Don Jakoby: One Screenwriter to Remember

by Rita Cook

What’s an ex-physicist doing writing screenplays when he could have finished his doctorate studies at Harvard? Well, in Don Jakoby’s case, he’s doing what he loves. And doing it well. After his stint at Harvard, he transferred into USC’s graduate film school to get a taste of what he had known all along was his calling.

Jakoby, a well-known screenwriter with quite a few producing credits, has worked in the business since 1983. He’s worked on such highly acclaimed films as "Aliens" (but he didn’t get a credit for that one), "Blue Thunder," "Arachnophobia" and last year’s "Vampires," to name a few.

As my meeting with Jakoby ends I inform him he’s been one of the best interviews I’ve had in a long time.

"Well, I have a lot to say, but I’m not quotable," he laughs.

His greatest fear is that he’s not quotable.
But he is. And seeing that Jakoby doesn’t grant too many interviews anyway, (-- he says, "There’s something about seeing your name in print that just destroys you" --), I thought it best to simply let his words describe how his life and his career have been the making of a truly superb screenwriter.

Rita Cook: You went to Harvard and you were a physicist. How did you get into the field of screenwriting?

Don Jakoby: When I was young my parents took me to see a lot of Alfred Hitchcock films and I was just fascinated by the fact that his films looked different than other movies. I thought I wanted to do movies, but I also wanted to finish my doctorate. Once you spend about five years in graduate school and you’re around really bright people you realize that they get pretty serious about what they do and I was more serious about movies. So I decided the time had come for me to switch over to movies and leave the thesis behind, so I went to USC graduate film division.

I took a course in writing, which everybody has to take, and there was an exceptional teacher who is now retired and who was almost universally disliked by the students because he was a rigid disciplinarian. Taking his course was like a moment of revelation because I saw that screenplays are structure more than anything. Underlying the movie is this invisible structure that consists of a certain number of scenes. In classic films from the '30s and '40s and '50s you probably have about 25 or 30 scenes. Today in a movie you have about 60 or 70 scenes because we move at a different pace. If you get those scenes in correct order with the correct content they are invisible to the audience, but they propel the movie forward.

I said, "I think I can do that." And it turned out that I had what I have now come to realize is an almost intuitive gift for seeing movies in terms of scene. And also an ability to run the movie in my head, which some people don’t have -- including most studio executives. Some people are fortunate enough to actually imagine, while they are writing the screenplay, the full lighting, pauses, weather and a sense of where you are in the movie.  I do that. So then it becomes your natural mode of expression. Now I’m working on a novel, partly because I write well and I’m tired of my writing not reaching anybody. Plus I am tired of the changes. So I think I’ll do a book and that way, nobody will change it.

RC: When did the change occur in the screenwriter determining what is selling now, and why do you think it changed?

DJ: Decreased attention span, MTV; all the usual, and an obsession with box office [revenue].

It’s an obsession with the opening-weekend gross. They are shooting for a core target audience, and the core, the bull’s-eye, gets smaller and smaller and so they become more and more adept at nailing the smaller and smaller bull’s-eye. The problem is that after you’ve taken out the bull’s-eye and you get all your 12 to 22-year-old males or whatever, the rest of the adults and other people in the world are not particularly interested in seeing the movie. So it doesn’t do any business and you wonder, "What were they thinking?" And the answer is, they weren’t thinking -- they were just looking for a marketable movie, a big opening weekend

RC: Do you think that trend is going to change at all?

DJ: Well, I would suspect it will get worse – you can’t go any lower. It doesn’t appear to be turning a corner.

RC: Terrible for all of us in the industry.

DJ: Well, you’re in danger if you’re literate and thoughtful. Because you just will not, cannot, do certain things in a screenplay because it doesn’t serve the movie well, or the behavior is inconsistent with the character's decency or behavior, and then it gets thrown out at the first available opportunity. It still remains true that if you make a decent movie with semi-decent people in it – anything from "Forrest Gump" to "Fried Green Tomatoes" or "Terms of Endearment" -- anything that is basically sensible and intelligent, you can’t keep people out of the theaters. They will line up to see the movie and they will tell their friends about it.

RC: What inspires you to tell the stories that you do? What is the favorite movie you have done?

