For today’s episode, I’ve had the immense pleasure of talking to screenwriter Mike Rich about his very first film, FINDING FORRESTER. Directed by Gus Van Sant, the film came out in the year 2000 and features the legendary “original James Bond” Sean Connery as a reclusive writer in the vein of J.D. Salinger, named William Forrester, who starts mentoring a young 16-year old black kid from the Bronx, Jamal, played by then-newcomer Rob Brown, who divides his time between playing basketball with his friends and at school and his secret interest in writing and literature. The film also stars a ton of other wonderful actors, including F. Murray Abraham as a condescending professor of literature, Anna Paquin as Jamal’s love interest, Claire, Michael Nouri as Claire’s father, Michael Pitt as one of Jamal’s schoolmates, and even rapper Busta Rhymes as Jamal’s brother. It’s a film which I’ve seen many times over the years, and its themes of studying great literature, finding your own creativity, developing an unusual friendship out of a student-mentor relationship, and looking back at the twists and turns of the past have always resonated very strongly with me.
In our conversation, Mike remembers how he wrote the script without having any expectations of it getting made and its journey to suddenly having Sony, Gus Van Sant and Sean Connery interested in it. He discusses developing the story with Van Sant and Connery, talks about the wonderful performances, especially by Rob Brown, and, naturally, he talks about the process of writing, about sports, and all the other themes and ideas of his story. We also touch upon some of Mike’s other films, such as the baseball drama THE ROOKIE starring Dennis Quaid, the ice hockey movie MIRACLE starring Kurt Russell, the horseracing film SECRETARIAT starring Diane Lane and John Malkocih, or the Pixar movie CARS 3.
My interview with Mike Rich was conducted in connection with our German-language podcast Lichtspielplatz, so if you speak German, please check out episode #79, which features an in-depth discussion of FINDING FORRESTER.
If you enjoy my interviews here on Talking Pictures, please consider heading over to patreon.com/TalkingPicturesPodcast to support the production of new episodes.
So without any further ado, here’s Mike Rich!
The mp3 file can be downloaded HERE.
Photos courtesy of Mike Rich
Editing: Christoph Schwarz
Music: Clark Kent
Thanks to Aaron Kaplan and Grace Sebastian for organizing the interview.
