Lecturer navigated Hollywood rise with complex spiritual path
The Emmy Award winning Hollywood screenwriter for such films as Shrek 2, All Dogs Go to
Heaven, and The Rugrats Movie, David N. Weiss visited The Woodlands Jan. 18 as part of his lecture tour.
In a presentation title “Shrek of a Trek: The Wild Spiritual Ride of a Hollywood Screenwriter,” hosted by Chabad of The Woodlands at the Hyatt Place on Research Forest Drive, Weiss detailed the chronology and events of being raised a secular Jew, then converting to Christianity as a teenager, and, finally, becoming a Jew who believes in God.
Weiss breezed into the Hyatt conference room slightly late Thursday night after fighting Houston traffic.
“It’s cold here!” he said. “We have freezers in L.A., too, but we don’t live in them!”
Weiss began his story as a “crazy young guy in Ventura, Calif., where there were very few Jews” at Buena High School. He was a member of a local temple, which he claims was not very religious, and that he had a “wild” imagination.
“It’s a pain in the butt when you’re little because you don’t have control over what you’re imagining,” he said.
Weiss grew up during a time when teachers were instructing students to seek cover under their desks in the event of a nuclear bomb attack. Black holes were wreaking havoc on his mind as well as the Holocaust movies he was shown in school.
“We didn’t talk about God,” Weiss said. “We didn’t talk about heaven. We talked about the Holocaust.”
When Weiss was 17, he said was working at a bakery on Christmas Eve.
“Because I was the Jew who could work on Christmas and Easter and the Super bowl,” he explained.
The baker had given Weiss some unsold pies as a gift, so Weiss said he spent the evening driving around Ventura delivering the pies to friends, when he met up with his friend Howard, who was perpetually trying to get Weiss to go to church with him.
That night Howard had a “secret weapon” during a lengthy discussion.
“He did something wonderful,” Weiss said. “He made it plausible. He made it not ridiculous that there might be a god.”
Weiss said he was spiritually transformed and began attending church more often, where he was put in charge of the drama program.
“I felt like I was doing something really important,” he said. “Which was great. I needed that.”
Weiss said another transformational moment occurred when his girlfriend at the time talked with her mom about her future with Weiss. Weiss’ mother was aware of his theater ambitions and implored him at the time to move to Los Angeles and pursue his passion, which he did.
A mentor there noticed his talent and suggested he try film school in New York to learn more about the art.
Weiss received a scholarship for comedy and wrote “The Man Who Loved Fat Dancing,” which was screened at the Academy Screenwriter’s Guild. He said the night Sydney Pollack introduced him as a filmmaker to a roomful of people was the impetus to his career as a screenwriter.
“People just started clapping, and I’m like ‘Ahhhhhh, I’m putting on a show’ and I ain’t going back, “he said.
The next couple of weeks was a flurry of meeting with agents. Weiss described how was summoned to Ireland to write for two years. Ireland, he said, was where he met a man who made him question his Christian faith.
“I moved back to the States, and I switched churches, so I can sit in the back row and just think because I’m confused,” he said.
It was around that time Weiss met a Jewish man at a film festival who was also a radio commentator who Weiss had known about from reading a Christian magazine that quoted him frequently. He was invited to the man’s house and was impressed to begin a new religious journey. He began attending shul — another term for synagogue.
It was at shul where Weiss met his wife and learned more about love through attending together. He said she told him shul felt like “coming home.”
He said the theme of love became the motivating force behind the writing of Shrek 2.
Weiss said he told the directors of Shrek 2 that it is not enough to have a plot. He said the British novelist C.S. Forester spoke of the differences between story and plot: a plot is when the king dies and then the queen dies; a story is when the king dies and then the queen dies of a broken heart.
“Suddenly we care,” Weiss said.
At the end of his lecture, Weiss spent a little time taking questions and talked about his work as a labor leader for Writers Guild of America, West.
Weiss said most of Hollywood labor includes “rank and file worker bees.” He said he started as a labor leader when there were 100 employers.
“Now you have six employers,” he said. “You have a company called Comcast NBC Universal. Now you have Disney which owns ABC, which owns Marvel, and Pixar and is about to own FOX.”
He said workers who value their health plans are at risk, and to be a labor union trying to battle against six massive national companies is very difficult.
“The labor movement is under such fire in the U.S.,” he said. “If you want to make American great again, you need a strong middle class.”
Weiss also spoke of his writing partner of 20 years, J. David Stem.
“He’s my second wife,” Weiss joked. “I’m a real collaborative person. I’m very verbal. I like to think on my feet, and it’s good for me to have a sparring partner. He’s brilliant. We really complement each other.”
They duo met working on a Nickelodeon show called Round House, which ended in 1996.
Weiss wrapped up his lecture with a statement about how unpredictable life can be.
“If you would have told me 23 years ago I’d be in Houston in this freezing weather, wearing a yamaka, I would say you were out of your mind,” Weiss said. “What I did was take a step. I wrote a word. I wrote another word. I took another step. If you keep taking a step in your spiritual life you become a stronger person—one step at a time.“