Geekscape Interviews: ‘Pacific Rim’ and ‘Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero’ Writer Travis Beacham

Legendary Pictures is poised to slam the box office with one of the most anticipated films of 2013 with Superman in Man Of Steel, out June 14th. Also on the near horizon is the new creation Pacific Rim, releasing on JUly 12th,  from story creator/writer Travis Beacham and director/co-writer Guillermo del Toro (G-Man).

While Legendary is known for creating some of the best action/science fiction films to date  including Frank Miller’s 300, Watchmen, and the reinvented Batman franchise, all which contained material that originated from a comic or graphic novel. While there are a lot of pros and cons to working with mythos like Batman or Superman with their built in fan-base, Legendary went in another direction with Pacific Rim.

Last year, they created a new channel of entertainment that would focus on developing their own flavor of “superhero-esque” stories, with the idea of taking the best ones and creating films from them (or vice versa – graphic novels from the film).

Legendary’s first attempt, The Tower Chronicles featured a supernatural story of heroes and villains which was well received and stayed in paper/digital form. However, their latest project, Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero, is set to capture the market with the full backing of having a film running simultaneously in 3,000 theatres. From a marketing standpoint, it’s genius, and just part of the repertoire that you would expect from a leader in the film industry such as Legendary.

In an exclusive interview, the creator of the Pacific Rim universe, Travis Beacham, talks to Geekscape about his story, working with G-Man, his uber-cool project at AMC, and film school in North Carolina.

Allie Hanley: Your new Pacific Rim graphic novel comes out June 5th. It’s the prologue to the screenplay you wrote for Legendary Pictures, Pacific Rim which opens the weekend before Comic Con kicks off in San Diego. Can you tell me about how this story is tying into the film and the world you created around these monsters and giant machines?

Travis Beacham: The film takes place over a decade after the first Kaiju attack on this world… Kaiju’s have been attacking and Jaegers (pronounced Yea-Ger) have been around for a little while… so the graphic novel takes place at the other end of the timeline. We see the first Kaiju attack as it unfolds, we see the development of the first Jaeger program, and the invention of the Jaeger teams, and we meet some of our characters in the Jaeger pilot program.

As we put the movie together it was important to us that we were put it in the context of a world that was bigger than the movie, that we weren’t just creating the stuff that we needed for the movie, but that we were creating an entire world around the movie. Even the stuff that doesn’t necessarily make it on screen or that we don’t necessarily have a use for on screen; but the fact that we thought about the history and that we planned it out, informs the confidence of the story and the apparent notion of universe.

So when we’re talking about what shape a graphic novel would take, rather than do a straight up adaptation, we all talked about what would be more interesting; and so we utilized this sort of dark matter of the story that we developed. That we created something that was additive to the experience of the  movie and an opportunity to explore the world in more detail.

Allie Hanley: A key aspect of your story includes the “Jaeger Program.” It’s the program that trains humans to control the machines that fight the monsters. Where did you come up with that name?

Travis Beacham: I am the sort of guy who agonizes over naming stuff. I spend days making lists of possible names. So when looking what to call these mechs or robots, I wanted to give them an identity. So I was looking up different translations of the word “hunter” and I came across the word Jaeger, which instantly I liked. I liked that it meant Hunter and that it sounded like like Chuck Yeager, and that when you looked at it maybe looked like the word Jaguar. So it was a perfect combination of associations. So you know that when you found a name that really works is when it coincidentally happens to be associated with several relevant things. As soon as I saw “Jaeger’ I wrote it down, underlined it, circled it, and I knew that was the name I wanted to use.

Allie Hanley: I thought you were going to tell me a story about how you passed out drunk one night on the couch, and woke up to see an empty bottle of Jägermeister on the coffee table. I like the real story better.

Travis Beacham: In an early version draft of the script there was a dive bar outside of the base called “Jägermeister’s” but that was jettisoned for an obviously predictable reason.

Allie Hanley: Legendary Pictures has really become the power-house movie studio in recent years with films like the Batman trilogy, the Hangover films, your Clash of The Titans three years ago, and here you are working with them a second time for Pacific Rim, both the film and the graphic novel. You’re a pretty young guy just graduating from film school eight years ago. What’s this kind of success like?

