|
 |
Can't forget 'Dolores!' Andy Robin, now a Pawtucket resident, was a co-executive producer on 'Seinfeld,' receiving four Emmy nominations and two People's Choice Awards with his longtime writing partner Gregg Kavet. PHOTO BY DAVID HANSEN
|
|
|
No film school for you
ANDY ROBIN, 37
FILM AND TELEVISION WRITER, DIRECTOR, PRODUCER
The Junior Mint, The Frogger, The Jimmy, The Soup Nazi - you remember at least one of these famous "Seinfeld" episodes. Perhaps less well known is Andy Robin, one of the writers behind each of them. Beginning his career writing sketches for "Saturday Night Live," the Harvard grad eventually worked his way onto the writing staff of his favorite sitcom and has now written and directed his first feature film, "Live Free Or Die," with his longtime writing partner Gregg Kavet. The film will be shown Wednesday and Thursday at the Newport International Film Festival. (Read the review on Page 10)
So you're living in Rhode Island now. Where did you grow up?
I grew up in Stamford, Connecticut. I lived in Boston for five or six years, and then moved to Los Angeles and lived out there for a dozen years. I moved to Rhode Island five years ago. We have a place in Jamestown, but we live in Pawtucket now. It's halfway between our families. It's got everything most good-sized states have but it's all close together.
How did you break into the business as a comedy writer?
I sent some sketches to "Saturday Night Live" when I was graduating from college, and just as I was about to get a real job and give up on writing, I got a call from the head of the writing staff at SNL offering me a job. I did that for one season, and then I wrote a spec sitcom script for "Seinfeld" because I was a really big fan early on. When Jerry hosted SNL one week, I was able to pass the script on to his producers, and they read it and liked it enough to have me pitch some episode ideas. They commissioned a script based on one of those ideas and that became "The Junior Mint" episode.
How does your writing partnership with Gregg Kavet work?
We're pretty much writing together all the time. Since Gregg is living in LA right now, we use a program that lets us share the same computer screen without being in the same room, and we use a hands-free set so we can talk and type at the same time even though we're 3,000 miles apart.
Truman Capote once claimed that John Huston, with whom he co-wrote "Beat The Devil," only drank and played darts while Capote wrote everything himself. No one really believes that story, but let me ask you: Who throws the darts in your partnership?
I think we take turns throwing darts. We let our brains rest every five minutes and let the other person take up the slack. Ideally, you get into a groove. We're on the phone, our voices are rising as we get excited about the scene we're creating, and we take on the characters' voices. But sometimes one of us will just go dead and the other has to do the work for a while.
Why did you decide to set the film in New Hampshire?
I went to summer camps in New Hampshire and actually lived there for a couple of years. And Gregg spent a lot of time there and in Vermont when he was growing up. So we wanted to set it in New England because we felt like we knew it, and we picked New Hampshire because it's got this real sort of in-your-face attitude - right down to their state motto - which our main character had and we thought fit the movie well.
Your script originally began as a TV show pilot but was never picked up so you decided to make it into a film. Would you consider going back to write for television or would it somehow be easier to make films?
I think even in the last five years, TV has changed a lot. So we're dipping our toes back in the water. Gregg and I are pitching some TV ideas for the first time in a long time because it's not a whole lot easier for a movie to be made. It took us eight years to make this movie. The freedom on a movie is nice, but if you can get a show on cable, you get a lot of freedom. With TV, you also get a ton of creative control. The writers pretty much run the show. And I think the networks are slowly changing - they're willing to try new things and give writers more freedom.
Did having Kavet on as a co-director help convince you that you could handle directing a film for the first time?
As a writer on TV, you are directing in many ways. You're interacting with the actors; giving them notes. The stuff we felt least equipped to do were the technical camera sort of things. We read a lot of books on types of shots and the effects that various shots give you. But neither of us went to film school, so the task of making the film look beautiful and interesting was kind of a big question mark. And going forward, I think that's something we'd like to focus on - the actual art of filming. We were on a very tight budget making our film, time and money-wise, so we just had to make sure the movie made sense and we finished all the scenes. But certainly working with someone else gives you a lot of confidence.
Aaron Stanford, who plays John Rudgate, mentioned one scene that was completely rewritten as you filmed. How much of the film was improvised or written while being filmed?
Sometimes an actor would do something, maybe when he wasn't even saying his lines, but when we're talking to him, we'd notice the actor used a particular expression, and we'd toss that in. There's a feedback mechanism. If you notice the actor does something funny then you try to remember it and write it down in your script as you're rehearsing. And then you rewrite the scene.
What was it like working on "Bee Movie," the animated film you co-wrote with Jerry Seinfeld? That's coming out next year, isn't it?
Yeah, in the fall of 2007. That was a lot of fun. It was really exciting to work with Jerry. He's one of a kind. He's just so scintillatingly funny. It was fun too because we had total freedom since it's an animated movie. We were pretty spoiled on "Seinfeld" because we had these big budgets so we could set the show on a fire engine or in a burning building, but this was like taking that a step further. Whatever the hell comes to mind, they can draw.
Finally, any advice for the real John "Rugged" Rudgates out there?
[Laughs.] Move out of town, and probably ditch your nickname. I don't know. Go to grad school?
Did you go to grad school?
Nah...Maybe someday.
LEN SOUSA
|
|
 |
|
