Oklahoman’s ‘Arrival’ at the Oscars comes with story
Although he has worked in the movie business and lived in Los Angeles for more than a decade, Eric Heisserer freely admits that he has played tourist the last few months.
After years of working primarily on horror films, Heisserer has arrived on the Hollywood awards circuit, hauling in a variety of nominations for scripting the elegantly cerebral science-fiction drama “Arrival.” The Norman native already has earned the Writers Guild of America, Critics Choice and Oklahoma Film Critics Circle awards for best adapted screenplay, and on Sunday night, he will compete for cinema’s top honor: an Academy Award.
“I am such the tourist. I’m sure I stand out easily because this is obviously my first rodeo at these things, but I get excited over name tags. I get excited over gift bags,” he said with a chuckle. “I get thrilled over just having a chance to meet someone who’s done, like, sound editing on another film that I’ve loved, or sharing lunch with one of the Oscar-nominated short film creators. That has been my experience where I’m happy to shake every hand and, on occasion, just go for the hug.”
Hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, the 89th Oscars will air live at 6 p.m. Sunday on ABC.
“I am told that there is no food there, but there is a lot of booze. So, I need to eat beforehand. And then I’m told that there are a lot of parties afterward. I’m not much of a party guy, but I’m going to try to hang in there because I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to go to these things again,” Heisserer said in a recent phone interview.
“I’m trying desperately to protect the Monday afterward just to sleep through most of it because I think this might be the time that I’ve gone into a sleep coma after such a hectic run-up to it.”
Learning as he goes
Since he has been trying to get “Arrival” made for most of his screenwriting career, Heisserer has undoubtedly earned a few hugs and parties. But the Norman High School graduate didn’t start out making movies. Taking some intriguing advice from his father, Andrew Heisserer, a longtime University of Oklahoma professor, he moved to Houston after high school to work at Space Industries.
“He nudged me in the right way. I was in high school and struggling as best I could, and he sat me down one day and said that he noticed that I was an autodidact, that I learned much better just through my own experiences. I had to break something on my own and put it back together again, and the classroom environment kind of drained the life out of me. This is pre-ADD drugs,” Heisserer said with a laugh.
“I found that fascinating. To have someone who’s a college professor say that his own son probably wasn’t right for college was kind of a shock to the system. But I found he was right. I went out and I made my way in the world and learned a lot on my own. … It wasn’t until years later when I came back to thank him and he said, ‘Did I say that? It was just because we had no money, Eric.’ “
At Space Industries, Heisserer used his selftaught programming skills to develop and design layouts for proposed high-tech equipment for astronauts to use. He found hanging out with astrophysicists and other geniuses inspiring, and he set out to pursue his long-held interest in storytelling.
The native Oklahoman penned 13 film and TV screenplays before getting his first option, and by the time he got his second, he decided to move to LA. He initially made his mark in horror movies, writing scripts for the 2010 “A Nightmare on Elm Street” remake, the 2011 sequel “Final Destination 5,” the 2011 prequel “The Thing” and last year’s original sleeper hit “Lights Out.”
Heisserer broke out of the horror genre and into directing with his wellreceived 2013 Hurricane Katrina thriller “Hours,” which was released two weeks after its star, Paul Walker, died in a car accident.
While he was making other movies, though, Heisserer was working on adapting Ted Chiang’s award-winning 1998 sci-fi novella “Story of Your Life” into the feature film that eventually became “Arrival.” About 2005, he read Chiang’s story of a linguist named Louise Banks whose life is fundamentally changed when she is recruited by the military to communicate with aliens who have made first contact with Earth —and it changed his life, too.
“At the end of the day, it was just how it made me feel, and it was my deepest wish to find a way to gift that to other people,” Heisserer said.
Making his ‘Arrival’
Although “Arrival” centers on one of cinema’s most timeworn topics —the alien invasion —it rarely has been given such an emotionally resonant and thought-provoking treatment. Pitching the story to the studios got him nowhere, but in 2010, Heisserer found supporters in Dan Levine and Dan Cohen — whom he affectionately calls “the Dans” —at the production company 21 Laps. The writer eventually decided to pen a speculative screenplay in the hopes of getting the movie made.
“This was a unique experience for me in that since I wrote it on spec with only the producers of “21 Laps” in the room with me, we were all very passionate about avoiding all of those tropes and crafted a script that sidestepped the kind of things that you might hear from, you know, a traditional studio executive,” he said. “I really didn’t get that kind of pushback until after the film was made and our distributors like Paramount and Sony then had to scratch their heads a little bit and figure out how they would market something that zigged instead of zagged.”
Director Denis Villeneuve (“Sicario”) has said in interviews he was drawn to the story’s originality, and Heisserer called working with the esteemed helmer “a lovely marriage.”
“The ideas and the emotion that he brought to this made it better because he and I wanted to make the same movie. Like he didn’t look at the script and say, ‘Here’s a chance to make my first dark comedy.’ He didn’t do that,” Heisserer said with a laugh. “He didn’t want to infuse it with the tropes of science fiction that I worked so hard to avoid. He was completely on board with the thing that we were all trying to build together.”
Even with its star power —five-time Oscar nominee (and notable 2017 snub) Amy Adams becomes, in Heisserer’s words, “the beating heart of this film” as the linguist tasked with communicating with an alien species, while two-time nominee Jeremy Renner plays a physicist who works alongside her to decipher the extraterrestrial science involved —the commercial and critical success of “Arrival” was one of the cinematic surprises of 2016.
The high-concept sci-fi thriller has earned more than $195 million worldwide and scored eight Oscar nominations, including best director for Villeneuve, best picture and, yes, best sound editing. The film made its home entertainment debut Valentine’s Day on 4K Ultra HD, Blu-ray, DVD and On Demand.
For Heisserer, the success brings as much relief as joy. “I will say that it is bittersweet the effect that time has on this kind of work,” he said. “After a certain number of years, you go from like cheering in victory to just sighing in relief that it actually got made or that it actually, like, went over another hurdle. Most of this has been a relief that it has found its audience and that critics have embraced it.
“You know, if this had come out in 2012, I think I still would have been just jumping up and down and screaming in joy. But the work tends to exhaust you to the point that when you reach the finish line, you’re just like, ‘OK, I’m just going to lay down here for a bit instead.’”