Interview (Part 1): Kelly Marcel

Published in

Go Into The Story

5 min readDec 2, 2013

London-based writer Kelly Marcel wrote the 2011 Black List screenplay Saving Mr. Banks which was produced starring Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, and Paul Giamatti. She is involved writing several other high profile movie projects including The Little Mermaid and Fifty Shades of Grey.

Kelly and I engaged in a wide-ranging Q&A, the focus of which is her thought process in writing Saving Mr. Banks. You will find her responses insightful, frank and hugely entertaining. Today in Part 1, Kelly discusses her background as a writer, her alternative approach to film school, and her first break as a screenwriter:

Scott: Your father Terry Marcel has been a director and writer, both in film and TV. What influence did his work have on you becoming a writer?
Kelly: I think it was less his work and more his work ethic. His longevity in the business is extraordinary. He’s still producing at 71 years old, and I have a huge admiration for that. He has always created. Even when we were little he would draw pictures for us to color in, and they were so much more intricate and inventive than coloring books from the store. His influence on me has always been to believe in imaginary worlds and to live outside of the norm. At no point did he ever tell me to go out and get a 9 to 5 job. He always said: “There’s no such thing as impossible, there’s no such thing as can’t.”
His influence reaches into my screenplays as well. A few of the things Travers says in Saving Mr. Banks are words from my father’s mouth.
Scott: You had a stint as an actor and you sister is an actor as well. What lessons about writing did you pick up along the way through your acting?
Kelly: I learned the difference between written dialogue and say-‐able dialogue. What looks eloquent and smart on the page can often come out of a mouth as stilted and artificial. As an actor I tried to get my head around lines that felt peculiar in the mouth, so I am always on a mission to try to make every line as true to the character as possible and as easy to articulate as I can make it.
I am also aware of mannerisms. When I acted, I always felt like my hands and arms weren’t part of my body. They were these big flapping things with their own minds. If possible I will always try to specify physicality. With Pamela, for example, it was feet together, hands in lap a lot of the time.
Scott: As I understand it, you had a Tarantino-‐like approach to film education, working part-‐time in a movie video rental store and immersing yourself in movies. How important has watching and studying movies been to your development as a writer? What do you look for when you screen a movie?
Kelly: Working in that video store was my education. Nothing is going to teach you structure like watching endless movies and TV shows. Seeing what’s good and why it’s good. Seeing what doesn’t work and figuring out why it doesn’t. I was immersed in film for 12 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week and it is the most significant part of how I learned to get from page one to page 110.
I don’t look for anything in particular when I screen a movie. I’ll watch anything and everything. Like everybody else, I want to get lost in it. I want to be taken on a journey. I want to be told a story, to learn something, to feel an emotion, to be entertained.
Scott: What are some of the movies that have been the most significant to you?
Goddammit Scott! Seriously? This is always such an impossible question to answer because every movie is significant in its own way. Okay if I had to choose a bunch — Harvey (sod off Craig Mazin, it’s MY favourite — Craig thinks he knows everything about Harvey. He is wrong.)
Harold and Maude and Being There also rank as movies I could watch over and over and over again.
I was fed on a diet of old black and white movies and a lot of musicals by my dad in my formative years, so I’m going to go with: Showboat, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Some Like It Hot, Citizen Kane, Gone With The Wind, Princess Bride.
We were always screening movies he’d worked on when he was a first AD so all the Pink Panthers, Straw Dogs, The Duellists, The Carry On films. Some of which should have been off the menu for a kid, but there was never a moratorium on what we could watch at any age in our house.
And then there’s ET! Fucking ET! Oh my god! Bugsy Malone!
In my teens and 20’s I was all about The Goonies and pretty much everything John Hughes made. The Godfather, Silence of The Lambs, Spinal Tap. God, I’m just listing movies now. I’m gonna stop. This is a preposterous question.
This year the movie that’s shouted to me more loudly than any other is Her. I fell in love with it completely.
Scott: You are also co-‐artistic director of “The Bad Dog Theater Company” founded in 2010 along with actor Tom Hardy and fellow writer Brett C. Leonard. How did you become involved in that and do you continue to write plays?
Kelly: I met Mr. Hardy whilst I was working on a staged musical version of “Debbie Does Dallas” for the Edinburgh Festival, and we were immediately simpatico. Both of us were interested in developing a space where actors who were not working could flex and hone their craft between jobs. We started out at the Latchmere theatre in Battersea -‐ opposite the video store I worked in. Tom could often be found behind the counter with me, hatching plans for our endeavor and handing out DVD’s. In the midst of developing what would ultimately become Bad Dog, Bronson came along and took Tom away. Shortly after he started filming, it ran into a bit of trouble, and I went up to Nottingham to rewrite for him and Nic Winding Refn. Bronson became what it did and propelled Tom across the pond, followed in quick succession by myself, and so Bad Dog took a bit of a back seat. However, Tom was over just the other week, and we both have plans to take time off in the near future and kick start our company. I would imagine that our first play will be a collaboration by all three of us. Though Brett is the one of us who is the SERIOUSLY talented playwright, so I’m a little bit scared to go toe to toe with him.
I do still write plays. They are all half finished!