KMC Forums - An EXTREMELY loooong read. but its interesting...

CS: I saw "Lord of the Rings" that way, and that was a very long day.
Rossio: Yeah, "Lord of the Rings" wanted to make it even longer by doing it with the extended versions. That's the way to do it.

CS: How closely have you worked with Gore Verbinski on the last two scripts, as far as coming up with ideas that can be realized?
Rossio: It's very collaborative. Gore will make all sorts of suggestions and contributions from characterizations to story points and obviously visualizations. Then also, there's the conceptual artist Crash Davis, there's Jim Burkett who works with Gore in doing story sketches, so yeah, it's filmmaking, it's hugely collaborative.

CS: When writing the scripts, do you write out entire action scenes with descriptions of the action or do you leave that to Gore and the action choreographers, just writing general things?
Rossio: It's a combination. We'll get specific in some cases and in some cases, the stunts that are designed are embellished or extended from what's written.

CS: Was the original Pirates script one you developed yourself and brought it to Jerry Bruckheimer and Disney?
Elliott: We had actually tried to get Disney interested in doing a movie based on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride after we finished working on "Aladdin" back in '92. At that time, there was a different company philosophy and different management in place, then about ten years later, Disney kind of had the same idea and caught up to us. We'd been talking with Mike Stenson at Bruckheimer Productions about doing a project together but we hadn't really found anything, and he calls us one day and says, "You know, we're producing this movie and I don't know if you guys would be interested, but do you know the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland?" And we were like, "Oh, you mean the thing we've been thinking about, how do you make a pirate movie, for the last ten years? Yeah, I think we might be interested in that."

CS: Then you wrote a script, gave it to them, they liked it and it went from there?
Elliott: It was bringing in the supernatural aspect and they went with that, and we had some very specific ideas about the type of character you needed at the center of a pirate movie. Taking a cue from Long John Silver in "Treasure Island," it had to be somebody who you kind of alternated between going, "Well, is this the most charming person I've ever met or is it a despicable villain who I should not turn my back on?" It's just that idea of the trickster, the completely amoral character wandering around the world, and that was what we brought into Captain Jack Sparrow.

CS: The very idea of writing a pirate movie is pretty daring, especially after "Cutthroat Island." I remember before the first movie came out, a lot of people were skeptical about it working. I'm not sure anybody thought it could be as huge as it ended up becoming.
Elliott: I did. It's actually in print on Terry and my web site. I actually called $300 million for the first movie. That was sort of more wishful thinking at that point. When we were working on it, Terry and I felt confident that if it was possible for a pirate movie to be successful, this was the approach it required to do it. As we were working on it, we had the feeling that not only was it possible we may never get to write another pirate movie again, it was also possible that NO ONE would ever get to write another pirate movie again.
Rossio: I think there was a resistance because when you add up that pirate movies, those don't work, and that it's based on a theme park ride. For some reason, people thought that was a bad idea, I'm not sure why. But on the other hand, I think it could be marvelous to enter the market place with movies that are sort of their own genre or that help define a genre. I don't think that with all the films that have ever been made, nobody had ever really made a supernatural pirate movie. Nobody has made a supernatural film set on the ocean in terms of something that played into all of those great myths and legends and stories, evoking the sense of what you get on say a ghost ship or a horrifying skeleton. It is those things, curses, cursed treasure. It just felt like, well wait a second, we're working on something here hasn't been done before, and that could work. Whatever had come before really didn't matter.

CS: Having written the last two movies at the same time, does "At Worlds End" have a different tone than "Dead Man's Chest" or is it literally a continuation of where the last one left off?
Elliott: We have actually tried to make sure that each of the three had its own identity. It would have been easier probably to simply remake "Curse of the Black Pearl" twice, but we actually wanted to insure that the movies had their own identities in of themselves, their own stories. 2 we went a little bit more comedic, broad comedic, because we were going to a far darker place with the characters, and 3, I think has� "At Worlds End" is a fairly apt title. There is sort of the idea of the end of an era, the Golden Age of Piracy coming to a close.
Rossio: I have to give a lot of credit to the studio in terms of the willingness to take risks, because these films are hugely expensive. In the case of "Dead Man's Chest," it wasn't repeating the formula, it was being something different. Gore will not shoot the same movie twice and Johnny will not give the same performance twice, they just won't, and that takes an enormous amount of trust on the part of the studio, creatively and artistically, to believe that something that is different will also work.
Elliott: Well, we're more than willing to write the same movie over and over.
Rossio: And certainly, "At Worlds End," the tone is actually different. Like Ted said, there's an epic end of the era [feel to it].

CS: I thought it was interesting that you guys wrote for a lot of animated films, and you've maintained some of the same genres between animated and live action movies like "Road to El Dorado" and Zorro, and "Treasure Planet" and the Pirates movies.
Rossio: Actually, I think Zorro preceded "El Dorado." There are certain stories we like telling, certain genres. One of the things about animation that we really enjoyed is that it really is so story-driven in a way that live action movies aren't. Live action movies a lot of times you can have the actor, simply seeing that person on screen being charming, can carry a lot of the film, but with animated films, it's all focused on the story. And so, it's a great place if you want to tell stories, that was what attracted us to it.

CS: With that in mind, would you guys ever consider writing a live-action Aladdin movie, a similar big scale movie, as opposed to a family animated comedy?
Elliott: Well, wait, isn't Pirates a similar scale? I hadn't really thought about it. To some extent, you feel like, "Oh, yeah�but no, we told that story." Where's the Broadway musical of Aladdin? What's the deal there, Disney, come on!

CS: I guess they haven't gotten to it yet, and they have to do the Broadway musical of Pirates first. You know it will happen.
Elliott: (laughs)

CS: Is there anything extra on the DVD of "Dead Man's Chest" that we all should be looking forward to?
Elliott: The one I'm actually looking forward to is how ILM realized Davey Jones and the Dutchman crew, because I think there are still people out there who are convinced that was prosthetics. To actually see that process and to see how Bill Nighy created that performance, it's amazing.

CS: There's already a lot of talk about fourth movie. Is that something you'd want to be involved with or is "At Worlds End" the end of the story you both wanted to tell?
Elliott: In all honesty, I heard that talk, too, but right now, we're just kind of looking forward to having finished these two. No dissembling there. "Okay, is it okay if we finish shooting the third one before we start thinking about the fourth one?"
Rossio: People will always talk about whatever they want, but there's no guarantee of a fourth film. There's forces in play that would hopefully make it happen, there are forces in play that could prevent it. It's quite possible that "At Worlds End" will be it. I guess it's like talk of the next Indiana Jones movie for so long. I'm sure there'll always be speculation, but for right now, this trilogy is designed to come to a conclusion.

CS: Or maybe we'll see a fourth movie in 15 or 16 years?
Rossio: (obviously joking) Exactly. Could be 4, 5 and 6 in twenty years from now.

CS: The Pirates prequel, excellent! We heard it here first! So do you guys have anything else lined up already or are you just going to unwind and relax?
Elliott: Nothing lined up at this point. Some things are looking up, but like I said, it will just be nice to be done, just to take that little time.
Rossio: There's things that have always interested us, but I think we'd have to be a little coy on that due to rights issues.
Elliott: I think you've already said too much. Now we have to kill him.

While the writer goes into hiding, you can get Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, out on DVD right now, while Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End is released nationwide on May 25, 2007.