Daniel Handler
By Daniel Robert Epstein
Sep 22, 2004
Lemony Snicket, famed children’s book author is on SuicideGirls, what a country we live in!
Of course while it may be unusual for Lemony Snicket to be here for his true identity of Daniel Handler it isn’t so odd. Before Handler struck it big with his children’s book series he wrote many a dark novel such as The Basic Eight and Watch Your Mouth.
In fact he’s even written a screenplay for the film Rick. Rick is so disturbing and upsetting that even before it’s finished you want to curl up into the fetal position and cry.
As directed by Curtiss Clayton, the movie is the story of Rick [Bill Pullman], a brown-nosing employee of a young, crass, and incredibly arrogant Wall Street success story [Aaron Stanford]. When Duke [Stanford] isn't in the office, he's busy seducing Rick's teenage daughter Eve [Agnes Bruckner] via cyberspace. Meanwhile, a smooth-talking hit man [Dylan Baker] specializes in bumping off corporate bigwigs, which puts both of the men in a complicated and deadly situation.
Rick opens September 24 in New York
Check out the further release dates for Rick
Daniel Robert Epstein: What was the inspiration for Rick?
Daniel Handler: Well I did some office temping for a while. But the real inspiration was that I had the chance to be chewed out by a movie executive. Then that night I went to the opera and watched Rigoletto which is more or less about a court jester who gets chewed out by the Duke in his court and falls into a web of murder. It occurred to me that I could take that story and put it into a corporate setting. It seems that nasty men with power have been chewing out their underlings since time began.
DRE:
Who chewed you out?
DH:
Some film executive. In my lean and hungry days I was trying to get any work I could as a writer. I would try to blunder my way in and try to convince film folk to pay to write scripts. I wasn’t really making any progress. But this one company took this as an opportunity to tell me that not only would they not let me write scripts but they didn’t have the faintest idea why they thought I would even be in a room with them.
DRE:
Where are these executives today?
DH:
I know one of them got out of the business and works for his father. That made me very happy.
DRE:
You don’t send them clippings?
DH:
I admit I was tempted to write him and ask what he was up to.
DRE:
I feel like there is a lot of anger in Rick. Anger and rage seems to be something that is a theme in your work. People cause bad things to happen to people on purpose.
DH:
Bad things happening just seems a part of basic narrative to me. I’ve never really understood how to make a story in which bad things aren’t happening or at least threatening to happen to people.
DRE:
Are you angry at all?
DH:
I’m not an angry person like I throw my glass of water into someone’s face kind of angry person. But I do look at the world and see things that are wrong with it.
DRE:
I noticed that at the end of the movie your name came up before the director’s name.
DH:
That was just a really nice thing that Mr. Clayton did because his name gets to be in the opening credits. He had a lot of respect for the script I guess. I always hope that is how it’s taken and people don’t think I demanded some special thing.
DRE:
Were you involved with the movie beyond writing the script?
DH:
If you look close you can see me playing the waiter. I wasn’t involved very much with the filming. I just came for a couple of days to watch a low budget movie get made which in and of itself is a miracle. I played the waiter because the budget of the film was such that I ended playing the waiter.
DRE:
Did you get your SAG card out of it?
DH:
I did actually. I got whatever the Guild minimum is for a speaking part in a film which is not a lot of money but it was pretty impressive considering I have one line.
DRE:
Well you got that health insurance.
DH:
I actually have Writer’s Guild Health Insurance which is going to run out soon. I’m constantly trying to find another guild I can latch onto.
DRE:
I think you’ll be ok.
DH:
It’s nice for you to say so. We were just thinking about this over Labor Day. My wife and I were wandering around going “I think we need another union.”
DRE:
How did Rick get stareted?
DH:
I wrote the script a long time ago before I was published as a writer and really before I could get any work as a writer at all. The only person who was interested at all was Ruth Charny, who ended up producing Rick. She said it might take her a while to get the film made. I told her that she could knock herself out because no one else wants it. We kept in touch and we worked together on another project but I just assumed that there was absolutely no movement whatsoever on Rick. Even that is being generous, I figured it was sitting in Ruth’s drawer the same way it was sitting in my drawer.
DRE:
How long ago did you write the script?
DH:
Maybe about six years ago.
Then Ruth called me about two years ago and said that she found a director that was interested in making it. He had done a short film and done some great work editing Gus Van Sant movies [Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho]. So I took a look at his stuff, he flew up to San Francisco where we met and instantly we clicked. He was sort of what every screenwriter wants in a director which is someone who has a lot of respect for the script but also sees possibilities in it that aren’t there. He turned what was only a snarky dark comedy into the sort of grand tragedy it ends up being. Visually it’s much different than I imagined and he helped bring out something I really like which is creepy grandeur while in other people’s hands it would have been like Office Space but meaner.
Then Ruth called me about two years ago and said that she found a director that was interested in making it. He had done a short film and done some great work editing Gus Van Sant movies [Drugstore Cowboy and My Own Private Idaho]. So I took a look at his stuff, he flew up to San Francisco where we met and instantly we clicked. He was sort of what every screenwriter wants in a director which is someone who has a lot of respect for the script but also sees possibilities in it that aren’t there. He turned what was only a snarky dark comedy into the sort of grand tragedy it ends up being. Visually it’s much different than I imagined and he helped bring out something I really like which is creepy grandeur while in other people’s hands it would have been like Office Space but meaner.
