David Leslie Johnson is a name I’m sure a fair number of you are not familiar with. What you are familiar with though is his script work which will plant itself on the big screen with the ucpoming movie The Orphan. I was able to sit down with him for a few minutes and chat it up about himself, the film and any future projects that he is working on.
Melissa: I’ve got quite a few questions for you. how did you come up with the particular story (for The Orphan)?
David: It was kind of a not typical process. the story was developed originally in house with an executive there named alice mason and they really wanted to do an evil kid movie and they were looking for writers to come in and kind of give them their take on it. they gave me the first three pages of the treatment within just the first act of the movie. It set up the family, and the premise of the family that adopts this girl. But then they end up bringing the girl home and you know something’s going to go wrong and they said what’s next, what happens? so then I came up with the ending and actually worked backwards towards the jumping off point that they have given me and pitch them my take on the ending. It was very different from what they had in mind, but in a good way, and so they hired me to write the script.
Melissa: Is there any sort of inspiration for how you sculpted out any of the characters from yourself or anyone you knew or did it come from your own mind like that person’s going to be this way..
David: Yeah (laughs) See, the characters came up a lot out of the story that I wanted to tell. Like one of the things that Ester does is she, I wanted her to be a very smart character. To be a character who really analyzes people and their relationships, sort of Hannibal Lecter style. And so the characters, I wanted to make them sort of complex so that Ester could exploit their weaknesses. I wanted to, you know, to give the characters and have them be sort of multi dimensional so that A) you believe them and it gave Ester the tools she needed to do what she needs to do in the movie. I don’t know if that makes any sense..
Melissa: How was it working with the director (Jaume Collet-Serra), seeing how he liked it. Of course he liked it or we wouldn’t be talking right now!
David: He did like it, though I think I wound up making things difficult for him because I had made such an intricate plot that when it became time to shoot inevitably there are things you can’t shoot, things that you run out of time to shoot and things that for time reasons they cut out. There weren’t a lot of things because everything was like, one thing was a set-up for another and that thing was a set-up for another thing and they pulled this one piece out so it wound up not making sense. So, it was fun but I think in the end it made the editing process a bit difficult (laughs)
Melissa: Compared to how it (the story) was originally in your mind to the final cut, how much of the original creation do you see on the screen?David: Its a weird combination of being very close to what I imagined and a lot better. They were really, the script is un-mentally the same from when I first started which is very little difference in the end product. But the director and the cast brought so much to it. They sort of brought it to life in a way that I didn’t know, I didn’t thought possible. You know, vera and isabel and just everyone. ariana, cc,jimmy, they really inhabit those characters and you know, when you go to see a horror movie you don’t necessarily your gonna leave going “Wow, those actors are really good” and thats what your going to get from this movie, thats what I think that impressed me the most. Melissa: I’ve got to say that the previews alone, it doesn’t look like any regular “I’m going to go and mess you up” kind of horror movie. There seems to be a lot more going into it, a lot more complex than what you normally see. I want to ask as far as like how you started and everything as far as screenwriting is concerned, who got you on the path to doing it?
David: I don’t know, you know I was always a big reader and like that sort of, like in second grade I was writing plays. I think that reading sort of like naturally lead me to like wanting to create, you know, stories. For a long time I thought I wanted to be a novelist and at some point I realize that sometimes that the things that I was wanting to write in books would be really movies, that they were very visual and that I am not exactly sure who or where it started but I have loved movies ever since I was a kid. I guess it was at some point I realized that these were written. I grew up in Ohio and I don’t know that I really paid a lot of thought of where the movies came from. They come from the box in the back of the theater thats shining the light down from there, I didn’t know where they came from and at some point I realized that I could combine the two loves. That I can be writing movies and i think that’s…I dont know where it came from but at some point I decided to combine the two. Melissa: As far as with script writing and everything like that, is there anything we can expect from you in the future? David: Yeah I have a sort of fantasy horror thing going on now with Appian Way again and Warner Bros. Its in the vein of Sleepy Hollow, that kind of thing. and were working on another piece called Lake Mungo, well the original project is called Lake Mungo. Its an adaptation of an Australian movie; its a ghost story about a family thats haunted by the ghost of their dead daughter and the original movie is really great. Its a very emotional supernatural story which I think makes it unique and I’m looking forward to getting started on that. Melissa: It seems to be a pretty interesting take on supernatural and everything like that, I guess the more supernatural emotional aspect I was talking about, it kind of reminded me a little like Poltergeist.
David: Yeah Poltergeist, those are my favorite horror movies, those where underneath there’s a really simple character driven emotional story driven kind of it all. I mean it has a lot of special effects, scary scenes and like one of my favorite ghost stories ever but its really just about a family that looses their daughter, and its about that they need to get her back. I think thats what I liked about Lake Mungo, is that its very very scary but its really about a family thats grieving and how they’re going to move on to the next stage of their lives. Melissa: As far as like movies and everything and projects to do in the future, future projects, is there any sort of director you’d like to work with? Like if you could work with anybody.
David: Well I just met, I just saw Sam Raimi at the premiere and I remember coming to Comic-Con years ago and there he was at the premiere last night. I love Sam Raimi and I think thats the first one off the top of my head anyways. The Orphan is out in theaters right now, so catch it as soon as you can!
