How to build a hero
Kimi writer DAVID KOEPP on creating a compelling protagonist
DAVID KOEPP KNOWS a thing or two about protagonists. “You gotta give a shit about them,” he says. And he should know. After all, he’s created some of the most memorable and iconic heroes/anti-heroes of the last 30 years, products of a fruitful career as one of Hollywood’s finest screenwriters. Here, Koepp talks us through some of his finest.
MADELINE ASHTON DEATH BECOMES HER 1992
One of Koepp’s weirdest films, the blacker-thanmidnight Robert Zemeckis comedy revolves around Meryl Streep’s Madeline, an actor who discovers that the secret of eternal life comes at a cost. “She was great fun to write, because she was just a terrible, terrible, selfish person,” laughs Koepp. He admits that with characters like this, studios can sometimes try to sand off their rough edges. “My response always is, ‘I understand that may not make him or her likeable, but it does make them interesting.’”
CARLITO BRIGANTE CARLITO’S WAY 1993
Al Pacino’s Puerto Rican gangster was adapted by Koepp from two novels by real-life judge Edwin Torres. “I normally don’t want to meet the author of the book, but in this case I had to meet him, and get him to like me enough to take me around this world,” says Koepp. It was Koepp’s idea to begin the movie with Carlito getting shot, narrating the events of his life as they flash through his mind. “The idea is that the whole movie takes place in the last 60 seconds of his life. Over the course of the movie we get to like him so much, we convince ourselves he’s going to make it.”
ALAN GRANT JURASSIC PARK 1993
There are three main characters in Steven Spielberg’s dino-tastic classic — Alan Grant, Ellie Sattler, Ian Malcolm — but Koepp always saw Sam Neill’s paleontologist as the chief protagonist. “If you go to the Michael Corleone model of character change, Grant starts the movie quite grumpy and solitary. He likes dead things better than living ones. And he has this experience and is tasked with getting two kids through the night in the jungle, and actually finds he’s good at it.” Life finds a way.
ETHAN HUNT MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 1996
Koepp was the first screenwriter to try to define the attributes of Tom Cruise’s super-spy, when he wrote the Brian De Palma original in 1996. And as he looked around for what made Ethan Hunt tick, he found the answer right under his nose. “I try not to write to an actor, because if you have an actor very firmly in mind and they pass, then you can never stop thinking about who you wrote it for,” he says. But Cruise was the producer on Mission: Impossible, and wasn’t going to pass. “For me, it’s hard to separate that character from the actor, because Tom has such a clear and powerful personality. There’s laser-like focus, there’s great strength — all that stuff is present in Tom.”
TOM WITZKY STIR OF ECHOES 1999
Another adaptation, this time of Richard Matheson’s short story, yielded one of Koepp’s most interesting leads, with Kevin Bacon assaying an ordinary man who finds that he can see spirits. “He was a working-class guy, which I loved, because ghost stories usually happen to upperclass or upper-middle-class people who own great big houses, because they’re beautiful to shoot,”
says Koepp, who also directed the movie. “The character really takes off when Kevin gives a very touching monologue where he tells his wife he’s disappointed in himself. Boy, you lock into that guy right away, because who doesn’t feel like that?”
PETER PARKER SPIDER-MAN 2002
Koepp was also the first writer to put flesh on the cinematic bones of Spider-man, writing Tobey Maguire’s Peter Parker for the Sam Raimi 2002 movie. And he found that an often-dismissed technique served him well: narration. “Voiceover is not such a bad thing if you want to create a strong central character,” he says. “It’s those initial strokes of who the character is that either free you to do interesting writing, or limit you. He’s a teenager who feels a bit misunderstood and is a bit lost. That’s a great start.” Koepp recently saw SpiderMan: No Way Home, in which Maguire returned to the role after 20 years. “I thought it was very good. Tobey’s such a soulful actor. You can see in his eyes that Peter’s been through some shit.”
ANGELA CHILDS KIMI 2022
Koepp’s latest is a collaboration with Steven Soderbergh, centred around Zoë Kravitz’s agoraphobic tech specialist. Koepp drew inspiration from one of his favourite movies, Sorry, Wrong Number, in zeroing in on a female protagonist. “I wanted her to be terribly vulnerable,” he explains. “The female-driven thriller is one of my favourite genres. And in Angela’s case, she can be brusque and difficult, but I like that about her. I wanted to feel for her and understand her world, and how hard the world was for her to navigate.”