He Had More Than the Germ of a Good Idea

Concern over the care and feeding of writers who manage to retain sole credit on a movie isn’t nearly as intense as that for other endangered species. Like the California condor and peregrine falcon, though, Marc Hyman is a rare bird indeed.

The Los Angeles native came up with the idea for “Osmosis Jones”--Warner Bros.’ latest hybrid of animation and live action--all by himself and, four years later, has nothing but good things to say about his producers and director.

Stranger things have happened, but not lately.

“I imagine that lots of people wish that my experience was more the norm,” Hyman said. “It’s really getting to be rare, especially in animated movies.”

“Osmosis Jones” is the rather unsettling tale of what transpires inside the body of a slovenly zookeeper, Frank Detorri (played with uncouth gusto by Bill Murray) after he gobbles up a hard-boiled egg discarded by a chimpanzee. The title character is a dedicated white blood cell (voiced by Chris Rock), who volunteers to battle a killer virus, Thrax (Laurence Fishburne).

What makes the film so much fun is Hyman’s ability to represent all the characters inside Frank’s body in ways that are both funny and “true to what they are ... This isn’t a movie about a white blood cell who wants to become a star on Broadway,” said the Calabasas High graduate, who admits to having only a seventh-grade understanding of how the body works.

“One character, Drix, has an inferiority complex because he isn’t a prescription-strength cold pill and only can be in the body for a certain amount of time before being secreted,” he continues. “Osmosis Jones, our white blood cell, is willing to sacrifice his life to ward off a virus.

“That’s exactly what pus is ... dead white blood cells.”

The 32-year-old writer apologizes for introducing such an unappetizing concept into an otherwise pleasant lunchtime chat. But it gets worse, especially for anyone who might be eavesdropping.

“Frank doesn’t take care of himself, so his body is literally a city under siege ... like Detroit in the ‘70s ... a once-beautiful metropolis that’s now teeming with lowlifes and bacteria,” explains Hyman, whose father is a psychiatrist and whose mother is a painter. “The idea that these cells could be trapped in a runny nose was in the original pitch

When informed that his luncheon companion barely could keep his popcorn down during an early screening, Hyman laughed and said, “Well, we did a re-cut since you saw it. We re-edited the scenes with the bloody toenail, the vomit and the zit pop.”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone, then, that those masters of gonzo gross-outs, Peter and Bobby Farrelly, were attracted to the script, agreeing to join the production midstream to direct live-action scenes. Animation sequences already were well underway, helmed by Piet Kroon and Tom Sito.

“Bradley Thomas, who runs our company, had told me about Marc,” said Peter Farrelly, in a phone call from his parents’ home in Massachusetts. “I met with him over lunch, and he gave me just about the worst pitch I’ve ever heard. All I could think of was that this guy was a fraud, and he had bamboozled the whole town.

“Then, Bradley insisted we read ‘Osmosis Jones,’ which was about the best script I’ve ever read.”

What impressed the filmmakers most was Hyman’s ability to keep his original concept whole throughout the course of the movie. It never ran out of steam.

“After I finished reading it, I asked my father, who’s a doctor, and my mother, who’s a nurse, if the script held water,” Peter recalled. “Marc was coming up with medical things I’d never heard of, but they said, ‘Yes, it does.’

“I called Marc and said, ‘Don’t ever pitch again.’ Then we volunteered to direct the live action.”

Even the participation of the Farrellys might not have been enough to keep some meddlesome studio executive from demanding a rewrite or two. Fortunately for Hyman--whose previous writing experience included work on the sitcoms “Lush Life,” “Sweet Valley High” and “All That”--he found another ally in producer Zak Penn.

“Zak wrote ‘Last Action Hero’ when he was 22,” said Hyman. “The first thing that happened after he sold it was that he was replaced by Shane Black and left out of the rest of the process. It was a heartbreaking experience for him, because it was his baby.

“So, Zak was very protective of me. With him as a guide, I learned what my job was at every specific moment in time.”

Even though Penn and his partner, Adam Leff, were handsomely paid for the dubious privilege of being given a “story by” credit on “Last Action Hero,” Penn clearly harbors hard feelings.

“As a producer, my only goal was to protect what I considered to be a really good idea and, later, an excellent script,” said Penn, who’s since been enlisted to help polish a number of projects, including “The Mask of Zorro,” “Antz,” “Charlie’s Angels” and “Men in Black.” “There’s no moral imperative for a studio to make the writer happy. As a producer, though, you’re technically a partner of the writer ... especially if you got attached to the project on the pretense that it was a good screenplay.”

*

Warner Bros., he stressed, generally was very supportive of the project. Under Penn and the Farrellys’ supervision, Hyman was given first dibs on any new drafts and rewrites.

“If Marc wasn’t there, ‘Osmosis Jones’ wouldn’t exist. He came up with 99% of the ideas,” Penn argues. “It’s not like ‘Planet of the Apes,’ where any number of people could have written that script. But I think Marc will admit that he became a lot better writer during the process.

“The guy who wrote the first draft would never have been hired to do the last draft. I think this film will prove to be a real good example of a project that benefits from this kind of consistency.”

Moreover, Penn says, “if we had hired a different writer for all of the rewrites done by Marc, it probably would have ended up costing us another $3 million in script costs.”

Hyman, who sharpened his skills at Emerson and Boston University, agrees that he’s one very lucky writer. He would like to think that all of his future projects will go as smoothly as “Osmosis Jones” but knows better.

In the last year, he’s been asked to participate on such films as “Dr. Dolittle 2,” and upcoming features “Bubble Boy,” “Rock Star,” “Showtime” and “Down & Under.” Hyman’s “God of Cookery” is in development, and the Farrellys have asked him to “punch up” their comedy about a pair of Siamese twins, “Stuck on You.”

Chances are that project won’t face the daunting challenge of coming up with another PG rating, a first for the Farrelly brothers.

“We had opportunity after opportunity to do horrible things, even beyond the burps, sneezes, yawns and coughs,” Hyman says. “But it really is a kids’ movie. We didn’t want anyone to think we were trying to trick people into thinking this is an R-rated picture disguised as PG.”

With any more of the beginner’s luck Hyman already has enjoyed, he can save it for the DVD release, “Osmosis Jones: The Writer’s Cut.”

*

Gary Dretzka is an L.A.-based reporter for the Chicago Tribune, a Tribune company.