Roger Dodger is an example of how – sometimes – all the pieces just fall into place. Writer-Director Dylan Kidd recognized that he’d created a great character when he came up with Roger Swanson.
Actor Campbell Scott obviously agreed and stepped up to the challenge, bringing an amazing cast – Isabella Rossellini, Jennifer Beals, Ben Shenkman, and Elizabeth Berkley – along with him. Roger Dodger proves that it’s always a good idea to carry your best script with you wherever you go, because you just never know who you’re going to run into.
Where were you in your career before Roger Dodger happened?
Nowhere, really. I had gone to NYU film school and graduated in 1991 and then most of the 90s was spent struggling to get any kind of entry into the industry. I loaded cameras for a couple of years; I worked in real estate for a couple of years. I made a short film in 1996, which was the first directing I had done since school, and that was a nice little thing to get my confidence up a little bit. I spent a couple years doing training videos for hair salons, industrial films, you name it. So really Roger Dodger was a very dramatic beginning to my career.
What the value of all those jobs when it came time to do your first feature?
At the time I was absolutely thrilled to have the work, and I still feel that any time you are -- and this is more from a directing standpoint than from a screenwriting standpoint -- any time I was on a set, calling "action" and "cut," it was an opportunity to learn. And it's always good to shoot and go into the editing room and slap your forehead and think, "I should have gotten that!" It's all part of the training.
And in terms of screenwriting, it's all just fuel for the fire. In the case of helping the script for Roger Dodger, I was just getting more angry and frustrated at not being able to break in, so I ended up putting all that anger into the mouth of the main character.
In my case, it was a long struggle, but absolutely worth it. I don't know how to do anything else, so for me there was no option.
How many scripts had you written before Roger Dodger?
I had written two other feature scripts and then one that had been sort of abandoned. So I guess, two and a half.
One screenplay was based on my experiences in real estate. Although it was nice to get it out of my system, I think I was aware when it was done that the script really wasn't good enough to show anybody.
The other one was a horror movie, an attempt to do something in a genre. It was fine, but wasn't anything that I was that excited about. Roger Dodger was the first time that when I finished a script, I was like, "Okay, I want to make this movie."
What was it about the script that made you feel that this was the one?
Probably the quality of the writing, but also the fact that this was the first time that I felt like I had a character that an actor would want to play. For me, a big thing about writing something that could be done for no money was trying to write a role that was so good that we could attract a name actor to work for what turned out to be peanuts.
That was a big part of my strategy: write something that somebody would walk through broken glass to play. Most of your expense in a movie is the above-the-line costs. It's difficult but possible to make a movie for a low-budget. What's really hard is getting someone that anyone's ever heard of into that movie.
Every time an actor wins an award for stepping outside of their comfort zone, like Halle Berry for Monster's Ball or Charlize Theron for Monster, I think it sends a message to other actors that sometimes you need to take a chance. If you're making $12 million a picture, you don't need the money. So why not take two weeks, go shoot a little indie, and maybe you'll get a statue? That was my theory, anyway.
Where did the idea for the story come from?
The real estate script I had written was big in scope and so, apart from the fact that I didn't think it was that strong, even if someone did fall in love with it, it was still a big movie. So the idea of Roger Dodger was to give myself the assignment of writing something that could be done for no money. That lent itself to a series of conversations and monologues.
It started with the idea of a guy who feels like he can tell everyone else what they're thinking. It was based on a friend of mine, who in college had this strange ability to go up to strangers and take their psychology apart in minute detail. It struck me as disturbing but also very compelling.
I started with Roger. It ended up being a buddy movie, but his nephew didn't come in until later drafts. You go through a certain amount of time thinking, "Well, maybe this guy is compelling enough, maybe people will sit and watch a train wreck for an hour and a half."
And then there was a point where I realized there has to be some foil, a character who we want to protect has to enter the movie. There has to be a reason for people to hang on and keep watching.
Did you have a theme in mind when you started?
I was interested in how somebody's work could bleed into their personal life. I feel that New York is very much a place where you can be so ambitious in your career that you end up translating those techniques into your personal life.
I liked the idea of a guy who works in advertising and actually ends up bringing that kind of rhetoric into the singles arena. The idea that he's literally trying to sell himself as a product, by creating insecurity in other people.
But the nephew didn't show up in early drafts?
I think I had one breakthrough draft, which was the first time when the nephew, Nick, came in, where it felt like this was the structure of the movie. After that there were endless tweakings.
