Award-winning filmmaker David Koepp spills the tea on Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, and more.
Since the 1980s, filmmaker David Koepp has been hard at work making a name for himself in Hollywood. The years of effort have paid off: This screenwriter, director, producer, and author is known for working on iconic films like Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible. Recently, KCM got the chance to pick his brain about a life spent on movie sets — and naturally, we were dying to know his opinions of our favorite actors and directors. When asked about legendary celebrities, Koepp recounts a slew of funny anecdotes: Most are silly, a couple are particularly revealing, and a few are full of wisdom (thank you, Kevin Bacon).
But let’s start with the most recent: Koepp’s recently released sci-fi thriller Aurora is being adapted for the big screen. And the history-making Kathryn Bigelow (Zero Dark Thirty) is set to direct.
Kathryn Bigelow’s dark side
“Our worldviews are very different. You might not be surprised to know hers is dark — I’m the optimist. It’s been fun for me to try to get in her head and interpret the story, instead of typing up a film version of this book.”
Tom Cruise’s superpower is enthusiasm
“Tom Cruise is the densest person I’ve ever met — not his intelligence, he’s very intelligent. His body is dense. Also, he’s very enthusiastic. We did several movies; the first was Mission: Impossible, then War of the Worlds. When you’re working on something and it’s going well, he’s voluble. There would be a few times he would jump up and high-five me, and I felt like my hand was in a cartoon, flopping around. I got a chest bump once and I wanted to go home.
“We were in London once and he said, ‘Hey! We’re getting up this morning and going jogging! Somebody said you like to jog.’ I said, ‘I love to jog.’ He said, ‘Come with us. We’re gonna run around Hyde Park 27 times.’ I said, ‘No…I won’t.’”
Rob Lowe and James Spader switched roles
“Rob Lowe was meant to play the James Spader role in Bad Influence. When he signed on to do it, I asked him out to lunch. I was very naughty — a writer’s not supposed to do this…but I said, ‘I think you’re playing the wrong part’ — which is seditious.
“I started talking about Donna Reed in From Here to Eternity — after playing good girls forever, she plays someone much more complex. And Henry Fonda in Once Upon a Time in the West — he was everybody’s dad until he was a ruthless killer. Those are the things that catch people’s attention. Rob Lowe came back quite excited about that idea. He started telling the producers, ‘I’m in the wrong part.’”
Taking Meryl Streep too seriously
“Death Becomes Her was my first big studio movie: It had Meryl Streep, Goldie Hawn, and Bruce Willis. We had a great rehearsal period, we all got along great, and I thought rewrites were going well. I came to the set the first day and Meryl’s character was in her Broadway dressing room. Meryl was just finishing a take. I sat down in a chair next to the director and she glanced over my way and went, ‘Oh, I can’t do it if the writer’s here.’ I think my whole body turned red — I was 28 and this was Meryl Streep. They started another take and I just froze. I leaned over to the director and said, ‘Should I go?’ He looked at me and said, ‘She’s kidding.’”
Kevin Bacon knows when he’s needed
“Kevin is immensely talented. He works really hard. I remember being very impressed by him on A Stir of Echoes. It was a scary movie. He had a big, emotional scene at somebody’s door during a night shoot. I meant to get to it sooner, but things had gone poorly, as they sometimes do. By the time we got him out of his trailer, it was 5 a.m. — little streaks of light were starting to appear. I said, ‘Kev, this big scene that we’ve talked about for months — you’re gonna have about nine minutes to do it.’ And he did it. The first take was great, which was good since the second take was unusable because you could see light in the sky.
“Afterward, I said, ‘I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean for it to go that way, but it was great. How did you do that? I didn’t use you for seven hours, then your big scene was at the very last minute, and you had one tiny shot at it…’ He said a huge part of the job is energy conservation. There’s a reason you have a trailer. It’s so you don’t sit out on the set talking to people all night. You go in your trailer and you rest because you’re going to be called on and you have to be ready at that moment.”
Steven Spielberg won’t back down
“There was one part of a scene in the second Jurassic Park that I really didn’t like, but Spielberg wanted me to write it. So I kept not writing it. I said ‘I don’t like this’ the first couple of times, but he kept insisting. I became very passive-aggressive. I kept turning in scripts where I hadn’t done it. It was starting to drive him crazy.
“We were shooting and he said, ‘You forgot again.’ I said, ‘Well, here’s the thing: I don’t like it. I’m not going to do it. I don’t want to write that.’ He said, ‘If you don’t want to write it, don’t. If you believe that it’s not right, you shouldn’t write it. But I’m going to shoot it.’ That’s how we should be. You have to do what you think is true.”
