DANIEL WATERS ON 'HEATHERS' (PART 1 OF 2)

Daniel Waters exploded onto the film scene with his brilliant, perceptive, wickedly funny screenplay for HEATHERS (1988). His subversive, outrageous, satirical sense of fun brought extraordinary qualities to films like BATMAN RETURNS (1992), THE ADVENTURES OF FORD FAIRLANE (1990), HUDSON HAWK (1991), DEMOLITION MAN (1993) and VAMPIRE ACADEMY (2014), the latter of which was directed by his brother Mark Waters, the director of MEAN GIRLS (2004). Dan also wrote and directed the unfairly underseen comedies HAPPY CAMPERS (2001) and SEX AND DEATH 101 (2007). In the first part of our two-part interview, I spoke to Dan about the writing, influences and initial reaction of the HEATHERS screenplay, and also the casting of the film.    

What made you decide that you wanted to make 'The greatest ever teen film'?

It was almost exactly like that. I've learned that naivete is one of the strongest forces in the world. The sad thing about becoming an old, grizzled screenwriter is that you lose your naivete and you start to think about what can be done and what can get made. Back then, after I had just moved out to L.A. and I was sitting writing my first screenplay, it was a case of ''What do I want to see?'' I see so many movies and what I wanted to see was a high school film with Stanley Kubrick's satire from DR. STRANGELOVE (1964) and the narration from Terrence Malick's BADLANDS (1973). The high school films that I was seeing lacked a certain something. The parents were always to blame. The kids were always innocent. Even when they weren't innocent, they were never to blame. I didn't want to make a documentary saying ''This is the way teenagers really are. '' I wanted to take a step back and take a darker, more epic, cynical, satirical approach. Stanley Kubrick did his science fiction movie. He did his horror movie. He did his war movie. Well, what if he did his teen film? So I wrote this three-hour script. Screenwriters today they read Variety, and they read the trades in order to find what is hot right now, instead of just writing. I've always found it ridiculous. It's like the light of a star of a planet that blew up two hundred years ago. By the time you write what's hot, it won't be hot anymore. I just went in headlong and wrote this three hour teen film. It was silly and insane of me but in this case it worked out.

You're a fan of John Hughes but the film is often described as an 'anti-John Hughes' film. Do you think of it that way?

In a way it is, yes. That doesn't mean I hate his films though. Looking back now, the thing that I didn't like about them, the quaintness and silliness of them, is even more endearing today. They're time-capsule fun. Even at the time I enjoyed them -it was just certain elements of them I always had problems with. In THE BREAKFAST CLUB (1985) a character says ''When you grow up, your heart dies. '' HEATHERS is saying ''When you're 14, your heart dies. '' Evil and bad behaviour can happen at a much younger age than just when you're becoming an adult.

Did you ever think it might have been possible to get Kubrick to do the film?

I honestly did think that somehow he would see the script and say ''Yeah, I'll do it.'' I thought I would have to go to England and work with him, and he would probably take a screenwriting credit with me. That was me being realistic!

Were you inspired by any particular films or books when writing the script?

Both the movie BADLANDS and the work of Kubrick were definitely inspirational. PRETTY POISON (1968) was another one. I also love Michael Ritchie's SMILE (1975). And not to sound too pretentious but I love the whole Shakespeare thing, man! I was always jealous of him because he always wrote about the top people. So, I thought ''Wait a minute. If I go to the royalty of high school, then I can have that same ambience. '' It's funny. To this day I get notes like ''Why can't you write the way people really talk?'' I take all the transportation in L.A., and I hear how people really talk all the time and it can be fascinating. I like it when characters, even the stupid characters, speak as though they were given an extra ten minutes to come up with a good line. I like the dialogue to be elevated. You can say it's Shakespeare or it's Turner Classic Movies, but I'm the last of the anti-naturalistic bent when it comes to screenwriting.

When did you begin writing the screenplay?

It was the spring of 86 when I said ''Right, I gotta actually start writing something.'' My friend Larry Karaszewski was graduating from USC in the fall of 85 and he was getting a place. There was an extra place so I moved in with him.

Were you writing it when you were working at the video store?

Yeah, and part of me still wishes I was working there because there's something about being on the floor, surrounded by movies, that allows you to get your juices flowing. I have never been the guy who sits at a computer and says ''OK, I gotta do five pages today.'' I'm always the writer who sneaks up on the writing of a script. I'm always collecting notes. I call it 'collecting acorns for the winter'. I end up writing little bits and bits and then adding them all up. I do everything by hand, so by the time it gets to the computer it has cleared a lot of customs.

How many drafts did you write?

I think there were three big drafts and then a lot of putting once we got to the green, just getting it right for a movie. There were drafts that went over 200. I found the original draft recently, and I could only get through a few pages. I wrote everything! The draft I showed everybody was a nice, tight 196 pages! I remember Michael Lehmann telling me I had to cut it down, and I was thinking ''Who the fuck are you?!''

Was anything lost do you feel from the shortened drafts and the final shooting script?

The first draft was more like a novel. I have adapted novels myself and you just have to accept that a movie is a different beast. That draft had more characters and more of a Charles Dickens expanse to it. There was a lot more about what happens to the school after the suicides and there were more characters from the media. I don't really miss all that stuff. I used to think it would have been better as a three hour movie but I don't think that way now.

Was HEATHERS always the title?

Yes, always. I wrote a short script in college about a girl who gets burned at the stake during a high school football game, and I had three supporting characters named Heather. People liked that element so much that I jumped off from there.

When you were writing the script did you have any actors in mind for the lead roles?

