Cinema buffs and movie fanatics galore are flocking to town for the Galway Film Fleadh and among the VIP attendees is Kirsten ‘Kiwi’ Smith, the screenwriter whose credits include the smash hit rom-coms 10 Things I Hate About You, Ella Enchanted, and Legally Blonde.
As she was getting ready to make her way from LA to Galway, where she is delivering the fleadh’s screenwriting masterclass, Kirsten took some time to talk about her career to date, touching on her love of poetry, her writing partnership with Karen McCullah, and being a woman in Hollywood.
Born in 1970, Smith grew up in Port Ludlow, Washington, and moved to Los Angeles when at 18 to attend Occidental College where she studied English and film. “I grew up on a sailboat,” she reveals, recalling her childhood and its influence on her subsequent career. “I was an only child and didn’t have television, so I spent a lot of time reading and making up stories and writing stories.
"Both of my parents are very good writers. Even though they didn’t self-define as ‘writers’, they utilized their writing skills in their professional lives. Also, my mom was a really active amateur photographer. I remember her making slide shows with photos of me and my classmates and syncing them to music and presenting them to my class. She had a visual passion that I must have been inspired by.
"My dad has a very dry wit and my mom has a very silly outgoing personality so I must be a combination of them. I also remember my Grandpa Owens as being very playful and loving witty people, and my dad’s mother loving to laugh and dance and be silly and fun.”
'Whatever makes us laugh goes into the script'
While still at Occidental, Smith began working at CineTel Films reading and reporting on scripts, a position that would lead to her becoming director of development with the company. One day she received a submission from a hopeful young writer from Denver called Karen Lutz (now McCullah ) and was so taken by it that she promptly requested that Karen send in four of her scripts. “They were ideas that I wanted to see as a film. There was a shared sensibility there - we had the same taste in stories and ideas,” Smith says.
The two women formed a friendship over the phone, and when Lutz came to Los Angeles, they met in person – on February 5 1996 - and began writing their first script on margarita-soaked cocktail napkins that very night. Since then, they have written 23 scripts together. Smith describes their typical working dynamic.
“We usually sit together in a room - either at Karen’s house or my office - or outside by her pool or mine," she says. "We talk through the characters and story and start organizing our ideas. Sometimes we’re creating a beat sheet from which to write the script, or we’re writing a scene out loud together. One of us has a yellow pad and we’re talking out loud and writing down descriptions and dialogue. Whatever makes us laugh goes into the script.
"When we’re rewriting a script, we’re talking over the notes that a producer or studio has given us and trying to decide how to implement them. Usually we have a hard copy of the script and a pen in hand. One of us will take the handwritten notes and type them into the script that night. Sometimes we also write remotely and email pages back and forth. We’ll put our changes in bold, so the other person can see what she changed.”
Several of the movies Smith and McCullah have scripted were adaptations from other sources; I ask Kirsten whether they were attached to these movies as 'guns for hire' or did they initiate the projects themselves?
“It’s varied,” she replies. “10 Things was an original idea where we had to adapt Taming of the Shrew. Legally Blonde was brought to us by a producer. Then he sold it to MGM and said ‘I think I have the writers for it.’ It always felt like we were in partnership with him. She’s the Man (aka Twelfth Night ) was interesting because one of the producers had written the script, but he was very welcoming of all of our ideas. Ella Enchanted was brought to us by Harvey Weinstein, so we were guns for hire on that one.”
Smith’s scripts have always featured strong female protagonists and she readily accepts being described as part of the 'Girl Power' wave. “Very much so,” she asserts. “I write with a strong woman and I spend a lot of time and energy inspiring other female writers at different stages of their careers. It’s very exciting to see Hollywood really waking up to the feminist cause. It’s really changing from when I started as a writer, and I’m happy to be part of the movement.”
While she has made her career in cinema, Smith’s first love was poetry and her poems have been published in many American literary journals. Her poems can sometimes carry a harder edge than her movies as in her poem ‘The Valley of I Hate Myself’ which begins:
"After a few days of You can have me if you don't hurt me/and You can kiss me if you promise to leave soon,/you pack your stuff and head south./You drive down past the ranch style homes of I like to watch it burn/and the freakish dust bowl of If I can't have you no one will,/and into the valley of I hate myself."
“That poem started with the title and grew from there,” she notes. “I thought it was interesting that there could be a place that collects misfits - sort of like a dystopian rehab of people who’ve made poor choices but still have hope for a happier life.”
Smith’s passion for poetry also manifested itself in her 2006 novel-in-verse The Geography of Girlhood. I ask if she would some day like to do a film that had poetry or a poet as its central theme? “I would love to do a biopic of a poet or where the lead character is a poet, and thread poetry into the story,” she declares. “I wrote the poem in 10 Things I Hate About You and I’d love to write more poems into scripts. It has to feel organic and not forced, though, and that was one of those lucky moments where it worked nicely with the story and the character.”
Kirsten’s website is titled ‘kiwilovesyou.com’ which suggests she is a warm, cordial person. How has such innate sunniness survived years of working in the bear-pit of Hollywood I wonder?
“Yes, I would say I am a warm person,” she tells me. “I love being around people and I love to analyze people and what makes them tick. And I like making friends. There is such an incredible collection of interesting people in Hollywood that it never ceases to be fascinating. Sometimes frustrating but always fascinating.”
Smith’s latest film project, again scripted with McCullah, is The Expendabelles in which a crew of tough women band together to form a team of mercenaries. “Our hope is that we pull together the final pieces of casting in the next few months and shoot in 2017,” she discloses.
Kirsten concludes our interview by declaring how much she is relishing coming to the Galway Film Fleadh; “This is my first time in Ireland. I’ve heard so many incredible things about Galway from other screenwriters who’ve come here, and the fleadh has such a stellar reputation. I’m really honoured to be part of something so special.”
