Mr. Beaks Skips Through The Grid With TRON LEGACY Screenwriters Adam Horowitz And Eddy Kitsis!

For the last several years, Adam Horowitz and Eddy Kitsis have been living the geek dream, banging out some of the best-loved episodes of LOST (e.g. "The Numbers" and "Greatest Hits") and, in their spare time, playing around on the hallowed digital ground of "The Grid" as the screenwriters of TRON LEGACY. This is their job. They actually get paid quite well to do it. And they can't seem to believe it themselves.

Horowitz and Kitsis are precisely the kinds of writers you want on a movie like TRON LEGACY; they loved the original film enough to insist on a sequel rather than a remake, and they seem eager to keep expanding the world of The Grid via different mediums (e.g. Disney XD's animated TRON UPRISING). They're essentially fans who have been handpicked by producer Sean Bailey to be the guardians of TRON - and they're committed to furthering the mythology of the franchise in a way that would satisfy them as fans.

When I sat down with Horowitz and Kitsis a few weeks ago, it felt less like an interview and more like catching up with friends I hadn't seen since junior high - particularly when we were naming off some of our favorite arcade and old console games. Had I not been dealing with a tight time frame of ten minutes, I would've gladly kept the game talk going (if only to see if they were as obsessed with the war-themed FRONT LINE as I was). For the most part, we talked about the development of the film, why they settled on a father-son narrative as a means of re-introducing (or, in many cases, introducing) audiences to the world of TRON, and where they might take the series should it earn enough at the worldwide box office to merit a sequel. I had a blast chatting with these guys. Hope you enjoy...

Mr. Beaks: What were your first experiences with TRON?

Adam Horowitz: I was a kid. I was very young. I remember being dropped off in the theater with my brother to see it, and just being blown away. Like really having my imagination fired. And then leaving and going right to the arcade, and throwing quarters right into the game - and finding that that game was so hard and so difficult that I would gravitate toward the tank game. On the tank version, I could last a little longer. But I could not defeat it.

Eddy Kitsis: For me, it was a very similar experience. I remember I was dropped off at the mall with my best friend at the time. Our parents would walk around while we went in the movie theater, because you were at that age where you were like, "I don't want parents with me!". But you were too young to be alone. The idea that there were computers, and that you could go behind the screen of a video game was just so mindblowing to me, and just so cool. In a weird way, I thought that the movie allowed you after - with the game and the toys and stuff - to be in it. You know, we were all fans of STAR WARS, and it's always fun to have movies that make you think about them, and that you get to still be in them in your own way.

Beaks: I think it's interesting that video games had that mystery of what lurked in the circuitry. "What hidden levels are we not going to find?" For some reason, this made me want to fill in the gaps in the extremely uncomplicated narrative of the game. Like you might want to write your own narrative in your head for, say, DONKEY KONG.

Kitsis: PITFALL was my favorite game. I was so good at PITFALL. But that's a classic example of "Where am I?" What's this guy's story? Why is he getting to the thing?" And, yeah, you start to wonder, "What is the narrative?" I think it's no surprise today that games have huge narratives.

Horowitz: I loved POLE POSITION. There could not have been less narrative in that game. You just go round and round. It wasn't even until POLE POSITION II where the track would even vary a little bit.

Kitsis: I liked TURBO. TURBO was cooler. When it went to night, it would get dark.

Beaks: It was also flat, and the car was smaller.

Horowitz: Which game was the one where the gun would drop down on top of the car, and you could fire? That was awesome because for the first time you could blow things up while driving. That was a seminal moment for me. [Beaks note: Anyone remember what it was called? I distinctly remember playing it, but couldn't find it online.]

Beaks: Having this kind of background, and this love for video games, must've been a huge plus in landing the TRON LEGACY gig. The timeline is a bit confusing to me, but was it the Comic Con trailer that essentially greenlit the movie?

Kitsis: The Comic Con trailer absolutely helped get it made.

Horowitz: It was in the summer or fall of 2007 when Eddie and I pitched our idea for this movie. [Producers] Sean Bailey and Justin Springer brought in Joe Kosinski, and then the whole team kind of formed then.

Kitsis: Sean said to Disney, "I want the director, producers and the writers to be together." We came from TV, so, for us, that collaboration was great because we constantly got to collaborate through the whole thing. He said to Disney, "We're going to develop a script, but we'd also like to do a test." So Joe had this great idea for the test that we wrote up. Then, all of a sudden, we get a call. It was Bailey or Justin, and it was like, "We're going to show it at Comic Con!" We were in the LOST writers room at the time, and we were like, "What!?!?" We truly say Comic Con got the movie made because the reaction from that test showed that there was a huge fan base and interest for TRON.

Horowitz: Right around the time the test was shown at Comic Con, we were finishing up the first draft. Then after the test, and all of that excitement from Comic Con, the movie really started to gain momentum.

Kitsis: After that test, deadlines went from a month to a week. It was like, "We're going." And then all of a sudden there was a weird FRAGGLE ROCK thing, where we'd go have weekly story meetings with Joe at his office at Digital Domain with Sean and Justin. Every week it'd be like, "Who's that guy?" "He's in the art department." "We have an art department?" All of a sudden, it just got bigger and bigger until one day you realized, "Oh, my god. Are we making this?"

Beaks: How did you approach the script? Was it a meat-and-potatoes narrative thing, or did you concentrate more on world building?

