'Bram Stoker's Dracula', Screenwriter, James V. Hart

0:00James V. HartWe were about three or four months away from release, in November, so this would've been August. And we'd had a couple of difficult previews. I get a phone call in New York one night and my wife said, "Hey, it's, it's, it's Coppola on the phone." It was like 11 o'clock at night. And when he calls, you get on the phone. "Yes sir, Mr. Coppola." And he basically was calling to tell me that he was very disappointed in the film, he was disappointed in the studio, he disappointed in the actors, he disappointed in the script. And he said, "I want you to get on the next plane in the morning and come to, come to San Francisco." He said, "I wanna show you that film. I wanna show you the film that I'm not happy with." So I went out there the next night, in the Godfather screening room, you know, with the big leather couches and everything and some, that wine. And he was right. I mean, I sat there and got drunk and I didn't like the movie either. This was a kind of, you know, a jumble.

1:07Jawad MirI would love to start off by finding out how did Bram Stoker's Dracula came to be?

1:16James V. HartWow. Okay. I grew up on, the Hammer films, the, Peter Cushing and, Christopher Plummer Draculas. And always thought they were very campy and not very scary and, you know, and I mean, even drive-in movies. I, m… you know, took a date to see, Dracula versus Billy the Kid, which had David Carradine in it, and, I mean, John Carradine in it, and, Bob Evans of all people played Billy the Kid, who went on to run Paramount. And mostly these were... I mean, I just, I was never afraid of them. And then in the, in the 1970s, friend of mine, a business partner, said, "Let's do Dracula." And I went, "It's never..." You know, I said, "It's, it's been done 100 times, you know, it's...

2:17James V. HartWhy?" You know. And, I read the book. I read the Stoker novel, which I'd never read. And it blew me away because it was completely different than any Dracula film that I'd ever seen. And that was because all the early Dracula films were based on a play by Balderston and Dean, which is how Bela Lugosi became famous, by making women faint in the theater. I couldn't figure out why, but that's where all the movies came from. I read the novel and it was this giant, sweeping, epic, Gothic kind of romance and, with a John Ford shootout at the end and a Texan with a Bowie knife, and I was from Texas so I went, "Oh my God, nobody's ever put a Texan with a Bowie knife in a Dracula movie." And I started trying at that point to, get some interest in it. I met Leonard Wolf who's, who's no longer with us, but Leonard Wolf was the leading, scholar on, the dark side of all of us. He was born in Transylvania. He wrote the annotated Dracula, which is a definitive Dracula.

3:21James V. HartAnd I spent, you know, several years trying to get people to do it, and they kept saying, "No, it's been done. We don't need it." and I kept saying, "Have you read the book?" Well, in our business, nobody reads the book. And then, two producers, Robert O'Connor and Michael Apted, a great director, both of which who've also left us way too soon. They said, "Okay, we'll do it." And, everybody in town turned it down. And we got it developed at, for a USA Network TV film with Karen Moore, who I remain indebted to because she put it in development. Nobody else would touch it. This is the same time I'm writing Hook. I'm writing Hook and Dracula at the same time. Nobody wanted to do either one of them. Hook was turned down everywhere. Dracula was turned down everywhere. And I was working on Dracula for as a TV movie and Hook as a very lowball development deal at, Sony. And when I turned the script in,..

4:23James V. HartWell, first of all, I'd never seen Dracula portrayed as a, as a sacred knight defending the cross of Christ. That's in the Stoker novel. You know, that was the historic Dracula. He was, a hero of Christianity. And that was the first big leap for me, was, "Wait a minute," I, we've never seen that. You know, nobody's done a Dracula that, who was fighting the, you know, the, a religious war. And when Karen read the script, she said, "Jim, we can't make this for $2 million." And I said, "I know." It's... "No, you can't." So she gave it back to me for one year. She had to fight to do that. Her bosses did not wanna put it in turnaround because then somebody might go do something with it and make them all look foolish. She got the script back to us and turnaround for one year, and she said... And I got it. She said, "One year to the date, if you don't have this set up somewhere else, I have to take it away from you. And you're not gonna like what we do to it." So in that year, we tried everything to get people interested. And finally, Winona Ryder was looking for, a way to change her kind of teenybopper idol, her kind of, you know, the, that teen queen thing she was doing.

5:44James V. HartShe wanted a more grownup role. And every agent in town gave her a pile of scripts. They were trying to steal her. And when people came back to her and said, "Okay, what do you wanna do?" She said, "I wanna do Dracula." And they all are going, "Why?" I mean, that was at the bottom of the pile. And, she said, "Well, have you read the script?" And, this is all unbeknownst to me at the time. So Winona came on to do, wanted to do Dracula, and she s… she called Francis Coppola and said, "I wanna s…..." Asked if she could send him the script to read to get his advice about whether or not it's a role she should do in her career. And the story that was told to me was that Francis called her back and said, "You absolutely should play this role. And oh, by the way, who's directing?" and that was how Francis Coppola got involved in Dracula. And I had tried...

