Alex Litvak Interview

Adam: So, when it when it turned out Fox wanted to explore a different direction. I mean what was the next step for you? Had they given you some direction and it was a case of refinement or it sounds more like you just went back to the drawing board?

Alex: Well, there was a case of refinement in the first act because logically they were happy with Act 1. Again, it ended up being vastly scaled down and fewer characters but like at least I would say it was a big rewrite but it’s not a complete discard and then everything beyond that was completely discarded and again I think what it was is we just had greater ambitions. We felt like “Let’s give the fans something we have not seen before”. We knew that was probably too expensive for what they wanted but we’re like “You can discard all this stuff” but like just the idea that we loved and the one idea that I wish we kept was the notion that the guy puts on the Predator armor and becomes a Predator himself to fight.

What Nimrod brought in, he had a much different version of the movie in his head and really the thought was “Look we got to stick to Predator world. Let’s stick closer to what the original movie was with the addition of the Upgrade, the alien planet and the worst of worst. So, those are the marching orders. Now go write the script. So, they gave us offices at Fox in the basement and for the next 10 days, we were there just doing insane hours. Just like churning out pages. I remember hearing the 4th July fireworks in the basement of Fox, the final thing we have to pull an all-nighter.

The Nolan story which you’re going to ask me about later is directly sort of linked to the pace in which the draft was written. I would say the closest to screenwriting combat that I’ve ever gotten. I remember there was a point toward the end where Mike and Nimrod almost got into a fistfight and I’m just like between them trying to… because like everybody’s losing their mind. This is now day 10, lack of sleep, immense stress because if we don’t deliver this time, the movie’s over. Everybody’s done. Everybody’s fired. Then we send it off and thank god, the studio responded positively. Obviously, they had notes but it felt like the skeleton and what they want is there so now let’s go.

I think some of it is budget. We like the idea to put this conflict between Predator and Predator cannot be front and center and the other problem that people have with it which again is like the right or wrong, is it’s two aliens fighting each other. Fundamentally we don’t really care. It needs to be about humans in jeopardy so which is why the Predator versus Predator is still obviously in the movie but it’s more in the background than in the foreground. We really were trying to, as you saw with the first version that I was talking to you guys about, we really tried to move it through the foreground.

Aaron: So, on the topic of the Predators then, one of the controversial aspects of the early draft that leaked was how the Super Predators genetically manipulated themselves which in that draft resulted in things like changing their blood to be black. Now the genetic manipulation angle would ultimately not make it into the final film with the only real allusion to that being… I think it was Nolan’s line about the difference between dogs and wolves. So, we were curious as to where this was actually dropped? Was it something that actually made it into the shooting draft and was removed in the edit or was that something that you and Mike dropped while you were working on the various drafts and refining?

Alex: Well, it was always a part of it because the idea of like they’re bigger better killers, why are they hunting people. Just for sport or to make themselves better killers? So that idea early on we very much championed and I know that idea survived for a variety of drafts and I think it eventually got removed because there was just no manifestation of it. It’s not like he saw those guys injecting themselves with anything that made them become bigger and better. So, at some point it just ended up being dropped. I’m not sure when. The idea of an upgrade based on the genetics of the prey, that was one of the big ideas going on.

To us, we never thought it was like sub-species, we just thought it was different clans like ninja and samurai. So, you have a more of a traditionalist mentality, more warrior-like mentality with the original clan and more say practical or more anything goes mentality with the upgrades which is like “Look it’s all about power, it’s about making yourself more lethal, stronger, bigger, faster”. That’s what the other Predators are and what we wanted to bake into the franchise and again that was another idea of other clans out there and there’s a civil war somewhere in the background which our guys could become invested in.

Aaron: Would it have been specifically like classic as a traditionalist and the Super Predators as the tinkerers? Would have been those just specific ones or would it have pulled in like other groups together in terms of the civil war thing like Predator 2‘s clan and stuff like that?

Alex: There were many conversations about how to build on it. Yeah, the whole thing was like you start with two but in success we could say there are five or seven. There are all these different tribes and again that’s where I still wish, as a fan, we explored that because the Predator universe is so fascinating because it gives you a keyhole. The first movie, here’s an alien that comes and it’s not an alien armada.

