We spoke to TonyKushner about co-writing TheFabelmans, working with StevenSpielberg and deciding on that ending. He also discusses their writing process, an upcoming fifth film with Spielberg, and how they chose the title.
In Academy Award-winner Steven Spielberg’s upcoming feature, The Fabelmans, the director explores his own coming-of-age tale through the eyes of the fictionalized Sammy Fabelman . Set in post-World War II Arizona, The Fabelmans chronicles young Sammy’s exploration of his newfound passion for filmmaking, the discovery of a life-changing family secret, and the ways that different perspectives through the lens can help us better understand the world around us.
TONY KUSHNER: You mean everything I've worked on, what would be the first? Oh, God. That's a hard one. I don't know how to answer that.I'm curious, if someone wants to experience your words people have to start somewhere with someone's resume. So I'm doing a couple of things now, but they seem to be on their way to happening. They're both mini-series or event series, or whatever I'm supposed to call them these days, limited series. I'm not doing these with Steven. And I think we may be starting on our way to our fifth, well, our sixth script and our fifth film. Yeah. I live in terror.
Then at some point, he said, "We're calling it The Fabelmans." So we went into filming with that as a title. I think a number of people around him said, "Okay, but seriously, when we're done with this filming..." And then also as happens, it got leaked, once we started casting and the word that we were doing this.
When he first said, "That's going to be the title." I thought, "This is going to be..." And when people said, "What is the movie going to be called?" And I would say, "The Fabelmans," they would say, "Spell it. What? What?" Which is not what you want people to say about the movie. Now that it's been out there and people are talking about it, people say, "Oh, The Fabelmans." And that's a nice feeling.
And then at one point, Steven said, "Let's start writing," and we used a collaboration software that enabled us. I typed, but he could see my typing. We started a blank page, and we wrote the whole thing. Yeah, there were a couple of places where I would take it and try something, and send it back to him, or whatever, but it is a co-written screenplay. I've never had more fun writing anything in my entire life. I loved it. I wasn't really surprised.
KUSHNER: Well, I said, "I think it's really important that we're doing this weird thing and it's just us." And the minute you turn the camera on, as everyone knows, and Steven knows better than anybody, the minute you turn the camera on, something changes in the room. And I've been in documentaries where they say, "Okay, write." And I tried actually, they do love to do that in England. They want to show you writing.
And Tom had some thoughts about. I think the big questions [were] always, and it was the question we were asking ourselves, in the beginning, is, "This is very personal. Is it going to have a universality? Is it going to speak to people who don't come to this hunting every moment to see where this or that moment in another Spielberg film comes from?" We wanted it to work for those people.
Kate was just overwhelmed by it. She knew, obviously, she knew Steven's parents very, very, very well. And she was moved to the core by it. She was really excited that he was doing this personal, this deep dive. She and I had a couple of long conversations about the parents. I think it was important that we had them without Steven on the phone.
I was certainly more involved in the editing of this than I'd ever been. I mean, I had nothing to do with the editing of Munich. I didn't know enough to even ask to go in. He started showing me stuff with Lincoln and we had a lot of back and forth about that. And with West Side Story, there wasn't much editing to do, because he pulled it all together and it kind of looked amazing. When I first saw it, I was like, "Oh, my God.
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