Kitsis: We literally approached it like fans. We were on LOST, and we heard our agent say that Disney was looking to do a TRON. We had no idea that there were some stops and starts before; we really didn't know anything other than that. So we approached it like fans in the sense that we didn't think we'd get the job. "They're not going to give TRON to two TV writers."

Horowitz: The first thing we thought of was, "We don't want to do a remake."

Kitsis: "That's blasphemous!"

Horowitz: We wanted to do something that could stand on its own, but would also honor the first film. So we looked at what we loved about that film: obviously Tron, and obviously Jeff.

Kitsis: It always fired our imagination when Kevin Flynn lands at the end, and he's taking control of the company. We're like, "What happens next?" The very first thing we had to do was find the emotional connection, and, for us, that was father-son. It was "Who's going to take us into the world?" That's the son. But the son isn't just going to learn about the grid; he's going to learn about his father through the grid. And for the father, who's spent so much time in this one world, what if there was a thirty-five version of himself as a reminder of all the things [he did]? Who you are at eighteen is different than who you are at twenty-eight. So what if your eighteen-year-old self was running around antagonizing you, and you're like, "Oh, man! There are so many things you don't get, but I can't change your programming!" That's where we started.

Horowitz: It was that idea, and then the idea of being able to tell a father-son story in a different way - which was a father with two sons, and a son with two fathers. It was a twist that got us really excited as storytellers, to have something to explore that you could only explore in the world of TRON.

Kitsis: And we were just so lucky to have Joe Kosinski. He is a true visionary. We always say he has come from the future to teach us technology. His background is in architecture. So to build a world with an architect who literally can draw... I still have the floor plans he sent us. We would sit down and have a meeting and talk about the disc games, and then Adam and I would go back to our office to start writing them. And we'd get an email, and there would be a design from Joe, so we could start tailoring it to that. That's the kind of weaving we did throughout the process.

Beaks: It's always difficult in films where you have a lot of backstory to dispense with to find those moments where characters can say things that aren't just there to forward the plot. To simply connect as people. How did you guys go about finding those moments?

Horowitz: It was a challenge. The challenge is settling on what your story is, and finding the best and cleanest way to tell it. Our process is we'll overwrite and overwrite; we write the giant messy version, and then try to hone it down. We were lucky to have these amazing partners to collaborate with throughout the whole process.

Kitsis: But as far as the rhythm of it, sometimes you want to take a breath. Sometime you want to learn a little more. Sometimes the scene you want to write is a little more intimate. And hopefully while you're writing, the story starts to tell you where it wants to go, and tells you where it wants to take a breath. You hopefully can feel it. And sometimes you're like, "Okay, I'm glad we stopped here for this, because this was a good moment."

Beaks: One of the big questions we didn't have an answer for until now was "What about Tron? How do you work Tron into this narrative?" How did you go about integrating him? Did you have different versions?

Horowitz: Like everything, it developed over time. But the movie's called TRON, you know? (Laughs)

Kitsis: It's interesting because it is called TRON, and he is a character, and yet you watch it and obviously Flynn is the protagonist. But we kind of had a plan for Tron in this one, and it pretty much stayed kind of how it is.

Horowitz: It's called TRON LEGACY. It was Joe who actually came up with the "Legacy" part of the title, and it came, I think, out of him realizing that the story we were all doing was about legacies working on many different levels - one of which was the legacy of all the different characters, be it Flynn or Tron, as well as the legacy of the movies. It worked on a lot of different levels.

Beaks: Are there more layers of the onion to peel back with Tron?

Horowitz: If we're fortunate enough that people like the movie and want more, we'll dive back into that onion.

Kitsis: I'll say this: what's great about movies like this is that... we flew over sectors of the grid that you didn't get to see. As storytellers, you're always like, "What happened in that sector?" Well, that's what's great for the animated show that we're doing, TRON UPRISING. Adam and I actually wrote the micro-series; we're involved in that on a heavy level because as storytellers, you get to tell the bits and pieces and things that you didn't get to do in the movie because you didn't have the time. But for us as fans, we want it all to be of a piece. So we're telling one story, and it's the story of The Grid. And sometimes it's better to be told in a movie, sometimes it's better to be told in a viral campaign, and sometimes in an animated [series]. But hopefully those layers you're talking about we will slowly peel back over time - as long as people continue to want to hear them. And if they don't, then we'll cry. It's that easy. We will literally cry.

Beaks: One last question: who gets credit for "Biodigital Jazz"?

Horowitz: Oh, god.

Kitsis: Jeff.

Horowitz: That had to be a Jeff.

Kitsis: Jeff Bridges, man.

Horowitz: There's so much of his character in the movie that came from getting to know him in the process. We would just write what we heard. He brought so much to it.

Kitsis: There's the phrase, "We were jamming" right? Well, Adam and I wrote that line because Jeff uses it. He'll say, "Oh, man, we were totally jamming last night." And Jeff is so brilliant and so great, you just have to keep up. That's the thing. So many of the great lines, he'll just come up with because he's just so brilliant.

Beaks: That's amazing to have that experience. You're just writing Jeff Bridges.

Kitsis: The best was when we were up in Vancouver, and there's a knock on our door. We look up, and it's Jeff. And he's like, "Oh, hey, man. Do you mind if I talk to you about a couple of scenes?"

Horowitz: There's no greater thing as a writer than to have him plop down on your couch and start jamming.

TRON LEGACY is currently in theaters worldwide.

Faithfully submitted,

Mr. Beaks