KC Writer is a Somebody in Hollywood

by Robert W. Butler
Reprinted from the Kansas City Star

John Scott Shepherd knows the roll he's on can't last. Eventually his work will fall out of favor.

But probably not for a long time to come.

Lately Shepherd has been living in what he calls "the zone," a place where he can write 12 pages of script or 18 pages of a novel in four or five hours. It begins after he drops his three children off at school and returns to the family's house off Ward Parkway. Still in his pajama bottoms, he climbs to the third floor and enters his office.

Actually it's more like a monk's cell with a computer. No stereo to hum along with while he writes. No art or photos on the walls. No window with a distracting view.

Nothing, in fact, to tear his eyes and mind away from the monitor where his future and his fortune lie.

Shepherd, who admits to being older than 35 and younger than 40 ("Most people think I'm younger than I am -- and I'm OK with that"), writes screenplays and novels. And for the last couple of years, just about everything he has written has sold.

After going deep into debt to follow his writing dreams, after enduring his father's death and a period when even the household appliances seemed determined to go bad, he's now a millionaire. And his literary juggernaut shows no sign of slowing.

His first produced script, "Joe Somebody" starring Tim Allen, opened just before Christmas and already has done something rare in contemporary Hollywood: Ticket sales went up in its second week in the theaters, an indication that the film will have "legs," or box-office longevity.

Shepherd's first published novel, Henry's List of Wrongs, hits bookstores April 2; Shepherd has been chosen by Publishers Weekly as one of a dozen new fiction writers to watch. A filmed version of "Henry" will go into production this summer.

Angelina Jolie already has completed filming "Life or Something Like It" from Shepherd's screenplay. Several other scripts, novels and even a TV series are in the pipeline. And Shepherd has signed a three-picture directing deal with Warner Bros. that will make him not only a screenwriter but an auteur.

Why all this for a former advertising guy from Kansas City? Shepherd has a theory:

"For every me there are five other guys equally talented," he says. "Tenacity is what keeps you going. You can't rest on one screenplay. You've got to write several. You've got to write every day. You have to check the Web to see what sorts of projects Hollywood is looking for, what's selling.

"I start writing about 8 every morning and don't slow until 1. When I'm in the zone I write really fast. I have a high degree of confidence in my ability to bring stories and characters to life.

"And I have something a lot of people working in the industry don't have: I'm in touch with what everyday people really care about."

After just one produced film it's too soon to make any pronouncements about the quality of Shepherd's work. But it's obvious he has a knack for coming up with plots and characters that get the attention of movie studio types.

Of course the concepts Shepherd nurses to a finished screenplay will undergo changes -- big and little -- before a completed movie shows at your local multiplex. "Joe Somebody" is a perfect example.

It's the tale of a divorced father who is beat up by the company bully in a dispute over a parking place. Worse, Joe's humiliation is witnessed by his precocious daughter. Joe demands a rematch and suddenly finds that everyone in the company now wants to be his friend. Before he was nobody. Now he's somebody.

"I got the idea watching a Dan Rather TV documentary called `Fame in America,' " Shepherd explained over breakfast in a Plaza restaurant. "It suggested how desperate we all are to be thought special.

"So I wrote a screenplay about a guy who piece by piece is losing everything he values. The movie's irony is that when he makes this impulsive decision to fight, he suddenly gets new friends and a better job just because of this ethereal something called fame."

At one point there was talk of making "Joe" with Jim Carrey in the lead and Jay Roach (of the "Austin Powers" franchise) directing. Eventually the project went to Tim Allen and his longtime collaborator, director John Pasquin ("The Santa Clause").

And the movie began to change.

"If you have a star like Tim, the movie will have to have `trailer moments,' " Shepherd said, referring to broadly comic scenes that will be at the heart of the advertising campaign to promote the film. "At one point the producers brought in some comedy punch-up guy to create funny moments. He got $200,000 a week to suggest things like, `Let's have Tim staple his sleeve to the wall' or `Tim gets kicked in the crotch.' "

Like many a movie writer before him, Shepherd found himself torn between the poles of artistic vision and commercial viability. Three times during the production of "Joe Somebody" he threw up his hands and walked away from the film because of the choices being made. Eventually he came back.

"The question you keep asking is, `Am I subjugating my vision so much that I'm chipping away at my own soul?' But you also find yourself passing through the I-am-the-artist-I-know-everything stage and realize that these guys are businessmen whose goal is to get the movie seen. You come to respect their know-how in making a movie aimed at a broad audience.

"It's kind of like you've written a fairly complex blues song, and it becomes a pop song. A good pop song. In fact, I think this is a really good pop song. It's connecting with people. And there's a sense that on one level this film is about something important. It asks more of an audience than your usual Tim Allen film."

Shepherd said that in the three years since his material began selling, he has moved from an awe of Hollywood and the moviemaking machinery to a mildly cynical view of an industry often run by bullies. He has also developed a determination to do things his way.

"I've learned I'm a lot tougher than I thought," he said. "I really will fight. I'm not going anywhere. I may get knocked down once, twice, but I'll keep on coming."

Initially, he recalls, he was all too happy to jump onto a plane at a moment's notice and fly out to the West Coast for a meeting with a producer. Then he realized that often those meetings were nothing more than ego-stroking sessions for the person who called them.

"You finally get to the point where you say, `No, I won't fly out to Los Angeles for your half-hour meeting. Especially when there's a chance you'll cancel it at the last minute and tell me to come back next week.'

"I've found that most of these meetings are pointless, meaningless. But if you're a studio executive, a producer, this is your only way to express your power. Once the director comes on board, your day is over. So during the development process is the only time the producer is fully in charge.

"He's holding a gun and pointing it at the writer. At no point is the writer holding the gun."

Shepherd, though, wants to hold the gun. Which is why he's eager, if a bit anxious, about getting to work on the first of three films he is to direct for Warner Bros.

Shepherd and his family -- wife Susan and children Natalie, 13, Jack, 9, and Cooper, 5 -- have considered pulling up stakes and moving to Los Angeles.

"We almost bought a house out there -- it was owned by John Stamos and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos -- and we backed out at the last moment," Shepherd said. "I guess it was about my fear of fixing something that isn't broken. Kansas City is a good place for us.

"As it is, I get to go out there for three or four days at a time. It's a break from the writing. I'm not Dad in L.A. -- I'm John. I get treated well.

"And when I come back to Kansas City, it's like re-entering reality. I need to be here. Usually you don't find ordinary people depicted in the movies -- they're all caricatures. But my stories are all about people who actually eat at the Outback Steakhouse."