In 1989, both Steven Soderbergh and “Presence” screenwriter David Koepp had movies at the Sundance Film Festival. While the two didn’t meet that year — Koepp was not in attendance for his “Bad Influence,” the lowkey thriller by future “L.A. Confidential” filmmaker Curtis Hanson, as Soderbergh took his “Sex, Lies and Videotape” into the history books of American independent cinema (and to Cannes, where it won the Palme d’Or) — their professional lives would continue to cross.
Koepp at one point tried to get Soderbergh to direct “Death Becomes Her,” a project Soderbergh said would be “too hard.” Then, after Koepp had subsequently become one of the most prolific and profitable screenwriters in Hollywood history with “Jurassic Park,” “Mission: Impossible” and more, the pair met for a drink.
Koepp presented an idea he had about an agoraphobic young woman whose job is to listen to recordings and one day – surprise! – she hears a murder. Soderbergh encouraged Koepp to write it, and every six months or so, he would ask Koepp, “Did you write that thing?”
“That was the first one we did together,” Koepp said of the script, which became the 2022 film “Kimi,” a terrific thriller and one of the very best pieces of pandemic media; it starred Zoë Kravitz and was released on what was then known as HBO Max.
This week, Soderbergh and Koepp’s second collaboration, “Presence,” opens in theaters. And on March 14, their third collaboration, a spy movie called “Black Bag,” opens. Now Koepp is “late” getting his fourth movie script for Soderbergh in. They are clearly on a roll.
After “Kimi,” Koepp sent Soderbergh three ideas. The director didn’t respond to any of them, although one later became “Black Bag.” Instead, he told Koepp that he wanted to do a ghost story from the ghost’s perspective.
“It immediately was all the things I like. It was a genre I love. It was set in a confined space. I love confinement of any kind – duration, space. And it was about a family. I get to write a family drama all in one space and smuggle it in under the guise of a ghost story. I’m in,” Koepp said. There was also what he called the “aesthetic challenge” of everything being told from that specific point of view. “That was huge,” Koepp said.
By the time they were working on “Presence,” Koepp and Soderbergh had evolved their style – they talk about an idea, Koepp writes up 10 or 20 pages of notes (“This is what a story might look like, beginning to end”). Soderbergh gives his notes. “And then I go write it,” Koepp said.
The resulting film follows a family (led by Lucy Liu and Chris Sullivan, who had worked on Soderbergh’s brilliant, short-lived Cinemax series “The Knick”) who starts to feel an unearthly force invading their new home. The unknown presence begins taking particular interest in their teenage daughter (Callina Liang). But what does it want?
Koepp describes Soderbergh as a great filmmaker (“And they’re very hard to find”). “The second thing is, I really appreciate he really lets me do my job, rather than trying to do it for me. And I know that he could do my job because he’s an accomplished writer,” Koepp said. Instead, Soderbergh is focused on all of the other hats he wears on a set, since at this point the filmmaker is also shooting and editing all of his movies, among other duties.
“The one difficulty I’ve had is keeping up with the speed at which he makes the films,” Koepp admitted.
“Presence” was a unique experience in that, in Koepp’s words, it “started on spec and stayed on spec because he paid for it.” Koepp, who is also probably most known for “Spider-Man,” “War of the Worlds” and the latest “Indiana Jones” outings, appreciates working this way, far from studio pressures and corporate mandates. “You can work out several drafts of a script before you even go looking for money. And then by the time you go to look for money, the script is solid. The director is him, and in some cases, you have the cast,” Koepp said. “There’s a lot that is done and it’s done without excessive input. It just turns out better.”
Of course, he isn’t taking home a giant paycheck from any one of his Soderbergh collaborations unless they do really well, but there is more to make up for it in return. “You’re writing what you think it ought to be, and nobody is telling you, ‘Oh, can you try not to offend China?’” Koepp said. He thought about a typical studio note – “Doesn’t this make her unsympathetic?” – that would probably have greeted Liu’s character in “Presence.” “Yes, she’s laundering money. Of course, she’s unsympathetic. You don’t get any of that,” Koepp said.
Koepp was fairly certain that “Presence” would follow through on its creative gambit, given how the script had turned out and Soderbergh’s talent. “What I didn’t anticipate was how much power the voyeuristic nature of the concept gives you. It just makes everything feel much more real because you are intruding and peeping on this family, and it just made it all feel so much more real, in addition to the very good performances,” Koepp said.
