The trouble with being a screenwriter is the irony that you are invisible to those who see your work. On the other hand, maybe that’s what makes becoming a screenwriter so brilliant – you change identities with the stroke of a pen. So while you may not know him by name, you do know him through the characters he’s created: Justine (Jennifer Aniston) from The Good Girl, Joey (Katie Holmes) from Dawson’s Creek and now, Dewey Finn (Jack Black) in School of Rock.
Meet Mike White. White has moved from indie film to major studio production and switched genres with as much deft and creative energy as James Brown during a sold out performance of “Sex Machine.” A native of L.A., White thought he’d spend his post-college years in New York City writing for the stage. Instead, he was offered a job in Hollywood and has since penned scripts for TV (Freaks and Geeks, Dawsons Creek) and film (Orange County, Dead Man on Campus). However, Sundance was where White’s reputation for solid storytelling ignited like wild fire. His darkly textured films The Good Girl and Chuck and Buck, films he also acted in, achieved critical acclaim, as well as viewer buzz for their power to simultaneously disturb and make you laugh.
His latest creation, School of Rock is once again garnering the writer and actor attention, most notably for being such a departure from his darker comedic fare. A cross between The Bad News Bears and Fame, White wrote the film for its star actor and Tenacious D front man Jack Black, who was his neighbor for three years. “Jack is a great performer, a terrific musician and the perfect antihero,” says White. “He’s kind of unhinged in that fun way Willy Wonka is, and I kept having this idea about him jamming around with a bunch of kids.”
The film, directed by another indie champion, Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused), tells the story of Dewey Finn, a down-on-his-luck musician who impersonates a substitute teacher and turns a class of fifth graders into a rock band. The story’s broad audience appeal and solid performances (the film also stars Joan Cusack and Sarah Silverman), is giving White the kind of mainstream credibility that will open more doors and opportunities to experiment with new things. As he says, “[At this point], I’m just trying to write myself back to freedom again, where I can follow my inspiration. The more you feel like there’s opportunities to do different things, the more you wish you could be free to do them all, but that’s life.”
As the film opens in theatres, Glide got the chance to catch up with White, where he opened up about acting, writing and what makes the man behind the curtain tick.
School of Rock is much different than some of your previous work. Did you consciously decide to move away from writing another dark comedy?
Yeah, a little bit. You kind of live in the world of the movie that you’re making, and The Good Girl was the last one up, and it was kind of the most hopeless movie I’ve written, and after that movie, and the kind of reviews it got, and the way it was taken, I just felt like ‘I can’t fall into the trap of taking myself too seriously…I’m writing movies’ (laughs). So there was a part of me that was like, ‘I want to just write something that’s gonna be a lot of fun…a lot of fun to write, a lot of fun to shoot, and a lot of fun to just be a part of.’ So yeah, it was kind of a choice to do a real departure from the more somber stuff I’ve done.
Does your approach differ, making a mainstream comedy like this, as compared to an indie like The Good Girl, where the end result would inevitably produce critical acclaim?
The truth is, it’s so hard to second guess…everything I’ve done, everything I’ve ever done sort of varies. I’ve gotten crazy good reviews, and crazy positive responses, and also like the most disturbingly, hateful responses (laughs). So at this point, I’ve just stopped trying to second guess how anything will be received. And you just kind of hope that the movie comes close to what you intended it to do. Whether it’s emotionally or out of the ideas of it, or just the story or whatever. But with this one, I just kind of wanted to see if I could do a movie that was just more of a crowd pleaser, I guess is the way to put it. I just wanted to see if I could do it. I’ve been sent a lot of scripts to rewrite, or met with studios and instead of trying to latch onto a person’s idea of what would make a commercial movie, or make a movie that people just want to come see, I just thought, ‘why don’t I just try to come up with the whole thing and see if it ends up in the ballpark.’
Is there a drastic difference between working with studio-producers versus indie-producers?
The huge difference is, Chuck and Buck and The Good Girl are exactly the draft of the script that I wrote, you know, with some changes that mostly were initiated by myself, but the script is the movie. But when you’re doing a studio movie, you have big producers you have to please and big stars you have to woo, and directors that have strong opinions, and frankly, there’s just more negotiations going into what ultimately the final script is. At the same time, like with this particular movie, I was shocked how close to the original script it turned out to be. The good thing about [producer] Scott Rudin is that, you have to please him, and once you please him, he becomes the greatest protector of the script. And really protects you from the whole ‘development by committee’ thing going on, and it makes all the difference. While he sometimes can be a lot to contend with, and he’ll be the first to admit it, once you feel like you’ve done your job, he definitely does his job by you.
So he’s a producer you can actually depend on to defend you and your script?
Yeah, he wants to make commercial movies, but he has more of an ambition in terms of…you know, he doesn’t go into it with some preset terms of, ‘oh, the guy needs a love interest,’ or a lot of the stupid development that certainly I’ve gotten over the years. And the truth is, after working with him, and having the experience I’ve had making independent movies, it’s going to be very difficult for me to go back to a situation where I end up being sort of pushed around in that way and you realize the people don’t know what they’re talking about (laughs).
In terms of your acting, when you’re taking on a character that you’ve created, is there a constant tension where you’re performing the way you initially intended the character to act, but the director is trying to pull it in a different direction?