Campbell Scott was very helpful, too. We were lucky enough to be able to rehearse quite a bit before we shot and Campbell helped me cut a lot of dialog. Because as wordy as the film is, the script was even more so.
Usually actors are begging for more lines, so if an actor is saying, "I think we can cut the scene here," their instincts are usually pretty right on. They're not going to tell you to cut a line unless there's a real reason for it. And Campbell is also a writer and a director, so he had a really strong sense.
Probably the most important draft of the script was created two weeks before shooting, going into rehearsal and realizing that a ten-page monologue was finished at page seven; that we didn't need to keep ranting for another three pages. We probably would have figured that out in editing, but it was great to not actually have to go shoot all that.
How did you come up with the title?
I honestly can't remember. I think I remembered hearing that as a nickname for Roger Staubach and I like titles that have an alliterative quality and stick in your head a little bit.
I also thought of this character as somebody who is dodging a bit. This is a guy that the audience is sort of chasing through the movie. And so our visual approach was that this was a guy who always had a cloud of cigarette smoke or something obscuring him. You could never really get this guy to sit still.
What is your writing process?
I used to hate writing, because I didn't feel I was any good at it. It was so hard, and it takes you a while to realize that it's hard for everybody. If you spend the first two weeks of a project staring at a page, you learn to forgive yourself a little bit and realize that that's part of the process.
I seem to work best in the morning. Roger Dodger was written while I had a job, so I was mainly writing at night. But now, I feel like my best hours are probably 8:30 to noon. I have a really hard time being at the keyboard for more than three hours, at least in the beginning.
To me, the hardest part by far is the beginning. That's the easiest time to get discouraged and give up. But I have an almost religious faith, based on the scripts I've written, where there is some point where you break through.
So for me, the first couple of months is a lot of not writing: thinking, obsessing, thinking this is a disaster that is never going to happen. Then something clicks and you start to write and you realize that all that worrying was really part of the process.
But I've never been somebody who can get up and put in a nine-to-five day writing. I just can't do it. At the very end, when you're racing to the finish line, then I probably could. But up until that point, if I put in three to four hours, I consider that a good day.
You're the first person I've talked to who has used the words "faith" and "forgive" to describe the process of writing.
And I'm an atheist!
I remember reading a great quote that Stephen Gaghan said about writing Syriana. He was describing what he goes through when he writes a script and at the end he talked about self-loathing and not being able to get out of bed.
The beginning is hard. You're trying to make order out of chaos, and chaos doesn't want to be ordered. If you can just get through that hard part, the first draft, then I think you'll be rewarded for your perseverance.
Do you follow a three-act structure in your scripts?
I guess so, but without really thinking about it. I read the Syd Field book when I was at NYU, but I think, for me, things work internally. I can't even remember thinking about the act breaks when I wrote Roger Dodger. I just had the sense that we were at this stage of the story and this is what should happen.
If you go to 5,000 movies in your life, then without even knowing it that structure is going to be in there when you're writing. I don't think it's a front brain thing; it just ends up being in there.
I feel like the last thing you want to do in a first draft is to be thinking about what page is the act break. I'm the exact opposite of someone who knows the ending before they begin. For me, the first draft is the “spill it” draft. And after that you can look at it and think, "Well, I have a 70-page first act, that probably can't work.
But your first time through is when your unconscious is really trying to tell you what the movie wants to be. For me it's important to follow your bliss in that first draft, even if it ends up at 180 pages or you hate everything but ten percent of it. At least you've got that ten percent, which is ten more than a lot of people have.
So you don't subscribe to the "the first act needs to end on page 30" philosophy?
The first draft, because there was no Nick character, I think there was a point where I read a draft and I literally started to get fatigued around page 25.
Once I realized that we needed Nick, the original plan was to introduce him very early in the movie so you had some sense that it wasn't just going to be about Roger. Campbell's performance was so great that we decided to roll the dice and I said "I think we can hang with this guy for about 20 minutes." Then we have the kid show up in the office, and a few minutes to get to know the kid and see how they relate, and then the movie can kick in.
There's something to be said for trying to fit it into a structure that people who read scripts for a living recognize. But for me it's always been a little more organic than having file cards and saying, "By page 40 I need to be here." But everyone's different.
Although it's a buddy movie, it is all from Roger's point of view. Do you think that's a function of the character of Nick essentially being a late addition in the scripting process?
Part of what we discovered was that Roger is controlling the tempo of the movie and the subject matter of what's being talked about, but in some weird way, Nick comes in at a moment when we're really starting to figure out something about Roger.
