Interview with Mark Frost

Mark Frost wrote the best-selling non-fiction book, The Greatest Game Ever Played, on which he based his screenplay for the film. He also served as a producer on the movie. Recently, some members of the press had a opportunity to sit down with him and discuss a few things. Unfortunately, a few things he wouldn’t talk about include the possibility of he and David Lynch returning to their legendary television creation, Twin Peaks, and anything about the screenplay for Fantastic Four 2 that he will be writing. I thought his discussion concerning themes that he was drawn to was particularly telling.

Can you tell us a little bit about how you came across the story of Francis Ouimet?

I played golf all my life and I knew about the Francis Ouimet story, but nothing had ever been written about it aside from a few scant articles that I’d come across. It was during the Ryder Cup in 1999 which was played at the country club at Brookline and Justin Leonard made a putt on the 17th green to win. It was an explosive moment and everyone trampled onto the green and one of the commentators mentioned that this was where Francis Ouimet had made his putt to win the 1913 Open and by the way, his house is right across the street. He can see the green from his bedroom window. I thought ‘there might be a story there’.

Why it is that Francis didn’t continue to play golf?

He did as an amateur. I think that’s a distinction that’s important to make about that period. Golf pros were second class citizens. They, like caddies, were not allowed in clubhouses. They were seen strictly as employees and hired hands. There was no glamour whatsoever attached to the golf professional. The only way for them to make money was to work at a club, making clubs, tending the course, and giving lessons. There was no PGA tour, nothing remotely like that to make money or a living even as a golf pro. Francis had always had an aspiration to become a businessman, to elevate himself into that middle class. The life of a golfer offered that avenue to reach that goal. So his feeling was, even after he won this great victory (he won the U.S. Amateur the following year, the first guy to hold both titles) he still never turned pro. He played the game strictly for pleasure. He didn’t earn a nickel from it. He never exploited the victory and within ten years had started to work as a banker and eventually a stock broker. Which had always been his intention. He never really thought that the life of a golf professional was the life for him. Golf pros were not allowed into the clubs until the 1920s, so it was another ten years before that even broke down.

This film is infused with an exciting visual style. Is that something that started on the page, that something you were aware of when you were writing?

Yeah, it started on the page. I realized that I’d seen a bunch of really boring golf movies. You can’t shoot a golf film like you do golf coverage on television. There’s a real standard convention on how you cover it: you follow the flight of the ball, it lands, and you watch it stop rolling. That’s fine for sports coverage, but it’s deadly dull in a film. So I was continually trying to come up with ideas on how to vary that. When Bill (Paxton) came on as the director, we worked with a visual artist to try to conceive of a whole bunch of ways to do that. One of the things that we discovered was that it was more dramatically interesting to watch people’s reactions to the shot than the shot itself. So when you see the film, you don’t actually see many shots of the ball flying. I think that there are only three or four in the entire film. The effort being we’ve got to try to make this not a golf movie; it’s a movie about a compelling human story that just happens to be set in this arena.

One of the most entertaining parts of the film was Eddie the Caddy. How much of his personality was available as research and how much of it was a creation?

Almost entirely available and I’ll tell you why. His daughter, Cynthia Wilcox, who’s about 45 and lives in Boston, had an account that Eddie wrote of the entire Open later in life, when he was mid-life but it had never been published. She gave it to me when I was doing the research. It had a lot of very detailed information about how his relationship with Francis evolved over those three days. And when we showed her the film in Boston a few weeks ago she went up to Josh Flitter, the actor, and said “you channeled my father.�

This kid was the original dead end kid. His father had died the year before. He was the youngest of six kids. Living in abject poverty. One step away from the poorhouse, really. So he was very tough, very resilient, very street smart. And apparently hilarious. Characteristics he carried with him throughout his life. So even though it may seem like he is an invention of a Disney movie, I actually think that’s pretty much the way Eddie really was. He was a remarkable little kid.

Could you talk about what kind of themes draw you to a project?

I’m always interested in character and identity. What is it that defines a person? Are they defined by their thoughts or their actions? Or how they are viewed by other people? How much of the choices that you make on a daily basis determine who you end up being? Everyday you are confronted with choices that take you down one path or another. People who choose the good path often seem kind of boring, but a guy like Francis Ouimet who really followed that path I found extremely heartwarming and a great kind of role-model of a human being because he was so kind to other people. Kindness is a quality we don’t see a lot in people. It was something that Dickens wrote a lot about, because in a world that has a lot of inequity, like the world he grew up in, it seems kind of like a miracle when kindness appears in a person’s behavior. I know that I was drawn in particular to his character, his challenges, and his kindness, particularly to Eddie, this little kid that hooked up with him. I thought that was quite remarkable.

I think that it’s also changed for me. I had a son two years ago and that’s changed the way I think about the kinds of stories that I tell now. You’re always in your mind telling whatever story you’re thinking to your child. That seems to be changing the kind of stories that I’m drawn to.