During the last 20-plus years, screenwriters Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have become specialists at writing bio-pics about artists whose work is weird, vulgar and often just plain bad.
The lives of disasterpiece Plan 9 From Outer Space director Edward D. Wood Jr. (Ed Wood), pornographer Larry Flynt (The People vs. Larry Flynt), anti-comic Andy Kaufman (Man on the Moon) and painter of bug-eyed waifs Margaret Keane (Big Eyes) might not seem worthy of big-screen preservation.
Alexander and Karaszewski have won a Writers Guild of America award and a Golden Globe for The People vs. Larry Flynt, as well as an induction into the Final Draft Hall of Fame. Why have these fellows been rewarded for applying their talents to such seemingly lowly subject matter?
"I think all these characters share something in that they're creating something that is bad, has a great deal of people dead set against them," Karaszewski says. "And that automatically gives you conflict. That's why we think these kind of fringe characters make better biographies than, say, you know, George Washington."
Alexander adds, "We love them because they have such a strong passion because they really believe in the art they're creating even if it's completely cockeyed."
The Eyes Have It
For their latest movie Big Eyes, their subject is Margaret Keane (played by Amy Adams), whose paintings of small children with enlarged, sad peepers became omnipresent in the 1960s. While millions of posters based on her paintings (and knock-offs of her paintings) sold during the era, Keane had to go to court in 1986 to prove the distinctive images were her creations. For decades, her one-time husband Walter (Christoph Waltz) took all the credit for her plaintive pictures.
Walter was constantly and gleefully hogging the spotlight, while Margaret was practically in a cubbyhole doing the actual work.
"Before we started the project, probably like most people in the world, I just thought the art was anonymous images with that mysterious one-name signature," Alexander says. "I suddenly stumbled across a two-page version of the Keane story, and it was kind of astonishing that these were real people, and they had this crazy drama going on backstage."
In the Shadows
If Big Eyes might explore the same art vs. kitsch debate their other films had, it comes from a place that's unique.
For one thing, Margaret Keane is their first female protagonist, and her shy nature is far different from the flamboyant anti-heroes of their previous movies. She also owes an odd debt to her two-faced spouse. The work may be all hers, but she might not have sold a single canvas without his effortlessly smooth salesmanship.
Karaszewski explains, "I think that Walter is an interesting villain in that everything he promises becomes true. I think when she first initially agreed to the lie, he was selling a few paintings in the basement of a nightclub. She had no idea that this was going to become the biggest selling art in America.
"So, it was a slippery slope. The slippery slope was actually going uphill in that it became so successful it made her feel silly to complain. She had this existential dilemma in that her art was not being credited to her, but they kept on getting bigger houses. Her daughter had a college fund. It was this success that she never imagined."
Alexander credits star Adams for being able to play a character who can be shy without coming off as passive. "Like Larry is saying, Walter was driving the bus all those years, so we had to figure out a way to construct the scenes so that Margaret wasn't being a doormat. Margaret was just sort of caught up in the lies, and she was complicit in the lie, then sort of like the underlings in the Nixon Washington White House, she's sort of helping enable the lie as it gets bigger and bigger over the years," he says.
"We tried to give Margaret moments where she would start to feel frustrated or despondent or angry at herself, and then she would start to talk back to Walter in her own little way until it would grow and grow and finally where she has to leave him and stand up for herself.
"The movie just got better and better in the editing because of the pull of the movie quietly on Amy because there's so much happening on her face. So as for why an audience would identify with her, I think they identify with her because she draws you in. You really feel for her."
Karaszewski also says another factor may have kept the relationship and the deception going longer than it should have. "I think a lot of this is from the time period. Women did what their husbands told them to do, unfortunately. I was born in 1961, and my mother stayed with my father for 20 years when she shouldn't have because divorce was a sin according to the Catholic Church. There are a lot of women who stayed in these relationships," he explains.
The real Margaret Keane must have approved.
She stayed with the project as the screenwriters-producers spent 11 years trying to get the film started. Also, like Flynt before her (who played a judge sentencing his cinematic alter ego Woody Harrelson), the 87-year-old painter appears in the film Alexander and Karaszewski wrote. Alert viewers can spot her sitting on a bench behind Adams during a scene in a park.
Alexander says having the real-life subject around during the shoot can be a blessing and a curse. "You want to bring them in, and you want to give them a good look around and to enjoy themselves for a day, and then you want to sort of move them along because it is a colossal distraction. Margaret lives outside of San Francisco. She was not able to travel to Vancouver where we shot most of the movie. We did have enough money for two and a half days in San Francisco, and so we made a point of treating her like a queen and bringing her onto the set."
When asked what it's like when the subject is like the late Wood or the deceased (or allegedly in hiding) Kaufman, Alexander says, "Oh no. Andy was on the set every day."
"Ooops. Actually [to Alexander] he can't print that," Karaszewski retorts.
"Not for publication, of course," Alexander meekly replies.
Karaszewski adds, "We have to keep all these lies straight."
Shut Up and Play the Hits
The two screenwriters have just contributed to the script for a new film based on R.L. Stine's Goosebumps series and have written the first two episodes of Ryan Murphy's new FX series American Crime Story.
When asked how they've managed to keep working together for so long, Karaszewski says, "We're stuck. We're the Hall and Oates of writing teams. We learned that if we stick together through all the lean years, we'll still be able to play the Greek Theatre [in Los Angeles] because people know who you are."
Alexander adds, "We can always tour with the hits. It's all we know."
MovieStyle on 12/26/2014