Interview (Written): Eric Heisserer

A conversation with the screenwriter of the Netflix movie Bird Box.

An excerpt from a /film interview with screenwriter Eric Heisserer. His movie credits include Hours, which he also directed, Lights Out, Arrival, and his latest Bird Box.

So Bird Box falls into my favorite genre of post-apocalyptic survival. Is it one of yours too?

Absolutely. The novel certainly is. I was just trying to do it justice.

Each of these are unique because whatever the apocalypse is, people have to adapt to the new world. Are there infinite possibilities depending on the cause of each apocalypse?

Certainly that could be explored. What I liked about the novel and what I tried to represent in the adaptation was that the biggest hurdle for us, the cause of the apocalypse is really our need to know. Our innate curiosity as humans, our struggle to understand why or who or what, that is of course our demise in this. The moment we surrender to decide to see what it is, then we failed.

Was a lot of the coping mechanisms — hanging strings, covering the windows, going out blindfolded — dictated by the book?

Some of it was and some of it I came up with as a cinematic expression of that. The coiled string that Malorie uses.

What are some differences between the world of the book and the world of the film?

They’re going to bleed through in my brain because I started on that in July of 2013, nine months before the book actually got published because I was given early galleys of it. I started a pretty strong working relationship with the author where I would start pitching him ideas. Every now and then he would say, “That should go in the book. Is that all right?” I’d be like, “Well, take it.” We had a pretty strong relationship that led into not only the publication of the book, but developing the script.

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Is the entity ever described in the book?

No. There was a moment in the screenplay where we decided to try and have our cake and eat it too in which Malorie is confronted in sort of a home invasion by one of the creatures and she sees it. Then she wakes up and we realize it’s a nightmare. It’s about what people imagine it is.

Does that go back to what was made most famous in Jaws, that what you imagine is scarier than anything you can describe or show?

Right, that’s the corner we painted ourselves into. We realized the moment that one of us started talking about even small features of what the monster might be, or the antagonist, down to a specific silhouette of a shadow or an appendage that entered the frame somewhere, there was always someone else in the room who would say, “Well, that isn’t scary to me.” So it defeated the purpose. We kept pulling back.

Here is a trailer for the movie Bird Box:

For the rest of the interview, go here.

For my 2013 interview with Eric Heisserer, go here.

For 100s of interviews with other screenwriters and filmmakers, go here.