I JUST THOUGHT ‘ELF’ WAS A FUNNY IDEA ... A STORY THAT WAS CLASSICAL AND TIMELESS, AND HAS ROOTS IN EVERYTHING FROM RUDOLPH TO MOSES FLOATING DOWN THE NILE NILE. Disney for a while based off of that script. Then my manager at the time got it to Will Ferrell and his managers … and things took off from there. I don’t think we’d be talking about the movie now if Will didn’t commit to play Buddy the elf, ’cause I can’t really imagine anyone else on the planet playing that role at this point.
on the lot writing movies for them. So, that’s how I got into that genre. It wasn’t intentional. I just thought Elf was a funny idea and … a story that was classical and timeless, and has roots in everything from Rudolph to Moses floating down the Nile.
CP: I hear you worked on the Michael Bay Ouija board movie.
DB: [Laughs.] Yes, I did. I wrote one draft a while ago. I might have been the first writer on that, I’m not sure. But that has since gone through many, many different incarnations. I think now they’re making it a very low-budget Paranormal Activity kind of film, or that it’s actually completed.
CP: I think they might have learned their lesson with Battleship.
CP: It seems like screenwriters have a hard job — everybody sees this thing you wrote, but
DB: Uh … yeah. I think Hasbro — they did
people rarely think about who wrote it.
Transformers, which is obviously incredibly lucrative for them, so they wanna do that again. But they can also lose a lot of money. It’s a big gamble, so I think they’re doing it in the smart way.
DB: Well, I think it’s a great job. … I’ve never wanted to do anything else in my life except be a part of making movies. So the fact that I’m getting to do it … it’s a dream, really. Whether people appreciate it or not, I appreciate it. I didn’t have a plan B going into this thing. I went to NYU to study film, then came out here to L.A. I was hell-bent on finding a way in, so I just started writing these screenplays — Elf was my second screenplay. Oddly, the first script I wrote was also a Christmas film. … I was on a Christmas bent at the time.
MARK GARVIN
CP: Was Christmas in New Jersey the first script? DB: Yeah! How’d you know that one? CP: IMDB Trivia. [Laughs.] DB: Oh, wow! Maybe I should look at that thing. Yes, it was called Christmas in New Jersey. It’s a romantic comedy that I haven’t looked at for years, but maybe I should re-read it. Maybe it’s got some Christmas magic in it as well.
CP: So, Elf is a musical now; how did that come about? DB: Literally, at the premiere of the film in New York, we were at Rockefeller Center and Mark Kaufman, who was an executive at New Line, came up to me and said, “Hey, I love the movie. I think it’d make a great musical.” So, I was, like, “Great! Let’s make it into a musical!” I thought he was kidding. And he was not kidding. … Me and my wife went to see the dress rehearsal and the next thing I knew, it was on Broadway. It was pretty surreal to see it on Broadway.
CP: Were you involved with the musical adaptation? DB: No, I don’t pretend to really know the first thing about theater. Movies and TV are where I live and breathe. I gave my very, very few thoughts at the dress rehearsal. I think they did a great job adapting it to the stage.
CP: A lot of your movies are for kids. How did you end up in that niche? DB: Elf got me into this thing called the Disney [Writers in Residence] Program, which is like an old-school Hollywood system where they hire a couple people a year and you’re CARFEUL, NOW: “It was pretty surreal to see it on Broadway,” says David Berenbaum of the musical adaptation of Elf, now starring Christopher Sutton and Kate Fahrner at the Walnut.
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CP: So how does one end up working on Ouija? Do they come to you and say, “So, we have this property …” DB: It was Hasbro. And it was Michael Bay. Yes, I sat with Michael Bay and he had an idea for what he wanted the movie to be — his original intention was, like, a Goonies, Gremlins, old-school Amblin [Entertainment] way into the story. Based on that, I went off and wrote a movie that was very effects-driven, massive budget; I believe later writers also wrote things in the nature of a very high-budget movie. But I think Universal just didn’t want to spend that kind of money on it, so they eventually decided to do it very low-budget, like, under $5 million. I think that’s the smart way to do it, for the Ouija film.
CP: Your brother Michael is a film editor. When you were growing up in Philly, was that all you guys thought about? One day, we’re gonna do this? DB: It was sort of in our blood. Mike bought a Super 8 camera and was always CONTINUED ON PAGE 18