Even if the movie isn't told through Nick's point of view, there's some way that we're linked to Nick, in that we're sitting there listening to this guy go on and on, and there's an interesting split that happens. We're aware that, as responsible people watching the movie, we feel that this kid should get away from this guy, but he doesn't.
So the more that Nick buys into everything that's being told to him and the more we realize that, "Wait, this is the last guy you want to be asking for advice," there's something interesting that happens.
It's the classic Hitchcock situation, where you've told the audience that there's a bomb under the table -- you told the audience, "here's who Roger is." And then you introduce someone who doesn't know what we know. It creates suspense, because you want him to get away but you also want him to somehow redeem Roger.
That's absolutely right. And somehow we thought that would work better if you were introduced to Nick early, because we thought if you set up that collision course, people are really going to be on the edge of their seats. And then we discovered that it was actually better to have the first 20 minutes be all about Roger and then you have the kid show up.
Under the guise of a talky, chamber piece, we're actually using every trick in the book to keep people in their seats -- it's a buddy movie, it's a Hitchcock movie, it's a sex movie. We were shameless in what we were doing. It's hard to have people just sitting and talking without there being serious subtext.
Were you writing to a particular budget?
No, but having a background in production was definitely a help. I had the understanding that if you could tell the movie in one night there would be only one wardrobe change.
There are basic rules that are pretty commonsensical, like don't have a car chase, don't make it a period piece, keep your locations to a minimum.
Also, a big thing for us was that we knew we were going to shoot with two cameras and that allows you to really burn through scenes more quickly. Basically, the whole second act of the movie is four people sitting at a banquette, having this extended conversation. We were able to shoot that entire thing in a day and a half because we were rolling two cameras.
There's a scene where Roger takes the kid out into the street; it's the first time where he's instructing the kid. It's a long, extended scene and even when it was written it was intended to be shot in one take. That was a 12-page scene that we shot in half a day. If you have two sequences like that, that's twenty percent of your movie that's shot in three days.
Did knowing that you were writing for a small budget cramp your creativity in any way?
Not really. This was one of those movies that felt like it wanted to be tighter. There were earlier drafts that took place over a longer span of time and it just felt like it wanted to be as tight as possible.
So there's nothing in the movie that I feel we would have done differently if we'd had more money, except for the luxury of being able to shoot more. But if somebody had said, "We love it, here's 2 million dollars," I wouldn't have written in some dream sequence of Roger when he was young. It just felt like it is what it is, that we were dropped into the middle of this guy's meltdown, and we hang on just to make sure that the kid's going to get out of there okay.
Did you write with specific actors in mind?
I didn't and I still don't. I have a hard time doing that, because I don't want to get too attached. I didn't have anybody in mind, so when we stumbled upon Campbell in this really crazy way, it was nice not to have some presupposed notion of it has to be this guy or that guy.
How did you get Campbell Scott?
My producer partner and I got to a stage where we realized, "we're not going to get this movie made in the standard fashion." It's like that New York thing, where nobody ever finds an apartment by actually going through the real estate listings. It's always somebody you know; there's always some backdoor.
So, really in a fit of insanity, thinking if I don't make this movie I'm going to go crazy, I started carrying the script with me every day. I thought, "Well, I live in New York, maybe I'll run into somebody." And that's how it happened -- two weeks after starting that routine of not leaving the house without the script, I walked into a café and there was Campbell.
I didn't realize that most people will not accept an unsolicited screenplay, because it opens you up to all kinds of potential litigation. But I was so clueless at that point.
Any advice to someone who wants to try the same thing when they spot the perfect actor or actress for their script?
The only advice that I have is to be really polite and make sure that you really do have a killer part to offer.
I'm not necessarily somebody who stalks people or is really aggressive or goes up to people, but I was so sure that this was a great role for somebody, I really believed. I might not have believed that the movie was going to work, but I knew this was a lot of meaty dialog for someone to perform. So I really believed that I wasn't wasting his time. If I wasn't sure, I would not have gone up to him.
If you get to the stage where you feel like you have this great gift that you can give somebody, then it allows you to feel like you're not just disturbing this guy's lunch.
Did you do any re-writing to fit the cast?
Nothing to fit the cast. We were lucky. Basically every actor in the movie was our first choice, so there wasn't a whole lot of "Oh, this person can't handle this type of thing," or "This person is really good at this – we should add more."
Fairly late in the game we added the epilogue where Roger goes back and sees Nick in Ohio. That was something that came from doing a reading. We did a reading where we found Jesse Eisenberg, who played Nick, and he was so good at the reading that we got really excited because we thought, okay, we actually have someone who can play this role.
