by Lucy V Hay
And what is this story about? ‘Parenting, specifically fatherhood,’ Eric answers, without hesitation. ‘There’s a lot of stories about motherhood’s journey. But from talking to friends, I knew that new fathers often have lots of doubts and anxieties about this huge responsibility they’re taking on. I wanted to explore the male psyche.’ Aware Eric does not live in New Orleans or even come from the city, I was keen to ask why he would set his movie there, in the midst of 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, and not, say, in the middle of a nameless storm, without the date attached? ‘I have friends who live there,’ Heisserer says. ‘New Orleans is a city that’s never forgotten how to celebrate. But when Katrina struck, there were all these stories, these smaller tragedies, that didn’t necessarily make the news. One really resonated with me: how doctors and nurses were having to hand-crank generators to keep medical equipment going when the power went out.’ So Hours comes not from just a single ‘place’, but several? Eric agrees: ‘I believe in what I call “mitosis screenwriting”; I don’t make a story from just one I’ve heard, but many.’
Hours was generally received very well, with Walker’s tragic death just a few weeks before the film’s release ironically increasing its profile (in fact, it was how I became aware of the movie, in an article ‘RIP Paul Walker, Who Was Two Weeks Away from Sharing with Audiences the Finest Performance of His Career’ on the blog Thompson on Hollywood). Hours did inevitably catch some heat from a few (generally younger) critics on the basis of being so markedly different from Walker’s previous works. In addition, the distributor took a route that is becoming steadily more common with drama features and sold Hours as a thriller, which it most definitely is not. Looking at the poster and DVD box, any moviegoer could be forgiven for thinking it is more in keeping with Fast & Furious et al: Walker is looking stressed and rugged, staring into the distance in the midst of skyscrapers and palm trees blowing in the gales; there’s even a helicopter flying overhead. ‘I understand why distributors make that move,’ Heisserer says, ‘but I find it disingenuous. I would have preferred for it to be sold as it is, not through deceptive marketing.’
However, in an industry in which commerce is king, creatives rarely get a say in how their own movies are sold to the public and Heisserer was no exception to this. Money was raised the ‘traditional’ way: with Walker attached, Heisserer was able to generate half the budget needed via foreign pre-sales via its distributor, Voltage. The other half came from what Eric calls ‘bonding companies’ – effectively, a big fat (and terrifying) loan. In addition, Hours was a punishing shoot; the team had to really hit the ground running. The movie combines a sunken set; fight choreography; water; flares and other fire hazards; a prosthetic baby, plus a real live baby; even a dog. The shoot was for just 18 days, a seemingly impossibly small window for such an ambitious project, but they pulled it off – even though they knew from the outset there would be no opportunity for pick-ups or reshoots. Eric and his team had to get the footage when they got it with no return, meaning effectively a single day’s shooting was the equivalent of three days’ worth. Eric tells a fantastic story about the scene in which Nolan goes to check on the generator in the basement of the hospital, which is mid-leg deep in murky water. Nolan subsequently gets electrocuted and has to fall back, ‘unconscious’, into the water. Eric’s team only had three identical outfits for Walker for this sequence, so Paul would have to act his electrocution, get dunked, then race out of the water to change, with Wardrobe stripping off his clothes and washing, drying and ironing them, over and over again. Just as the odds are against Nolan in the movie, however, Eric and his team succeeded, in the face of amazing adversity, in getting the film in the can.
