Interview (Video): Bruce Joel Rubin

A conversation with the screenwriter of Jacob’s Ladder and Ghost.

Bruce Joel Rubin’s screenwriting credits include Jacob’s Ladder, Ghost, My Life, and Stuart Little 2. Here is a 2007 interview, one of several in the excellent series The Dialogue.

A quote from Rubin on the origin of Jacob’s Ladder:

The script idea began as a dream: A subway late at night; I am traveling through the bowels of New York City. There are very few people on the train. A terrible loneliness grips me. The train pulls into the station and I get off. The platform is deserted. I walk to the nearest exit, and discover the gate is locked. A feeling of terrible despair begins to pulse through me as I hike to the other end of the platform. To my horror, that exit is chained, too. I am totally trapped and overwhelmed by a sense of doom. I know with perfect certainty that I will never see daylight again. My only hope is to jump onto the tracks and enter the tunnel, the darkness. The only direction from there is down. I know the next stop on my journey is hell. Partly that came out of my own fear and despair, because nothing in my life seemed to be working. In Illinois, I felt like my story had evaporated completely. My story was, ‘You don’t have a story.’ Here you are, living in a cornfield. No friends. No work. Your wife is supporting the family. Basically, in my mind, the story was over. I could have given up my filmmaking goals and settled into a different kind of lifestyle… My story would have been: ‘Okay, you tried.’ Instead, I woke up from my subway dream and said, ‘That’s a great opening for a movie.’ I then tried to write my way out of hell.

For more interviews in The Dialogue series, go here.

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