Screenwriter Aaron Guzikowsi was riding a hum-drum day job stuffing envelopes at a New York ad agency, when inspiration struck for a screenplay about a tale of children gone missing and the ripple effects this had on their families. After hammering away at the story for years—often in his former employer’s supply closet, Guzikowsi completed Prisoners, and hit the writer’s jackpot when Warner Bros. greenlit his film, attracting a cadre of A-list talent including Hugh Jackman, Melissa Leo, Jake Gyllenhaal, Terrence Howard and Viola Davis. Creative Screenwriting spoke to Guzikowski, to learn more about his extraordinary journey.
Screenwriter Aaron Guzikowski
ANDREW BLOOMENTHAL: What first sparked your idea for the story about two young girls who go missing in rural Pennsylvania and the police investigation to recover them? Can you also discuss how your manager Adam Kohlbrenner helped you develop the script to make it film ready?
AARON GUZIKOWSKI: Well originally I just wanted to write a scary thriller that dealt with two things that I find to be the scariest: losing something you can’t live without, and that feeling you get when you’re lost. That was the impetus, and then I just started writing it and building on it. Originally the story was more centralized on the father character [Jackman], and as I kept working on it, the detective character [Gyllenhaal] became a larger presence and it became more of a two-hander. When the studio bought the script, it was in not-too dissimilar shape to what it ended up being. In terms of development, it stayed the same until the director Denis Villeneuve came on, and then he and I worked on fleshing out the detective character more and adding in more scenes involving him. But most of the actual development of the script was between myself and my manager, who ended up becoming a producer on the film, and in a large sense, that development also had to do with transitioning from a smaller story of the father to the larger, two-hander perspective on the whole thing. But from the very start it was always about these two families—these two girls. The skeletal structure of it all was pretty much intact from early on.
Hugh Jackman as Keller Dover and Paul Dano as Alex Jones in Prisoners
BLOOMENTHAL: Before the kidnap crisis hits, there’s a domestic Thanksgiving Day scene, with these two families–the Kellers and the Birches, with very organic and naturalistic interactions. When writing the dialogue for multiple characters having multiple conversations simultaneously, do you articulate those specific moments and beats on the page? Or are these moments better served by broadly describing the setting and letting the actors improvise their way through them?
GUZIKOWSKI: I think it’s a little bit of both. I think you need to at least set up the structure of what it’s going to be, on the page, but the actors will end up improvising little bits here and there, which helps in bridging the whole thing together. But you have to have the musicality and the rhythm of the back and forth–or at least some version of it on the page, and the actors sort of pick up on that rhythm and they can riff on it and you can get a more naturalistic, cross-talky, real-feeling kind of get-together. But you definitely have to have some kind of version of it on the page, in terms of the dialogue and the rhythm and how it’s going to bounce from one character to the next.
BLOOMENTHAL: I have a similar question about how much you described on the page with respect to the Holly Jones character, played by Melissa Leo. [SPOILER WARNING] She’s first portrayed as this docile widow, yet there’s something vaguely creepy about her, where she embodies a slightly “off” demeanor. And when she’s got Hugh Jackman at gunpoint, forcing him to do these dastardly things, she’s so nonchalant, and she never yells, which makes it all the more creepy. How much of that demeanor was described on the page?
Melissa Leo as Holly Jones in Prisoners
GUZIKOWSKI: I write pretty sparsely, but surely it was on the page that she’s speaking these things, but there’s not a lot of huge exclamation marks. A lot of that’s in the performance too, and since the actor and the director know the whole story, they can get an idea of what they need to do in those moments. So you can describe it, and I do, to some extent on the page, but you can only do so much within the parameters of the screenplay structure. I had long conversations with the director about who these people are, and hence he had long conversations with the actors about who these people are, and then the actor takes all that information and internalizes it and it comes out in subtle ways during the performance. Of course, a lot of it has to do with the casting, and there are things built in to the actors that are just really compelling and interesting that they’re able to bring to these characters.
BLOOMENTHAL: Yeah, Melissa Leo is seemingly innocuous, but there’s something going on behind those eyes that’s a little off-putting.
GUZIKOWSKI: It’s amazing when you get a really good actor like Melissa Leo, how much is built in, and without doing very much at all, they portray so much.
BLOOMENTHAL: In collaborating with the director Denis Villeneuve, was there anything he did, or any treatment he gave the script that deviated from the vision you had when you wrote it–even if it was an improvement? Or was it all completely collaborative and totally expected?
GUZIKOWSKI: Denis was really great and he was unusually respectful of the script. And all the changes that he did make, I executed, so I was fully aware of them. In the editing of the film, there were some scenes that got cut out, but it had to be that way because the original running time of the movie was like three hours.
Director Denis Villeneuve with Jake Gyllenhaal on the set of Prisoners
BLOOMENTHAL: Were you given any mandate to pare it down in the writing stage?
