Simon Kinberg: Interview

Interview by Clint Morris

Interview with Simon Kinberg
Writer of the movie xXx 2.

Nearly every kid grows up watching and loving action movies. We all had block-mounted Schwarzemgger posters on our wall, all cashed in our two-for-one tickets for Rambo when it screened, and some of us even flew the flag for a newbie named Jean Claude Van Damme when he burst on the scene in the late 1980’s. Action-movie buff Simon Kinberg took his love of the genre one step further: he now writes them.

In this exclusive interview, Clint Morris talks to one of Hollywood’s most in-demand screenwriters about penning for Tinseltown’s top studios, and helping transform Ice-Cube from a Cadillac-riding rapper to a spirited action hero in xXx 2.

Simon Kinberg wrote the Mr and Mrs Smith script, which is a now infamous for bringing Brad and Angie together

Clint: So they’ve pulled you away from writing to do publicity for xXx 2?
Simon: A little bit actually, a little bit.

Clint: What are you working on?
Simon: I’m working on X-Men 3 right now. It’s in the re-writing stages. It’s supposed to start filming in two or three months.

Clint: Does that mean the pressure is on for you?
Simon: The pressures always on [Laughs] …with these kind of movies. They hired a director [Matthew Vaughn] a couple of weeks ago, so now I’m really working with him to put his vision in the script.

Clint: Will X-Men 3 be about Dark Phoenix?
Simon: I’m not allowed to say, but your guess is… it was set up pretty well in the second movie. So, that’s part of the third movie, but there’s a new plot that’s the story of the film.

Clint: What of the rumours that James Marsden mightn’t be coming back?
Simon: I believe he is now. The way I’ve written his character now – I’m trying to write him so he only has to come back for a couple of weeks. But he’s definitely a part of the movie.

Clint: Do you enjoy writing the action-adventure scripts most?
Simon: Yeah, very much. I grew up loving action movies and comic books so the opportunity to write these movies is pretty great. I’ve never written a straight drama – I find them to difficult to write. I imagine I’d find writing American Beauty or Ordinary People, or another straight drama, equally if not more difficult.

But even films like X-Men have a lot more drama than another comic-book or action flick would. I think so – there’s no question. What I tried to do when I’m writing these movies – like xXx 2 – is to make the drama as compelling as possible. That way we can really get into the characters and it’s not just a video game.

Clint: When did you start with xXx 2?
Simon: I’d met with Rob Cohen, who was the producer of the movie and was the director of the first film, a couple of years ago, and he asked me if I wanted to write the sequel. I liked the first movie, I liked a lot of things about it – the attitude of the film, the action of it, the philosophy of it – but I really didn’t want to do a sequel unless he wanted the film to be very different from the first one. It had to be its own animal. There’s really no reason to make a sequel unless you can make a better or significantly better version.

Thankfully, Rob’s ideas for the movie were very radically different than the first film and then it became even more different once [Director] Lee [Tamahori] became involved in the process. One of the first things I wanted to do was to take the movie away from James Bond world and make it more grounded – almost a political thriller. I wanted it to take place in the United States, with an American villain – as opposed to some vaguely European villain who wanted to blow up the world – whose goal was very real and specific.

Then, [Ice] Cube’s involvement made the movie even more different than the first film. I think – more exciting. It was a fun process. Usually these movies go from say, okay or good, and in the wrong direction, because they get overdeveloped or they relied on too many writers, or whatever, and this is a movie that I genuinely think got better and better over the span of development.

I just think that Lee Tamahori was so rigorous with the film – in terms of the action, and in terms of the characters. We just keep honing instead of making compromises. I’m really proud of it; I think it’s a very surprisingly different, fresh take, on the franchise.

Clint: Were you onboard when Vin Diesel was attached to the sequel?
Simon: Yeah, yeah. My first draft was for Vin being in the movie, and then for different reasons, mostly creative, the studio decided if they’re going to make a radically different movie and maintain the tone of the first movie – why not just take it all the way, and create a new hero.

Like 007, it could be anyone – it could be a woman, whatever. I thought that was really neat. For me, it gave me an opportunity to create a new character. For me, the most exciting thing was just to sit down and say ‘Okay, who is Ice Cube? Where are his skills at? - he’s not going to be a snowboarder or an extreme sports guy – What is his relationship to the characters that are already in the franchise?'

He and Sam Jackson have a much denser backstory than Vin and Sam had in the first movie – they have this whole complicated history together in the movie.

Clint: Did you have to do any research into xXx 2?
Simon: We had to do a lot of research actually. Lee, myself, and producers Neal Moritz and Arnie Schmidt went to Washington DC for a week, and we spent time with everyone from Navy Seals to Politicians in the pentagon to… everyone that we could talk to about new types of weaponry, about strategic plans implemented in case there’s an attack on Washington DC, the blueprints for the capital building – we found all these tunnels underneath…it was the coolest week I’ve spent on any movie.

