‘Killers Of The Flower Moon’s Eric Roth: How A Boxer’s Love For Sparring With Prose & Directors Leaves Him On Brink Of Breaking Records
deadline.comEXCLUSIVE: It is only after Eric Roth invites you to sit on his front porch and discuss screenwriting and the thorny process of making great movies that you find yourself saying, wait, you wrote that one too?
He’ll tell you you’re sitting in a chair where Nobel Laureates and Pulitzer winners held court — as if sitting with arguably the greatest and most successful living screenwriter isn’t intimidating enough — and there will be the occasional interruption as neighbors or passersby stop by this covered birdhouse looking repository at the edge of his lawn where Roth places books he’s read and admired, to help others revel in his lifelong love of words.
They all want to talk about what they read and Roth is in no hurry to send them on their way. You wonder why a writer, so unparalleled at distilling a massively successful book like Killers of the Flower Moon into the blueprint for a great movie creatively controlled by a director and not him, would stay in that lane.
When so many of his peers have exited for the on ramp to directing, which gives them all the control. You cannot argue with the results: Roth has been nominated six times for Best Adapted Screenplay — Forrest Gump, The Insider, Munich, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Star Is Born and Dune — and another nom would put him past Billy Wilder, one of his heroes.
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