6:46James V. HartThis was 1990. I had been trying since 1977 to get it made. And then when Francis came on with Winona Ryder, every studio in town turned the project down.

7:03Jawad MirReally?

7:04James V. HartExcept one, Sony. Yeah, everybody turned it down, with Francis and Winona. He was just coming off of Godfather III, which was a big disaster, and I think people were spooked with him. And he wanted to make, a completely different kind of film and go back to his old days when he was, started working for R… Rod… Roger Corman. So and literally we're… where the clock is ticking on the year. And finally, literally the last week of that year, Sony came on board, and said they'd make the deal for Francis and Winona and my script, and took it on board. And, this was the same time that Hook was going through the same thing. Everybody in town turned Hook down until Spielberg read it. And suddenly these two, scripts that, nobody wanted to do had the two most legendary filmmakers in my lifetime, attached to direct.

8:04James V. HartI'm still grateful to Karen Moore. We're still friends. I thank her every chance I get. We just screened Dracula in Santa Fe, where she's lived for years. And, if she hadn't given that script back to me, it would've been a TV movie that nobody would've ever wanted to watch.

8:25Jawad MirWhat a great story, and that's, you know, it's, it goes to show that 13 years, I mean, it's a long time, but in hindsight, you know, it may seem a flash. But good on you that you were committed and again, like you said, not only that it just got made, you know, they got made by two of the most esteemed directors who still are to the date…

8:49James V. HartYeah

8:49Jawad Mir... You know, one of the best directors in the business. Amazing, and…

8:52James V. HartAnd I think, I also think that, you know, 30 years later, Dracula and Hook are still, are high on everybody's viewing list, which blows me away that those two have become not just cult classics, but they're genuinely... New audiences discover those films every year. It's, it's amazing to me the afterlife they've had.

9:14Jawad MirI was surprised. So I spoke to Glen, is it Sc… it's Gantalberry, one of the editors, on Dracula. And we, you know, we, our team kind of spread it out on sh… social media, and we discovered there's a Bram Stoker's Dracula Facebook group…

9:33James V. HartOh, yeah

9:33Jawad Mir... Which is ex… extremely active.

9:36James V. HartYeah.

9:36Jawad MirAnd…

9:36James V. HartAnd also on Inst… Instagram. You'll find Instagram, all over Instagram.

9:40Jawad MirI mean, it's, a ma… it's a... You know, someone can understand Star Wars, Jurassic Park, ET because they're those type of films, but I never anticipated Dracula. And one of the things, when Dracula I saw in the '90s, I probably didn't like it. I was like…... 14, 15.

9:56James V. HartYeah

9:56Jawad Mir... You know, who cares about a love story? But…

9:58James V. HartYeah

9:58Jawad Mir... Watching it, just a few months ago, I was completely blown away in every aspect. The, you know, the writing especially and the opening was one of the best openings I've ever seen, you know, from a story standpoint and a character. And then the way it was shot and the costumes and everything was just, it was so character-focused as opposed to, you know, like a blood-sucking, you know, Dracula as we all know. Yeah, like you said, I mean, it was... I don't know why the studios didn't wanna make it, but maybe because they hadn't seen, nobody had read the book. But what a great film.

10:34James V. HartNobody read the book, and also Francis was not at his, the peak of his powers. He was on a downtick. Excuse me.

10:42Jawad MirYeah.

10:42James V. HartAnd Peter Guber and took a chance. He wanted, he wanted to bring Zoetrope into,.. He saw that there was a way to do this. And Francis also had a com… very clear vision of this from the very beginning. He told me like on the very first page, when he read the very first page about the war, the battle, and the warrior and the knight and everything and the, and the battle with the, all the impaling and everything, that he knew that this was different than any Dracula that had ever been seen. It went back to the historical Dracula. It went back to the novel. Apparently, the novel was his favorite novel to read to his campers when he was a camp counselor to scare them at night, you know, to get them to go to shut 'em up.

11:23Jawad MirInteresting

11:23James V. Hart... So it was, it resonated heavily with him as well from the very beginning.

11:29Jawad MirInteresting. That's so cool. So the script that you wrote, the one that everybody liked, was it also the shooting script?

11:38James V. HartNo. Ne… ne… never. But, as Francis said, they, we, they,.. Then he, when he was interviewed, they asked him, and he said... When we were talk… asked, "How many rewrites did you do?" and I think we pi… we came up with the number of 50. And they said, "Well, how much did the script change from what Jim originally wrote?" He said, "Oh, it's exactly the, what Jim wrote, only different." And…... I actually was amazed. I went back and looked at one of my early drafts, and before Coppola, and I was amazed how much survived How much of what was done survived, all those, all those rewrites and revisions. He was very respectful of the script from the very beginning. So was, so was Winona, so was Gary, Oldman. The entire cast was very respectful of the script. Doesn't always happen that way. And, he, we… the love story was always there. The opening was always there. We did... He heightened the, we heightened the romance between, Dracula and Winona w… by adding some scenes, like the Rules Cafe scene where he begins to open her up to her reincarnation self and he makes the diamonds out of the tears.

