Scott Z. Burns Talks Writing On ‘No Time To Die,’ "Pressurized" Blockbuster Writing & Other Projects In The Works [Interview]

The way the world works is strange. In the fall of 2019, I interviewed writer/director Scott Z. Burns about this excellent Amazon political drama “The Report” starring Adam Driver (a movie that was sadly overlooked that season), a type of whistleblower piece about a Senate staffer investigating the CIA’s use of enhanced and illegal torture techniques following the September 11 attacks.

The Report’: Adam Driver & Director Scott Z. Burns Look At Post-9/11 Torture Methods By The CIA

Burns and I also spoke about the James Bond film, “No Time To Die” film he had written on and a few other projects, and as Bond was initially set to come out in April 2020, just less than six months later, I figured I would save the Bond and extras talk until that time. Of course, a pandemic hit, and here we are in October 2021, almost two full years later. Burns didn’t earn a screenwriting credit on the final Bond film, but he was there in London working on the film in early 2020 for a brief window. As one of Hollywood’s highest-paid script doctors (who was also called to write on “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” and many other projects that aren’t on his IMDB), he’s often called in to look at movie scripts and see if he can help diagnose and offer solutions to help with the dramatic problems.

Because I vowed to run this at some point, now that “No Time To Die” is finally coming out (and reactions were out this week, including our review), here’s the long-belated second half of this conversation for Bond heads or anyone interested in the various projects Burns is also working on [Editorial context provided where necessary, as he discussed at the time projects that had not yet been announced yet].

Lastly, and while, we’re here because I have no other place to put this nugget of small news: some Bond fans are already complaining about the ending of “No Time To Die” (among other things). I’ll say this without spoiling. A source close told me about the ending years ago, and the basic concept of the conclusion was not due to director Cary Joi Fukunaga, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, or Burns and, in fact, was written by Neal Purvis and Robert Wade, approved by the Broccolis, and in fact, may have gone as far back as the days when Danny Boyle was on the film. The particular details of the ending may have changed, but the basic concept was drafted long before anyone was recruited to help rewrite it. So there you have it, in case you think the newbies somehow “changed Bond.”

Here, we segue to the second half of the conversation beyond “The Report.”

To pivot slightly, you were mentioning the things in the world that interest you. People tend to forget, you wrote and co-produced “An Inconvenient Truth,” a documentary for which you won an Oscar. Now that climate change is such a big issue again, I keep thinking, Scott Burns, must be thinking of a way to tackle that dramatically.
[Laughs]. Well, as it turns out, that is the next thing I will be working on.

Seriously?
Yes. But again, what’s interesting to me about climate change is there a way of storytelling around it?

That’s the challenge, right?
Yeah. That starts with the human experience and works outward from there. I think we tend to be so terrified of the science and the possibility of the horrible things that happen, as a creative person, that you stop because they’re so fantastical. I don’t mean fantastical in that they’re a fantasy, but they’re just so extraordinarily profound— a better word for it, I suppose—when you start hearing about islands sinking under the ocean.

But before islands sink under the ocean, or worse, there’s a lot of other stuff that’s going to happen that is going to affect day-to-day life. So I do have a project that I’m starting in January that I can’t talk too much about. That’s what I want to focus on because it is, I think, the biggest issue of our time. Once we get done playing politics with it, it’s going to be our most formidable adversary.

[editor’s note: This was the AppleTV+ climate change anthology series that was announced in January 2020, about two months or so after we spoke]

It’s what we always do, though, right? We, as humans, especially governments, are entirely reactive instead of proactive. Then we’re not going to have politics; we’re just going to have disaster. How do you deal with the disaster when it’s already there?
Exactly. Things with this particular kind of disaster make the reactive cycle that you’re describing particularly dangerous. Even if we stop burning all fossil fuels now, like today, we still have so much baked into the system that we’ll have crazy weather patterns for years to come. So that becomes complicated because the human brain has a tough time with a slow-moving crisis like climate change.

