Gail Gilchriest is a storyteller whose work spans a wide range of media—from newspapers (check out this HoustonPress article on My Dog Skip), books, and magazines to feature films, scripted television, marketing, advertising, social media, and public relations.
Beyond the traditional outlets, she’s written and produced travel documentaries for the governments of Jamaica and Barbados, crafted a fairytale backstory for a Canadian toy company’s product launch, and written liner notes for a jazz record label.
She has taught writing at both UCLA and USC and currently lives in Los Angeles with her son, Angus, and their dog, Diego.
1. 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the film adaptation “My Dog Skip”. What was it about Willie Morris’s memoir that inspired you to adapt the film?
It's kind of a weird thing. I had recently moved to Los Angeles and started writing scripts. I had been a journalist before and had written a couple of nonfiction books, and I was really just kind of making a career change.
I met Jay Russell through my longtime friend, John Lee Hancock, who was one of the producers on the movie. We were just friends, and they were in the movie business too. So, they had optioned the book My Dog Skip, and I was a big Willie Morris fan. I grew up in Texas, and I had read his first memoir, which was called North Towards Home, which I really liked. It was one of my favorite books.
So, I mentioned that to them, and pretty soon they said, “Why don't you adapt it, and we'll produce and direct it and see what happens?” So, I just dug in, and we met a couple of times a week for a year and worked on building a movie.
2. What was your writing schedule when you wrote the screenplay?
It's been a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, everybody was working on other things. I wrote whenever I could. I think I was working as a receptionist or something. So, I wrote at night, and then I met with them on weekends. Sometimes, we met during the week. I think we did at least 14 or 15 drafts of the script before we even started working on a shooting script.
3. What was your experience working with Jay Russell in this film?
Yeah, it's funny. Jay and I are in Hollywood. You have Hollywood friends, and you have real friends. Jay started out as kind of a Hollywood friend, I guess. Well, I knew him socially first, but we had a good time working on the movie, and we've stayed really close friends. I mean, he's the godfather to my son, and we sometimes spend holidays together. I went out to Palm Springs with his wife. We're really good friends.
So, we had a good time working on the movie. We especially had a good time with Willie Morris, who was really funny and a prankster and a practical joker. He was just a lot of fun, too. So, the three of us had a great time.
4. Were you ever on set? If so, could you tell me your memorable moment?
Well, one of the most memorable moments for me was when I was on set. I didn't talk to Willie Morris while I was working on the script. The producers and Jay didn't want me to talk to him because we were inventing. The book itself is very evocative and has a lot of imagery and memories, but not a lot of plot. So, we were inventing a story to make the movie work, and they didn't want me to be influenced by him or vice versa.
So, I didn't meet him until we went down to Mississippi for the kickoff of the film. Willie and his wife, Joanne, had a big party at their house in Jackson for the film crew, the stars, their neighbors, and other people in Mississippi. It was a really lovely party.
At the party, I met Willie, and he was very complimentary about the script. But I was a little nervous because I'd made things up about his life that weren't in the book to make the movie work. So, I was standing there talking to Willie when some of his friends walked up and started talking to him about the script. I think people had read the script. People involved in the movie had obviously read the script. They said, “Willie, tell us about that guy who lived next door to you who went off to the war. I had no idea that was a part of your story.”
Willie said, “Yes, that young man”—and he talked about the character. Dink was his name. “He was just a phenomenal athlete, and I really looked up to this guy.” He went on talking about it, and then, when the other people moved on, I said, “Willie, am I losing my mind? I thought I made up that character.”
And he said, “You did. You invented that character. But you didn't make the story more factual; you made it more true. So, I've just now decided to go ahead and adopt that character into my past.”
It was really funny because I'd been so worried about him being mad that I was going to make things up about his life, and he just went ahead and adapted what I made up into his life story.
5. Did you ever consider making a cameo in the film adaptation? If not, why?
No… I don't know why I didn't. I didn't think of it. It was a very kind of down-and-dirty production. The whole production had a really good vibe around it. We were all having a great time. Everybody loved the project.
So, I didn't have a cameo, but I did help paint sets, set decks, and all that kind of stuff, which was really fun. The guy who was the production designer, David Bomba, is a really big-deal production designer. David just made this movie look amazing.
My mom and her sister and brother came to visit on the set, and they grew up in the same era that Willie grew up in. They were just blown away by the recreation of the 1940s house and garden and everything. It was very cool.
6. Actor Frankie Muniz plays the lead character, which is author Willie Morris as a young boy. Did you talk to him? If so, could you elaborate your experience working with him?
He was really young then, so he was a kid. His mom was around a lot, as you would expect with a child working on set. He was really surprisingly adult and professional, not in that kind of precocious, gross child-actor way, but in the way that he was aware that he was there to work and not to play. He took all of his work really seriously.
He was a lot of fun when the cameras were off. He was a cute kid, and when the cameras were off and there were other kids on the set—his friends on the set—they all ended up playing together and hanging out. They also were super cute with Willie. Willie had really good BS with young kids, and that was really, really fun to watch.