Initially, the writer had seen the aesthetic “as a difficulty to overcome when I was writing, and now I suddenly saw it as a great opportunity and asset.” (Yes, we asked if in the script the ghost goes through the wall; he said that he had it in an early draft and Soderbergh told him ‘I can’t afford that.’ Instead they used fades to black.)
He was even more heartened by the movie’s surprise premiere at last year’s Sundance Film Festival. It was held in a library and the air conditioning was off. It was not the most comfortable environment to watch a movie. “But the audience was rapt. It was silent and there was like no walkouts. At film festivals, you get walkouts,” Koepp said. There was actually one walkout. And when somebody asked the person why, they responded, “I can’t take this kind of stress at this hour,” Koepp recalled. “Then I thought, Oh, this works.”
While Koepp had written ghost stories before – 1999’s “Stir of Echoes,” based on a Richard Matheson story; and 2008’s “Ghost Town” (written with Koepp’s partner John Kamps), a comedy about a dentist who can see ghosts – the writer is adamant about adding something to the mythology each time. For “Presence,” Koepp wondered, Why are there ghosts? And also, Why can we perceive them?
In “Stir of Echoes,” Kevin Bacon’s character can see spirits after being hypnotized. In “Ghost Town” it’s “the idea of a colonoscopy gone bad.” “I’ve noticed that during periods of my life when I’m experiencing something that’s traumatic, I am much more open to other people and sensitive to their pain,” Koepp said. “If you’re going through something of your own, you become more adept at picking it up in others and stopping and maybe asking them what that feels like for them, or just expressing sympathy that you really mean.” He pointed to a line in the script where a psychic visiting the house says to a character, “I’m sorry that you suffer.”
“I thought, hey, what if, in periods of trauma, we become not only more attuned to those around us, but to, you know, other kinds of perception that we might not be aware of otherwise,” Koepp said. “That was my idea – if you’re suffering badly enough, you might be open to another presence around you.”
The collaboration between Soderbergh and Koepp is particularly harmonious because Koepp’s more commercial sensibilities nicely complement Soderbergh’s occasionally more outlandish ideas (this is a man, after all, who has shot more than one movie on an iPhone). “It does seem like a nice balance. I’m constantly pressuring like, hey, why don’t we add this loop? And he said, ‘I’m not handing out leaflets in the theater to explain something. I just want to understand,’” Koepp said.
The only regret the screenwriter has from “Kimi” was that he couldn’t see it with more audiences. He got to go to a couple of festivals but “it played great with an audience, because it’s meant to be a mainstream thriller.” He looks forward to “Presence” (via Neon) and “Black Bag” (via Focus Features) actually playing in front of audiences.
So has Koepp ever tried to get Soderbergh to make one of the high-concept studio movies that he is so good at writing? The screenwriter said it’s never come up. “I know what he likes and what kind of day at work he enjoys. I don’t think that includes an enormous amount of studio pressure and a team of VFX artists telling him, ‘You can’t do that. You should do this.’ I don’t think that’s has value to him,” Koepp said.
Around the time Koepp spoke to TheWrap, Soderbergh had revealed his annual list of things that he had watched, and there was a strange amount of “Star Wars” material on there. It was enough to wonder if he was working on a secret project for Lucasfilm — and it was enough to assume that, should he be working on a big budget commercial project, that Koepp was writing it.
Koepp said that he was not working on a “Star Wars” project with Soderbergh.
“It’s hard to picture him wanting to do that, but who knows? He’s full of surprises. I love that about him. He told me once years ago he was doing something, I can’t remember what, and I said, ‘Oh, that’s certainly different for you.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, I’ve got to throw them off the scent.’”
As for whether or not Koepp will direct again, or if his collaborations with Soderbergh scratch that particular creative itch, the writer said that he does indeed want to direct more.
“There’s a story I have in mind that I’m actually working on with a friend now, that is a drama. I’ve never done a straight drama where I have no genre conventions to fall back on. I can’t have a chase or a gunfight or the final conflict with the guy in the house. I can’t use any of that,” Koepp said. “And finding the characters and the rhythms and the crescendos and the emotional climax, finding all that naked is hard. I’d like to pull that off.”
At least he’s found something even harder than a big budget franchise movie or a ghost story told from the point-of-view of the ghost – a really-for-real drama. They don’t make those much anymore. Talk about scary.
“Presence” is in theaters Friday.
