Lawrence Kasdan is the man behind some of the greatest movies of the 20th-century. He got his start by writing Raiders of the Lost Ark for Steven Spielberg and followed that up with a couple of sci-fi movies called The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi—maybe you’ve heard of them. Since then, Kasdan has written and directed more than ten movies Above all, Kasdan's career is marked by his passion for movies and moviemaking. The Travesty sat down with him to talk about writing, movies, and inventing the man known as Indiana Jones.

Texas Travesty:You grew up in West Virginia, that’s correct?

Lawrence Kasdan: Yeah that’s right.

TT: Does that have anything to do with your interest in movies?

LK: No, it doesn’t but it was a great place to grow up. It was just good, I lived in two small towns there, it was just regular stuff. I saw Hollywood movies, and then I went to school in Michigan. I think the only thing West Virginia did for me was that it was a great place to grow up.

TT: You were also an ad copywriter before you got into movies, did you want to do advertising?

LK: No, I always wanted to be a movie director and had been writing screenplays since college, but I got a masters degree in education so that I could make a living. Then, out of college, I couldn’t get a job teaching so I got a job at an advertising agency. So I took a job, got married, and had a kid so I could make a living and I did that for five years until I was able to sell something, my first screenplay.

TT: Some of the first movies you wrote were “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “Empire Strikes Back,” and “Return of the Jedi.” What’s it like to have co-written two of the most beloved science fiction movies of all time?

LK: Well, the way it happened was that I sold one of my original screenplays to Steven Spielberg and he said, “I want you to write this movie that I’m gonna make with George Lucas” and then, “will you meet George Lucas with me?” I said of course. I was so excited. So the job I got was to write “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and when I was done writing “Raiders of the Lost Ark” they needed somebody to work on “Empire Strikes Back,” so that was like the second thing I did. So that’s how I happened to get in on it. I had already written “Raiders of the Lost Ark” and then “Empire Strikes Back” got made first.

TT: Did you ever imagine that either of those movies would still be as big as they are today?

LK: Well, you have to remember “Star Wars” was the biggest movie of all time. Writing the sequel was a sure thing. But “Raiders,” no one knew. We made that up, that was an original movie. And we were hoping that people would like it but it was much bigger than I would have expected. But its gone on very well. Let’s hope it holds up.

TT: Well that leads into my next question. You got to write “Raiders,” and that was the first installment to a trilogy whereas Empire and Return were the second and third. There you got to finish up whereas with Raiders it started with you. Was that a really different writing experience?

LK: Much different. To be creating the thing you know? We’d agreed upon the character and the story. But then I had to go off and write all the details.

TT: Where did you draw from to create the Indiana Jones character?

LK: Well for all of us, George and Steve too, everybody wanted to make an adventure movie like the ones that had excited them, you know? There were all kinds of adventure movies and western movies when I was growing up and George too was interested in these old serial adventures where they get into cliffhanging situations at the end of each one. Then they’d come back the next week, this was back in the 30s and 40s. George hadn’t even seen them, he just learned about them. So the combination of both those things is “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” It’s about these serial adventures where one thing happens after another and the adventure movies we saw as kids.

TT: One of the lines I remember most from Raiders is “Snakes, why did it have to be snakes?” I wonder, for you did it always have to be snakes? Did you know the kryptonite for Indiana Jones was going to be snakes all along or did you think maybe something else might be it?

LK: Well, before I started writing George, Steven and I talked through the story and one of them brought up the thing about snakes. I think who personally didn’t like snakes was Steven. So when we were kicking around the idea of what his weakness should be I think it was Steven who said he should be afraid of snakes.

TT: After “Empire” and “Raiders” you finally got to direct and put on your own film, “Body Heat.” What was it like finally getting to direct your own work?

LK: Well, it was the greatest. It was great. It was what I’d been thinking about since I was fourteen. So I waited for thirteen years before I got to do it. It’s the best job in the world and I still love it—to get to direct something you’ve written yourself. That’s like the ultimate. It was everything I dreamed it would be and it was the first of, I guess, ten movies I’ve directed.

TT: It was also the first film that you did with William Hurt. Did you know then that you’d want to work with him again or did it just happen naturally as you wrote other movies?

LK: You don’t know until you have the experience and I was writing everything myself. So I didn’t know what I was gonna write next. Next thing I wrote was “The Big Chill” and there were all these parts and it just seemed natural for Bill, plus there was a part for him. He’s such a good actor and he’d done a great job in “Body Heat.”

TT: “The Big Chill” has a famous soundtrack, was music really important to you at the time?

LK: Yeah. Yeah, you know because the movie is about these people who were friends at Michigan in the 60’s. Which is when I was at Michigan with my friends and when we were at Michigan, like any college student anywhere, music is hugely important at that time, but Motown was one of them and the Stones of course. We were able to use that music which we liked as the soundtrack. And my wife had a lot to do with picking out the songs. She created a bunch of mix tapes for me and we tried to take it different places. Some we knew ahead of time we were gonna use and we actually shot them that way.

TT: You said earlier that Westerns were sort of an inspiration for writing “Raiders.”