That reading was a huge epiphany, because we realized there was an actor who exists on planet Earth who could play this role. It really lit a fire under us, because we thought Jesse would grow a beard in a year and his voice is going to drop, or whatever, so we've got to move.
It was sort of our "That's our Hitler!" moment from The Producers.
The other thing we learned from the reading was this huge sense of when the movie ended. The original ending had Roger putting Nick into a cab to the airport and you could just feel the air go out of the room, because the audience cared so much about Nick, because Jesse was so good. They wanted to know if he was going to be okay.
So it was combining that sense of wanting the narrative pleasure of following through and also, just for me, I really wanted to stick Roger in a cafeteria full of kids. I don't know why, it's such a guilty pleasure for me. The movie starts with Roger having lunch in this restaurant with all these adults and then by the end of the movie he's actually found his peer group.
So I think it was a combination of sensing that the audience would feel ripped off if the movie cut to black at that point and also having this visual of Campbell Scott bopping above all these other heads in the cafeteria.
Do you show drafts to friends or use readings to gauge how you're progressing?
I like readings. I'm not a fan of too much feedback. I'm stubborn that way. I like feedback, but for me the whole point of a reading is to sit in the room and you just know -- you just know if something's dead or if something's working.
I do have people that I turn to and that I care about what they think. But my feeling is that, unless the comments match something I already felt in my gut anyway, or if every person has the same comment, then I know I have an issue. I generally have found that putting too much stock in feedback can get confusing, because people are going to have a hundred different opinions.
Is there anything in the movie that people tried to talk you out of that you're glad you stuck to your guns on?
I tend to be the opposite. I tend to be the guy that cuts too quickly. I loved when the Coen brothers released their Director's Cut of Blood Simple, and it was like eight minutes shorter or whatever. That would be me.
My experience has been that if I have a gut feeling, if I know something isn't working, I don't need to be told to take it out. And someone says it isn't working for them, but some gut things says I want to keep it in, I guess the reward I get for writing the script and putting myself through this is that I get to say, "No, I don't want to lose that."
There has to be something in the script that gets you juiced, otherwise it's dead on arrival. I think you have to fight for that, even if you're not going to be the one directing it.
Did knowing that you were going to direct it change the way you wrote the script?
I don't think so. But I think that's probably why I say I don't enjoy writing. It's mainly because I love directing and I think of myself as a director.
So the writing is this very necessary part, but it's not the fun part. For me it's less about hating writing and more about getting impatient, because I want to get to the point where I can go and start collaborating with others.
What is the most fun part?
I really like editing, which is very much like writing. It's just more fun, because you get very tangible results very quickly.
For me, I enjoy the entire process, but I probably add the most value in the editing room. I think I'm fine as a director on the set, but I'm not some Ridley Scott genius who always knows where to put the camera, and I'm not John Cassavetes, where I would say the right thing to the actors.
But the editing room is a place where my tenacity pays off, because I just keep working the footage and refuse to stop tweaking. I just find it really enjoyable, not walking away until a scene is as absolutely good as it can be.
There's a shot right near the end of the movie where Roger is sitting alone on his couch, smoking and thinking, and the smoke disappears in front of him, like a cloud of fog lifting. Was that in the script or a happy accident?
That's the one effect that was completely scripted.
There was a deliberate structure, where the first image of Roger was of him expelling a plume of smoke. Then, we really labored over that last shot of him smoking. It's the only dolly shot in the film. Our poor cinematographer had to light it in a certain way, so that the smoke would read.
I don't know if anybody even gets it, but I still get a kick out of it when I see it. "Oh, look, he's coming out of the fog." It was even written in the script that way, something like, "Roger exhales and then the smoke lifts …
Although you created Roger, I'm sure there was a point where Campbell took him over and knew him better than you did. Do you remember when that point was?
Probably by lunch on the first day.
I had a really interesting thing happen with Campbell. I think good film actors work really small. There's a great interview with John Travolta where he says he always has to remind directors that they might not see what he's doing on the set, but they'll see it on the screen. These guys are working at a level where the camera can almost read their minds.
My initial concept for Roger had been much more manic. But Campbell brought this total James Bond sophistication to it, where he's saying these horrible things but it's going down so smoothly. That was a total surprise to me and I had a panicked reaction. We talked and he said it's going to be fine. And I thought, I've cast this guy and he's great. Maybe this is not what I had in mind, but maybe that's the whole point.
