[Narrator] "On Story" is brought to you in part by the Alice Kleberg Reynolds Foundation, a Texas family providing innovative funding since 1979.

[waves] [kids screaming] [wind] [witch cackling] [sirens wail] [gunshots] [dripping] [suspenseful music] [telegraph beeping, typing] "On Story" presented by Austin Film Festival.

A look inside the creative process from today's leading writers and directors.

[paper uncrumpling] This week's "On Story," a conversation with the Academy Award nominated screenwriter of "Life of Pi" and "Finding Neverland," David Magee.

- The process of taking someone else's work, in some ways, it's more freeing because you can see what you like and what you don't.

You can have strong opinions and you can begin being very critical.

It's not a reductive process.

It's a, "Let's just keep throwing ideas out," and getting it bigger and bigger.

Creating a lump of clay you can mold.

[paper crumpling] [typing] [Narrator] This episode, David Magee examines his process of adapting and translating, both "Finding Neverland" and "Life of Pi" into Oscar winning films.

[typewriter ding] - I lived in New York for a lot of years.

I had a great time.

I made no money.

I traveled around and did regional theater and spent a lot of my time trying to find ways to support my acting habit.

And, as the result of that, I did a lot of voiceover.

When you go and listen to a book in your car, you can either listen to the full length, which is 10, 13 hours, it could be quite long, or you can listen to the abridged version, which is about three hours.

Someone has to abridge that book.

And I went into the studio one day and someone had abridged a novel that I was reading.

And I said to the producers, "This is terrible, I'm sorry, but I mean, this was the worst abridgement I'd ever read in my life."

And I said, "I can do better than this."

And they said, "Well, do you want to try?

We will pay you."

It wasn't a lot, but it was enough to keep me going.

And I said, "I'd do it."

And so over the course of about five years, I abridged at least 85 novels.

I don't know exactly what the number was, but I became an editor, essentially.

Taking other people's books apart.

And what I was doing was taking a 105,000-word book, which runs for 12 hours down to 29,500 words, which runs about three hours reading time, approximately the length of a film script.

My focus was to pare away extraneous scenes and lengthy set descriptions, focus on dialogue and action.

So, without me realizing it, I was getting incredible training in structure, and I learned a healthy disrespect for writing.

[audience laughing] 'Cause I always wanted to write, but I was just a little scared of it, and I was treating words as too precious.

And once you've cut up 85 other people's books, you start to feel a little less precious about your own words and a little more confident in your ability to think in the big picture.

[typewriter ding] Allan Knee, who had done "Little Women" on Broadway and was the writer of the original play, had staged a version of "The Man Who Was Peter Pan," which was the play he wrote.

And it happened to be reviewed in the Hollywood Reporter, and it caught the attention of Miramax.

They tried to buy the rights for it, but by the time they did, Nelly had bought the rights from Allan for a dollar, and then I had got that dollar to write it, you know.

So it was just, we had already had a contract.

So they said, "Okay, well see what you can do with it."

And about 4 1/2, five months later, I had a rushed first draft that I then shared with them.

And based on that, they said, "Okay, yeah, we'll give you a shot to write this."

And so I did my darnedest to do any, you know, I would please them no matter what they said, it was a musical, I'd say, "Okay, let's go."

But it was another several years before Marc Forster, the director came on board.

Marc Forster read the early version of the script.

Marc expressed interest early on, but then nothing happened for years.

And then when "Monster's Ball" came out, they said, "What do you wanna do?"

And he said, "I told you, I wanna do 'Finding Neverland.'"

And that's how that happened.

[typewriter ding] There is a big final scene in the movie when Sylvia, the mother, imagines Neverland goes to Neverland.

They do a play in the living room.

And then I had at a certain point, when Peter Pan says, "Let's fly away," she found her chair being lifted up.

And some people from the theater were carrying her out to the backyard where they had set up some of the scenery so that we would see that they had gone to special effort to make it magical for her.

And that's all I thought we were ever gonna be able to afford.

Well, of course, as soon as I turned it into the studio, they said, "This is great, but make it bigger," which you never hear.

