Screenwriter Frank takes action

CHICAGO -- "I'm probably the least-bitter screenwriter you'll ever meet," Scott Frank likes to say.

It's easy to see why. Name a top Hollywood director and chances are good Frank has written a screenplay for him. The list includes Barry Sonnenfeld ("Get Shorty") , Jodie Foster ("Little Man Tate") , Sydney Pollack ("The Interpreter"), and Steven Spielberg ("Minority Report "). And, in 1989, he was nominated for an Oscar and won a Boston Society of Film Critics Award for adapting Elmore Leonard's novel "Out of Sight" for director Steven Soderbergh.

But after more than 20 years in the business, the 47-year-old screenwriter says, "I really was sort of uninterested in myself creatively."

With his directorial debut, "The Lookout," which opens Friday, Frank has rediscovered his joy of working in Hollywood and in the process made a small thriller that's as tender as it is suspenseful.

Written by Frank more than a decade ago, "The Lookout" begins with Chris Pratt (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) , a cocky high school jock, speeding down a rural Midwestern highway at night with his girlfriend and another couple. When he turns off the headlights to better glimpse a brilliant firefly mating ritual, we know that the drive -- its own teenage mating ritual of sorts -- can only end in tragedy.

The film picks up four years after Chris crashes the car, killing two of his friends. The guilt, along with a head injury that's left him attending an "independent life-skills center" by day and working as a janitor at a small bank by night, are only part one of Chris's nightmare. Soon, a charismatic criminal (Matthew Goode) preys upon Chris's vulnerabilities to enlist his help in robbing the bank, with more tragedy and, ultimately, a sliver of redemption to follow.

"The idea originated in two places," Frank says. "I had known someone peripherally who had a very serious head injury. Before his accident, he was a very funny guy, very athletic, really kind of charming and interesting, and after the accident, he [was] an entirely new person. And I thought, 'What a fascinating character. You know who you were, and you can't go back there, and now you're this other person you have to get to know.'

"And then I subsequently read or heard about these banks in rural parts of America that would frequently get quite a bit of cash for a time, in farm subsidy money or agribusiness money. And I thought locating that character in a thriller might be really fun and tense, and a great sort of underdog movie, especially if he participated in this robbery under the misguided notion that he could reinvent himself yet again."

Directing the film had never been Frank's intention. But after seeing directors like Sam Mendes and David Fincher become attached and then unattached to the project over the years, and looking to fill the creative void in his life, he decided he wanted the job.

"Writing for me is a scary process, but directing is a really scary process, because it's in front of everyone," Frank says. "You are in a sense performing creatively in front of a lot of people."

Goode, best known for playing Scarlett Johansson's fiance in Woody Allen's "Match Point," likens Frank's sensibility to that of an actor. "He was so worried about the film, how it was going to turn out. [And] he's so smart, but I never felt talked down to."

Adds Goode's co-star, Gordon-Levitt, "Obviously, filmmakers who aren't in front of the camera care about what they're doing, but there's something else that happens when it's going to be your face -- you can't do something that looks stupid, because it's going to be my face on screen. That's what an actor goes through, and I felt that same kind of investment coming from [Frank]."

Even though the film isn't autobiographical, Frank says, "I felt like I was tapping into stuff that was much more personal. You become more authentic the more afraid you are."

"I realized -- and it was stuff I probably knew but didn't deal with -- that I have had a very happy, satisfying career, based on really satisfying other people. I often compromise because I was made to feel good making other people happy. And," Frank adds, laughing, "I felt even better making me happy."

Frank's screenwriting career began a couple of years out of college. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1982, he moved to Los Angeles "not knowing a soul," where he did documentary research for a production company that also produced "Gimme a Break!" Hoping to get a job writing for the sitcom, he gave the only person working on the show he knew, casting director Randy Stone, a script he'd written in college. It was "Little Man Tate."

"Randy Stone called me in the middle of the night and said, "All right, here's the thing: Your script is a mess, but the writing is really good. I think you're too good to write for ' Gimme a Break!' Don't waste your time doing that. Let me option the script."'

By the end of 1984, Frank had an office on the Paramount Studios lot and was well on his way to becoming "the least-bitter screenwriter you'll ever meet."

Well, he does share one bitter story -- his experience doing a rewrite job of the relatively family-friendly 2004 remake "Flight of the Phoenix."

"I really wanted to make 'Deliverance' in the Gobi Desert," he says. "I wrote a very dark script, which [the studio] decided not to make, and it represents for me what's wrong with movies now in that the marketing department began to exert a certain influence over the movie, before the script was even written."

He's hoping for better luck with a Western he'd like to direct that he calls the "best thing I've ever written." But, he notes, "The appetite for Westerns just isn't what it once was, so it's going to be a very tough row to hoe," and notes, sarcastically, "It's called 'Godless,' which I'm also sure helps with the marketing in this day and age."

But with two other projects in the works, an adaptation of a Jonathan Tropper novel for Paramount and an original set in the world of automotive design for Universal, there isn't time to stay frustrated. Well, maybe a little.

"The form [of a screenplay] is what's so frustrating," Frank says. "It's all sight and sound, and you can only go so deep with that format. I do believe a screenplay should be an art unto itself. It should be a great thing to read, and to that degree there is some satisfaction, but I don't know that it's enough."

Mark Bazer can be reached at mebazer@yahoo.com.