12:55James V. HartA little Jean Cocteau nod. The cinema scene used to take place in a zoo. We began to focus more on building the romance between the two of them and the longing between. The meeting on the meeting on the street, in London, was always in the original script, but it kind of just stood out. It didn't, didn't go anywhere until they met sometime later. So, but he loved the John Ford shootout at the end. He r… we ramped all of that up, which is in the book. He chose to use all the diaries and the letters that the studio fought him on, because that's how the Stoker wrote the novel and how I'd written the script, was to use all those documents to tell the story. I, and, all I can say is it got... Oh, I've, the scene where, John Harker sw… makes his way to the nuns and they save him and the wedding and all that stuff, you know.

13:55James V. HartAnd when I was first spending time with Francis, and we were going through the script, and he's there turning the page of my script and saying, "I like this. I like this." You know, and I'm going, "I'm sitting here with Francis Coppola. He's going through my script." And I realized how much I'd stolen from him, and how perfect dir… the, he was as a director. And I finally said, "You know, I stole this from Godfather and I stole that from Godfather, and I stole this from Apocalypse Now, and I stole this from Conversation, I stole this..." And he said, "Yeah, well, you know, my father used to tell me to steal from the best." And that was his way of, you know, patting me on the back for stealing from him. But I did realize what a he… a heavy influence he had when I, without knowing it would ever be him in writing the script.

14:40Jawad MirThat does happen a lot of times to a lot of people, including myself. Like, you know, sometimes you work on something and you know, direct something and it, and then you realize years later, oh, you know, when you're watching a screening at a public event, this kind of feels like something I saw 30 years ago, and you never pick that up when you're actually directing it. But it's... And I mean, Francis Ford Coppola, like, you know, his b… biography, one of my favorite films of his is The Outsiders. I…

15:09James V. HartYeah

15:09Jawad Mir... Absolutely love that book. I read it in high school by S.E. Hinton…

15:13James V. HartYep

15:13Jawad Mir... And we had to watch the film. An amazing book, an amazing movie, and he has this ability to do something very original each time he does it. Now his upcoming movie, Megalopolis…

15:25James V. HartYep

15:25Jawad Mir... You know, that looks very good, and I can't wait to see it.

15:29James V. HartWell, we all, we all are waiting with bated breath when the public finally gets to see it.

15:34Jawad MirYeah

15:34James V. Hart... Me… including me.

15:36Jawad MirYeah, it's coming to TIFF. I'm hoping to get in.

15:39James V. HartYeah.

15:39Jawad MirThe tickets have ran out, so let's see.

15:42James V. HartYeah.

15:42Jawad MirBut I'm hoping to get in. I'm really excited. Were you on the set for Dr… Bram Stoker's Dracula? Was it…

15:47James V. HartYeah, we were. The Sony, the Hook was, on the Sony lot, and they were, as shooting, wo… wound down on Hook, they started building the Transylvania and Dracula set. So, they were both my films at that point were, had taken over the So… Sony lot and a couple of other lots around. Yeah, no, I was on the set a lot. He was very good that way. Didn't have to be. Some of the stuff I really wanted to see, just to watch him work, you know, and how he worked, and, what hi… and what his method was in terms of working with the actors and working with the crew. And also, we had done all this prep work before we shot.

16:32Jawad MirYeah.

16:32James V. HartI learned a lot about preparation from Francis, that just like you have pre-production when you go to make the film, you also have pre-production before you write the script, or as you write the script. And we did so much wonderful prep. And he had everybody up to the ranch, up to the estate to, for rehearsals and games and character building, sort of, events and adventures. I was at all the rehearsals right before we started shooting, with Ball House. We had a little high eight camera, you know, filming the rehearsals and…

17:08James V. Hart... We did radio plays where we had actors come in and read, for a live audience. He also did storyboards with, I did storyboards with Peter Ramsey that f… literally followed the script, not just random storyboards, but each shot, so that he always, he was building a running video of the film all the time. Excuse me. In real time. So we always knew, we were always fixing stuff along the way, and it still didn't work in post. We still had problems in post, which, like, we can talk about. But I learned about what goes into prep… and the preparation of writing a script or rewriting a script. And it's not that you don't just sit down and g… and start writing. There's all this examination, analysis and, character examination, in terms of, in terms of character, not plot, but in terms of character. And it's still carried, it's, I still do it today. He's the only director I've ever worked with besides Brian Henson who had that kind of prep.

18:12James V. HartYou know?

18:13Jawad MirWow

18:14James V. Hart... He shot the movie three times before he walked on the set.

18:18Jawad MirYou know, it's in… int… it's interesting you say that because I'm working on a project right now, and I've been thinking the same thing, that it was never, it never occurred to me it was like called prep work as in, you know, in terms of, script, before script. Like, you shoot stuff with the actors, and you just get a hang of it, and you will discover new things, and they will get comfortable. And I think that's, that's why the film became great as it was, because everybody became comfortable with each other. Plus the preparation of anything, you know, leads to a good, solid story, or a product or whatever that is.