I’ve no experience in the military but since Ice Cube’s character has a military background and Willem Dafoe’s character is a former military general who has an illustrious military history I had to do a lot of research and a lot of talking to people in the military. Not so much to get the facts down, but to get the voice down. They have a little bit different way of talking and a little bit different way of looking at the world, certainly a different way of looking at war… so I wanted to be as true to that as possible.

Simon Kinberg has also been helping to flesh out the characters of the new movie based on The Fantastic Four

Clint: Have you seen the finished cut? How’d you think it turned out?
Simon: Yeah I have. It turned out pretty great. I think it’s super-super exciting, it is literally like a bullet coming out of a gun – it is non-stop. Lee really cared about these characters, he gave them a chance to breathe – even in this insanely fascinating movie – and I think you too will genuinely care about these characters.

It’s not a video-game where if they die, they die – you really wanna see them survive. There’s an emotional attachment that is rare in these kinds of movies.

Clint: One of your original scripts is Mr and Mrs Smith – the film’s sure getting some publicity at the moment, isn’t it?
Simon: Yeah, it’s getting a lot of publicity. I hope when people go to watch it they’ll be watching John and Jane Smith and not Brad and Angie.

Truth is, when I was working on the movie – and that was nearly every day of shooting – I saw John and Jane, not Brad and Angie, but I also don’t really care for their private lives, so…

Clint: You also worked on The Fantastic Four. How was it bringing those characters to life?
Simon: That was a pretty charmed experience. I came onto the movie just a couple of months before they started shooting the movie and stayed on right through the entire production.

The blueprint was already there, as in the screenplay, but the characters weren’t there yet, so my job was to work with the actors, work with the director, and hone in the characters.

There are some wonderful actors in the movie like Michael Chiklis is 'The Thing' and Julian McMahon is 'Dr Doom' – and he is spectacular. So I had to focus on character, and it’s such a character movie because it’s about a dysfunctional family under the guise of people with super powers. We really focused on this family and the people, rather than the power.

Clint: Can you tell me about The Killer’s Game?
Simon: It’s an adaptation of a book called “God Forsaken” which is a movie an assassin in Europe. It’s got a bit of Luc Besson’s The Professional in it, and there’s an old movie I love called The Samurai – it’s got a lot of that in there too. It’s getting close to starting up actually.

Clint: How did you get into screenwriting?
Simon: I got incredibly lucky, is the short answer. I wrote something when I was in film school – it was kind of a drama now that I think about it – that a professor of mine read, liked it, and sent it out to Hollywood. It started making the rounds out there.

When I was still a student I wrote Mr and Mrs Smith and at that point I’d gotten to know a couple of producers, even some studio executives – so I sent that out as a script and it opened a lot of doors for me. It’s sort-of about who you know but it’s also about what you’ve written, because if you send them 120 blank pages it’s not going to help.

Clint: The first film that’ll have your name on it though is xXx 2?
Simon: Yeah – I can’t wait. I think it’s a pretty surprising movie; it’s a pretty radical film. These actors really invested in the movie – Ice Cube trained like crazy and really, really, was really rigorous about the character. We had many conversations about things that would never turn up on screen but that he needed to know in terms of playing the character.

Clint: Any more comic-book movies in your future?
Simon: I don’t know, maybe, I do love these guys at Marvel Films. But as I said, the next thing I’ll write will probably be an original in contrast to an adaptation, but you never know. I do love most of their books…

Clint: Any superhero you’d like to bring to the screen?
Simon: The truth is, my favourite comic book of all time was the X-Men. I told them my dream was to write X-Men. I don’t actually love the comics, but I love the Spider-Man movies, so if I got a call to work on Spidey-3 I’m sure I would. X-Men 3 will keep me busy for a little while though.

Clint: They’re talking about bringing in a new xXx every movie?
Simon: That’s their idea.

Clint: Would you like to write the next one?
Simon: I would love to [do the next one] only because I had a great experience and they were very open and generous to me creatively, in terms of allowing me to do some things that some other studios wouldn’t have, but I’ve worked on a bunch of sequels in a row and I’m thinking what I’d like to do next is another original script.

Clint: If you do end up doing xXx 3 – have you got an ideas for it?
Simon: It’s funny, I talked to Revolution studios about it – in the most preliminary sense – and without getting too specific about it, my impulse for xXx 3, which is the same I had on xXx 2, would be to make an entirely different movie – it’s not enough to just recast the lead.

The great thing about the action genre is that there are so many action sub-genres in it – there’s the spy movie, there’s the political thriller. The first movie is a straight-up James Bond spy thriller, the second movie – as you’ll see – is a political thriller, the third movie could be something else interesting – it could be more of a martial arts movie.

Clint: Martial arts you say?
Simon: That was something we talked about. We’ve talked about setting it in Asia.

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