DRE:
Did you have to do any rewrites when Curtiss came on?
DH:
We did some rewriting of some dialogue and we added a scene but it’s scarcely anything you would notice.
DRE:
There is a great scene at The Remote Lounge in New York City. They incorporated the cameras and video screens into the movie, did you write that in?
DH:
Well that’s what happens when you are on a low budget film. A location is available so we decided to add a surveillance angle to that scene. I always think it’s strange when certain places appreciate whatever publicity they might get from a film, “The Remote Lounge, where hitmen come to make dirty deals with executives.” I wouldn’t think that would be the product placement most people dream of.
DRE:
What did you think of the casting?
DH:
What is interesting about Bill Pullman is that when he is onscreen you see something bubbling under the surface all the time. You see it in Independence Day, Zero Effect, Lost Highway and all those great movies he’s been in. he has that nice blank exterior that reflects something moving around inside which works really well for Rick. He’s the smooth wisecracker but he’s clearly tortured inside.
DRE:
Was the internet sex angle always in there as well?
DH:
Yes it was. It was written during the early days of the internet when all it was used for was pornography.
DRE:
It still worked fine.
DH:
Yeah I don’t think I have to tell someone from SuicideGirls the erotic possibilities of the internet.
DRE:
Rick kind of reminded me of Roald Dahl’s adult stories because of the twist ending. Did you see it as something like that?
DH:
I just saw it as a pretty moralistic tale which certainly Roald Dahl does.
DRE:
Have you written other screenplays?
DH:
Yes I adapted someone else’s novel for a movie called Kill the Poor. I also did some work on the Snicket and I’m doing something else with Mr. Clayton.
DRE:
What did you write for the Lemony Snicket movie?
DH:
I wrote a draft when it was in development.
DRE:
Do you know if any of it was used?
DH:
I don’t have the faintest idea. I’m actually seeing a rough cut this weekend which will be my first real glimpse.
DRE:
How’s that feel?
DH:
It feels weird. I got to visit the set a few times so I have a grasp on what it’s supposed to look like but it’s sort of nerve wracking to see what happens to a narrative in a $200 million motion picture. It’s very strange. The Snicket books were optioned right as the first two books were published and slowly awareness increased. What started as a low blip on Paramount’s radar screen just got bigger and bigger until they needed DreamWorks to come in and help them. That’s been pretty surreal to watch.
DRE:
Is there any comparison to what you saw on the set of Rick to the set of Lemony Snicket?
DH:
It was sort of hilarious. There was a time when I was going from a meeting about the Snicket film to a meeting about Rick. The differences were just crazy. The Snicket people would show me the blueprint for this lake they were building and they would say “We’re going to be building the lake in this aircraft factory and here is where the cave is going to be” then I would go over to a diner to meet with the people about Rick. They would say stuff like “If it snows that day the movie will have a snowstorm in it” “If we can get a bar then they meet in a bar otherwise they have to meet on the street.” I wanted to get to the room where they kept all the money for the Snicket movie and just take a couple suitcases over to Rick but that’s not how it works. The amount they would spend to fly me out to New York, put me in a hotel and take me out to lunch to talk about the Snicket was money we could have used to double the budget of Rick.
DRE:
Did the producers of Rick ever think to hold off on releasing Rick to get it out at the same as the Snicket movie?
DH:
No with a film like Rick we would take anywhere that was interested. It’s a really dark movie and I don’t think it’s the sort of hipster dark that a lot of independent films are, it’s actually dark. You feel sad and defeated at the end of it. There was also a concern about luring children into it.
DRE:
How was the screenwriting process for you?
DH:
The actual writing of a screenplay isn’t that different.
DRE:
I would imagine that you are pleased that Brad Silberling because he has had some very dark moments in his life that always seem to show up in his work.
DH:
Yes he is clearly someone whose psychological issues show up onscreen. I understand that. It’s not really a part of Snicket but there are some images of the Baudelaire parents and his wife Amy Brenneman is playing the dead mother. It would never occur to me to cast my wife as a dead woman.
DRE:
Did you read the screenplay they went into production with? I know it changes so much on big movies.
DH:
It’s a very slippery document. They sent me some things because I did some dialogue work and wrote some voiceover that happens in the movie. It’s still changing even though they’ve filmed it all.
DRE:
How was it when you visited the set?
DH:
It’s shocking in its scale. I’m not somebody who had an exact vision of what the cave would look like. In the books I like to keep things fairly vague so the readers could use their own imagination to fill it in. In this case it was the imagination of Rick Heinrichs the set designer.
DRE:
He’s really talented.
DH:
Yes so he has his own ideas. But just to walk into a room and see hundreds of people making sure the trees look dead enough and typing up what it says on the headlines of the rolled up newspapers. All this stuff that you can’t even see but it adds up collectively. It’s just a bizarre thing to go into.
They told me they kept having trouble with the set of Olaf’s house and backyard. Members of the crew kept forgetting and they would step outside the house to smoke cigarettes, they didn’t realize they weren’t outside yet because it was so realistic. You know it’s a good set when it fools the people who built it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
They told me they kept having trouble with the set of Olaf’s house and backyard. Members of the crew kept forgetting and they would step outside the house to smoke cigarettes, they didn’t realize they weren’t outside yet because it was so realistic. You know it’s a good set when it fools the people who built it.
by Daniel Robert Epstein
SG Username: AndersWolleck
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