Because I had been very constrained, and my little fantasies were just kind of, and he dances with the dog, he dances with a bear.

And they said, "No, let's put it in a circus tent with people all around, and it's a big cell."

Okay.

[audience laughing] Let's make it bigger, that's fine by me.

And it got bigger and bigger.

And then we were confronted with the realities of the budget.

And I was in New York when I got a call from Richard Gladstein, the producer, and he called and said, "We've cut Neverland."

And I said, "What do you mean we've cut Neverland?"

And he said, "Well, we don't really have the budget to spend on that big scene.

So we're just gonna see a look on her face.

She's gonna enjoy the play, and she'll get a look and she'll understand that something's happened."

And I flew over to do work on the script.

And when I arrived, Richard met me and he had this gleeful impish look on his face.

We went to this enormous studio.

And then that entire garden scene that you see, they had hundreds of people carrying plants and AstroTurf and crocodiles covered with jewels and everything.

And they were building that in the entire space.

And he said, "We're not telling Miramax we're doing this."

[audience laughing] "We spent the money, but if they find out before they see it, they won't like it.

So I had to lie to you."

[audience laughing] "So you know, once we show them the footage, they'll be so happy, it'll be okay."

[audience laughing] And that was the case.

[magical music] - That is Neverland.

[typewriter ding] And my agent called and said, "Have you read 'Life of Pi'?"

And I said, "Yeah, that's a hard one."

And he said, "Ang Lee wants to do it."

And I said, "Sounds great.

It sounds good, let's do it."

Ang and I met the next night after I talked to my agent, and I talked to Ang about another project previously.

So we had a little bit of a relationship.

And the first thing that we talked about was what is this story about?

What is this film about?

What's the focus?

What's the center?

Because there are a lot of ideas that are kinda thrown around in that book.

You have to focus on the themes that are most important to you.

So we agreed from the very beginning that this was a story about storytelling, about the power of stories to help us through our lives, to overcome the thing, difficulties that we face in our lives.

About how we all have different narratives, some religious, some spiritual, some atheistic scientific ways of understanding the world that you have to like rely on.

When you find yourself in a difficult situation, you have to step back and say, "Okay, this is what's at work."

In the book, there's a scene that's played for comedy where he's a young boy and the father wants to teach him that animals are dangerous.

So he says, "Come see this tiger."

It wasn't Richard Parker, "and we're gonna feed the tiger a goat."

And they watch the tiger eat the goat.

And they're kind of faintly horrified.

And then he says, "Now what about an antelope?

And is an antelope safe?"

"No, an antelope has horns that can spear you."

"What about a zebra?"

"A zebra can kick you to death."

"What about?"

And he goes through dozens of animals until he finally gets to a bunny and he says, "What about a bunny?"

"Okay, a bunny's safe."

And that's kind of the tone of it.

We wanted to turn that into a real disillusionment that he reaches the age of around 12 or 13.

He thinks the world is safe, the world is like this zoo.

Everything is wonderful and protected.

And then one day, he meets the tiger and he realizes there's a harsh, cruel world out there that he's never been introduced to.

And we call that our bar mitzvah scene.

[dramatic music] - No!

What are you thinking?!

- And so it's played not for humor, it's played for the intensity.

And for the kind of break in relationship he has with his father at that moment, who is the rationalist, who is the scientist, who basically says, "You think everything's a dream.

You think everything's a party.

You think that animal has a soul?

No, that animal will eat you.

That animal doesn't care anything about you.

If you think there's anything in that animal's eyes, it's something you made up."

- This is between a father and his sons.

Suraj, cut away.

- He said he's sorry.

Do you have to scar them for life?

- Scar them.

That boy almost lost his arm?

- But he is a boy.

- He will be a man sooner than you think.

And this is a lesson.

- And that becomes kind of a something that he needs to understand for himself and prove for himself over the course of the journey.

So that's a way in which a specific scene was tailored to the film in order to give shape to the first act and an action to the first act.