18:56James V. HartYeah, and we still had problems in post

18:59Jawad MirOf course

18:59James V. Hart... In spite of all that prep.

19:01Jawad MirYeah.

19:01James V. HartBut it also led me to the other, a whole nother, my whole protocol with the heart chart and everything came out of this. We were about three or four months away from release in N… November, so this would've been August. And we'd had a couple of difficult previews. It's Francis and I's memory differs on this, so this is, this is my memory as the writer. They'd had a c… couple of difficult, previews.

19:33Jawad MirPre… yeah.

19:35James V. HartAnd there was some concern about studio, about how the movie was go… was going. And I get a phone call in New York one night, and my wife said, "Hey, it's, it's, it's Br… Coppola on the phone." It was like 11 o'clock at night. And when he calls, you get on the phone. "Yes, sir, Mr. Coppola." And he basically was calling to tell me that he was very disappointed in the film, he was disappointed in the studio, he disappointed in the actors, he disappointed in the script. He basically wasn't real happy with where things were, after all this time and all this prep we did. And he said, "I want you to get on the next plane in the morning and come to, come to San Francisco. Apologize to Judy," my wife. "I don't know how long you'll be, but we got some work to do 'cause I really am not, I'm not happy with where things are." and I'm going, "Great." He said, "I wanna show you that film. I wanna show you the film that I'm not happy with." And so I was going, "Well, wonderful," you know. "Can't wait to see it." And, after all these years, I had the best director in the world for the film.

20:37James V. HartSo I went out there the next night in the Godfather screening room, you know, with the big leather couches and everything, and some, that wine and, some cognac and stuff, you know. And, he didn't even come down to greet me. He stayed up in the penthouse and he called me and he said, "Okay, are you here? You're fine, great. Call me as soon as you finish and I'll come down and we'll talk about it." And, there were two women who also spoke Romanian there. I'm not sure why they were there, but that, I guess for atmosphere. And he was right. I mean, I'd sat there and got drunk, and I didn't like the movie either. And I'd seen all the dailies and been on the set a lot of the time, and everybody had revered the script and protected it, and this was a kind of, you know, a jumble. So he finally called, I think it must've been about midnight, and he finally called down upstairs. Said, "You didn't call me." I said, "Yeah, I'm, I'm, I didn't, I didn't like it either," you know? So he said, "I'll come down."

21:38James V. HartSo he came down, like an 18-year-old kid. I mean, just full of energy and life, and he had his, you know, his smoking jacket on and his cravat and his little cigars and his Turkish fez and little slippers and, you know. And just came in and he sat down on an ottoman and right in front of me, just leaning forward, and said, "Now I wanna tell you about the movie," you know. And I was sitting there going, "Wow, isn't that the movie we made?" Excuse me. It's a cold, not COVID. I just tested. And we had missed things in the narrative when the, you know, when the actors bring it to life and the film takes on a life, what have you. There are things we'd chosen not to shoot, and there were things that we had missed or piece, you know, like, not like connected, connecting tissue.

22:30Jawad MirYeah.

22:30James V. HartThere wasn't one scene we had to reshoot. But what we did for the next two weeks was go through identifying the narrative where we were missing clarity or we were missing some moment that we needed or some brushstroke. And I literally wrote pieces of scenes and transitions, and we rewrote the narration. And then if, h… the next thing he had to do was get, the studio pr… to, who was already worried, to put up more money to bring Winona and Gary back to do reshoots, and Sir Anthony. And he showed the f… he showed the, a cut that we had, an improved cut that we had done to George Lucas, to get his opinion, and to Mike Mignola, who was our up-and-coming graphic novelist at that point, who was doing the novel. And, so George watches the film, Lucas watches the film, and he says, "You broke your rules." 'Cause the ending had always been a controversial ending.

23:31James V. HartIn the original script, spoiler alert for those of you who've never seen Dracula, in the, in the original script, you know, they go, and Winona and, Mina and Dracula go into the chapel. He's been stabbed in the chest with a bowie knife by a Texan, and they go into the chapel. She drives the knife through him into the stone. You know, he dies, and she's redeemed. And in the script, and in, and the ending that was shot was she gets up and leaves the dead Dracula, walks out of the chapel into the arms of Keanu Reeves, and they walk off into the sunset. The audience hated it. The preview audiences were, "Bullshit, boo, no." Everybody wanted Dracula and Mina to stay together 'cause he had, he really now was the hero of…

24:20James V. Hart... The Dracula story, which had never been done before. It was always Jonathan Harker and his crew getting rid of the, that mean old monster coming to mess with our women, you know? And here it was everybody wanted Dracula and Mina to stay together. And that's when George said, "You broke your rules. You know, you showed us how to kill a vampire in this like nobody's ever shown us before. You have to cut off their head and cut out their heart, and then you put a stake in." She has to cut off his head at the end to fully release him and complete the cycle. So I remember Coppola calling me back in New York and saying, "Okay, so do you think that we can get Winona back, to work with Gary if she cuts off Gary's head?" And I remember saying something like, "That's the only way you'll get Winona back, is she's gonna cut off Gary's head." 'Cause at that point they clearly did not get along. I mean, two weeks into the shoot they were already having issues.

