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I’ve started a company, called Tall Girl Productions, and we’ve got our first project that is purely producing, not writing, with a writer named Evan Daugherty. It’s for NBC, it’s called ‘Afterthought,’ and it’s science fiction-ish. That’s fun.
You don’t know what someone’s going to walk away from a movie with, but you hope it’s something positive, but if nothing, you want them most basically to be entertained and engaged. That’s your job. But you also hope to give them something to chew on or maybe some insight into the human existence, you hope a little bit. Not to sound too lofty.
Everyone is given one gift, a reason for being, and it’s our obligation to do something with it. Obviously, it’s a challenge – but if you’re not taking the bull by the horns, I have no patience for you. You’re just taking up space.
Studios, because they are investing a great deal of money in movies, they want a guarantee that when they hire somebody that person can deliver for them. Everything is fear based, so they pigeonhole people. But I’ve written everything, from Westerns to sci-fi to dramedy, I’ve done it all.
I am involved with ‘Write Girl,’ which is such a great organization, because they go into inner city schools and work with underprivileged girls to pair them up with other writers. And it gets them learning to express themselves and become familiar with their own voice. They have a 100% success ratio getting those girls into college.
My humor tends to be a little more edgy than is appropriate for ‘Twilight,’ although I got some in there. That was fun! There’s just a tonal difference. For me, storytelling is storytelling. But, I do like writing for grown ups.
I love Charlie, Billy Burke’s character. Writing for him is so spectacular, he’s so funny and wry and every scene he’s in he just takes. There’s a scene in ‘Eclipse’ where Bella tells him she’s a virgin, and it’s the funniest, most awkward scene I’ve ever seen on film.
One must never assume that a character is sympathetic because of either the actor playing them or the fact that they’re a lead. I think that’s a recipe for failure, actually, because if they become unsympathetic, you lose your audience.
With ‘Twilight,’ you have these massive tomes that you have to condense. With ‘Penoza,’ we had an eight episode Dutch series that, just for the pilot alone, I condensed three episodes. So, there’s a lot of filling in and a ton of invention that has to happen to fill out eight episodes.