Talk: Nyswaner on Pitt and Hollywood

Once the A’E editor of The Pitt News, Ron Nyswaner went on to have an illustrious career in… Once the A’E editor of The Pitt News, Ron Nyswaner went on to have an illustrious career in screenwriting, earning an Oscar nomination for “Philadelphia,” starring Tom Hanks, as well as a Peabody award and three Golden Globe nominations for “Soldier’s Girl,” based on a true story about the murder of Pfc. Barry Winchell.

On Saturday, Nyswaner spoke with The Pitt News about life in the industry, as well as his recently published memoir, “Blue Days, Black Nights.”

What was the most difficult part of moving from Pittsburgh to Hollywood? What can aspiring filmmakers do to help ease that transition?

I sort of avoided the transition by moving to New York City. (laughs) I remained a New Yorker, which was possible 20 years ago when I started, but it isn’t possible today. Now you have to move to L.A.

Going to a graduate film school would help ease the transition. In a graduate film program, you work on a fairly professional level and have to meet the high standards required to make a good short film. So if you’re moving from Pitt, you have to be aware that your competition is the hundreds of people graduating from film schools who have 15- to 20-minute films under their arms, and many of those films are very impressive.

It also helps to have some kind of knowledge about something outside of the business. Many of the more interesting people who are trying to become filmmakers know something about history or science. There’s a whole group of films being made right now about scientific innovations. Those are people who know something about something.

People sometimes become trapped in their specialty and know only about film. I’ve cast actors in various films, and the actor who walks in who has done something besides acting school is usually the more interesting actor.

What role did your undergraduate experience play in crafting your identity as a writer?

Pitt is where I found film. I didn’t know a lot about film as a little boy from Green County, Pa. I knew that I liked movies but had no idea that movies were something you could study and that had a craft. We watch movies and we’re seduced by them.

Marcia Landy taught my first film class at Pitt, pointing out how film breaks down into shots. Most of us don’t think of film as a series of shots. We’re unconscious to the structure of film, and she made me conscious of that structure. She also taught me about the power of film in terms of social issues. If you look at “Mrs. Soffel” and “Philadelphia” and “Soldier’s Girl,” I use my craft to explore controversial social and political issues. That’s Marcia’s influence.

What can the University of Pittsburgh and organizations like Pitt In Hollywood do to help students to prepare for Hollywood? What would you like to have seen when you were a student here?

I don’t know what Pitt is offering to you right now, but I would encourage people who want to write for films to connect their writing and filmmaking studies with something of historical or social significance, and to write scripts that require lots of research.

I have very little interest in scripts about how hard it was when someone tells his parents he wants to go to Yale but they don’t have the money, or someone breaks up with his girlfriend on her birthday. I would hope there are people right now at Pitt who would want to make films about the Iraq war and soldiers coming home with no arms and legs.

There’s a really interesting world out there that artists and young, college-aged people should be engaged with.

Screenwriters like Joe Eszterhas and William Goldman give conflicting accounts in their memoirs of the writer’s role in Hollywood. Eszterhas is known for his stubborn refusal to alter a word of his screenplays while Goldman suggests the writer should flatter even the most inane suggestions from studio executives to keep the job. Where do you stand?

I have to say, I am not forced too often to write what I don’t want to write. It’s not my goal to have a big house in Beverly Hills. I have a very inexpensive house in Woodstock that does not have a swimming pool. I write what gives me joy to write.

However, I also believe that film is all about collaboration. What’s the point of being a writer if your goal is to defend the first seven pages that come out of your computer? As far as I’m concerned, there is no good writer who isn’t open to suggestions and rewriting.

There is not one word in the first draft of “Philadelphia” that is in the final cut. It took 25 drafts over two and a half years to write that movie, with whole plots and characters completely cut. Young writers who believe their job is to defend the first draft should probably change that attitude.

Your memoir, “Blue Days, Black Nights”, addresses intensely dramatic themes — obsession, addiction, passionate love — and yet still contains some very darkly funny moments. Was the use of humor a conscious decision on your part or did the material naturally lend itself to that?

It was both. I did not want to write a sentimental, confessional book. I hate those kind of books. I thought the only way to write the story was to view it as a black comedy. It was a conscious choice. While the events in the book were happening, I saw that they were absurd and funny. So I guess I have that gift to view myself with a sense of humor.

You were awarded the Ryan White Service Award shortly after “Philadelphia” was released, and you’ve also been involved with activist efforts since then to promote AIDS awareness. Are there other social issues that you’d like to address in your work?

What I’m trying to do in my work right now is write characters who have no boundaries so that they’re not from any one group — gay, straight, bisexual or anything like that.

That’s the point of “Soldier’s Girl,” that two people fell in love and that those characters completely defy any kind of characterization. Barry Winchell was a straight soldier who fell in love with a transgendered woman who was only halfway through her transformation, so that the woman he fell in love with had a penis, but they loved each other anyway. I’m interested in people who live outside boundaries and categories and take lots of risks.

My memoir has the same theme. The hero is a drug-dealing male prostitute who would not be considered heroic for most people, but from my point of view he is a true hero because he has integrity, and he loved.

Join Ron Nyswaner in Alumni Hall at 7 p.m. on Tuesday for a free screening of “Soldier’s Girl” to be followed by a brief Q-and-A session.