25:21James V. HartSo we… when you now see the movie... And he did it. He brought everybody back, those beautiful sets that were built like stage sets, so they folded instead of having to rebuild them. So in the last scene, in the film, there are medium shots and close-ups and wide shots that were taken almost a year apart, and it's seamless. You can't tell. And she cuts off his head, she's healed, and, up in the cathedral and the freeze of Dracula and Mina together in the heavens, that was Roman's idea. And that's what the audience wanted. They wanted them to be together somehow, spiritually and whatever. So that was the beginning of the heart chart and this whole analytical thing that I do on scripts before you get in the editing room, before you shoot. Francis was very generous that way in helping me find a way to where I could start analyzing my own work so this didn't happen. And to Francis' credit, he went...

26:25James V. HartThe studio was, he embattled the studio to get this money. You know, he didn't want let them take it. He would not let them take over the film. I saw this fearless artist, you know, fight for the, to get the best way possible to tell the story, who never gave up, and, it's still inspiring to me that he, you know, here at 85 or 84 he's finally got Megalopolis done, which has been a passion project of his for 40 years. I'm sorry I went on a bit, but

26:56Jawad MirNo. It's fine

26:56James V. Hart... It's, it's, it's what I learned about him as an artist.

27:01Jawad MirNo. The, it's, it's all good. I really love listening to all these behind-the-scenes stories, especially of the films that I really enjoy. But one of the things about Coppola is that if you... Have you seen the series, The Offer? The behind-the-scenes…

27:16James V. HartYeah

27:16Jawad Mir... Story of Godfather? Okay.

27:17James V. HartYeah. I saw the first season. They didn't do a second one.

27:20Jawad MirI think it was just a miniseries, and that's what they…

27:23James V. HartBut it ended, it ended too, way too early.

27:26Jawad MirYeah. But for... It's amazing a guy like him makes Godfather. Okay, I can understand his first film, or one of his early films, you know, and then he gets opposition, then he makes a second one. I don't know if he got much opposition, but probably not as much as the first one. Then the same thing with Apocalypse Now, same thing with Dracula, same thing with, what was the movie?

27:50James V. HartOne From the Heart.

27:52Jawad MirYeah. Then, Megalopolis. It's like every s… no matter how much he proves himself over and over again, he always has to fight, but the credit goes to him, like you just said. For him, and especially Megalopolis, for him to spend I think 125 million of his own money, at least that's what I read in w… in Variety…

28:11James V. HartYeah

28:11Jawad Mir... And still fighting at it at the age of 85, it's just incredible that how Hollywood works. You know, there's never faith and, but you just, if you keep at it,..

28:25James V. HartWell, he said, there was an Instagram post where he's talking about th… that he has no re… he got to make every movie he ever wanted to make. He got to live a life that he wanted to live. He got to d… do, you know, he... All these things he got to do, that he doesn't have to regret not getting done.

28:40Jawad MirYeah.

28:40James V. HartAnd now he's getting a Kennedy Center award, you know? Like, the ultimate ul… I think that's the ultimate recognition, is to finally be recognized by the Kennedy Center of the Arts. And I don't know... I mean, he's, he was so fierce in his artistry. We almost didn't shoot the film. The film almost fell apart three days before shooting. Another lesson from the maestro. We were rehearsing. There's a church at Franklin and Highland in LA where a lot of films rehearse, 'cause they got a big gym in the back, and you can bring in, you know, furniture and stuff, you know. We were rehearsing there with the full cast.

29:27James V. HartBall House, that's where he had this, the Hi8 camera. You know, and we're rehearsing, and I'm there and, making, taking notes and what have you. We're discussing. And then we're supposed to shoot, like, in f… in less than five days. They're sort of the last, you know. And we're shooting the scene where Gary takes Winona to his chest and she opens it up and she drinks from him and all that stuff, and they, and they come in with Van Helsing and, Sir Anthony and everybody comes in with their, holy water and silver bullets and crucifixes and stuff, you know. And Gary stands up in the little bed we had there for him, and he starts delivering the lines, and he just stops cold and said, "I can't do this, Francis. I can't, I can't, I can't do the scene." And Francis basically said, "Wait a minute. This is... All of you guys wanted every line. I put every line back in the script that you wanted back in here. This is what you wanted." You know, "And now you tell me you can't do it?" And he said, "No, I can't." You know? "they're... I'm, I'm standing here in my underwear, and they're saying this stuff.

30:31James V. HartThey're not afraid of me." They're not, they don't, they're not afraid of me. I'm, and they've got all their shit that they're doing to me. And Francis I could just see went, "Okay." And he turns to me, he says, "Jim, take everybody to lunch around the co… around the partition there, and you guys go over the scenes until you get it right. Then I will let you know if we're gonna make this movie." And everybody's looking at me going, and I've got the, all the Academy Award winners and these, you know, they're, "Fuck." So, and, I say, "Okay, everybody, let's go. Let's get away from Francis and let's go away and have lunch here." And everybody's going, "What the fuck?" You know, "What's going on?" And Gary's like, ".." And all of a sudden we hear all this crashing and there's tables turning over and chairs and stuff being thrown, you know. And I go running around the partition, and I see Francis disappearing out the back door with his fez on, his beret. And the place has been trashed. He's thrown coffee on the scripts.