It's been kind of fun to watch Frankie grow up. I don't keep in touch with him—but I think Jay does. He turned out to be a really nice young man. I almost feel like family when I see him now, like I do when I see my grown-up nephew.
7. The film has an amazing cast that include Diane Lane, Luke Wilson, Clint Howard, Kevin Bacon, and Harry Connick Jr. Could you mention any interesting facts about any of them?
I got to know Diane Lane a little bit just at the beginning of the shoot. She was lovely, of course. Kevin was there. He had been a friend of Jay's from another movie in the past.
I remember one time having a conversation with Kevin about his accent. His Southern accent in My Dog Skip was perfect. Sometimes actors who aren't from the South pour on too much, and it feels a little false, but his was just ideal.
We were talking about it, and I said, “Did you grow up in the South? Did you spend time in the South?” And he said, “No, why?” I said, “Your accent is just dead-on.” And he goes, “I'm an actor.”
We laughed, and he goes, “See, I can turn this on and off.” And he showed me that he could turn it on and off. It was funny that I never really thought that that's what they do. They turn it on and off when the camera rolls.
8. When the film premiered 25 years ago, what stood out to you?
Oh yeah, that was great. It was really, really great. There were a couple of different premieres. I went to the one in Texas. I grew up in Texas, and they had a big premiere in Austin, so I went. There was a party afterward, and a lot of friends, family, and other people were there. Luke was there; he's from Texas, too. I don't think Jay was at that one. That one was a lot of fun.
I remember one of my college roommate's daughters was grilling Luke, other people, and me about whether or not it was real alcohol that the kids were drinking on the set and in the scene. We said, “No, we did not give kids alcohol on the set.”
There was another big premiere here in L.A. My family came, and my nephew, who was about five years old at the time, had his picture taken with Enzo, the dog that played Skip. There was a party after that premiere at Jay's house in the Valley. I remember my nephew and all the boys from the movie—all the cast kids—playing football in Jay's front yard after the premiere. It was really fun, and then Jay took all the kids bowling afterward.
So, that was really fun, too. It was a really, really great time.
9. I read somewhere that the author of “My Dog Skip”, Willie Morris, saw the screening of the film and praised it as a classic. Sadly, he passed away. Could you talk about that and your experience with him on this project?
Well, Willie was a really interesting character and was very emotional. A lot of things could make him cry. He could make himself cry. He made himself cry talking to me about a baseball game he heard on the radio in, like, 1945, and he'd get teary about it. I told Jay, “Willie had kind of a strange form of incontinence in that he leaked from his eyes whenever he got overwhelmed with emotion.” He cried a lot when he watched the movie. He cried every time he watched the movie, in a good way. That was a really sweet thing about Willie—how often he would get teared up and how much he loved the movie. He kind of recast his own memory of his childhood after seeing the movie.
There was a moment when we thought about having Willie do the voice-over. Harry Connick Jr. eventually did the voice-over. We thought that Willie wanted to try it, so he gave it a shot. When he came out to L.A. to record some sample voice-over, I had dinner with Willie and Joanne. They came over to my house, and Willie told us stories and cried. He also was really funny.
He was friendly with Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was from Arkansas, and Jay's from Arkansas, too, and they knew each other a little bit from something Jay had worked on in the past. So, one of Willie's favorite things to do was prank-call Clinton when Jay was around. He would prank-call the White House.
One time, I was in Mississippi after My Dog Skip, working on another project. I stayed at Willie and his wife's house. Willie and I prank-called Jay, and Willie could change his voice and make himself sound like somebody else. I can't remember what he said to Jay, but on that particular prank call, he was super fun and funny.
It was just heartbreaking for all of us when he died. He died before the premiere, but he did get to see the movie, and he liked it. That was gratifying to all of us.
It was such a fun experience for everybody involved. When I went back to Mississippi to work on another project—maybe about a year later—Willie and Joanne, his wife, Ward Emling, the film commissioner in Mississippi, and I all loaded up in Willie's car and drove to Yazoo City, where he grew up, to have dinner.
It had nothing to do with My Dog Skip; we had all gotten to be friends and really enjoyed each other's company. So, that was a memory I'll always hold.
10. Were you able to attend Willie Morris’s Funeral?
Yes, I was. I went to the funeral with Jay, John Lee Hancock, and our other producer friend, Mark Johnson. We all went down together to Jackson. I got to say, as funerals go, that was a pretty good time, too. Willie had a lot of friends, and a lot of friends who could tell good stories. It was a very memorable thing as well.
He was friendly with Winston Groom, the guy who wrote the book Forrest Gump. Winston Groom had a cameo in the movie. He played maybe the butcher or the grocery store owner. Willie pranked him all the time, too. He was a presence at the funeral.
One of the funny things about the film is that Winston Groom was enormous. He was a huge man, like six-five. He had these massive feet, and the wardrobe department had a very hard time finding period shoes in whatever size he wore.
