Long before he became the go-to guy for things like Indiana Jones 4 and Spider-Man 4, screenwriter David Koepp got started with Apartment Zero, new this week on DVD.
February 27, 2007 (Press Release) --
At the tender age of 24, David Koepp and filmmaker Martin Donovan decided to produce the screenplay Apartment Zero themselves. It was the third or fourth script Koepp had ever written, but the first to eventually get made, in 1988.
In those days, it was easier to pitch a film based simply on a great idea. In the case of Apartment Zero, the premise was that of two mysterious roommates (Hart Bochner, Colin Firth) colliding in Buenos Aires against the backdrop of serial killings. Today, Koepp argues, in order to get a movie made in Hollywood, you have to be able to also present the cinematic vision and attach a couple of recognizable stars to boot.
“What we did with Apartment Zero was that we pre-sold the world, excluding North America, to RCA/Columbia on home video and banked a contract for about half the budget,” Koepp explains during a recent interview with FilmStew. “Then the rest, about another $400,000 or so, came from a London real estate developer who thought it would be fun to be in Hollywood.”
“We ran out of money toward the end, so I put in everything I earned for about two years to finish it up,” he adds. “It was sort of a mess, but it got done. I learned a valuable early lesson about not investing in your films.”
“The film made money, but the question in independent film distribution is, ‘Who does the film make money for?’ In this case I think it made money for a number of people, but not necessarily for the people who put the money in.”
While Apartment Zero co-star Firth was cast during filming in Valmont, the film that would launch his career, the drama did little for Koepp’s profile. Instead, it was another spec script, Bad Influence, that initially put Koepp on the map in 1990 when it was made by Curtis Hanson with James Spader and a sex scandal buttressed Rob Lowe. And when Jurassic Park hit theaters in 1993, the Wisconsin native had most definitely become an A-lister.
In between, there was another collaboration with Donovan, Death Becomes Her. “I initially wanted to do a story about an apartment building with four apartments in it, with each one having some nefarious goings on,” Koepp recalls. “I had an idea for a guy who was hounded by his shrewish wife. He ends up killing her but because she’s a witch, she doesn’t die and she just continues hounding him and now she’s got more to hound him about.”
“That was the only storyline I could come up with for the four apartments, so we just said, ‘Well, let’s just make that the whole movie,’” he continues .”We thought it would be a strange little independent movie along the lines of Apartment Zero, but then Bob Zemeckis got interested in that and it went off in a different and much larger direction.”
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
In those days, it was easier to pitch a film based simply on a great idea. In the case of Apartment Zero, the premise was that of two mysterious roommates (Hart Bochner, Colin Firth) colliding in Buenos Aires against the backdrop of serial killings. Today, Koepp argues, in order to get a movie made in Hollywood, you have to be able to also present the cinematic vision and attach a couple of recognizable stars to boot.
“What we did with Apartment Zero was that we pre-sold the world, excluding North America, to RCA/Columbia on home video and banked a contract for about half the budget,” Koepp explains during a recent interview with FilmStew. “Then the rest, about another $400,000 or so, came from a London real estate developer who thought it would be fun to be in Hollywood.”
“We ran out of money toward the end, so I put in everything I earned for about two years to finish it up,” he adds. “It was sort of a mess, but it got done. I learned a valuable early lesson about not investing in your films.”
“The film made money, but the question in independent film distribution is, ‘Who does the film make money for?’ In this case I think it made money for a number of people, but not necessarily for the people who put the money in.”
While Apartment Zero co-star Firth was cast during filming in Valmont, the film that would launch his career, the drama did little for Koepp’s profile. Instead, it was another spec script, Bad Influence, that initially put Koepp on the map in 1990 when it was made by Curtis Hanson with James Spader and a sex scandal buttressed Rob Lowe. And when Jurassic Park hit theaters in 1993, the Wisconsin native had most definitely become an A-lister.
In between, there was another collaboration with Donovan, Death Becomes Her. “I initially wanted to do a story about an apartment building with four apartments in it, with each one having some nefarious goings on,” Koepp recalls. “I had an idea for a guy who was hounded by his shrewish wife. He ends up killing her but because she’s a witch, she doesn’t die and she just continues hounding him and now she’s got more to hound him about.”
“That was the only storyline I could come up with for the four apartments, so we just said, ‘Well, let’s just make that the whole movie,’” he continues .”We thought it would be a strange little independent movie along the lines of Apartment Zero, but then Bob Zemeckis got interested in that and it went off in a different and much larger direction.”
Source: http://www.yahoo.com
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