A writer's life: Mark Bomback, Hollywood telecommuter

• Mark Bomback grew up in New Rochelle, graduated from New Rochelle High School.
• After graduating from Wesleyan, he and his roommate, Dan "D.B." Weiss moved to Los Angeles.
• Weiss went on to write and produce "Game of Thrones," Bomback to become a successful screenwriter.
• Bomback kicks off the Lohud Influencers Speaker Series on Feb. 17 at the Chappaqua Library.

Mark Bomback’s words have been on the lips of Hollywood A-listers Hugh Jackman, Bruce Willis, Colin Farrell and Denzel Washington.

The 44-year-old screenwriter has developed a knack for gaining  a toehold in movie franchises — from “X-Men” to “Die Hard” to “Fast and Furious” and “The Planet of the Apes” — getting comfortable and crafting worthy sequels. His latest, “War for the Planet of the Apes,” is being filmed now in Vancouver, anticipating a July 2017 release.

On Feb. 17, Bomback is the inaugural speaker in the Lohud Influencer Speaker Series, created by The Journal News/lohud.com. The series, hosted by Engagement Editor Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy, will feature leaders in varied fields who have chosen to call the Lower Hudson Valley home. The proceeds from the events, held at various locations, will benefit local nonprofit organizations. Bomback’s talk, at the Chappaqua Library, is titled: "SCREENPLAY BY: The role of the screenwriter in the filmmaking process.” It will benefit Friends of the Chappaqua Library.

For the most part, Mark Bomback has fashioned a career as a screenwriter, script doctor and producer from the comfort of his Mount Kisco home, where he and his wife, Tema, are raising four children, age 7 to 15.

In a Hollywood landscape where scripts are constantly changing writers, Bomback is typically the final hand on the script. He sometimes tweaks scripts without getting a screen credit.

"When you start to work on these, no surprise, the studio wants to hire you for others because they feel you're some sort of insurance policy because the movie you worked on did well. I did it on 'Fast and Furious 7,' and 'Fifty Shades of Grey,'" he said.

"I'm lucky to be called on for these, but even luckier because we live in a day and age when I can do it from here," he said, in his home office, its walls lined with framed movie posters on which he has worked: “Live Free or Die Hard,” “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” “Unstoppable” and “The Wolverine.”

"If the movie's in production, then I'll have to go there. Like 'Fast and Furious 7,' I had to go to Atlanta for a week to do it. You need to be accessible. But when I’m writing, for the most part, I’m home."

He grew up in New Rochelle, the son of a pediatrician and a social worker, the first of his family to do anything in the arts. After more than a decade in Hollywood, where he worked his way up from the mailroom — really — Bomback returned to Westchester in 2004.

“It didn't occur to me to live in Westchester until we had two kids,” he said. “What you can't anticipate until you have kids is how valuable your family is to raising them. My three brothers live in the tri-state area and they're all younger than me and I wanted my kids to be raised with their cousins and aunts and uncles and their grandparents.”

It’s not easy to jump into an established franchise, find your footing, and advance the story, something Bomback has done repeatedly.

"I don't think you can do it if you're not a fan of that particular franchise," Bomback said. "I find that the most useful thing is to simply write the version of this installment that you, yourself, would be most excited to see. And to try to treat the character as if he's your invention, even though he's not."

His influences

Bomback didn't pause long when asked about collaborators who have influenced his career, naming the late director Tony Scott ("Top Gun") and Matt Reeves, director of the two latest "Planet of the Apes" films.

"Unstoppable' was the first script I started after we moved to Westchester," he said. "It had had a couple of directors come and go and when Tony came on, I of course knew his work, which was fast-paced and muscular and I was a bit worried about what he'd be like as a human being."

He became fascinated by the way Scott operated.

"The lower you were on the social totem pole, the more he would go out of his way to be kind to you. The humility with which he conducted himself was a great lesson to me."

"Unstoppable" was inspired by the story of two men who stopped an unmanned runaway freight train. The studio wasn't interested in getting every aspect of the story right, Bomback said, but Scott demanded authenticity. That meant buying the rights to the mens' life stories and giving Bomback time to get to know them — a railroad engineer and conductor played by Denzel Washington and Chris Pine.

