just by the very nature of Whitacre’s behavior, it couldn’t be another Insider,” says Burns. “He just didn’t fit that mold. You couldn’t help but read his story and start to laugh. There was just too much absurdity in it.”
Bringing that absurdity to life was one of the challenges Burns faced as he began shaping the screenplay. One of the keys to cracking this was creating a series of non sequitur monologues that can be heard throughout the film as Whitacre’s inner running thoughts. It turned out to be the perfect way to establish the tone of the character while foreshadowing the twists and turns the story would take as it unfolded.
“The book was really a good piece of reporting, but there was nothing of Whitacre’s internal monologue in it,” continues Burns. “I started thinking that what this character has been telling people all along is an unreliable narrative. That’s what the monologues establish -- Whitacre’s unreliable narrative.”
The task got a little easier when Matt Damon got involved. Soderbergh knew the actor could be funny from working with him on Ocean’s Eleven. Burns sent him the book and by the time he was 60 pages in, Damon was hooked. He wanted to play Whitacre. The initial draft of the screenplay sealed the deal. Damon especially liked the interior monologues. “That was a big help,” Burns says. “As I continued to work on them, I had Matt’s voice in my head. It made it easier because I could hear his rhythms and write to that.”
Another unique aspect of the film is its retro feel. The Informant! harkens back to the caper films of the 60s and 70s. This wasn’t a conscious decision, according to Burns. It just naturally evolved throughout production. He cites the location, Decatur, Illinois, as an contributing factor. The costumes by Shoshana Rubin also helped. But what Burns really thinks solidified that feel is Marvin Hamlisch’s music.
“What was great about the way Marvin wrote the music,” says Burns, “is that he said he wasn’t writing it for movie. He wrote it to be Whitacre’s internal soundtrack.”
The Informant! worked so well, it not only led to Burns and Soderbergh’s second project together, it inspired it. There’s an incidental scene in the film where Scott Bakula’s character -- Whitacre’s FBI liaison --sneezes. Whitacre reacts in horror, flustered that he’s going to get sick. The scene has no bearing on the plot, but it got the filmmakers thinking. What would happen if there were a viral outbreak on a global scale? How would the world react? Referencing the 1918 influence epidemic, Burns began drafting a scenario. As he was doing so, the H1N1 virus hit.
“It was amazing how some of the things that I had written were now coming true,” says Burns of the screenplay that he plans to turn into Soderbergh soon. “It was really eerie.”
Burns has also signed on to pen Universal Studios’ action-oriented screen adaptation of the Electronic Arts hit game Army of Two. Then there’s No Place Like Home, a series he’s developing for HBO with Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. It will be a scripted look at humanitarian organizations and the work they do. Burns and Jolie are also Executive Producing.
Burns also plans to get back to the directing chair next year with Side Effects, a psychological thriller he wrote set in the world of pharmaceuticals. Lorenzo di Bonaventura is producing. No stranger to the director’s chair, Burns previous credits include the HBO original movie The Half Life of Timofey Berezin and an episode of the Showtime series Californication.
Burns is pleased that his schedule is so full, but he is just as grateful that it is also features a wide variety of subject matter.
“I never wanted to just write comedy or action movies,” says Burns. “I’m hoping the community will give me the opportunity to write a lot of different kinds of stories. I like working on different projects -- things that are not all the same.”
And though he enjoys all aspects of filmmaking and plans to continue to pursue producing and directing opportunities, there’s no question which part of the process he enjoys the most.
“Writing is always my first love. You can get up in the morning and if you have a pencil and paper, you can be a writer,” says Burns. “To be a director, you have to have actors, equipment, a crew, funding and all these other elements to do that. With directing and producing, you have to have the permission of the rest of the world to get something done. This isn’t true of writing.”
Despite all the heat surrounding him, Burns remains very cool discussing his career. But there is one subject that can get his blood boiling -- the environment. For years, Burns has been actively involved in Earth Day and The Nature Conservatory. He cites Dennis Hayes, often named as an instrumental figure in this country’s modern environmental movement, as his mentor.
His passion for the subject even led Burns to his first producing credit. Along with Lawrence Bender and Laurie David, he helped turn Al Gore’s slide show about global warming into the feature film An Inconvenient Truth.
It’s the thing I think I’ll always be most proud of,” says Burns. “It is great that I am able to intersect my passion with my profession.”
The movie was a huge success, grossing just under $24 million during its U.S. theatrical run. It also won two Academy Awards -- Best Documentary, Features and Best Original Song for Melissa Etheridge’s “I Need to Wake Up.”
Though thrilled with its success, Burns admits to being frustrated that its impact hasn’t lasted.
“We haven’t really been able to change people’s behavior,” says Burns. “A friend of mine recently told me that at the time of the movie, 77 percent of people believed global warming was real. In a recent study, that was down to 57 percent. Fewer people don’t even think it exists!”
Blame the economy. The global financial meltdown has shifted people’s priorities away from the environmental meltdown. Burns hopes that the upcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference, taking place from December 7 to December 18 in Copenhagen (http://en.cop15.dk/) will refocus attention on the problem. Organizers anticipate approximately 8,000 attendees. Up to 170 countries are expected to send representatives. Burns is especially encouraged that many of the key environment organizations will be there. “It’s good to see all these groups joining together, pooling their resources,” he says. “Hopefully, it is not too late.”