GUZIKOWSKI: No. No, I wasn’t, which I think was good in a sense, because until you see some of these things on screen, it’s hard to say what we can live with losing for the sake of time, and what we can’t. The editor Joel Cox did an amazing job, in terms of maximizing certain moments. But certain things had to be cut; it’s just the reality of it because things were just going too long. But in the writing stage, it’s not usually the case, or not always the case, that when collaborating with directors, they’re so hugely respectful of the script, and Denis is very inclusive and constantly calling me and asking me about stuff, and I would send him a revision, or whatever was needed.
BLOOMENTHAL: Did you ever have an impulse to want to direct the film yourself? Or was that not really on the table?
GUZIKOWSKI: Well I do want to direct films. But I did not want to direct this film.
BLOOMENTHAL: Why not, Aaron?
GUZIKOWSKI: You know why? Because I’d never done anything like this. And I feel like I could have done it, but I don’t think I could have done the best version of it, and I definitely didn’t want to fuck it up. I didn’t want to be the guy who fucked it up.
Jake Gyllenhaal in Prisoners
BLOOMENTHAL: In the film, there’s a great deal of police talk, and statistics about how failure to recover a kidnapping victim within a certain time frame, exponentially decreases the chance of finding them alive, and things of that nature. Did you do a great deal of research? Did you learn anything that surprised you?
GUZIKOWSKI: I did a little bit of research, but I don’t do tons of research, usually. I usually just research whatever I need do to get through the scene, I mean, within reason. I obviously don’t want to get anything horribly wrong, but at the end of the day it’s about telling a story and making it as impactful as possible, and once you get into a moment like that, where you need the information to be right, I research it to make sure everything kind of jibes with reality–at least as close as it need to. But I try not to get too bogged down trying to adhere to real life.
Hugh Jackman as Keller Dover in Prisoners
BLOOMENTHAL: Hugh Jackman’s Doomsday, fanatical survivalist mentality, really hits home when we see a stockpile of supplies in his basement. Did you articulate the inventory of these items in the script?
GUZIKOWSKI: No, it was more generalized in the script. You only have so much space. I think mentioned the meds down there, and the canned foods, and a few other headlines, then the production designer worked with the director to come up with the specific items, because there’s hundreds of things down there. On the page you’re brushing in what it feels like to look at this stuff and what pops, then when you shoot it, that’s when you drill down and say “What do we really need to put in here?”
Aaron Guzikowski
BLOOMENTHAL: What was your reaction when you first saw it?
GUZIKOWSKI: It was great! It was even cooler than I imagined—just the extreme nature of it all when you see it on screen, and the way they finished that’s shot through the gas mask that’s hanging up on the wood beam there. It’s always the best-case scenario when you’re brushing it out on the page, and then when you see it on screen, it takes on a whole new dimension of effectiveness, which it definitely did here.
BLOOMENTHAL: Let’s talk about the Alex Jones character, who was so sparse in his words. How did you determine how much to dial back his actual dialogue, to imply someone who has a 10-year-old mentality, who still has to provide exposition? He has to have that moment when he signals to Hugh Jackman that he might know something.
GUZIKOWSKI: It was interesting, because Paul Dano did so much with his interpretation of it, but also, although we don’t see him talking a lot, it’s inferred that when he’s alone with his aunt, he will talk. It’s implying there’s a larger aspect to this person, without him doing it on screen, which sometimes can take away from the big picture you’re trying to present. But he always said very little in all the drafts, which is so important to his character, that he remained this mystery, and you never know if at some point he’s going to start talking in a fluid way—if he has it in him, or if he doesn’t. And the best way to do that is with him saying as little as possible. From the moment we meet him, he’s in this state of fear and that also informs the fact that he’s not able to speak because he’s gone through this horrible traumatic experience when he was kidnapped, and so on and so forth. And from the very start, Jake Gyllenhaal is screaming at him and dragging him into the woods, so there’s never a chance he’s ever going to talk because people do nothing but try and terrify him from the moment we meet him.
BLOOMENTHAL: It also maintains the possibility that he’s hoarding information that’s necessary.
AARON: Exactly.
BLOOMENTHAL: Either this guy’s a hell of an actor, or he’s creepy-ass in real life.
GUZIKOWSKI: Paul Dano is such a nice guy in real life, and he’s a hell of an actor. It’s such a tough part to really wrap your head around as an actor, and he just dove right into it. He was amazing.
Paul Dano as Alex Jones in Prisoners
BLOOMENTHAL: He was definitely all in. So let’s end on a totally fun question. Tell me about the snakes in the storage containers. Did you just have a yen to work with snakes?
GUZIKOWSKI: You know, I really did! And there are actually more snakes in the script. There was a moment where Hugh Jackman puts snakes through that little hole in the cell that he builds.
BLOOMENTHAL: That would have been sadistic.
GUZIKOWSKI: It would have been pretty nutty. I think they did shoot it, so maybe it will be on the Blu-Ray or something. But, I just liked the image of it, and I wanted there to be some real big scares, and I love the obviously symbolic nature or it all. But just the way the snakes play on screen–it’s a great moment, so I was happy that we were able to keep the snakes in there.
BLOOMENTHAL: It looked pretty good too. I don’t know what component of the snakes were real, versus rubber, versus CGI.
GUZIKOWSKI: I wasn’t there on the day they shot it, but I believe they were all real snakes, which is always a good thing.