Travis Beacham: It was a very charmed and unique experience for me from the beginning. I had this idea basically back in 2007 <for Pacific Rim>; and sort of sat on it for awhile. I didn’t really have the details on it or ability to pitch it to anybody. It wasn’t really based on anything. It was an unfamiliar title, so it had that going against it. So I think I was really lucky because Legendary was the first place that I went to, and where it sort of landed because they have such confidence in the idea, and such conviction in it. It would have been so easy for them “well this is good and we like it, and maybe we will pull elements of it into some other property that we have;” but no, they were immediately interested on its own terms. We were all seeing the same movie, and Guillermo kind of came on board around  the same time.

Allie Hanley: Since this graphic novel is tied to Pacific Rim the movie, will it be sold in mainstream markets or only comic book stores?

Travis Beacham: It will be sold in both, hitting comic book stores June 5th, and then hitting mainstream markets when the film comes out.

Allie Hanley: I read that you graduated from a film school in North Carolina… People have a vision that if you want to work in Hollywood you need to be at a school in California… can you touch on your experience and maybe give some advice to writers?

Travis Beacham: That’s definitely the perception but I don’t think it’s necessarily true. But with that said, I think once you are ready to start your professional life it helps to be in Los Angeles as a writer. Simply because…. I think the theory is, “I don’t want to get out there because that’s where everybody is and I don’t want to get lost in the herd.”  The flip side of that coin is, is that this is where everyone who is looking for material is…. I’ve heard it said, -I think it’s a bit of an exaggeration, but if you threw a great script out of a car window in LA it would get made into a movie, or you would at least get a phone call about it.

So I think the primary thing a writer should be thinking about, -apart from the technicalities about like where to be and where you want to be based before all that, is that you make sure that you are do something that you love. People tend to hear that as “do something that you like an awful lot.” I mean do something you love.

You are not thinking about impressing anybody. You are not thinking about being clever. You are not thinking about what the appetite is or what is saleable.  You are imagining yourself on a desert island with no possibility that no one is ever going to read the thing you are going to write. You are on a desert island, and no one is going to read the story that you are going to write. And you ask yourself in that moment, what is the story that is still itching to get out, -even if there was still no audience. I think that is the thing  that you are going to write better than anything you can think of. And I think that is the script you toss out the window and you get a phone call.

Allie Hanley: Can you tell me about the first time you got involved with Del Toro?

Travis Beacham: Actually it was a spec script that I had written while still in school in North Carolina called A Killing On Carnival Road. It was a sort of fantasy/noir murder thing. It never got made but it did get optioned at New Line and Guillermo, he was sort of interested. He was actually the first director I met when coming out to Hollywood, so that was sort of intimidating to being a fan of his work. Anyway it never came together and I think Universal ended up screenwriting Hellboy 2 or something so I never had a chance to do anything with him. So when Pacific Rim came around I was very happy to have another chance to work with him. It felt very appropriate.

Allie Hanley: What were some of the stories and movies you grew up with as a teen that inspired you to become a screenwriter?

Travis Beacham: That’s funny because what I think inspired me specifically was being in film school and working with the medium, but I think that in a broader sense is that I have been making up stories way, way back when I was a kid. At some point it was just a matter of learning what a screenplay looked like and what it sounded like. At some point it really got me thinking that that was the medium for me. I have always been a fan of movies, and especially monster movies. I think Ray Harryhausen (Clash of the Titans 1981) was the first filmmaker I knew by name. And my first memory of any movie I think was an old Godzilla film. I have always, always been a fan of that sort of movie. It’s always been a constant part of my taste as long as I can remember, even before my professional career, I’ve always been a fan of those sort of genre stories.

Allie Hanley: Can you tell me about your new AMC project?

Travis Beacham: Yes, it’s called Ballistic City, and it’s a sci/fi crime show set on a generation ship that is a 100 years out into space, and another 100 away from it’s destination. What I like about that as a setting, -as a back drop, is that none of these people have ever been on Earth, they have all been born here <on the ship>, and they are going to die here. The story unfolds entirely in this bottled city in the void of space. There is something I think that is both simultaneously strange about that premise and very human. What do you do, what meaning do you find in life, in that life and reality. I think it’s a very interesting backdrop to be working in.

The title is a metaphor for a city being wrapped in a bullet being shot from earth to someplace else.

Allie Hanley: I heard you will be at Comic Con Intl for Legendary this Summer… will fans have an opportunity to connect with you there?

Travis Beacham: I hope to be there. We have this new graphic novel out. I hope it’s big enough to have me there. In the eyes of a parent, I think this graphic novel is the most beautiful thing and I hope others feel the same way.

Pacific Rim hits theatres on July 12th, and Pacific Rim: Tales From Year Zero is available now.