HJ reporter Scott Roche recently had the opportunity to interview Gary Wheeler, director of the recent independent release The List, at the beautiful Ballantyne Resort Hotel in Charlotte. They made themselves comfortable and after introductions they dove in.

HJ: It seems to me by reading the background materials that you were really involved in the writing process. Can you talk about how that looked?

Gary Wheeler: Yeah sure. We started the process four years ago. Robert Whitlow and I met. I loved the book and he loved a movie that I did in South Africa called Final Solution—so we decided to make a movie together. After about six months we sat down to say, okay how are we going to make this into a movie? What's the story we're going to tell? So we had a think session with two screenwriters, myself, Robert Whitlow and his wife Cathy, with this big dry-erase board and said, what's this movie about? Robert picked up a copy of The List, turned to the back page and said, “The last line of the book is this: ‘God's children and his enemies both make the same mistake. They both underestimate the power of prayer.’ That's what the movie is about. Now how do we do a three act structure?” So we started the process. The first script had a hundred and fifty pages. We outlined it, [did a] treatment, the other screenwriters took it, wrote that hundred and fifty page document. We tweaked it down to about a hundred and thirty and then Robert and I came in and rewrote it day after day after day for probably ten months to a year. What that meant was we did two full cast script readings where we would read it, change it. I spent time with a friend of mine who's a great story-structure guy named Tim Sullivan. We spent day after day at Starbucks just going through this page after page. Eventually we cut it down to a ninety five page, extremely tight screenplay, no fat. We eliminated all the fat from it. Every cut we could, we'd just tell it visually, tell it visually. The only thing left were the important parts. We wanted to make a movie almost like The Bourne Identity. I love those movies that don't explain themselves, don't over explain themselves. Just keep rolling, everything propels itself. That's what we were going for with this. Although this is slightly less thriller-esque. It's more of a legal drama than a legal thriller. That's the way it went.

HJ: So being involved in this process from the screenwriting forward, is that your modus operandi?

GW: Yeah, it is. I have a good friend who make two or three movies a year and I just can't seem to do that. I make one movie every two years. I don't always write scripts and I don't always direct the movies. Up until this point I've been largely a producer and a creative development guy. So, working through the script with a writer. I have a degree in broadcasting and a minor in English, so I love literature and writing. I've always tweaked things but this is the first time I've been this involved. I've always been involved from a producer standpoint in all my films this heavily from the get go.

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