Doug Liman Blog: Chicken Coop Editing and Stark-Naked Script Meetings

Share on Facebook posted 08-18-09 by Doug Liman

Greetings, Ninjas,

So last week I was up in Martha’s Vineyard where I have what Dave Chappelle calls a “fuck you to Hollywood farm” (they can beat you up but they can never take away this place that really makes you happy). Dave was in my first, and never talked about, film, Getting In.

Jez Butterworth, who co-wrote Fair Game with his brother and is one of the producers, has been in New York helping me with the edit. He came up to Martha’s Vineyard to vacation and to work with me on the edit.

Last year at this time, Jez and his brother John Henry had come up to write and work on the script at what turned out to be a critical time for its development (most scripts go through pivotal moments, times when they really come together). They were working in a converted chicken coop that I’ve set up as a writing and editing room. While his brother balanced work and play, Jez spent two weeks on Martha’s Vineyard that summer without ever going to the beach. My house is on the water, and he never went into the water; in fact, he never changed out of long pants. This year I actually lent him a pair of shorts and got him in the ocean. (That’s Jez, the shorts, and the writing room in the picture.)

For the most part I end up in a very close and collaborative process with my writers; it’s a process that’s probably more usual in theater than in film. And I really see the writers as my partner. I like having the writers on the set, and when it’s a good relationship they really are my partners. Part of my process is to insert myself into their process when they’re writing and to invite them into my process when I’m directing. So The Bourne Identity was created in eight days with Tony Gilroy and me in a room. And Fair Game came together in my chicken coop.

In fact, it’s funny, last summer Jez and John were writing in my chicken coop for these really long days and I’d write with them and then go do fun things, then write with them and leave them alone. I had a house full of people, including Dan Weil, who production-designed Bourne, and his family and my sister and her family, so I was kind of like the cruise director. I’d just come back from water skiing or wind surfing, and I was taking an outdoor shower and Jez and John Henry saw me and came running over and I ending up having a script meeting with them while I was stark naked in the shower and they were just outside the wood partition, and they were excitedly telling me about how they had cracked a scene. It sounds like one of those Hollywood things, but I’m really not that Hollywood. I once had a meeting with Joel Silver while he was in his pajamas, so I’ve kind of one-upped him ’cause I was butt naked in the shower for my meeting. The difference is, I guess, that I didn’t impose this on them, they found and cornered me in the shower.