Writer-Director John Lee Hancock Refuses to Be Pinned Down
John Lee Hancock is a filmmaker who’s impossible to explain, to define, to pin down - which, after having a lengthy conversation with him, I would say is just how he likes it. The reasons for this are largely threefold: he’s a writer who sometimes directs his own work, a director who sometimes directs other people’s work, and a filmmaker who’s largely averse to interrogating his own creative motivations. In other words, this was a challenging interview for me, but somehow, by the end, more gratifying for it.
John got his big break in the Nineties when Clint Eastwood got a hold of a script of his and decided to direct it. This was A Perfect World (1993), a film I adore and which you should immediately watch if you’ve never had the pleasure. It tells the story of an escaped felon who takes a young boy hostage; the two form an unlikely father-son relationship while on the run. It’s one of Eastwood’s overlooked masterpieces, for my money. This led to John writing Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997) for Eastwood next. Five years later, he made the leap to the director’s chair himself with The Rookie (2002), but he wasn’t working off his own script this time. John has largely spent most of his career since then see-sawing between directing his own scripts and directing other people’s, a habit that presents no rhyme or reason if you ask him about it other than a passion for the story and themes being explored in each project. Amongst these projects, he wrote and directed the sports film The Blind Side (2009), crime thriller The Little Things (2021), and, most recently, the Stephen King horror Mr.Harrigan’s Phone (2022); and as director, he’s gone deep into 20th century Americana with Saving Mr. Banks (2013), The Founder (2016), and The Highwaymen (2019). While he doesn’t necessarily see connections between many of these films, it’s hard to miss that I do.
For screenwriters at all levels, I would encourage you to focus on John’s approach to craft, how he chooses and develops his projects, and what he learned from rewriting and directing The Little Things a quarter-century after he first wrote it. As he politely resists deconstructing his motivations for his creative decisions, I ask you to consider your own capacity or willingness to do so with your art. While I might ask these questions of an artist, is it unreasonable to expect every artist to want to dive so deep into their work? Is it wrong to expect any artist to be able to explain themselves? Worthy questions.
COLE HADDON: Let’s start with an easy question, but one that could prove revealing. I’m curious what your cinematic comfort food is. What film or films do you find yourself regularly returning to or watching every time you need a creative pick-me-up?
JOHN LEE HANCOCK: I’m not sure any of the films I find myself continually watching are “comfort food,” but they do scratch an itch and make me want to work hard to be a better writer and filmmaker.
CH: For example?
JLH: The Conversation balances delicately on the head of a pin. The entire movie depends on the inflection of one two-letter word. “He’d kill us if he had the chance,” which means you are afraid of being killed and the other inflection of “us” – “He’d kill us if he had the chance,” which is an effort to forgive oneself in advance for killing someone. Is the person uttering this line a victim or a perpetrator? Brilliant. The Verdict is a damn near perfect movie, and I will watch it again and again noticing new details every time. Also, anything else by [Sidney] Lumet. Lonely Are the Brave is a little-known film directed by David Miller and written by Dalton Trumbo. Kirk Douglas has said it’s his favorite of all his films. I love the theme of “someone born a hundred years too late.”
Depending on what I’m working on I’ll choose films in that genre to watch for inspiration. I’ve been working on a spy thing, so I reread The Spy Who Came in from the Cold and watched the film again. Both brilliant.
CH: I rewatched The Conversation last year and The Verdict this year, and I wholeheartedly agree on both counts. It’s been at least twenty years since I watched Lonely Are the Brave, so that’s going in the queue, thank you. Speaking of spy things, if you haven’t seen “A Spy Amongst Friends” yet — it’s a British series — I can’t recommend it enough.
So, you turn to films — and I presume TV and maybe even other art — for inspiration as you work. Can you tell me what your process is like for breaking a script? I know every project is different, but is there any kind of unifying approach you’ve identified over the years?
JLH: Hmmm, breaking a script. They all come from different places so the approach is always different.
CH: How about adaptations?
JLH: When adapting a book, I read it two or three times then do a page pass where I highlight and make notes about things that just must be in the script. Doing an adaptation is largely about deciding which sixty percent of the book to leave out of the movie. Then I start to loosely outline to come up with a structure and work from there.
“Doing an adaptation is largely about deciding which sixty percent of the book to leave out of the movie.”
JLH (cont’d): For an original idea, I make a lot of loose notes and devise a structure fairly quickly so I can decide if it’s a movie or not. When I have an outline and I feel I understand thematically what the story is truly about, then I start what Scott Frank calls a “vomit draft.” For me that means unfettered writing - almost always overwriting so as to find the heart of the characters and plot. I don’t worry too much about page count, but do look at overall shape of the script. Then you just rewrite and rewrite until you think you’ve done everything you can to make it work. From a subject matter standpoint, as I said, I’ll watch films, listen to music that fits the thematic mood, really just whatever feels inspiring at the time. Every time I write, the process is slightly different.
