INT: Wayne Powers

Last Updated on July 28, 2021

The Arrow interviews
Wayne and Donna Powers

What do "Deep Bluee Sea" and the upcoming slasher flick "Valentine" have in common? Wayne and Donna Powers co-wrote them both. The Arrow had the pleasure to interview this screenwriting duo and here's what the love birds had to say…

1- Is it hard being a husband/wife screenwriting team? Does it sometimes interfere with the marriage?

Donna: The good thing about being a screenwriting team is that we get to be together all the time; the bad thing is, we get to be together all the time. It doesn't really interfere with our marriage; everything else does (just joking.)

2- Were you both screenwriters before you met?



Wayne: We were in film school (USC) when we met, so we were both learning to be screenwriters. A professor of ours named Margaret Mehring knew that we were going to get married and suggested that we write together.

3- How deep was your involvement with Deep Blue Sea? Was it originally your concept or did you just come in for the polish? Also, are you happy with how it turned out?

Wayne: Duncan Kennedy wrote DBS as a spec script and it was bought by WB, so it was his concept. After that about five writers took stabs at re-writing it and another director was attached for some of those drafts. After Renny Harlin came on, we were brought in. The movie became essentially what we wrote. The draft we were first presented by WB was much more of a military espionage, high-tech action movie, grenade launchers, that kind of thing. We wanted our team to include more blue-collar types and not to have weapons to fight back, to play it more as a horror film.

4- Did you get to visit the DBS set or any set for that matter? Any memorable experiences?

Donna: We had a great time on the set, which was where they shot Titanic. If it wasn't for Titanic they may not have been able to pull off DBS because the sets there were tailored for our film. My favorite part was watching the scene where tons of water come rushing into the wet lab. It was spectacular to see.

Wayne: The actors were all very friendly; we'd hang out in their rooms, talk. Except for Samuel Jackson, this film was the first really big budget movie the actors had been in and they appreciated and enjoyed the scope of it.

5- Wayne, you just hopped on to the directing bandwagon yourself with "Skeletons In The Closet", starring Linda Hamilton and Treat Williams. Could you tell is what the movie is about and when we might be able to see it?

SITC is about a father who comes to suspect that his son may have committed a series of murders, or maybe the son is innocent and the father is a paranoid man who may have committed a murder himself. It's a psychological thriller, we never cut away to the killings, we see the entire film through the father's eyes, yet we don't know if we trust the father or not. You can see the film first at some film festivals, and after that, I don't really know yet. I'll know soon. Artisan is in charge of that domestic. Nu Image will show it foreign. It will play in Park City as the closing night film for the No Dance fest. on Jan. 25th at 8 pm. Their website is nodance.com.

6- And how hard was it stepping behind the camera for the first time directing veterans such as Williams and Hamilton?

When you direct a low budget film on a tight schedule, working with seasoned actors makes your life much easier. The communication is faster, they understand what you're doing with the camera, etc. Even Jonathan Jackson (who plays the son) although he turned 18 while we were shooting, he spent 5 years or something as Luke and Laura's son on General Hospital, so he was a veteran.

7- Another script that you worked on is also coming to light very soon: Valentine. Have you seen the movie yet? What can genre fans expect from this flick?

Donna: Valentine is a horror/slasher film in the Halloween vein. We saw a final cut (but not a final mix) last week and it is scary. It delivers completely for genre fans. What's different about the film is that the characters are in their 20s, not teens, so the setting is a little more like Sex in the City.

Wayne: What appealed to us about writing the project was the notion of do you really know who you're having dinner with? Could they be a killer. It's the same premise we explored in skeletons in the closet, that film having a father and son at dinner; this film having two people on a date at the dinner table. Valentine's Day is a cool day to explore the premise because everyone was to be with someone on that day, no one wants to be alone.

8- Have you ever been surprised by the casting of a specific actor in a part that you wrote? Where the actor was the opposite type of what you had in mind when you wrote the part?

 

Wayne: Well in my film, I hadn't thought of Linda Hamilton until her manager brought her up to; I hadn't thought of her because I didn't think I'd be able to get her for such a low budget film, but the material appealed to her. She was, however, exactly what I had in mind when we wrote the screenplay.

 

9- You worked on another script called "Dare", which Joel Schumacher is going to direct. Are you happy with his involvement? What is the script about?

Joel has been great to work with. He is very creative, kind, knows what he wants but gives you plenty of room. He works extremely hard (we would have story meetings with him between set-ups of a film he was directing; he's always working.) It's about a young, up and coming lawyer who isn't very happy with her own life. She's having an affair with somebody, she's lonely, she at a point of crisis. Her best friends from college come to see her and they, as opposed to going into the white collar world, went off to see the world – they're adventurers. One if her first love, too, so they come into her life and she starts thinking about the road not taken and should she have done that or should she have not; she should go off with them now. But then it turns out that they have more nefarious reasons for coming back into her life. It's a thriller with a lot of twists and turns.

10- Where do you guys get your inspiration? "Skeletons In The Closet" for example, how did that come about?

Wayne: SITC came from the idea of taking an Ordinary People type of drama, a father-son relationship, and taking it to its more extreme and disturbing end.

11- What's next for The Powers'?

Donna: We're working on a remake of The Italian Job for Paramount. It's an action heist film. PG-13. A lot of fun.

12- Any advice for the budding screenwriter out there?



Wayne: Don't write a spec script with the idea that you'll sell it for a million dollars. Write it with the hope that people will read it and appreciate the craft of it so much that they're hire you to write one of their projects. That way, your script will have more of a personal feel, more original. And once you've written it, rewrite it many times, getting advice from others (some of which you take, some of which you don't) but just keep rewriting until you're so sick of it you want to murder the script. Then you're done. A big mistake is to write a draft, be tired of fussing with it and jump right into another script. We spent 8 months writing our first script out of college. It wasn't commercial but it got us work.