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Screenwriter Mark Protosevich thrives in a post-apocalyptic world of words. |
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Finding hope in the dark days of civilization’s end
By Sue Harrison
Banner Staff
It’s not what happens the day the world ends, it’s what happens the day after that. That’s one of the concepts screenwriter Mark Protosevich works with so well as filmgoers get to see in his latest movie “I Am Legend,” starring Will Smith.
Protosevich just got back from the New York premiere of “Legend” to the Provincetown East End home he shares with painter Robena Malicoat. They met eight years ago on the set of an earlier movie of his, “The Cell.” She used to split her time between L.A. and the techie side of the movie industry and Provincetown, where she comes from an extended family of artists going back to the ’30s.
He says he came here for the Millennium New Year’s celebration and — not unlike the sci-fi plot twists he loves — never really left. And because he had already earned a name and reputation as a screenwriter, he was able to work from the end of this curling spit of sand, about as remote from tinsel town as one can get and still be in the U.S.
He grew up in Chicago and describes himself as one of those kids who loved movies and “The Twilight Zone” and comics with wild fantasy stories. His dad was an electrician, his mother a teacher. He went to Columbia College in Chicago and studied film. He was asked to teach and stayed on for four years before succumbing to the need to go west and find his place in the movie world.
“At a certain point you have to go to L.A. if you want to play in the big leagues,” he says. He drove out, crashed on a friend’s couch and got a job as a receptionist at a production company headed up by Michael Douglas. From there he volunteered his way up the production ladder.
“If you have a job and your daily tasks are A, B and C, volunteer to do D, E, F and the rest of the alphabet. Soon he was asked to be a reader, the person who looks at the mountains of scripts that pour in and narrows them down to the ones the big bosses need to look at. He worked for producer Scott Rudin and then moved on to doing studio work with Columbia, Orion and finally MGM.
There are two components in a potential script — a marketable idea with a strong core story and really good writing. “If you can do both, you’ve got a career,” he says.
But all the while he’s making the company moves, his heart is back working on scripts of his own.
“I had no desire to be a studio executive, I wanted to be a screenwriter. That’s what I came for,” he says. He got lucky and his script for “The Cell” sold, got him an agent and was made into a movie.
“That was my calling card,” he says of his first movie. “Producers love to read work by new writers. If they like you, they give you a shot and you get hired to work on a project, not write on spec.”
In fact, he says, you can make a fine living and rarely write a film that actually winds up in theaters. Every studio, he says, has 40 or 50 films in development but only 10 or 12 of them gets completed.
In the course of all the development work he’s done, another of his films, “Poseidon,” did get made.
Meanwhile, he had written an adaptation of science fiction writer Richard Matheson’s classic sci-fi novel “I Am Legend,” based on a man who was the last man alive after a biological war. That became this year’s release, but it took 12 years and plenty of rewrites before that happened.
“Matheson was one of the most inspirational writers for me,” he says. “When I started to pay attention to stories or episodes of ‘Twilight Zone,’ that really grabbed me they would often be by him. He wrote movies like the ‘Incredible Shrinking Man.’ Then I found out he was a novelist.”
Like so many other writers, Protosevich confesses to loving the possibilities of a post-apocalyptic world. “It creates a blank canvas,” he says. “All the rules are thrown out the window.”
His ideal movie creation, he says, is a combination of a big action film full of entertainment with the psychological complexities and drama of an indie movie. Why choose, he says; have it all.
He explains how it took 12 years from first draft to final production. There were writes and rewrites. Producers and stars came and went. Even Will Smith, the film’s star, was already on board back in 2003 but it just didn’t all come together until now.
The early reviews and audience buzz points to a big run for “Legend,” and that probably means even more work for Protosevich but he now has the luxury of working from Provincetown.
“Most of the time you are holed up for three to five months doing rewrites,” he says. “I can do that from anywhere. At this point I have to turn down more work than I can take on.”
So the really nice suit has gone back into the closet with the other ones he keeps for glitzy occasions like premieres, and he’s now settled into his Provincetown life thinking about the next movie or maybe a sequel to this one.
“It’s nice to have a hit movie,” he says, and you can almost hear his smile.
artseditor@provincetownbanner.com
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Jan 3rd, 2008