DJ: Well, I did some work on "Aliens." I would say that of all the material I have been involved with, that came out very close to what it should have looked like. It was a happy accident of great casting and the lucky break of Signourney Weaver playing Ripley and, of course, Ridley Scott doing the movie. And then we did "Blue Thunder" together and it was not as happy an experience. That should have been the first "Diehard." A bunch of people were interested: Clint Eastwood was thinking of it, Ridley Scott was thinking of directing it ,and none of those things happened. So you have an excellent piece of material that’s been rewritten and indifferently directed even though it was an okay movie.

RC: What has been the most vulnerable aspect of being a writer?

DJ: The danger is the destruction of the screenplay. A great idea is taken and if you’re not lucky or not well-connected in certain circles in which writers are welcomed in as part of the family, then changes are made in the screenplay which don’t serve the screenplay. And unless you’re really lucky they’re generally for the worse, in my experience. And so you see really great material not only destroyed, but then rendered up on screen in a way that makes you embarrassed to have been involved with the idea. Some writers are very lucky: they get great actors and a great director to do a mediocre script and you still get by with a respectful movie. You know you’re not supposed to be able to get a good movie out of a mediocre script. It is very easy to get a bad movie out of a good script if you don’t get the right combination. Some people, honest to God, really are lucky. I was fortunate enough to have a first experience with "Aliens" so I saw what a well-executed screenplay that is correct looks like when it is done right and I’ve never lost sight of that.

RC: What was the one pivotal moment in your life that has changed your future -- or have you had that moment yet?

DJ: Yeah, I mean definitely I have had a moment like that. It usually comes down to meeting a particular individual because the world is full of seekers and the joke with seekers is that they never find. The truth is that people who are going to get something are found by people who have it because they are looking for you and it’s useless for you to look for them. So in one case with a writing teacher I found something there I was looking for.

RC: What is your point of view about the entertainment industry and how does that fit into your life-view?

DJ: I think it’s a gift to be able to do movies because I think they are the most powerful art form.

RC: And by that you mean writing or producing?

DJ:  Or directing. So many people want to be writers; however, they’re just smart enough to know that the power in this town resides with, in terms of decision making ability and charisma, people who dispense jobs and make careers. But movies are an art form and I have an ability to see the movie as I’m writing it, which I think is really rare and I didn’t realize it. I assumed everyone did that. I have always taken it for granted that your imagining the movie as your reading the thing – I mean literally seeing it inside your head. I don’t think that’s the case.

RC: How do you get what you see in your head down on paper?

DJ: That’s easy because all you do is take the dictation like you’re a stenographer – you run the scene, the lines. Obviously it takes a long time to get the dialogue right in a complicated scene, but those lines and things come to you while you think about it. And a line that may sound great doesn’t actually need to be said.

RC: What is your experience writing screenplays?

DJ: I enjoy writing the screenplay format and as many dramatists and novelists have been quick to admit that it is a wonderful format: roughly one page per minute, spaced out with dialogue and screen description. The format actually does approximate the rhythm of the movie, so when I write, I write everything long hand, but when I type it I don’t use "Movie Magic" or any of that stuff -- I actually tab it over. When you do that, you’re getting a feeling for the way the screenplay is going and it gets worked out and it reads like that. So I think it’s important to have your own pace. But that’s considered too explicit and too much trouble nowadays.

Screenplays have become at least one level down in terms of literary construction of what they used to be.

RC: What about the business of screenwriting?

DJ: I have several ideas that I hesitate to write because I know I am in mortal danger. The better I write them, the closer they are to the way I want them said.

All great movies are about a character who has a problem and we meet the character in the first act and we see that there is a problem. Then you have a choice, and make a decision. Once that decision is made -- and there are always two choices and they are mutually exclusive -- and when the character chooses one of them he then pays the price for that choice. The last act is always, "All right now, I want to see the price and the price is that it gets out of his control." All great movies are about those two choices and all the greatest movies are about always choosing the higher way. But some movies are about choosing the lower, which is great.

It’s so simple and yet it is the first thing that every screenwriter can’t get unless they’re fortunate to have a story, which by its very nature is automatically about a choice.

Very few people get to make those life-altering, yes-or-no decisions. And yet, it’s what we want to see in a movie and when a character chooses, we want to see him pay a price.

 -- RC
©1999 Rita Cook