Yeah, sometimes that comes up, but when I’m acting, truthfully, I’m so focused on not being the stinker in the group (laughing) that I feel like, if I look to the director for help, and I like the ideas, that by being in the movie it frees me up from being that kind of anxious writer with nothing to do except backseat drive, and bitch about what they’re not doing. So I think it’s a good way to be a part of the project without being sort of the worrywart.
In some of the films you’ve both written and acted in, you sometimes have the best lines of the movie. Are you consciously writing those for yourself, and is acting something you’d like to pursue further, or are you keeping it secondary?
I don’t know. Acting is fun for me. It’s frustrating when you just feel like the screenwriter that kind of plans the party and then the party happens and you get sent back to the caves, and so I’d like to be able to keep that option open. But I get sent stuff, or offers to do things, and for me…it’s taken me so many years to get to a place where it’s a little bit easier to get stuff made that I write, that I feel like it would be silly to just go off and, I don’t know, play ‘the computer scientist’ or whatever action movie or something (laughs).
What’s your writing process? Do you come up with a premise and go from there, or do you have a character that you build a world around?
It’s different with each thing. With this one, I just kind of had a picture of Jack [Black] jamming with a bunch of kids, and I just thought that was a funny idea (laughs). And the story just started coming to me. But there’s a long, sort of percolating period for me, and then a very, kind of rapid writing period.
You and Jack co-wrote a lot of the songs for the film? What was that like, writing with one of the masters of Tenacious D?
(laughs) Well, the stuff that we wrote together is some of the stuff that he just kind of sings on guitar in the classroom with the kids. A lot of it was in the script and then Jack brought a lot of his stink to it. So yeah, it was hilarious. I mean, it was fun…he had me come over to, Liam Lynch helped out on one of the songs, and he had come over there and just listen to them jam, and it was a kick, definitely.
So what’s on the horizon?
I have a TV show that I created that will be premiering the beginning of 2004. It’s with Molly Shannon and Jason Schwartzman. It’s called “Cracking Up.” Jason Schwartzman plays a psychology grad student who moves into the guest house of this Beverly Hills family, to just sort of work with their youngest kid who is having development problems, and then once he gets in there, he realizes that the kid is the only sane one in the family. It’s twisted. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.
You mentioned how you’re finally at a certain level in your career, but how did you deal with the initial frustrations, and all that goes along with being a struggling writer trying to make it in Los Angeles?
For me, the first thing that I did, and was really the key to having any kind of success, was just channeling all of that energy into writing. I just kept writing, and I would write script after script, and some of them sucked and some were ok, and I got passed the, thinking I’d written a masterpiece and waiting through lunches or meetings or whatever, like somehow that was gonna save me, and I’d just try to finish a script and start thinking of the next one. I think out of all of it, it helped me get a voice, and certainly made me realize that there was stuff that I really could do and there was stuff I could do that was just ok. And there’s such a need for real material, that I think if you can just add it, eventually someone is gonna figure it out. I just think a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that there’s a million ways to become a writer without actually writing (laughs).
When it comes to compromising your work, have you had a particularly bad writing experience?
Well, truthfully, any time you’re getting paid, it’s better than the worst writing experience (laughs). The worst writing experience is when you write something for no money and it turns out to be a piece of shit and you wasted months of your life (laughs). But the worst in the sense that it did not match up to my sensibilities as a writer was definitely Dawson’s Creek. ‘Cause I did that show for two years, and it was like…as much as it was painful to keep writing those scripts it was a great learning experience, ‘cause I learned what the world of television was like, and the process….but it was just, so not my kind of characters or kind of situations.
Have you found there to be more room for the writer’s voice in television as opposed to film? And do you prefer one medium to the other?
The thing is, I’ve had a lucky run in terms of the feature work I’ve done, just ‘cause I have been able to really let the script be the thing that got shot, and I haven’t been rewritten a thousand times. But that’s unusual (laughs) and I don’t really know…I’d like to say it’s just ‘cause I’m a really great writer, but I think it’s just serendipity. In TV, you really do have more power if your running a show, but there is a lot of interference too. Each thing has it’s traps, and the best approach, or at least the approach that’s worked for me, is that you just keep writing your own, original material, and not sort of, sign on to write a franchise or the rewrite or sequel or whatever. If you’re the creator of what it is, you have much more control over it and it’s much less likely that they’ll replace you and push you around.
Well, what happened to Freaks and Geeks? There was quite a cult following developing around that show. Is there a DVD release in the works?
Yeah, there is gonna be a DVD release. It was another, you know, after Dawson’s Creek, I said ‘I’m not gonna do TV anymore,’ and then I saw the pilot for Freaks and Geeks, and I was like, ‘wait, this is the show that I told them that we could do!” And I felt like I didn’t want to leave with a bad taste in my mouth, so I signed up to do that show. But it was really creatively exciting and fun, but it was another one of those…heartbreaking, you think you’re doing great work, and it still doesn’t hit, and you’re not supported by the network, so it was definitely frustrating.
So do you see yourself staying with comedy for the long term?
Well, I like things that kind of blend tones. Like The Good Girl I kind of see as a comedy, but people argue otherwise. I mean, I’d like to do comedies, but in terms of what that means, you know, there’s the School of Rock kind of comedy and then there’s The Good Girl kind of comedy, there’s the Chuck and Buck kind of comedy…and some of them, you don’t laugh at (laughs). I just think I’ll always do sort of character-ish comedies. I don’t think I’ll ever do a movie where people jump in the air and kick each other in slow-motion.
No?
I don’t think so. Maybe…as long as I get to do the kicking! (laughs)