"He was a director I really admired and for him to validate what I was doing was huge," Bomback said.

Scott took his own life in 2012.

“It was quite a shock, as he was the very essence of vitality and enthusiasm. I had last spoken with him only a few weeks before his death, so it felt unreal for a while.  I still think of him often, and his attitude remains an ever-present source of inspiration.”

Another of Bomback's professional influences is Matt Reeves, director of "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" and "War for the Planet of the Apes."

“His work ethic has been remarkable to me," Bomback said. So comfortable are the two that they’ll share a screenwriting credit on “War for the Planet of the Apes.”

"It was a fascinating year," Bomback says. "We wrote it by Skype every day, and we used this program called Screen Hero that let us work on the same script at the same time. He'd be in L.A., I'd be here. We'd patch in at noon my time, 9 a.m. his time. I'd break for dinner then come back in and we'd wrap up at 9 p.m. my time. Scene by scene. Word by word."

Willis and an Eagle

Others exerted influence in different ways, including Glenn Frey of The Eagles and Bruce Willis.

In 1994, Bomback got a job as a personal assistant to Frey, who died recently.

"It was the most menial tasks, like picking up laundry, for two-and-a-half years. I knew him as well as an assistant can know his boss," he says, pointing out a souvenir from that time. "That is a Glenn Frey guitar."

When Frey was on the road, Bomback was writing, in an office the singer rented for him.

In 2003, Bomback was rewriting an action comedy called "Me Again" for Bruce Willis. It was never made, but Willis noticed Bomback.

"He took enough of a shine to me, I guess, that when he was in a meeting with (20th Century) Fox and they said, 'We want to make another "Die Hard,"' he said: 'There's this kid I've been working on this other thing. I think you should hire him.' It was very gracious of him. He didn't have to do that."

Bomback labored over the script that would become “Live Free or Die Hard."

Fast forward  eight years and both Willis and Bomback call Mount Kisco home.

A family cause

The father of four has lent his talents to a cause near to his heart.

His cousin's 9-year-old son has the rare and painful skin disorder, Epidermolysis Bullosa, which involves constant blistering and missing skin that requires daily dressing changes and wound cleaning. Kids with EB live in constant pain and can't play sports or run, for fear of falling down.

Bomback's cousin teamed with a California family — who drafted their friend Eddie Vedder, frontman of the band Pearl Jam — to create the EB Research Project, which is researching cures for the disease.

"Last year, we raised about $5 million," Bomback said. "There's a genuine optimism that this could be actually be the way to a cure. It's a big part of our lives."

Bomback helped produce a short but heart-breaking video — which includes a Pearl Jam soundtrack — in the hopes of raising research money.

Meet Mark Bomback

What: The Lohud Influencers Speaker Series presents Mark Bomback's lecture "SCREENPLAY BY: The role of the screenwriter in the filmmaking process.”

Where: Chappaqua Library Theater, 195 S Greeley Ave, Chappaqua.

When: 7 p.m., Feb. 17.

Tickets: $12 in advance; $15 (cash-only) at the door.

Web: https://tickets.lohud.com/e/lohud-influencer-speaker-series/tickets

Bomback filmography

"War for the Planet of the Apes" (in production, due 2017); "Insurgent" (2015); "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" (2014); "The Wolverine" (2013); "Total Recall" (2012); "Unstoppable" (2010); "Race to Witch Mountain" (2009); "Deception" (2008); "Live Free or Die Hard" (2007); "Godsend" (2004); "The Night Caller" (1998)

Quotable

From “Live Free or Die Hard”

Matt Farrell: “You just killed a helicopter with a car!”

John McClane: “I was out of bullets.”

From “The Wolverine”

(Logan throws Noburo off the balcony of his condominium... into a swimming pool)

Yukio: “How did you know there's a pool down there?”

Logan: “I didn't.”

From “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”

Maurice: “You still think about them?”

Caesar: “Humans?”

Caesar: “Sometimes.”

From “Unstoppable”

Frank Barnes: “This ain't training. In training they just give you an F. Out here you get killed.”