31:32James V. HartHe's turned over the tables, turned over the chairs. And he's gone. And Anahita Nazarian, his lifelong... Like, she was always more than an assistant. She now produces for him. She was standing there with her arms crossed just facing everybody. And Anahita announced to, all of us that we're supposed to go home or to our hotels, and wait to hear from Francis over the weekend whether or not we're gonna make the movie. And everybody's going, "What's going on?" You know? And this is before cell phones were predominant. You know, there, nobody…

32:13Jawad MirRight

32:13James V. Hart... Could, like, whip out their cell phone and go, "Hey." But in a matter of minutes, it had spread all over town that Francis maybe pulled the plug or went over the edge or had a fit or something, you know. And Anahita says, "Everybody go except you, Jim. You stay here." Oh, great, you know. So she says, "Francis wants you to go back to your hotel. You'll get an airline ticket tonight. You'll meet him tomorrow in Reno, and you will spend the weekend working on the script." And I'm going, "Great." So I'm now Jonathan Harker being summoned by Dracula to go to the castle. And sh… and, about 11 that night, I go, my agents are calling. Everybody's calling, like, "What happened? What happened?" And, about 11:00 that night, there's a little knock on my door, and it's Elizabeth Seldes, who was Francis' creative, ex… executive, with a brown envelope. There's an airline ticket in it, but it also, there's a VHS cassette with a handwritten note that says, "Watch this before you meet Francis."

33:21James V. HartAnd it is a rough cut. I said, my wife's going to bed. The kids are asleep, you know, and I, and it's a rough cut of the Ellie, what, the documentary Ellie did about the making of Apocalypse Now. And specifically, and it still had the time code on it. I mean, nobody had seen this. And specifically there's a moment where he gets on Martin Sheen about having the heart attack, where he says, "You, nobody's dead till I... You're not dead till I say you're dead." And I see him create all this chaos and derail everything. And I realize this is his, this is the way the artist gets control, rec… gets recontrol of the, of the project and the process, that he has to create chaos in order to retrieve it. So I knew I wasn't gonna die, you know, going to Reno, but I also knew now what this, kind of what this process was, what this, what he was doing. And the casino that we went to in Reno was where he went for The Godfather during his weekends to, before he would shoot. So I get there the next morning. I'm in a tie and jacket, and, they are all ready.

34:35James V. HartThey have this, put me in this giant room with big plasma TVs and a bar and, you know, whatever you wanted. And I of course have my version of a laptop then, which was like a sewing machine, you know, to drag around. And I'm sitting there at the bar just waiting. Phone rings, and it's Francis. And he s… he says, "Oh, good. You're here." He said, "How's your room?" "My room is fine, Francis." "Do, would you like a bigger room?" "No, I'm fine." "Are you sure? I can get you a bigger room. And all you have to do is say so. I can get you a bigger room." I said, "No, I'm fine." And he said, "Okay. I'll come down in a few minutes and we'll talk about the script." I hang up the phone and, you know, 30 seconds later I hear a click at my door. Coppola's got a key to my room. So he opens the door and stands there in the doorway and doesn't enter, because you have to invite the vampire in order to give them power.

35:38James V. HartSo we're already playing a game. He loved pranks, you know. And so he l… he leans in and goes, "Oh, I can get you a bigger room." I said, "No, we're fine." So finally he said, we're, we just sit there apart. I'm s… like 30 feet away from him. And he finally says, "So what if Dracula turns into a big bat?" And I went, "Okay, " This had always been a contention in our, in pre-production and what have you, 'cause everything, the green smoke, the wolf, the old man, the prince, all that's in Stoker, you know. But we knew that, we always felt like that once he turns into a bat and flies out the window, we're back in camp ter… we're back in Hammer territory. We're back in, you know, everybody d… no more, we're, it was no longer real. And I said, "What do you mean, like a 747?" He said, "No, just a big bat." And what we talked about was why are the, what the vampire sees in the mirror, why they're afraid of mirrors… Why they, you know, why they shatter them.

36:42James V. HartAnd it wasn't because they couldn't see themselves. It's because they could see themselves. They could see that tortured soul that they had, that they had become after years of being damned and condemned to this life of being a vampire. And I said, "If that's what you wanna do, that's cool." and he said, "I'm so glad you agree." And then he put a... The reason he was standing in the hall, he put a statue in the doorway that Greg Cannom had designed of the vam… of the g… big bat that Gary was gonna become. You know, he'd already designed the suit. Francis knew exactly what he was doing. He'd had this all part of his design, just get re-control. So cut to, four months later, we're shooting the scene. Gary's all in the bat suit, you know, and he's all, "Hey, Jim, I gotta... What do you think? How do I look?" You know? And he said, "I got a s… surprise for you." and not one line has changed in the script that Gary couldn't do.

