This year, screenwriter Howard A. Rodman considers himself “really lucky.” He penned not one, but two dramatically different films at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival: “Savage Grace,” which is part of the Premiere category, and “August,” which is part of the Spectrum category.
“At its best, an indie film is like, ‘Hey, let’s build a tree house,'” he says. “But there’s always a better chance that the spirit and the intention of the work will be honored. My work that gets made independently always tends to feel more like me.”
Rodman comes to Sundance a veteran. In 2000, he wrote the festival’s opening film, “Joe Gould’s Secret.” He notes the festival has changed some, become more of a market, but it’s still his favorite. “I love the audience at Sundance,” he says. “It’s a group of people that are here to see strange and beautiful film.”
Dramatically different in scope and subject, both of Rodman’s “strange and beautiful” screenplays were completed five or six years ago, and for two very antithetical reasons.
Rodman built “August” on the story of Romulus and Remus, the mythological founders of Rome, and on the 1948 film “Force of Evil.” “What I liked about ‘Force of Evil’ was that every hairline fracture could create a big huge abyss,” he says. “It’s about complex villains.”
Directed by Austin Chick of 2002’s “XX/XY,” and starring Josh Hartnett as the hero and David Bowie as the villian, “August” captures the energy of the youthful dot-com era, with the story of two brothers fighting for their sinking empire, and risking their relationships with loved ones and dear friends along the way.
“I set it in the dot-com era because it seemed like fun to me Writers love technical language and the characters just started speaking to me,” he says. “It was also an exciting and interesting time when I knew people who were millionaires on paper but could barely afford a bag of Ramen. It was a time that was really about hubris, which is, in some way, one of our best national qualities.”
“Savage Grace,” starring Julianne Moore, covers an equally dark topic. Originally a 1985 biography written by Natalie Robins and Steven M.L. Aronson called “Savage Grace: the True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich and Famous American Family,” the film dramatizes the wild and tragic tales of the rich and eccentric, disturbingly dysfunctional Baekeland family subject matter that did not appeal to Rodman when he was initially approached by producers.
“It’s about a larger-than-life family that’s beautiful and wealthy, but who live lives full of incest and murder,” Rodman explains. “And at first, I said, ‘I’m not the right guy for this’ I was afraid and at the same time I was fascinated.”
But director Tom Kalin, director of the 1992 festival selection “Swoon,” convinced him to sign on. “It ended up being one of the most fulfilling experiences I’ve had as a writer, because I was so involved in the process, on every conference call,” he says. “I think I ended up writing 58 drafts for Tom.”
According to Rodman, the stories of homosexuality and incest in “Savage Grace” might be a little less shocking in today’s cultural climate. When writing the characters, Rodman says, he was careful not to fall into the easy trap of painting villains or pass judgment. Ultimately, he concludes the film is about “the failure of the very basic obligations of love.”
Rodman is a legacy in a family of filmmakers, including his father Howard Rodman, Sr., a writer of teleplays for more than three decades. He is the former chair of the writing division at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, a member of the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America, West and an artistic director of the Sundance Institute Screenwriting Labs.
A vocal supporter of the Writers Guild, Rodman regularly blogs on the Huffington Post about his field’s current crippled state and is all too aware of just how fortunate he is this year of all years to be a writer credited with more than one fully-realized film.
“Most screenplays don’t get made so it’s a miracle that I have two at Sundance,” he says. “It’s just a happy accident. It’s an embarrassment of riches.”
“August”
Last chance festival screening:
Saturday, Jan. 26, 11:30 a.m., Library Center Theatre, Park City
“Savage Grace”
Last chance festival screening:
Saturday, Jan. 26, 11:30 a.m., Racquet Club, Park City