Since then I've learned that that moment of surprise is the very best feeling you can experience on the set. If you don't feel surprised, you're in trouble. The whole point is that you write a script and then the actors turn it into something so much better and richer and different than you ever thought.
It wasn't until the end of the shoot that I realized how right Campbell's choice had been. The only way people would stand this guy was if he was kind of suave about it. If he had done what I had pictured in my head, the movie would have been a disaster. So that was a great lesson.
I think I imagined the character as constantly pushing people away and what Campbell was doing was more of a push/pull thing, where he reels you in and then pushes you away. That's so much more interesting than what I had in mind.
I don't think I'll ever make a movie that turned out so much better than I imagined. I thought the script was good, but the actors added so much.
You were quoted once as saying you wanted every character in this movie, even if they only had one line, to be so well-drawn that they were worthy of their own movie. How do you go about doing that?
I think that's something that's easy to say, but in the end it comes down to the actors. It's very easy to say that you want people to feel that you could go off with any character, but unless it's Jennifer Beals who's riding off in that cab, maybe you're not really going to give a shit and you'll say, "I'll let her ride away."
I think it was more about just wanting to instill in the actors some sense that everyone is important, that there are no supporting characters. But I do believe that it's the responsibility of the writer to love every character equally. Once you start writing a character who is only there in order to fulfill some piece of plot machinery, then nobody is going to care about that person.
I have this clear memory of being about twelve years old and going to a James Bond movie. There was a scene in the movie where the main henchman gets in a fight with an extra character in the movie -- some Secret Service guy we'd never seen. And it ends up being a really long fight. I remembered being so thrilled that this guy, who you'd think would be dispatched immediately, gets a nice scene.
I always enjoy it when characters come in and you make a snap judgment about them and then they surprise you, either by claiming more of your attention than you thought or just being richer than you thought.
It's our job to remind audiences that every character has something going on and everyone has a story to tell. It sound pretentious, but that's where our heads were at when we made the movie.
What did you learn writing Roger Dodger that you still use today on higher-budget projects?
The main thing that I learned from that script was that it was the first time ever when I was writing something that I thought, "This is good, this is working."
My other scripts had been okay, competent, but the hair on the back of my neck didn't stand up. For me, the most important thing now is trying to make sure that I get as close as I can to that feeling. I never want to settle for, "Oh, this is okay." You want people to read it and get genuinely excited about it and want to shoot it.
You’ve got to get to a place where you are genuinely pumped with what you're doing. As hard as it is, you can't give up on a script until you've gotten to that place.
What's the best advice you've ever gotten about writing?
I have to say it was that Stephen Gaghan quote I mentioned earlier. That was the first time that it really hit home for me that it's hard for everybody and that 90 percent of writing might just be staring into space or reading a book and feeling like you're procrastinating.
Writing is so hard that I only want to do it if I'm absolutely dying to tell that story. My advice would be, particularly in the beginning, the only thing that is going to make your script jump off the page for a reader who's read a hundred scripts that day – the only thing that's going to make a difference – is that there's something about it that's getting you up each morning. Even if it's the least commercial idea in the world, I have to believe that somehow that passion translates to the page.
My experience with Roger Dodger was that I had written two other scripts that I thought were good, and then it wasn't until I wrote Roger Dodger that I realized that there's a difference between just "good" and "holy shit this is good." The industry is tough enough and competitive enough that if you're going to go out to somebody, whether it's an agent or an actor or you're going to submit it to a studio, it has to have that holy shit feeling.
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Jonathan Demme: The value of cameos
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Kevin Smith: Skipping film school
Jon Favreau: Creating an emotional connection
Richard Linklater: Poverty breeds creativity
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Robert Rodriguez: Sound thinking
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George Romero (“Martin”) on writing horror on a budget
Rebecca Miller (“Personal Velocity”) on adapting short stories
Stuart Gordon (“Re-Animator”) on adaptations
Academy-Award Nominee Whit Stillman (“Metropolitan”) on cheap ways to make it look expensive
Miranda July (“Me and You and Everyone We Know”) on making your writing spontaneous
Alex Cox (“Repo Man”) on scaling the script to meet a budget
Joan Micklin Silver (“Hester Street”) on writing history on a budget
Bob Clark (“Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things”) on mixing humor and horror
Amy Holden Jones (“Love Letters”) on writing romance on a budget
Henry Jaglom (“Venice/Venice”) on mixing improvisation with scripting
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Academy-Award Winner Kenneth Lonergan (“You Can Count on Me”) on script editing
Roger Nygard (“Suckers”) on mixing genres
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