So you would feel like you were being told a narrative, an action narrative rather than kind of an abstract, interesting, but you know, a novelistic approach to kind of exploring ideas for a book.

[goat cries] [typewriter ding] - en we first started talking about the adaptation, we thought, "You know, what if we did?"

Well, Ang suggested what if we do the three acts as completely looking different filmically, everything different about them.

So the first act takes place in kind of a romantic India.

The second act takes place in something completely different, at sea.

And the third act takes place in yet another mode.

Now, we pulled away from that, but in the course of that conversation, we said, "Let's try and," 'cause there's so much exposition, there is so much that has to be explained.

"Let's try doing the second act without any dialogue at all."

And that's all the time at sea.

From the moment the shipwreck happens until he gets to shore, let's try and write the whole thing without a word of dialogue.

Just actions, you know, figuring out all the actions that we could do to tell the story.

And that's how we wrote it.

But I think I was trying to prove to myself as a writer that I didn't need voiceover because it's a truism in screenwriting to a lot of people that you shouldn't use voiceover.

And so I was trying to prove I didn't need to, but I got to a certain point where I said, "Now I've proved that I can convey what's happening, but what we're missing is what the boys experiencing emotionally as a result where his thoughts are taking him."

So if I could convey the actions of the story and the moment to moment, what is he trying to accomplish without words?

And then if I were able to write in the voiceover, his more abstract feelings that come to him as a result of what he's going through, then I'm not cheating.

I'm expanding on what you're seeing.

So at that point, we started bringing voiceover in.

And it's only natural if you've got an animal in a boat with you, whatever animal it is, you're gonna talk to it.

So it became almost forced and artificial if he was like looking at the tiger and going, eh, you know.

So then we had him actually talking to the tiger, and that felt very natural.

So it was only gradually that we brought out the voice in that character.

[gentle music] - Talk to me.

♪ ♪ Tell me what you see.

♪ ♪ [typewriter ding] - I never talked to him and said, "Now what is your most important message?"

Because I suspect, and I don't wanna put words in his mouth that there's a line in the book where he'll tell you a story that will make you believe in God.

And I think Jan believes that the book does that successfully, makes you believe in God.

I don't think that's the main point of the book.

And in fact, when we have that line come up in the movie, Pi's response is, "Oh, my uncle would say that about a good meal."

Because I wanted to undercut the notion that we're gonna try and make you believe anything.

What we were focused on was the power of that faith and that story to help Pi on his narrative.

And are you gonna question his right to take that story and make that his reality when that's what helped him to survive?

You know, and that was a more interesting question to me.

So that at the end of the film, Pi says to the writer, and this is in the book though, not which story is correct, but which story do you prefer?

Which is the better story?

- In both stories, the ship sinks, my family dies, and I suffer.

- True.

- So which story do you prefer?

- The one with a tiger.

That's the better story.

- We're not taking sides on which story is the more true or real.

[typing] [typing] - Hello, my name is Jeremy Mackie and I'm the director of the short film "The Return."

The idea for the film came from a short story by H.H.

Munro called "The Open Window."

Our writers, Heather Hughes and Kate Wharton had suggested the story to me and I remembered it as a very morose and also very whimsical tale.

And then we were also really enamored with two actors, Marvin Rosand and Conner Marx who made this fantastic odd couple that we really wanted to work with.

So with those elements, we started to make H.H.

Munro's story ours.

Coming up, this is our film, "The Return."

I hope you enjoy it.

[mysterious music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ [traffic ambience] - Mel.

Hey, Mel, how's it going?

- You're late.

- I'm Josh.

- You're replacing Mark.

Mark's a good guy.

Hard worker.

Daughter just turned three.

- I don't know anything about Mark.

[Mel] You interviewed with Stan.

- Oh no, actually, my dad was a dealt, so he knew the mayor from way back.

Anyway, after graduation, made a couple phone calls.

Here I am.

- Stan wants to meet us over in maintenance - In...

I'm sorry, in maintenance?

Mel, my skills are web design, right?

And optimizing search engine results.

The future.

It's raining down.

You know what I'm saying?

