Boxoffice - October 2018

FILMMAKER INTERVIEW
How did you choose to portray the Hart/
Rice relationship in the screenplay?
Because although virtually everybody in
America assumes their relationship was
sexual, both of them have continued to
deny it, even decades later.
Bai: Just to be clear about it, primarily
their response has been that it’s not
anybody’s business. Hart said there was
“no relationship.” How he defines that
is his question. I don’t think that they’ve
denied, so much as declined to talk about
it; that would be a more accurate way to
put it.
Carson: The point of the movie is
that the event is not the crux of the issue.
There are a lot of other issues going on.
We deal with it in that way in the movie.
Both in the visual and audio style of the
movie, we give the viewer a lot of choices
of what to pay attention to. We very
rarely lock on one person. There’s very
rarely a tight shot on one character for a
long period of time, because we’re giving
the audience a choice of what’s important.
The event in question is obliquely
referred to, but we’re giving the audience
the choice. Do you think that’s absolutely
central to the story? Great, you can focus
on it. But it’s your choice as a viewer.
Why did you decide to go for an R
rating here?
Carson: We made the world feel true
to life. People use a lot of bad words in
the real world. In order for that world
to feel real, fortunately or unfortunately,
people need to talk “real.” Fortunately or
unfortunately, some people have really
foul mouths in that world. So we wrote
people the way that they actually sound.
As a result, that’s the rating. But the content
and the themes of this are well over
the head of a 13-year-old anyway! We’re
asking people to grapple with big human
conflict, big geopolitical conflict. This is
not a 12-year-old’s movie, having nothing
to do with sex scenes.
Bai: To Jay’s point about making
the world feel real, I’m trying to decide
whether to let my 13- and 10-year-old
kids be able to see this movie. On the one
hand, there’s a lot of profanity. On the
other hand, they hear me on the phone
all day long. The world may be so real
that it doesn’t matter!
Matt, your 2014 book about Hart
was titled All the Truth is Out. Whose
decision was it to change the title to
The Front Runner?
Bai: We all talked about it. My only
regret is that we’re re-titling the book,
which as an author is much more painful
than as a screenwriter. The title came
from a Yeats poem; it’s a very literary
reference that Hart recites at one point in
the book. It’s a lovely title that my wife
came up with, and I’m very attached it to
it for a book. But you’re not going to use
a poem in a movie title, not in a way that
feels natural and real. I think the reference
would have been lost. All of us came
around in the end.
How certain is it that Hart’s front-runner
status prior to the scandal would have
lasted, either for winning the party
nomination or the presidency? Neither
of our last two presidents were the front
runner for their party’s nomination on
the day they announced.
Bai: That is true today, certainly. But
in 1988, if you had the kind of numbers
that Gary Hart had going into that
campaign, you would have been a very
formidable favorite. It was very rare that
someone with that much of a hold on
their party’s nomination process was
upended, at that time. No one can say
for certain. But The Front Runner is an
entirely accurate title. The idea that he
would have been the nominee is a pretty
strong one.
Talk about your relationship as co-screenwriters.
How did you guys work together?
Did both of you write each scene, or did
one of you write one scene and then the
other would write the next one?
Bai: We’ve known each other a
long time; we were close friends before
we started co-screenwriting, so there
was a very comfortable collaborative
rhythm to it. Everything we write, we
pass it back and forth. Someone will
do a bunch of scenes, then get busy or
get stuck and hand it off to the other
person. We talk about it constantly.
We don’t use Track Changes, we don’t
litigate the changes. Our rule with each
other is “If you didn’t notice I changed
it, it was probably worth changing.” It
ends up being such a collaborative process
that we don’t even know by the end
who started what scene. It’s always fun
because we’re always laughing. I think
that helps the process too, the fact that
we have a lot of fun doing it.
Carson: I totally agree with that. It’s
enjoyable. We’ve been friends since 1999
and that really helps. We’ve also been on
opposite sides of the fence, so we know
how to be tough but respectful to each
other. Neither of us lets the other get
away with anything, but there are no axes
to grind with either of us, because we are
actually really close friends. We enjoy it.
And as Matt says, we pass it back and
forth so often. We don’t do a Frankenstein
approach, so it’s not like I write
something and Matt writes some and we
stitch it together. Someone starts it and
writes until they stop, then the next person
gets it and does a pass, then it keeps
going so there’s a continuity of voice and
feel throughout. We’re similar but bring
slightly different approaches to it.
Bai: We should note that there were
three of us. We sort of dragged Jason
[Reitman] into our way of passing it
back and forth. It was probably new to
him, but it all melded so seamlessly. I
learned an awful lot about screenwriting
working with him. I’m sure Jay would
say the same. The three of us had a
really great collaboration. We are three
people who could work together really,
really well.
Carson: We’re actually doing another
project with Jason after this one. We
can’t say what it is yet! But it worked so
well, we’re doing it again. n
58 BOXOFFICE ® OCTOBER 2018