We also have problems with delaying immediate gratification. We have a hard time behaving selflessly and forgoing pleasure now so that future generations will have a chance. So there’s a lot of things about the human-animal and about the way our government is set up that makes this a really tricky issue to tackle.

100% agree. I thought of you immediately when I thought of the possibilities of climate change told through a dramatic lens. People often think of you as a Steven Soderbergh collaborator or a fix-it script doctor but tend to forget ‘Inconvenient Truth’ is such a big thing.
Yeah, look, I love working with Steven because he’s probably the most intellectually curious person I’ve ever met in my life and also the most creatively fearless. Steven wants to do something different every single time, and that’s inspiring to be around. I’ve love working with him, and I hope that he and I continue to do that. But there are also things that I think he encourages me to do on my own.

Right, even Side Effects” was originally something you were going to direct, and then he eventually took over.
I tried to get it made. Steven witnessed my frustration over the years, and it turned out that he had a hole in his schedule, and he had read the script and said, “I know you want to direct that, but I would love to do it, and we’ll work together on it.” That was, it turned out, the right choice for me to make for that story. Because I wanted to get it made. I mean, ultimately, what drives you as a creative person is how do you get the thing you wrote made in the best way possible? Steven’s producer and first A.D. is a guy named Greg Jacobs [editor’s note, also a director, and he helmed “Magic Mike XXL”]and Greg always used to say to me, “Playing bass in a great band is better than being the lead singer in a shitty band.” I love having played different instruments in Steven’s band.

He’s so generous as a collaborator; it doesn’t feel like my role has ever been diminished. But there is also something extraordinary about him getting to direct and having the ability to make so many decisions that influence how a thing will turn out. So I would like to do more of both, please.

You were talking earlier about avoiding exposition and that kind of thing. At the same time, you’re known as being one of the big Hollywood re-writers or go-to guys to fix a script. You wrote a “Planet Of The Apes” script [editor’s note: from scratch, and that script wasn’t ultimately used at all]. You wrote uncredited on “Star Wars: Rogue One,” before Tony Gilroy, something most people don’t know about. You helped rewrite the new Bond “No Time To Die” down to the wire before production started script [editor’s note: then production was delayed, Burns was unavailable, and they tapped Phoebe Waller-Bridge to touch up much of the female dialogue and characterizations] Can you talk a little bit about that? Just maybe the approach, the process?

Yeah. Tony Gilroy and I always have this conversation, and he and I share a Cardinal rule. The rule is do not take the gig unless you know the answer to solve the script’s main problems. We kind of look at it as the writer’s Hippocratic Oath, which is when a project comes to you in that situation, it’s already left the station, and it’s on its way to production. It’s not a time to exercise your ego or to blow shit up and start it over because you think you have all of the answers. I think it’s a time to do a fair amount of triage and go, “Okay, so here are the thing that are the givens.” Sometimes those are the locations, or those are specific plot points that will have to be there, or sometimes they’re the characters. It’s coming up with solutions within those boundaries, and it’s a different kind of creative and intellectual exercise.

[editor’s note: Gilroy and Burns are essentially two of the highest-paid screenwriting doctors in Hollywood and are generally tapped for most of the blockbusters when they have problems. Burns helped rescue “The Bourne Ultimatum” and did such a great job, it led to a lot of other blockbuster work].

Since it’s not your baby, I was going to say there must be something fun about it, in a way, as an exercise.
Well, it’s enjoyable to solve problems. That’s how it feels to me is you get to come in and be fresh eyes and go, “Okay, so here’s what the problem is dramatically.” If you can diagnose the problem and come up with a solution that allows the production and everything to continue to move forward, it’s a great experience. For some of us who write, it’s also an opportunity to be collaborative in a way that you don’t always get to be. So, I love doing that; I’m flattered anytime someone calls and asks. I always say the same thing to them, which is, “Let me make sure I have an idea before I say yes. That I have an understanding of what the problems are and what the solutions are. Otherwise, I’m just wasting your time, and the next person is going to have an even tighter vice around their skull. You’ll be even closer to your shoot date.”

So, it’s very pressurized. I also like that part.

More from this interview on the second page…