I had a huge post-LABYRINTH (1986) crush on Jennifer Connelly and I thought she would be the perfect Veronica. To this day, Winona still teases me about it. She did a Ron Howard movie, THE DILEMMA (2011), where she got to meet Jennifer Connelly, and she told her all about it. It was funny when Jennifer was Oscar-nominated for A BEAUTIFUL MIND (2001) because it was always like a punchline for Winona. I certainly realise now that Winona was the perfect person for it. I hadn't seen her in BEETLEJUICE (1988) yet because it hadn't come out yet. Michael Lehmann was friends with the writer of it and so he knew more about her than I did. I had only seen her in SQUARE DANCE (1987) and to me she wasn't the dark Audrey Hepburn ingenue that I wanted for the Veronica role. I had my arms folded but I soon realised how stupid I was.

It's incredible that she was only 16 when she made the film, and already a fan of film noir!

And she was really 16 too. I saw her in the elevator going up to meet her and I thought ''Who is this little girl?'' Other people liked the script, but it was only after I talked to her that I realised how good it really was. If a teenager with that kind of intelligence and cinematic knowledge loved it, I knew I must have really done something right.

Were you consulted at all in the casting decisions?

I wasn't initially as involved in casting as I'd have liked to have been. I wasn't even aware they had begun casting people and I got mad. I eventually got consulted. We were never going to get big, established stars. I had not been blown away by the films Christian Slater had made at the time. I really came to appreciate how charismatic his performance was in the movie. Critics complained that he was copying Jack Nicholson, but it's actually the way that he talks!

What sort of reaction did the script get once you began sending it out?

I was really low on the totem pole. I was literally a guy behind the counter in a video store. I didn't even have an agent. People starting out ask me how to get an agent. I tell them ''Write a script that you can get one person other than yourself to like, and people will be willing to pass on to other people. '' I got a lot of great responses from people who said HEATHERS was a great writing sample but that it would never get made into a movie. I did manage to get an agent off the script, but even he said ''OK, we're gonna put the HEATHERS script in this drawer here. It will be our little secret. '' Eventually I got an agent who was also Michael Lehmann and Denise Di Novi's agent (Bobbi Thompson), and she really loved the script. She was able to package it all together and help get it made. I was really lucky to meet all these guys, even though I didn't realise it at the time.

Was there a point where you realised you had something special?

A lot of people wanted to read it and it certainly got a great response from everybody that did. I was so naive that I was saying ''You really like the script? When do we start shooting?'' People would just laugh. The idea of actually making the movie was something that people couldn't deal with. Even when I was having meetings during shooting, people couldn't believe we were actually shooting it. They thought they had discovered this crazy script that no-one knew about and they couldn't believe it was being made into a movie. I call HEATHERS 'winning the lottery'. Writing that movie and having it get made was such a big deal but I didn't appreciate it at the time. I wrote my first screenplay and everyone loved it, so I thought it was just the first of a thousand great films I was going to do. I didn't realise that no-one was going to let me write a movie like that again. When I go and speak in classes with people, I tell them that they are at the best point of their life because for your first script, you're expected to write stuff that is completely out there and completely original. It's the only way you're going to get noticed. There's nothing worse than somebody who sells out before they are asked to sell out. The studios want somebody who is an original talent and then they want to take them and force them to do their crap, but you are in a position now with your first script where you are allowed to be out there. I was in a position later on where it was like ''You know, you should get that HEATHERS stuff out of your system now if you want to work in today's industry.'' You can see with the stuff after HEATHERS, especially the Joel Silver movies that I did, that I was promoted in the worst way possible. ''You did HEATHERS, so now you can do this crap.'' You need to somehow keep the naivete that you had.

How much did HEATHERS reflect your own high school life?

I feel like I'm on the outside looking in. I was the writer even in high school. I had a column in the high school newspaper, and I would write all the PA announcements. It was always ''Get Dan Waters. We need to write a speech for the Pep Assembly. He'll write a funny sketch. '' I always had a journalistic relationship with high school from the beginning. High school was certainly not the traumatic experience many people assume it was because I wrote HEATHERS. College was actually the worst four years of my life because I loved all the pain and drama of high school. In college everybody is just having a good time and for some reason, instead of going with the flow, I just hated it. I didn't wanna have fun. I wanted to see people cry! Everyone in my particular high school class was a friendly bunch. For HEATHERS I kind of stole from my younger brother and especially my younger sister's experiences.

How important was it for you to look at the social issues of high school life in your script?
If I had to write my Seven Deadly Sins in order, Sloth would be number one. I love writing but actually sitting down and doing it is difficult. I love having the ideas floating around in my head more than actually finishing something. When I say HEATHERS was written as a response to the teen films, that's correct, but I need more than that to get me to write. The way teenage suicide was presented in films and in the media as a news story incensed me. A teenager who had committed suicide would be elevated to this God-like level. The way the media talks about these issues makes it too real and suddenly suicide becomes something to consider when you're feeling depressed. One of my favorite lines in the script is when the teacher says ''Whether to kill yourself is one of the most important decisions a teenager can make.'' There was a certain sanctity and solemnity at the time about teenage suicide that I wanted to satirise – the highlight of that being the father saying ''I love my dead gay son'' at the funeral. Only now does the father realise the problems his son had been having. Suicide shouldn't be the way to get them noticed.

Do you ever surprise or shock yourself by the stuff you come up with?

I actually never do. And it goes to the part of the way I write. ''Fuck me gently with a chainsaw'' for example, was something that I had floating around in my head long before I put it in HEATHERS. By the time it went into the script I had digested it a million times. There was a review that I have always worn as a badge of honor that said ''Waters is chilling for what he assumes is common ground. '' In other words, ''He has no idea how fucked up he is.'' 

I spoke to Dan by telephone and would like to thank him for his time. 

Part two of the interview.  

Interview by Paul Rowlands. Copyright © Paul Rowlands, 2016. All rights reserved.