CH: Every. Time. I don’t think a lot of aspiring screenwriters understand how malleable both the form of screenwriting is or how any of us approach it is.
Let’s shift backward for a moment, to 1986. You’re four years out of Baylor Law School, and about to make a huge life decision to throw away your budding law career to pursue filmmaking. How long coming was that move and how much did it scare you — and your family — at the time?
JLH: I had been writing short fiction, plays, and my first screenplay while I was practicing law. There came a point in my legal career where I should commit to the firm — and partnership down the road — or try and make a living at the thing I would, and did, do for free. My parents, both public school teachers who paid for my law school, were very supportive. I believe they felt that I should go for it and if it didn’t happen in a couple of years, I could always come back to Houston and practice law. I’m sure they had their reservations, but kept them to themselves.
CH: I’ve seen almost every film you’ve received a credit on, and it’s impossible not to notice that several of them are set in Texas. Most of us are defined by where we grow up and many of us — the artists, at least — spend the rest of our lives somehow returning to that place over and over again. Tell me how Texas feels when you think about it. I literally mean feels. How does it manifest in your heart, your mind, your soul?
JLH: I believe when you’re born in Texas, it holds a place inside you wherever you may find yourself in the world. The fact that Texas was once its own country is pounded into you from an early age, so it is almost like your passport should be issued by The Republic of Texas.
I have instant recall of how the heat feels different there, how the humidity on a hot summer night smells, and the various horizons you take in when you travel within the state. All these things are familiar to me in a way that feels like they are characters in any story I write that is set in Texas. I can’t help but hear the songs of language - the drawl of West Texas, the clipped accent of East Texas and everything in between. All these things invade stories, as though they are demanding that you set whatever tale you’re considering in Texas. Actually, the state takes unfair advantage of you in this way.
“I have instant recall of how the heat feels different there, how the humidity on a hot summer night smells, and the various horizons you take in when you travel within the state.”
CH: It sounds like a lot more cost-effective way to end up with films made about Texas than production subsidies.
JLH: I’ve experienced working on films in Texas from 1992 through 2004 or so and it was a wonderful time. I wish there were Georgia/Louisiana-style credits available because you can shoot so, so many things in Texas. It has many different looks. We considered shooting The Blind Side there, but we saved four million dollars shooting it in Atlanta. On a lower-budget film that is a substantial number.
CH: I hadn’t realized its production incentives were so poor. So, Texas was imprinted on your identity. Maybe even warped it. Whatever happened, it’s part of you, for better or worse. I’m curious, did the way you were taught to look at the world — maybe the way you were taught to handle conflict or chicanery — impact how you acclimated to Hollywood? Maybe hamstrung you or even turned out to be your superpower in such a singular business culture?
JLH: Interesting question. I think the fact that I was raised to always be on time has helped me a great deal in Hollywood, since everyone else is almost always late. I also try to rely on “horse sense” when facing dilemmas. I think the fact that I practiced law is seen as more interesting than that I’m from Texas, to be honest.
CH: One of your first produced films is also one of my favorite American films of the Nineties. I’m talking about A Perfect World. Set in Texas in the early Sixties, it tells the story of an escaped convict who takes a young boy hostage. Clint Eastwood directed and co-starred in it, alongside Kevin Costner as the convict. There are certainly worse ways to get your big break in Hollywood, right? Given the impact A Perfect World had on your career — and, again, because I love it so much — could you tell me where the idea for it originated?
JLH: A Perfect World came from a mashup of three different stories I was considering writing. I always had a bunch of possible ideas that I would revisit to add notes to in hopes that one day there would be enough of a story to turn the notes into a screenplay.
The first story was about a Texas Ranger who, in the last days of his career, has to assist coordinating and then come to personal grips with the aftermath of President Kennedy’s fateful trip to Dallas.
The second story was loosely based on a kid I knew who was kidnapped by escaped inmates and spent a few days with them until they were caught without incident and the boy returned home. I was taken by the seeming normalcy of his time with, and reactions to, the inmates. They watched a lot of TV in a farmhouse, if I remember correctly.
The third story was more of just a visual. Growing up in Longview, we didn’t have a lot of money, so I really remember the first time we were able to get store-bought Halloween costumes. My brother Joe, maybe four, was Casper the Friendly Ghost and he wore that costume all the way into the spring of the next year. I’d see him running around by himself playing in the field next to our house, so that image — a boy in a Casper costume in a field — stuck in my mind.
CH: What you describe sounds like an incredibly organic way for a story to originate, one that requires time for a story’s true shape to reveal itself. But I found that in success, a lot of the time I used to be able to give to this process — which I prefer for both process and aesthetic reasons — had to give way to the demands of deadlines and the most current Hollywood mood. How about you? Do you still have, say, notebooks filled with potential ideas for scripts waiting to coalesce into another A Perfect World?
ncG1vNJzZmibn6Gyqa3DnaanZqOqr7TAwJyiZ5ufonyxe9aroK2domKxqr7EnKuoql2fvKm6jKWcnmWYlruku8Kk