It’s just one guy and this one guy doesn’t come to conquer us, he’s just here to hunt. He’s just here fishing effectively right. So, what a great keyhole way to the story. So, we wanted to widen the keyhole with this one and then to say but really, we’re just giving you now, it’s a door but beyond the door, they’re like here be dragons and wonders and monsters. So, you really can go to places you’ve never thought of and see things you could never have imagined and I think in trying to compress it back to the keyhole, we’ve kind of lost some of that.

Adam: Moving on to the human characters. We always found Royce to be a very interesting lead. He’s not your traditional protagonist and we don’t even learn his name until the very end of the film. Can you tell us about the conceptualization of Royce? Did you find him difficult to write?

Alex: No. Again, this was a big thing that we wanted to go for. Dutch is a leader of men. Dutch is like “Leave no man behind”. He is a soldier. So, what’s the opposite of that? The opposite of that had to be mercenary. The opposite of that had to be a guy who is cynical, disillusioned, a former version of Dutch if you will. We always thought of Royce as somebody who started out from the good places Dutch and then shit happened and now he is a version of Jason Bourne, a man either men hunted or a hunter. There was a number of different openings that we did for him. The original pitch was with him being dropped but the studio said “Well can we get to know him more before this”.

So of course, we went and wrote a bunch of different versions. There was a version where you saw a bunch of soldiers being hunted and you think it’s the Predator but it’s Royce. He’s the one who is hunting and killing soldiers in some foreign country. There is a reason why we describe him as like a Steve McQueen face because Steve McQueen, that was his speciality, playing these anti-heroes. There’s a reason why he has only one name because I love the Richard Stark novels with the Parker character. The professional thief only has one name Parker.

That’s where that came from. So, his voice was just really easy because it’s a guy who doesn’t joke a lot. It’s a guy who doesn’t fraternize a lot and he’s a survivor. He doesn’t want to be a leader of these guys. He sort of becomes a defecto but he’s all about survival. The casting of Adrian Brody which I’m going to talk about later was surprising but just writing that character… I’d say that’s the character that changed the least from draft to draft. He’s always this guy who desperately does not want to be a hero, does not want to lead men. He just wants to get the f**k out of here and it’s him becoming a leader and becoming a savior to spite himself.

Aaron: Was there ever any temptation to just go all the way or was he just always planned that he would have that arc?

Alex: He has to come back because the what works about these the stories is fundamentally that deep down there is a shred of humanity and a shred of goodness in him. Hans Solo is going to come back to help Luke. It’s just making this moment so satisfying you’re like finally, you’ve become the guy they’ve always thought you could be.

Aaron: So, the character of Edwin and the casting of Topher Grace was another element that we found particularly interesting with Predators. Now I’ve always thought he was a really fascinating concept but personally he’s the one character in the film that I’m not overly convinced with in the final product. So, can you tell us a little bit about the thinking behind his character and how you feel about the finished effort?

Alex: That idea was that’s one of the characters that survived in the first draft. I think it was Mike’s idea and I gotta say I think it’s pretty genius. Putting yourself in the mindset of okay so we’re gonna do something different here and of course you’re gonna have your prototypical soldier and we have our share of soldiers in this thing from different special units from different countries. We obviously had to have the Russian guy but he was like finally a Russian guy who’s not a monster – was a hero and then okay there’s some criminals. How can we give fans something feels fresh?

Who is the biggest Predator on earth and arguably not on the combat setting which is expected? Not in the streets which is okay fine. You got your criminals and Predator too. What’s the new spin and I gotta say whether or not some people like it and some people hate it, it’s a pretty interesting idea that Hannibal Lecter also finds his way onto this planet. So, in the only major difference was in the first draft, you knew from the get-go what he was. We sort of used Steve Buscemi from Con Air as a prototype as the guy who is a mass murderer and they’ve dropped in and they all have their weapons and hit weapons are these knives and scalpels and just really creepy dude.

