Go Into The Story Interview: Jack Epps

My talk with the co-writer of Top Gun, Legal Eagles, The Secret of My Success.

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, there was almost no one hotter in the world Hollywood screenwriting than Cash & Epps. Their writing credits include Top Gun, Legal Eagles, The Secret of My Success, Dick Tracy, Turner & Hooch among other notable films.

Transitioning into the field of academics, Jack Epps is currently chair of Writing for Screen & Television at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts.

Here are links to the six installments of my entire interview with Jack:

Part 1: “At the time, I was an English major and I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I went to a student film festival, saw the films, came out and said, ‘Well, I can do better than that.’ Took a film class, made a short movie and I found myself creatively. It became instantly clear that I wanted to make movies. If I was going to make movies, I had to learn how to write them.

Part 2: “We agreed more than disagreed, and ultimately on a partnership, it became about passion. If one of us was so passionate about an idea and said, ‘No, I think this is the way it should be done,’ we’d do it. We’d try it, and the worst was it didn’t work.”

Part 3: “ I hope young writers today know who Billy Wilder is and if they don’t, they should watch all of his work. For Jim and me, he was our go‑to person. We always asked: ‘What would Billy Wilder do?’”

Part 4: “In K-9, the dog doesn’t die so there was a pressure for us in Hooch to basically not have Hooch survive.”

Part 5: “To know something, teach something. I think that’s really true. I had to teach people how to write screenplays so I had to dig deeper and really get to the bottom of how storytelling and screenwriting worked. I developed a lot of my own theories. And the writing improved greatly because of teaching.”

Part 6: “You’ve got to understand this is going to take time. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. If you’re impatient this probably isn’t the business for you. You have to be in it for the long haul.”

For Jack’s book “Screenwriting is Rewriting: The Art and Craft of Professional Revision,” go here.