A Write Knight Takes on Hollywood--and Lives to Tell the Tale

Movie making is character building. When I sat down to write “A Knight’s Tale” in the summer of 1999, my goals were simple. It was written to be a story about youth. Youth and identity. I also wrote it to save my hide.

In the spring of 1999, I was coming off two tough work experiences. First, I had directed a film called “Payback.” My feature debut, it had a lot riding on it. Unfortunately, the version of “Payback” I directed was taken away from me, and the third act was re-shot.

Movie making is a fight. Or a beating. And when the director, the producer and the studio all have a different idea of what the film should be, there’s going to be some sort of fight. On “Payback,” it was a big one, and I lost. Ouch.

Movie making is soldiering on. I took refuge at 20th Century Fox and “The Sin Eater,” which I had written a year earlier and was attached to direct. Attached to direct. It makes me think of a remora hanging on to a shark. I’m not a remora, am I? A movie in Hollywood isn’t a shark, is it?

“The Sin Eater” was a gothic Catholic horror film about a man who has the ability to absolve sin outside the church. Sounds like what good box office can do to a sagging career. All past sins are forgiven if your movie makes money.

It kept almost getting greenlit. Almost happening. Almost. The almost in this case involved the entire production team being hired: the DP, editor, costume and production designers. I even scouted locations in Prague in the depths of winter--a fantastically romantic thing to do.

The movie simply fell apart. It happens all the time. It’s just, it shouldn’t happen after your previous movie gets re-shot. Ouch!

After 15 years in the movie business, I felt like I was at ground zero. I did not want to return to my days of writer for hire, and I did not want to write original scripts for other directors to direct. I, myself, had no offers to direct anything else, and my best existing screenplays were all tied up with other studios.

Movie making is also paranoia. And I knew what they were thinking: good writer, can’t direct. Or worse, maybe: average writer, can’t direct his way out of a paper bag.

If I ever wanted to direct again, I would have to make my own break. I would have to write a new screenplay. The good news in that equation is, good or average, I am a writer. I enjoy writing. It’s just that I’m a little leery when my career happens to be on the line. Maybe now I’m being a melodramatic writer, but that’s how it seemed.

The system was against me, and it made me angry. But I write better when I’m angry. But what to write? It came to me in a flash. I would write a movie about a guy who writes movies. No, wait, I would write a movie about a guy who writes movies but who also wants to direct them.

I soon realized I had come up with a movie even I wouldn’t pay to go see. I felt whiny and trite. Not to mention, it had been done before.

With no other ideas, I decided to check my archives. These consist of two cardboard boxes. I came across a 5-year-old file called “Champion.” In 1995 or so, I had read a history of medieval jousting. I had been amused to learn that jousting was the full-contact sport of medieval Europe.

That made me smile. That made me happy. That made me realize that people back then were probably a whole lot like we are today. It also stopped me cold. I had a world without a story. That’s why I had never done anything with it. But flipping through the file, I saw that one of my notes was underlined: You had to be of noble birth to compete.

Everything suddenly dropped into place. I had cracked the safe. My hero obviously had to be a peasant. A peasant pretending to be a noble so he could compete. The story of a peasant who wanted to be a knight, only he had to fight the prejudices, laws and roadblocks set up by the powers that be. Peasant. Knight. That was it!

I had found a way to tell my story: the story of a screenwriter who wanted to be a director. Of course, nothing is that simple. First of all, I don’t want to imply that directing is somehow better than screenwriting. It isn’t. The screenplay is the center. If the center does not hold, nothing does. But if you want to ensure that your story is told, your best bet is to try to be the one who gets to tell it. Second, there was a lot of work to be done. Real events had to be fictionalized, medievalized. The specifics I will take to my grave. The important thing was that I had found the hook.

The bedrock was research. General medieval histories. Specific biographies on Chaucer, Edward the Black Prince and William Marshall--the jousting Mickey Mantle of his day. I reread “The Canterbury Tales,” thus the characters of Simon the Summoner and Peter the Pardoner. I read every entry, A to Z, of a medieval wordbook. I read medieval cookbooks, medieval gardening books, a medieval treatise on the art of courtly love in 14th century France, all of it to steep me in medievalism, to add realism, a sense of the smell of the place.

And that’s when a really nice thing happened. That’s when “A Knight’s Tale” became something else. That’s when “A Knight’s Tale” became what it is now: a movie about youth, identity and freedom and questioning the world constructed by the powers that be. That’s when rock ‘n’ roll entered the picture.

Thank God for my research, but I threw it all out. The people of medieval Europe did not live in a museum. They were not trapped under layers of varnish that turned them into dark old paintings to be viewed in passing, to never be connected with emotionally. They were not to be governed by a general code, whether dress or behavior.

They danced to their music the same way we do. They laughed, loved and lived the same way we do. I wanted it all to be what I dubbed rock ‘n’ roll medieval. I wanted it to be about changing your stars, whatever they were. Corny, maybe, but that’s a sentiment that movie making excels at.

Then came the last step before I actually sat down to write the script. I made a tape of music I felt was relevant to and would help inspire the story I wanted to write (if only to steal a few lyrics into the dialogue). It turned out to be the music I was listening to in the ‘70s. When I was a youth. BTO, Bowie, War, Thin Lizzy, AC/DC.

“Buddy you’re boy make a big noise playing in the streets gonna be a big man someday. . . .”

I couldn’t say it better than Queen, so why try? I wrote the music into the movie. I wrote a movie that made me remember when I was young. When I used to feel instead of think. When I thought I would live forever and didn’t quite yet know that the new boss was going to be exactly the same as the old boss. Or maybe not. Maybe hope, battered as she was, still rocked. Because hope is movie making as well.

Then the script was sent out into the cold, cruel world that had so recently been so, well, cold and cruel to me. And John Calley, Amy Pascal and Columbia Pictures actually gave me the money to do it. And left me alone to do it. And embraced it like good studio parents are supposed to. I felt like a kid again. I even got to shoot it in Prague, which is a whole other story.

In the end, I turned the genre on its head, teased it like you would a brother, then respectfully set it back on its feet. In the end, I made a movie in the tradition of some of my favorites. A small story painted on a big canvas. Poor boy wants his life to be more than it was preordained to be. He makes it more. Simply by being true to himself. Against the backdrop of jousting tournaments across Europe in 1372. I could relate to it in a very personal way. So, hopefully, can anyone else.

But whatever happens, I can say it’s mine, the movie I wanted it to be. Hollywood had delivered her harsh blow, and I had come out the other side. Still standing. The center had held, and so had I.