My Take on Hours
I don’t mind admitting when I’m wrong, so I’ll say first I was sceptical about Hours. I’ve seen many typecast stars like Walker, both in my career as a script editor and as an avid consumer of movies myself. In my view, the bigger the star, the less likely they are to throw off the ‘shackles’ of their previous roles and make us believe they are something else entirely. So, before his death, Paul Walker did not figure prominently on my radar, but I’m married to a car nut, so I’ve watched all the Fast & Furious movies multiple times without resentment. I like the soundtracks and the speed and I thought Walker was attractive, but I will be honest and say I thought I was seeing Walker, the actor, as ‘the guy who likes to drive fast’, not the character, Bryan O’Connor. However, my interest was piqued when I read about Hours, so when I saw it on promotion at the supermarket, I bought it. Now, as anyone who knows me in ‘real life’ realises, I am a phone addict: any movie I watch must compete with Twitter, Facebook and email, whether I am at home watching a DVD, or streaming, or even at the cinema (I realise that makes me some kind of evil heretic, but calm down: I’m usually the only person IN my local, rural cinema). So just like always, I was tapping away as Hours began… but my phone was forgotten by the time the short, stylised credit sequence kicked off: I was pulled in straightaway. Within moments, Abigail, in labour and in trouble, is escorted into hospital on a gurney, her husband Nolan holding her hand, telling her it’s all going to be okay. But we know it’s not going to be okay, and that’s why Hours makes for such compelling viewing, because it gets worse and worse for Nolan, but, crucially, not in the way we expect.
It would have been very easy to make Hours a straight thriller, to set Nolan’s struggle to keep his infant daughter alive against a deadline in which a tsunami will arrive when the levee breaks; or to have looters hold him and the baby hostage, ‘man-in-the-box-style’ like Buried (2010) or Frozen (also 2010, not to be confused with the 2013 Disney cartoon of the same name!). In the latter, three students – two male, one female – are accidentally left dangling (literally) on a ski lift in freezing temperatures above a closed-down resort. Though Nature is effectively the antagonist in that movie, just as it is in Hours, Frozen is most definitely a thriller as the students must fight for their lives against the height, the cold and, most notably, man-eating wolves. In contrast, Hours is about the private desperation and doubts of a single individual who’s not even sure he and his child can both survive the situation and, even if they do, whether he can be a good father. And that’s a real strength of Hours as far as I’m concerned: the fact baby Abigail (named for her dead mother) is a character in her own right, despite the fact she never speaks a single word (not to mention she is a doll for most of the movie!).
It’s important to remember that drama should not automatically equal ‘depressing’, and the dialogue in Hours plays an important part in ensuring the story – which starts with death and destruction – does not become a complete downer. There are genuine moments of warmth whilst Nolan talks to the baby, showing her photographs of her mother and even her own scan photo as he reminisces about how he and Abigail (Snr) came to meet and develop a relationship. There are also moments of humour, such as changing the baby’s nappy for the first time, where it looks as if Nolan is performing surgery, or when he discovers that Sherlock, the dog Nolan has to save in the hotel lobby, is supposed to be a rescue dog himself: ‘Well, I hope you’re embarrassed!’ Nolan quips. Yet if Hours were a thriller instead, baby Abigail’s role in the story would have been quite different: she would have become a problem Nolan had to deal with (thus a prop he would undoubtedly have had to move) as the water got higher; or marauding dogs threatened them; or looters set fire to the building; or all of the above. Instead, against the backdrop of a large-scale disaster, Hours is the much smaller, more personal and human tale of a man accepting his role not only as a father, but coming to terms with loss and what it means to be a widower, as well as husband and son.
Though I do not necessarily approve of the distributors’ methods of mis-selling Hours (which I agree with Eric are deceptive), I do nevertheless have a counter view. Though it’s obvious a good portion of those wanting to watch Hours on the basis they think it’s a thriller will come away disappointed, there must surely be a section
of that ‘duped’ audience who will enjoy the film regardless? I am reminded here of the movie Stepmom (1998), starring Julia Roberts, Susan Sarandon and Ed Harris. Sold as a straight comedy, anyone who has actually watched Stepmom knows it’s the absolutely devastating tale of one mother’s journey through terminal cancer (Sarandon). She must not only ready her young children for her death, but also effectively ‘train up’ her ex-husband’s (Harris) new partner (Roberts) to raise them when she has gone. Given the two women are from different generations and outlooks, this leads to huge conflicts, some of them funny, some insightful, others tragic. As a cancer survivor myself, I actively avoid cancer stories. I don’t wish to be reminded of what I went through or could have had to face; I even dodge Holby City on BBC1. So wild horses could not have made me watch Stepmom had I not been ‘duped’ into thinking it was a comedy (with absolutely zero mention of cancer, by the way). Yet I loved Stepmom and thought it was authentic and real, with relatable characters. On this basis, I’m willing to bet real money many who came to Hours just wanting Fast & Furious-type antics still came away with an appreciation for its story and characters in the way I did with Stepmom… it’s certainly food for thought.