LK: I loved them. I absolutely loved them. “The Magnificent Seven,” I don’t know if you’ve ever seen that. I loved the John Ford westerns and the Howard Cox Westerns I saw when I got to Michigan. I loved all the Hollywood westerns I saw when I was growing up in West Virginia. I liked all those guys—I liked Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster. I liked the “Gunfight at the OK Corral.” Those movies just meant a lot to me. “Red River” and “My Darling Clementine.” These are all the great Westerns. I love them to this day. I can watch a western and have a good time. “Searchers,” “Winchester 73.”

TT: You mentioned “The Magnificent Seven.” That’s a Western based on “The Seven Samurai,” and I know that “Star Wars” draws on the “Hidden Fortress.” Are you influenced by those films?

LK: Well, both of those movies, “The Seven Samurai” and “The Hidden Fortress” were made by Akira Kurosawa. He was the greatest director that ever lived in my opinion. Those are just two of the amazing movies that he did. He did so many amazing movies and those movies meant a lot to me, all his movies. He’d do adventure movies, he’d do dramas, he’d do historical things, and samurai movies. It was fantastic, he’d do everything. I still think he’s the greatest director there ever was.

TT: You’ve written and directed ten different films, but you haven’t directed every movie you’ve written. Is there anything liberating in that? When you’re writing script knowing that you won’t have to direct a particular scene, is that a load off your shoulders or not so?

LK: It doesn’t really work that way. When you like directing you wish you could direct them all. There’s no feeling like, “I’m glad I don’t have to go out and do that.” When you write them you want to go out and direct them too. I just happened to start out as a writer and I wrote for other people sometimes. But I didn’t do that for too long. It happened that I was lucky that the ones I did were big movies. But basically you want to do the fun part. The hard part is the writing the fun part is when you go out there and solve all the problems and make a movie.

TT: If writing is the hard part, let’s talk about “Dreamcatcher,” which was an adaptation. Not that adapting isn’t hard but that’s got to be a different writing experience. Do you prefer writing your own material, or did you like adapting? It wasn’t the first time you did, “The Accidental Tourist” was also an adaptation, right?

LK: That’s right. “Dreamcatcher” was the second book I had turned into a movie. I liked both those experiences. I think it’s harder to turn a book into a movie, because they’re very different. Because they have the same basic story but the story doesn’t always work on screen. And you have to figure out ways to tell the story visually. Books happen in people’s heads and they imagine things. But it’s very difficult to adapt books to movies. It doesn’t always work out. You see movies made out of books that don’t have much to do with the books they’re based on. I think it’s much harder to write an adaptation than an original screenplay, when you’re thinking about it in visual terms as you write it.

TT: How do you deal with the sort of people that insist that the book was better than the movie?

LK: I think a lot of times they’re right. With “Accidental Tourist,” that was a book a lot of people thought was hard to adapt. But I think it turned out so well, it got named picture of the year by the New York film critics, and that doesn’t mean it was better than the book. It just means that it was successfully turned into a movie. Those are two different things.

TT: “Dreamcatcher” was also a return to science fiction. That’s because you’ve worked in several different genres. Drama, romantic comedy, science fiction, Westerns, and Dreamcatcher has a horror bend to it, do you think it’s important to work in different genres and get out of the comfort zone or do you just enjoy doing it?

LK: No, it’s just something I had wanted to do from the beginning. You know I had liked so many different movies I wanted to make as many different kinds of movies as I could possibly make. And I was lucky because I got to do that and, hopefully, I’ll get to do some more and they’ll all be different. It’s just what interests you. The fun part is the different kinds of worlds you go into and just kind of locations and all the problems are different. To me that was kind of the point, to do as many different things as possible.

TT: I read that you have a few projects in the works including another science fiction film called “Robotech,” is there anything you can or care to say about it?

LK: That’s something I wrote for someone else and I don’t know what’s gonna happen with it. It’s based on a Japanese anime and I don’t even know if it’s gonna be a movie. It’s one of these science fiction movies where it’s an alien invasion and it’s a battle and it happens in the future. It’s based on this series of cartoon shows and actually two different series have been put together for American TV. So it’s pretty wacky and I don’t know if it will ever get made.

TT: Your first movie you got to write was Raiders of the Lost Ark back in 80 or 81?

LK: Well I actually wrote it in 78.

TT: That’s true, it was released in 80. So you’ve been in movies for 30 years. What’s the biggest difference between when you started in the business and the business now?

LK: That’s a really good question. Movies have changed so much in terms of where they are in the culture. And Hollywood movies have just narrowed down to a few kinds of movies. There’s comic book special effects movies, there’s romantic comedies, a few that tend to be dumber and dumber, then there are like slasher movies. There are exceptions of course, but you know there aren’t that many unusual things. When I started out every movie was sort of an adventure, you didn’t know what you were getting. And the time before I came in, in the 70s and the 80s was really good too. Everybody would try to do something different. But now movies are expensive to make and expensive to advertise. And the studios are only interested in what can be a gigantic hit. That wasn’t the case when I started out. It was tough even then to get what you wanted made, but it was nothing like now. Every movie is such a big roll of the dice. Even if it doesn’t cost that much to make it costs a fortune to advertise. That didn’t use to be the case. So when studios go to make a decision, they just try to make the safest thing in their mind that they can make. They’ll do any comic book graphic novel, even if no one may have read that graphic novel, they just want the feeling that somebody feels validated and some brand of people heard it. It’s crazy you know? And it’s not so different in music too. It’s the sort of corporatization of everything, and I’m sure you’re aware of that.