Interview from “Writer’s Guide To Hollywood” I recently did an interview for Skip Press' "Writer's Guide to Hollywood," a film industry newsletter. Since it’s so difficult to get a hold of, I decided to reproduce it here. COMIC BOOK TO SCREEN - INTERVIEW WITH DWAYNE MCDUFFIE Skip Press: In April, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dwayne McDuffie, who has been turning comic books into Hollywood properties. If you ever wondered how that happens, this might help. (1) How long have you been into creating comics? Since about 1988, when I sold the comedy series DAMAGE CONTROL, about the engineering and insurance firm who cleans up the rubble created by the epic battles between Marvel superheroes. DAMAGE CONTROL is currently in development by Village Roadshow. If it actually gets made, it will be the strangest movie, ever. One can hope... Since then I've written for just about every major comic book company. I've written Spider-Man, The Avengers, Back To The Future, (The Artist Formerly Known As) Prince and tons of other stuff you have no hope of ever having heard of. Although I prefer to write humor (and have done so whenever those kinds of assignments were available), there's almost none to be found in today's mainstream comics. Maybe we should find another name for them. (2) At what point did you start doing your own ethnic comics? Ah, "ethnic comics"? That's one I've never heard before. I started writing black characters rather late in my career at Marvel. I had some success with Deathlok, a book about a pacifist who finds himself in control of -albeit trapped within- a powerful military cyborg. Deathlok #1 was the first comic I ever worked on to sell over a million copies. It gave me the financial wherewithal to be able to co-finance Milestone, my own company, in 1992. We called ourselves multicultural, by the way and we took that very seriously. Both our product and our creative staff were representative of many different racial, religious and ethnic groups. My hope was that we would find fresh water, if we looked in different wells. I think we succeeded. (3) Do you think your own personal profile (your ethnic background) has helped or hindered you in (a) the comic biz, (b) Hollywood, or has it been a non-issue? (Hope this doesn't tick you off, but I get the wildest arguments on this kinda stuff.) In the comic business, it's been a major hindrance. In 1988 when I made my first sale, I became only the second black in history to write for one of the majors. There have been maybe a dozen since then, but only one currently has a regular assignment. The racial barriers in comics, particularly on the writer/editor side, have always been substantial and the current downturn in the market has, of course, made things worse. I could tell you ugly stories but I prefer to look forward, the ugly stories are bad for my digestion. In Hollywood, I don't know. I haven't even really *been* to Hollywood yet. It would be disingenuous of me not to admit my suspicion that the current political pressure on the networks to be more racially diverse helped STATIC SHOCK get on the air (Yay, political pressure!). On the other hand, they could have picked something else, so my ability and effort is in the mix there, somewhere. On CHAOS AND ORDER (my feature script for Fox), the producer has met me (he's also the co-writer. He hired me) but nobody from the studio has. I'm not sure they know what color I am. Maybe they'd be pleased, maybe they'll read this and can me, maybe they don't care. I've got enough friends in the business to know that race is a limiting factor and I'm sensibly wary but frankly, I haven't had anything hit me in the face, as of yet. (4) How did you break into the show with the WB network? We co-published Milestone with DC Comics. DC's President, Jenette Kahn, was very fond of our titles. She's sold several DC properties for media over the years and came very close for various Milestone characters on several occasions (feature films, live action shows, even an an opera!). One of our near misses was an animated series to be called, "The New Guard." A terrific pilot was written by Alan Burnett, who was a muckety-muck on the animated Batman series from a few years ago. Although it didn't sell, Alan became a fan of several of our books and has repeatedly pitched various Milestone shows over the years. This season, all the stars lined up properly and he and his team made the sale. By the time I heard about it, it was practically a done deal. (5) Is writing scripts harder than writing comics, or does your heavy visual background help you in writing scripts? Scripts are *easier* than comics, because in comics, you have to absolutely control time. The example I like to use; "A man comes home from work, he's tired. As he enters his apartment, he absently tosses his coat across the back of a chair. He flips through his mail, sees one particular letter. Opens it. His face falls as he reads the news. He crumples the letter, that horrible thing, and allows it to fall to the ground." Okay, in moving pictures, that sequence is a leisurely 20 seconds, tops. In a comic book, as written, it's two and a half pages (or over 10 percent of your space in a standard, 22 page issue). That's too long. You can't do it that way. You have to find *specific moments in time* in that sequence to sell the action so you can cut it down to a page or less. It's much harder than just describing the entire action. As you might imagine, a sequence like a fight or a chase multiplies this problem considerably. Comic books do force you to write visually. You can't give an artist a script full of great dialogue scenes. You have to give him something to draw. This skill travels well. (6) What are your future aspirations? I'd like to improve my craft and eventually move into live action stuff. I'd love to make my living writing for the screen (but I have to admit that my experience writing for comics probably translates more directly to episodic stuff, like TV). I love seeing what actors do with my words. I love seeing the pictures move. I love the idea of the incredibly large audiences you can reach through these media. I guess I'll find out shortly if I've got what it takes to make a career of this. (7) Anything else you'd like to tell me... I'd like to take the opportunity to plug my web site, http://www.dwaynemcduffie.com. In the interest of appearing to be remotely on topic, I'll mention that the site includes lots of samples of both professional comic book scripts and "Marvel-style plots" (think of them as a treatment that the director shoots MOS, then gives back to you to write dialogue to loop in after the fact. As unlikely as it sounds, the process works). Finally, thanks for the invitation to talk to your readers, even though I'm sure the bulk of them know more about this stuff than I do. And isn't that always the way?