Now over the course of it, it shifted to “Hey let’s play him as somebody who is going to be dangerous coming not only from the outside but from within the group” which was also an element in our first draft where eventually he turns on the group but it’s a little bit more expected because he’s a serial killer. I have to say again execution aside and people love it or hate it, the notion that there is a Predator embedded on Predators and he’s like a chameleon hiding in plain sight. I think it was a really interesting idea. I think the ideal of a character like Edwin is a really cool idea and I’m glad that it’s something that we came up with early and unlike all the other stuff managed to survive various changes and iterations.

Aaron: So, you you’ve already talked in some degree about this next question and naturally when any Predator related film starts to come out, everybody is always curious as to whether or not Arnie and Dutch are going to be involved. So, we know he was approached regarding Predators. Robert talked about it. Nimrod talked about it and we saw an alternative ending in your leaked second draft but how far did that go in terms of you and the writing. Were there any other versions of Dutch throughout the writing of Predators?

Alex: Yeah, it was actually. So, obviously there’s the one that you are aware of. I so wish that happened because I remember us talking about it and we’re like if this happens and I remember saying this to Nimrod, if we’re in the back of the audience in Westwood on the opening night and Arnold comes on, the whole theater is going to stand up and cheer because “Now he’s the Predator warchief. How awesome is that”. So, the other idea there was a draft where the Nolan character became Dutch. Robert said “Well maybe, we can actually get him for like a more serious part and why not have him be the Nolan character”.

So there the notion was that Dutch has been brought here and he’s been surviving here and he’s kind of lost it. So, he still has the darkness of the Nolan character but it’s Dutch. I don’t think it was ever serious and I don’t think anybody wanted to see Dutch as this dark anti-hero so it was just one draft and never really took off from there.

This is now third or fourth draft probably fourth where it’s like we find Dutch and so he finds our guys take him and takes him into the compound and then tries to rob them and kill them because he’s a survivor. So, it was still all the moves of the Nolan character – just Dutch and with kind of more of the backstory of Dutch. It was tried for one draft and never really went beyond that.

He gets killed much like the Nolan character gets killed which is another reason I think it was an exploration, not a real attempt whereas with the cameo at the end… everyone was like “Yes let’s try for that”. That was more of an exploration like “Do we do we like it or not” and it’s just something that Robert wanted to try and again, he’s like “Well maybe Arnold wants to die in the movie” or something like that but I don’t think that draft was ever shown.

So, I go back and they were working on Predators so in Nimrod’s mind, the movie that he wanted to make was just a relentless pressure cooker where like it starts, it doesn’t stop. Like great but when we do a first pass of the script, the script ends up being 67 pages. I love the pressure of the original. We want to keep it going and as a result a lot of the dialogue stuff we wanted to do. He’s like “No it’s got to move. You say two lines. Don’t say five”. So, as a result, we end up with this 67-page script. We’re like “Nimrod, it doesn’t work”. He’s like “Yes you’re right, it doesn’t work”.

So now we’re all scratching our heads in the 11th hour trying to figure out how the movie needs a slowdown. It needs a moment where they’re in relative safety where we can also explain some of the stuff that has happened and Mike to his credit, that was another Mike idea. He goes “What if they find a survivor” and I was like “What are you talking about?” I didn’t get it at first and then what he talked about, I was like “Oh so you’re talking about Robinson Crusoe”. He goes “Yes” and then it all started clicking. Oh, it’s Robinson Crusoe. The guy who’s been stranded there for a very long time and thematically what appealed to me was, it’s survivalism.

It’s a guy much like Royce but now he’s been here for whatever number of years and it’s all about me. It’s all about surviving at any cost which is what he turns into. So, we presented this to Nimrod and he liked all this and then we went and wrote it. Fundamentally when you think about it, the Nolan section, it’s like it’s very modular. You can lift it out of the movie and we wouldn’t have any substantial repercussions on the story.

It’s just that there are some character themes. We kind of get into the mythology which we desperately wanted to do but when I met Lawrence Fishburne and I gotta say very early on, even I think over the course of the writing of it, the Fishburne idea was thrown out because Nimrod worked with him before on Armor and he goes I need Larry Fishburne to do it. As you remember that second draft is still pretty short for a feature so we need to drop in a section where like it beefs it up more so but that’s why Nolan is in the movie.