The future.

Mel, it's, you know- - This is the future.

Okay, this is your time card area here and other things and the lockers.

And you'll need to know the entire tunnel system.

- The tunnel system.

- Is that a problem?

- I tend to do better in open spaces, you know what I mean?

But no, it's gonna be great.

Actually, in my junior year abroad, I took a tour of the Paris Tunnel systems.

- Yeah.

- It's very cool.

[mysterious music] ♪ ♪ - This whole campus is built on one big sinkhole.

We're constantly pumping the water out.

That's why there's so many fountains.

Water overflow.

[laughs] Hello, Mike, how you doing?

- Hey, Mel.

[mysterious music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Let me show you something.

♪ ♪ [door creaks] Most people don't realize the Space Needle is really tilting, just like the Leaning Tower of Pizza.

- It's Pisa, but... - Oh yeah.

History buff.

♪ ♪ [engine starts] [engine humming] [rumbling] [engine humming] [exhaust spews] [gasps] - Mel, Mel?

Mel.

- Pay attention.

You do not want to get lost.

- Now, I was actually promised a desk job.

All right?

My dad said very specifically- - Before Stan gets here, I gotta fill you in.

Whatever you do, agree with him.

He's had a rough time these last few years.

See that boiler room?

Valerie died there.

- So... somebody died down here.

- Five years ago, she came down here for a smoke in her mobility scooter with her service dog.

He had been installing a grounded static line on a de-energized 230 kilowatt.

Stan accidentally left the line hot and it touched her scooter.

- She got electrocuted?

- Slowly.

For a while, she was conscious, but no one could touch her.

We could hear her screaming and the thunk of her scooter hitting the wall trying to move away.

The smell was terrible.

The burning hair, the stench.

The keys she had the charge fused them together.

Stan made it into a paperweight and he carries it everywhere.

- That's horrible.

- Well, that's not the worst part.

Poor Stan thinks she's still just out for a smoke and will come back someday rolling in on her scooter with that damn dog.

That's why the fire door's propped open that wide.

He just can't cope with it.

He can't seem to let go of her.

It is terrible.

I feel so sorry for him, I do.

It's just doesn't make sense.

You know what I mean?

[suspenseful music] - Hey, Josh?

- Yes.

- I'm Stan.

- Hey Stan, how's it going?

- Mel showing you the ropes?

- Oh, you bet.

He's been very informative.

- Good.

Don't usually leave a safety door open, but Valerie and her dog will be back in a sec.

She's grabbing a quick smoke and she always comes in this way.

She's limited mobility, so I let her do it.

I know I shouldn't, but she's been here forever.

- She sounds like a very sweet lady.

- Sure is.

- Let me level with you.

Stan, I don't know too much about maintenance.

My degrees are computer science- - No, no, no, no, no, you start in janitorial, work up to maintenance.

And after a few years, facilities management.

- Do you have anything above ground?

- Tunnel work is vital.

This facility cannot operate at peak efficiency without proper tunnel maintenance.

You don't think her battery died, do you?

I mean, she's been gone for a while.

- No, sir, I think she's fine.

- Mel, did you fault analysis that pump?

- Yeah.

- Great, show me.

You don't mind waiting down here for Valerie?

She'll just be a minute.

- Okay, well- - Did he talk to you about getting lost?

- Yes sir.

- Good.

[power humming] [power humming] [suspenseful music] ♪ ♪ [thudding] - Holy hell.

[suspenseful music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ Okay.

[suspenseful music builds] [dog barking] [dog barking] - That one right?

[running footsteps] - Who the hell was that?

- Mark's replacement.

- Weird guy.

Is he coming back?

Why's he leaving?

- I expect it was the dog.

He said last spring break in Mazatlan, he rescued a little dog.

One night, he woke up and it was gnawing at his bare toes.

Apparently, it was a long-haired sewage rat.

He said he is terrified of little dogs.

[Stan] Huh?

Too bad.

Well, maybe we can get Mark back.

- That's probably a good idea.

[dramatic music] ♪ ♪ [upbeat music] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