John Logan has a hell of a resume for a screenwriter: Any Given Sunday, The Aviator, Sweeny Todd, Rango, and Hugo.
He’s also had co-writing credit on Gladiator, penned Star Trek: Nemesis, and contributed to Steven Spielberg’s upcoming biopic of Lincoln. And on top of all this, he’s contributed to Skyfall, the next Bond film.
I spoke to Logan several times back when I wrote for Creative Screenwriting, and he was always a cool guy, as well as someone whose talent I’ve admired. (When I interviewed John, he was still living in Illinois, but he eventually got a beach house out here in L.A.)
He was first putting on plays for ten years, making no money, but he loved storytelling, and wanted to move into movies.
“I just loved movies more than anything in the world,” he says. “All the seminal events of my life I can trace to the movies I was watching at the time.”
Then he got that life changing call which every screenwriter prays for. Logan’s came from Oliver Stone, who directed his script Any Given Sunday.
“Sit down,” Logan’s agent said. “Oliver Stone is going to be calling you in ten minutes,” and sure enough, ten minutes later, the phone rang. “Okay, I wanna do your movie,” Stone said. “I gotta meet you in Tokyo in three days.”
“And from that bizarre beginning came everything,” Logan says.
As for when he got the call to work on the new Bond film, Skyfall, Logan told Collider he got so excited, he said to director Sam Mendes, “I don’t care what you pay me, I don’t care what I have to do.”
Skyfall is due to hit theaters next November, and Logan added, “I’m particularly pleased that Skyfall comes out on the 50th anniversary of Dr. No. For fifty years this franchise has been going incredibly strong through twenty-three movies, so to be part of that is incredibly fun.”