Anyway, I enjoyed Hours so much I immediately tweeted Eric Heisserer on a job well done, suggesting my ‘Bang2writers’ should watch it too. I frequently make movie recommendations, so I didn’t think much more about it, until I noticed a reply in my @ box from Heisserer, thanking me. Because I’m the cheeky type, I took the opportunity to ask for his email address, telling him I’d like to ask more details about Hours’ production. It’s something I ask everyone I can on Twitter, so I imagined that would be the end of the exchange, as it has been countless times before. But to my delight Eric replied within minutes and sent me his email address via DM. A few emails later I had the screenplay for Hours in my inbox and loaded up to my Kindle, with Eric’s challenge to find the differences between the page and what ended up on screen. So here is a round-up:
• The screenplay itself. The script for Hours is impressively written, furthering the accepted belief that an excellent movie starts on the page. Its format is meticulous and, unlike many US screenplays, it comes in under 100 pages, like a produced British feature script generally would. Being a shooting script by a writer/director, there were inevitably a few instances of camera angles and PUSH ON, etc. but they were not overdone or intrusive. I’m used to reading extremely utilitarian or ‘vanilla’ scene description, but Eric’s showcases his writer’s voice, pushes the story forward AND reveals character… yet is lean and visual. The character introductions in the screenplay are a case in point; so often spec screenplays will attempt to introduce characters visually and make the age-old mistake of concentrating on their clothes (especially if they’re men) or their looks (especially if they’re women). But Heisserer avoids both these obvious traps with ease. Check this out:
NOLAN HAYES (34, clean-cut white-collar at first glance, cleaned-up blue-collar in truth), talking to SANDRA (30s, focused).
ABIGAIL LONDON (perhaps 25, perhaps 35, too full of life to gauge).
Filling out the rest of the table are: MARC (38, gregarious), GLENN (30s, quiet), KAREN (36, coy), Marc’s wife, and JEREMY (late 20s and eager) seated next to LUCY (20s, the odd duck).
Spec writers often tell me it is ‘impossible’ to be both economical with words and visual, but Heisserer proves where the competition is.
• The dinner party. Those character intros above take place at a dinner party where Nolan and Abigail (Snr) tell their friends how they met. Yet, as I’ve already mentioned, the produced version of Hours is quite different: Abigail arrives at the hospital on a gurney, already in labour and clearly in difficulties, Nolan holding her hand, telling her everything’s gonna be fine, and the dinner party has moved from page one to perhaps 20 minutes in, when Nolan is left alone with baby Abigail in the incubator for the first time. Though I love flashback as a device (in comparison to many script editors and consultants), I have never been a big fan of starting a screenplay or movie with flashback. My main concern has always been, ‘Where are we flashing back FROM?’ and I believe Hours illustrates this issue brilliantly. Eric tells me the dinner party flashback remained at the beginning of the produced movie for much of the editorial process. It was only when the team made the decision to incorporate the stylised credit sequence taking in Hurricane Katrina that they realised they would need to move the dinner party. Why? Think about it: you can’t start off with a very intense opening sequence that leads into a happy party; tonally it just does not make sense. Now, the entire movie takes place in the hospital: Nolan arrives with his wife on a gurney, and it ends when he leaves on a gurney and is much more satisfying storytelling as a result.