37:44James V. HartIt's all the same lines except one, and it was one that Gary wrote. And he said, "I got a surprise for you. What do you see?" And in the middle of the take, in the middle of the scene, and with the cameras and all the costumes and all the actors, Francis and everything, Gary stands up and says, "Look what your God has done to me." And I'm sat there just went, "Fuck." The actor found the very soul of the character that I couldn't find in the dialogue and didn't have a way to express it, and he did it, you know? And I was just, like, blown away. "Cut." He come, "Hey, what do you think, Jim? You know, what do you think? Well, you like it? We c… I can do it better. I can change it." "No. It's perfect." And that was Gary. He was so invested in the character. Francis was so invested in the pro… in getting it right that, you know, I still think about that not one line changed in that scene that Gary couldn't do except that one that he wrote. Yeah, that's how Francis stays in control.

38:45James V. HartExcuse me.

38:48Jawad MirNo, that's… That's such a... I mean, it can backfire too, but you have to have that kind of confidence, a level of confidence to be able to pull something like that and have things…... Go your way, right? And only someone like can him, can… someone like him can do that. And also, I watched this interview once. It's, it's been a while. It was a conversation with some journalist. Francis Ford Coppola…

39:14James V. HartI'm sorry. I hope you can cut this out. Excuse me. Okay, I'm sorry.

39:18Jawad MirIt was... No worries. It was a conversation in the n… late '90s or early 2000s between Coppola and some journalist. And they were talking about that how Godfather, when it came out, it was this and that, and same thing with Godfather II and Apocalypse. And Francis Ford Coppola kept saying that movies, at least for his movies, but I think that applies to a lot of movies, that are not really received really well when they come out, they become timeless over time. A case, another case example is a lot of Stanley Kubrick films.

39:56James V. HartYep.

39:56Jawad MirI mean, even if you look at AI, Artificial Intelligence, that Spielberg directed of Kubrick's tri… idea. I remember when I watched it, I d… I had a problem with the film, you know, where it should have ended, but years later, I realized how wrong I was.

40:13James V. HartYeah.

40:13Jawad MirAnd that's, that's, that's the beauty of cinema, is that sometimes some films…... Don't… they're way ahead of their time, and that's where Coppola and Spielberg and Scorsese and all these great film-fa-filmmakers are, that they're way ahead of their time. People…

40:29James V. HartWell, they're way ahead, they're way ahead of the audience's time.

40:32Jawad MirThat's what I meant.

40:33James V. HartBut it's ultimately the audience…

40:34Jawad MirYeah

40:34James V. Hart... That decides whether or not it's a, it's a success or a failure. I don't care who you are, Francis or…

40:39Jawad MirYeah

40:39James V. Hart... Steven. You know, ultimately, the audience is who stands up and makes it a success or not a success. And unfortunately for Dracula and Hook, the afterlife has been incredible. You know, the afterlife on Hook is staggering. Same thing with Dracula. It... The audience is expands every year from those movies, not shrinks. There's not, there's not fewer and fewer viewings. There are more and more.

41:06Jawad MirAnd I strongly feel that's a testament, obviously, to the collaboration of the team effort, the directors, the, you know, composers, the producers, and all that, actors, but everything begins with a pen and a paper.

41:21James V. HartYeah.

41:21Jawad MirRight? And it's a testament to your work that these worlds are still, you know, living on in people's hearts and minds, and they're having discussions about these films that have been around for 30, 40 years…

41:37James V. HartThat's it

41:37Jawad Mir... As if they just came out yesterday.

41:40James V. HartWell, it blows me away. And, my mentor, Frank Pierson, is the one who taught me a big lesson. I was having… After Steven and Francis had both signed on to do the films, I was having a hard time. I still didn't, was not part of Hollywood. I didn't, didn't feel like I was part of that whole scene out there. Still don't. And, Frank Pierson got me drunk one night at the Hole in the Wall bar in Sundance. We were there for the, for the festival and the workshops. And he said to me, "Just remember, kid, no matter how dark things get or how, doom and gloom you feel like nobody's ever gonna do your work or read your pages or never gonna matter to anything, just remember that nobody, no director, no producer, no actor, no composer, no stunt person, no cameraman, no soundman, no dreamster, you know, nobody has a job in this business till some writer types 'the end.'" And a minute, a… and in those days, I went, "Oh, thanks, Frank.

42:41James V. HartYou're making me feel better," you know? But, you know, you look at, look at the end, the end credits when you watch Netflix, and it says choose credits or skip credits. You know, choose the credits.

42:51Jawad MirI know.

42:51James V. HartEvery one of those people, names there are thousands, hundreds, none of them had a job till some writer had the courage to type the end. So I now refer to all of us as writer/job creators. That's our new hyphenate. 'Cause without the writers, the jobs aren't created. That really helped me with my self-esteem, as a writer over the past few years. You know, whenever I get... I just remember, you're creating jobs. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's my jo… that's what I'm supposed to be doing, not whining and bitching and moaning. I should be reveling in the fact that we're creating jobs, you know? That's the byproduct of what we do.

