You mention the name Alex Kurtzman around people who know movies and immediately the Transformers franchise and Star Trek come to mind. Alongside his writing and producing partner Bob Orci, Kurtzman has put pen to paper for some of the biggest films over the last six years which includes the first two Transformers films, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible III. Kurtzman’s career in writing began with episodes of “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys” and “Alias” and his first work in feature films was on Michael Bay’s The Island, but in 2012 it seems he’s taking his career in a different direction.
While Kurtzman and Orci are working on the screenplay for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and they worked with Damon Lindelof on the screenplay for the upcoming Star Trek sequel, the two lifelong friends have teamed to create their own production house, Kurtzman Orci Paper Products. They are already producing films such as the upcoming Ender’s Game adaptation, Antoine Fuqua‘s Exit Strategy, the heist thriller Now You See Me and a Van Helsing reboot with Tom Cruise attached to star.
The opportunity also affords them the chance to work on some more personal projects, one of which being the new family drama People Like Us which Kurtzman and Orci wrote after working on it for seven years and was actually inspired by a moment in Kurtzman’s life where a sister he had never met, one day introduced herself, walking up to him and saying, “Hi, I’m your sister.” The moment is a bit more dramatic in the film, but it, nevertheless, offers up a more personal side of the filmmaker than we have seen before. Then again, perhaps we’ve seen more of both Kurtzman and Orci on screen than we ever may have known…
Among many things I discussed with Kurtzman in my interview with him last month, I couldn’t help but wonder where a film like People Like Us comes from when all we’ve really seen from him to this point are screenplays for genre features and all of them have been collaborative efforts, ranging in various levels of quality. He acknowledged how it might be difficult to understand, but said, “I grew up in the heyday of indie film and I always thought that’s what Bob and I were going to go do. Then life took us in a different direction. So, for me, [People Like Us] was about getting back to what put me here in the first place.”
That, however, didn’t stop them from injecting a little bit of themselves in those blockbusters in their search for adding something personal to the stories, “With Trek, Bob and I realized halfway through we were writing about our partnership. So when Kirk and Spock are working through a lot of their stuff, that’s me and Bob,” he said. “On Transformers the thing that interested us, in the first movie, was the story of a boy and his car and we related to that. What it’s like to get your first car, what your first car means. A sense of responsibility and freedom and sex and all of that.”
As far as why the varying levels of quality in the films he said, “All those movies, they’re a totally different process based on your director and based on the producers and the voice-end of the process. Part of our job is to try and hold on as much as we can to the things we think are meaningful, but when you have corporate mandates, restaurant tie-ins, toy tie-ins, there’s a lot of voices in that process and when you’re not the director you don’t always get your way. That’s not in any way an attempt to throw responsibility off ourselves and the things we do, because it’s still our names on screen and we do the best we can to hold on to as much integrity as we can. Sometimes it works really well and other times it works less well.”
While someone’s past usually informs as to what we’ll get from them in the future, I was mildly surprised to see Kurtzman’s first time out as director wasn’t on some kind of sci-fi action film, but instead a quiet family drama. But once he started talking about the films he appreciates and loves it’s actually more surprising he ever got involved in the blockbuster racket.
“I would say, first and foremost, when you talk about Sam’s character I think about Dustin Hoffman‘s character in Kramer vs. Kramer and Tom Cruise in Rain Man,” he said, discussing Chris Pine‘s character Sam in People Like Us who finds out he has a sister he never knew he had following the passing of his father.
“Those are characters that start off [their respective movies] in a very, very different place than where they end, and the audience could never go on the journey they go on if the character didn’t start [off the film] not seeing the light that was in front of him.”
“When I saw Good Will Hunting, I have to say
that movie changed my life
I remember walking out of the theater in a total daze and just thinking,That is what I have to do with my life. ”~ Alex Kurtzman
He told me of his appreciation for Jim Brooks and Cameron Crowe and how Steve Soderbergh‘s Sex, Lies and Videotape “totally opened [his] mind up.” The film, however, that would inspire him to get into filmmaking was Gus Van Sant‘s Good Will Hunting.
“When I saw Good Will Hunting, I have to say that movie changed my life in a lot of ways,” he said. “Those guys [Matt Damon and Ben Affleck] were just a little older than me and Bob and they had written this masterpiece. We couldn’t believe it actually. And when we saw the movie, I remember walking out of the theater in a total daze and just thinking, That is what I have to do with my life.”
I did enjoy People Like Us (read my review here), but it isn’t on par with Good Will Hunting and I’m sure Kurtzman would be the first to recognize this. But it definitely shows promise, something I wouldn’t have expected from the writer of Transformers or its sequel Revenge of the Fallen, but that part of Alex and Bob’s life seems to be behind them as Alex told me, “I think we’d run out of things to say there,” but his appreciation for the Star Trek universe remains and perhaps that’s why it was so easy to fall in love with the cast in J.J. Abrams’ continuing of the franchise.
“Bob and I poured our heart and souls into Star Trek and into the next Star Trek with Damon, and loved every second of it,” he said. “That is a very protected process too because, again, we’re writing for ourselves and for J.J., Bryan Burke and the cast, who we love and think has done such amazing work on those characters. But it’s not always like that, and it’s okay, it’s part of being a working screenwriter in Hollywood and part of the joy is actually figuring out how to deal with that. Because you’re not going to bat a thousand every time.”
From what I can tell, you need a big ego to call the shots as a director and to fight for your screenplay, but you also need a little humility to recognize your faults. With Alex Kurtzman I got a lot of that out of my time with him and I do urge people to give his new film, People Like Us a shot. It’s in theaters now and has one of the best endings you’ll see all year.