• Nolan’s arc. Nolan’s arc in both the screenplay and the produced movie is ‘textbook’ in that he essentially rejects the call of looking after baby Abigail in the first instance with the somewhat cold statement, ‘I don’t know you,’ as he stares down at her tiny form in the incubator. Importantly, however, this rejection does not become what I call ‘tick-the-box screenwriting’ for, again, Nolan does not do what we expect. We may assume that a grief-stricken man would simply wander out of the hospital in a daze, forgetting his daughter, only for ‘something’ to happen that makes him turn on his heel and race back to her bedside. But Heisserer sidesteps this predictable beat, having Nolan go down to the hospital morgue instead, searching for his wife’s body, finding her on the floor (Hurricane Katrina has meant a surplus of bodies literally piled up in the corridors). What follows is a poignant moment in which he tells Abigail Snr he ‘wants her back’, making us realise he will do what she would have wanted – look after the baby – but feels completely out of his depth. Unable to exert control over the situation, Nolan grabs a morgue technician to help him move Abigail off the floor and place her inside a body bag. The technician, awkward in the face of Nolan’s stark grief, makes a passing comment that ‘at least’ he has a baby daughter and that her birth is still cause for celebration, further underlining our belief Nolan will go back to baby Abigail, which of course he does. From there, Nolan moves on from saying ‘this baby’ when he first meets her in the produced version (a line deviation by Paul Walker that was not present in the screenplay) to ‘owning’ her as ‘my daughter’ (here in the screenplay and approximately the same in the produced version). As events progress, the dramatic context moves from Nolan doing what he is ‘supposed’ to do in the first half, to doing ‘whatever it takes’ in the second, including effectively murdering the looters Jase and Lobo in cold blood to remove the threat they pose before it even really begins. Nolan’s arc is completed when his own rescuers give him the crying Abigail on the gurney and he says, smiling this time, ‘I know you,’ neatly mirroring the first words he said to his child.
• Nolan the character versus Nolan as Paul Walker plays him. The lynchpin of Hours is Walker’s performance, in my opinion. Now, remember, I came to Hours quite ambivalent about Walker’s acting capabilities, yet I found myself liking Nolan better in the produced movie than the screenplay. I don’t dislike Nolan in the screenplay; we root for him and want him to succeed. But Walker breathes life into Nolan and makes him a real person who’s quite different from other characters I’ve seen him play. What’s more, Heisserer’s directing is understated, so the terrifying and desperate situation Nolan finds himself in never once becomes melodramatic or overly sentimental, even when exhausted Nolan starts to hallucinate and speaks to the ‘ghost’ of his dead wife, who is wearing her best party dress. This is testament to how movies are a collaborative art. I’m always arguing with writers that a great movie is a sum of all its parts, not just a great screenplay, and Hours illustrates this perfectly. Yes, it’s great on the page… but it becomes even greater on the screen.
• Behind the scenes. Final comparisons between the screenplay on the page and the produced movie are as follows:
i. The dog. It’s said filmmakers should ‘never w
ork with children or animals’ (an adage echoed by Adrian Mead) but, like Night People, Heisserer’s Hours has both. Sherlock the dog is a great addition to the cast; he is involved in some of the stand-out thrilling moments. Sherlock attacks and drives off the first looter, before he can attempt to kill Nolan. However, it’s notable that Sherlock is considerably more ‘useful’ to Nolan on the actual page than he is in the produced movie, with Walker seemingly ‘leading’ the scenes in which Sherlock appears. When I asked Eric about this, he confessed the dog was a big problem for the team, largely because Sherlock couldn’t do even ‘half the things he was allegedly trained to do’. As a result, editor Sam Bauer found all the good takes and stitched them together for that performance, leading the rest of the team to joke the dog should receive an award for ‘Best Performance by an Editor’!