43:29Jawad MirA really beautiful way to put it. But, you know, when you, just to kind of wrap up on this conversation in the next couple of co… questions, comments, is that when you're about to, when you have an idea about any script that you worked on or anything that you're working on, you have an idea, and it starts developing in your head, and you start taking notes down, and the characters start coming and everything. When, from the time you have conc… conceptualized an idea or conceived an idea until you start writing the first letter or word, on an average, what's the gap of time? Like, is it something that you do right away, or do you wait?

44:09James V. HartWell, let me just…

44:09Jawad MirHow does that work?

44:10James V. HartOne thing I didn't talk about was the heart chart that came out of the whole thing with Coppola.

44:14Jawad MirOkay.

44:14James V. HartCoppola gave me three questions that I started with 'cause I wanted some way to have, to jumpstart that process. I didn't want to…

44:21Jawad MirSure

44:21James V. Hart... Face a blank page. So he gave me three questions, and I've now expanded it to 10. Now we're a whole, sort of, it's called the heartbeat, the heart chart, and it basically measures the emotional journey your characters travel through your narrative, you know? And it's a, it's a chart. It's a graph. It's online, heartchart.com. And I n… I never, face a blank page 'cause I'm always answering questions about my characters. What does my character want? What do they need? What are they afraid of? Are they, are they satisfied with what they've got? You know, what are the obstacles? In the end, does it, do they get what they need or not get what they need? And so I have a series of questions that you answer when you're jump-starting that idea. And when you finish, if you finish the three questions, you'll have, basically written out a character-driven narrative as opposed to plot-driven 'cause you're dealing with character. And all of our, all of our methods have to do with building character, and they're the ones that create the story for you.

45:24James V. HartThey're not pushed through the story by the plot. They pull the audience with them through the narrative to get to the end. So it depends. My son and I are, just turned in a draft of, our Young Hook origin story that, I did after Hook. I wrote a novel after Hook 'cause I didn't, I didn't particularly care for the portrayal of Captain Hook. It wasn't one I had conceived him as a character based on Barry. We also are doing three other projects now that, and all of them start with answering these questions. And sometimes you can do it in a, in a day. Sometimes it's, three months. Sometimes it's a week. But answering the questions are, you must do. This is that pre-prep. This is that pre-production. If I can answer those questions, then I can start with the signpost and the outline. The last thing I do is write the screenplay. And by the time I get to write the screenplay, I'm adapting from my earlier original work.

46:25James V. HartI'm never facing a blank page. So the screenplay becomes more mechanical, and you still have discovery, but the screenplay is a much more mechanical process instead of this mysterious waiting for inspiration and all that stuff. I don't, I don't believe in writer's block. I don't think that's possible, not if you use this method. And, it came, it came from my time with Francis, who is a writer first, not a director. You know, and that was another big one for me. He said, "To be a great director, first you have to be a good writer." So it's all about storytelling, and I do think that it takes between three and six months to write a really great script, maybe longer. Dracula was 15 years, and Hook was seven years, and, you know, and you're still messing with it. Young Hook has been 30 years. But if you use this process, it really jump-starts that whole creative spark that you're, that you're waiting around for to show up.

47:30James V. HartIt forces you to write. Answering questions makes you write. You can't sit there and go, "Gee, I don't know what to write." Well, ask, answer this question. Yeah? And until you know the answer to those questions, you shouldn't be trying to write the script, even if you've got them in your head. That's heartchart.com…

47:49Jawad MirYeah

47:49James V. Hart... To be shamelessly promoting.

47:51Jawad MirAwesome, James. Maybe in the next month or so we can talk about Hook or anything else that you like because this has been awesome.

47:57James V. HartThank you, sir. I hope you get…

47:59Jawad MirThank you

47:59James V. Hart... I hope you get a rental.

48:02Jawad MirWell, I, more than important than that is making a film that I wanna make about the, is a, is…

48:07James V. HartThere you go. Hey, well, you've got a camera, so.

48:10Jawad MirAre we... I'm not worried about that. I'm worried now… I'm just gonna add one more thing right now. I have this, again, I'm g… I'm like glad that you're gonna send me what you're gonna send. It's, it's a very timely story about an Israeli and a Palestinian…

48:26James V. HartYeah

48:26Jawad Mir... Boy in different times and how their lives are interconnected, and I'm just, we're just trying to raise capital. We're halfway there, so fingers crossed.

48:32James V. HartGood. Good. Good…

48:33Jawad MirYeah

48:33James V. Hart... And we need a c… we need coexistence right now, so.

48:36Jawad Mir100%. 100%.

48:38James V. HartGo for it.

48:39Jawad MirThank you. Thank you so much, James.

48:40James V. HartThank you, sir. Go with gravity, and just remember, you're a writer/job creator. You're a, you're, that's what you're, that's what the writers are. They're job creators.

48:51Jawad MirI will live with that now for the rest of my life. Thank you so much.

48:54James V. HartYeah. Go type the end.