When Winston decided to have a cameo in the movie, Willie rewrote the scene that Winston was going to be in, just as a prank, to make it really silly and not something Winston would want to be a part of. He gave it to Winston the night before and simply made some script changes. And, of course, we didn't know what he was doing. He just wanted Winston to say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know if I want to do this after all.”
11. Skip helped Willie through childhood, who helped you through our childhood?
I had dogs growing up. People always kind of assume that I'm a real dog person because of Skip. I think we're all kind of dog people. I had pets that were important to me, but I also grew up in the kind of environment that Willie did, albeit 25 years later, in a small town where everybody rode their bikes. Everybody knew the dogs in the neighborhood by name. You would walk into your friends' houses and get a glass of milk from the fridge.
So, I really related to what his childhood was like. One of the things that was kind of funny about working on the script is that I grew up as a girl—I'm a girl. A lot of times, I would write a scene where they were playing football or something. I can't remember exactly how it went, but I was writing a bunch of very snappy comebacks from Willie to the guys who were bullying him and making his retorts very verbal.
When I showed the pages to Jay and John, they took a big X and put it through the dialogue I had written and said, “No, just have them punch him.” And I'm like, “What?” And they go, “Yeah, boys don't talk that much. Just have them punch him. And he cries.”
So, I did grow up a lot like Willie, but in some ways I didn't. I was lucky to have creative partners who filled in the other parts, who had all gotten punched out in some form or another on a football practice field.
12. Are there any novel/novella/short story/article that you would like to see adapted into a film or TV series?
Like I said, I was a big fan of Willie's work and really came to love Mississippi and Jackson. I had also grown up being a big fan of Eudora Welty and really liked a lot of her novels. I adapted one of them for Masterpiece Theatre years ago. I wasn't wild about how the project, you know, came to pass, but I would like to see a lot of Eudora Welty's works adapted.
13. Could you talk about how being a journalist has helped you write screenplays and your experience as a journalist in Houston?
I was not a terrible journalist, but I wasn’t really cut out for it. I worked on feature stories more than breaking news, so longer Sunday stories. My editors would say, “Wow, your prose is just pretty seamless.” It was seamless because I would think about how I wanted the story to go before I even interviewed the subjects. Then I would drive the subjects in that direction. And that's not really the way they like to do it in journalism. You're not really allowed [to do that].
I always felt like, when I was a journalist, I could make this story so much better if only this guy said this or did this. So, I realized pretty early on that journalism probably wasn't the best long-term path for me.
Bonus Question #1: Did Journalism help in some way with writing screenplays?
Yeah, I mean, stories are stories, right? When you have a good feeling for a story and what makes a story good, it's almost like cooking, where you feel like, “This is missing something here. It needs something more, or something less, or whatever.” So, in adaptation, you're really given that leeway to sweeten the story or spice up the story or do what you need to do to make the story flow better. In that way, I really love adaptations. This one, My Dog Skip, was kind of the ultimate. You couldn't ask for a better experience than this one was.
Bonus Question #2: So how was your experience in Houston, in general?
Oh, it was good. I lived in Houston for a long time. I grew up near there, and I worked for the daily newspaper. I had a column on Sundays for a while, and I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed working in the newsroom. The newsrooms—I don't know if they're still like that—but they were a really fun place. A lot of smart people goofing off, and that was really great.
When I started writing books in Houston, I felt a little out of it because all my friends were teachers or lawyers or something else, and I was sitting at home in my office writing all day while everybody else was out among people.
But when I moved to L.A., everybody is like me. You go to the coffee shop at 11 in the morning, and it's filled with people with notebooks. So, I like it quite a bit here, but I'm homesick for Texas a lot, too.
14. Looking back 25 years ago, in one word how would you sum up your experience with the film?
Nostalgia, I guess.
Even I felt kind of nostalgic back then, right? It was so much like where Willie lived, and where we shot was so much like where I grew up. Everybody involved with the film felt like people I had known from my previous life. So, it was really very much like family.
When I think of it now, I feel the same way I do when I think of, you know, fun times in my hometown.
Beyond the traditional outlets, she’s written and produced travel documentaries for the governments of Jamaica and Barbados, crafted a fairytale backstory for a Canadian toy company’s product launch, and written liner notes for a jazz record label.
She has taught writing at both UCLA and USC and currently lives in Los Angeles with her son, Angus, and their dog, Diego.
1. 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the film adaptation “My Dog Skip”. What was it about Willie Morris’s memoir that inspired you to adapt the film?
It's kind of a weird thing. I had recently moved to Los Angeles and started writing scripts. I had been a journalist before and had written a couple of nonfiction books, and I was really just kind of making a career change.
I met Jay Russell through my longtime friend, John Lee Hancock, who was one of the producers on the movie. We were just friends, and they were in the movie business too. So, they had optioned the book My Dog Skip, and I was a big Willie Morris fan. I grew up in Texas, and I had read his first memoir, which was called North Towards Home, which I really liked. It was one of my favorite books.
So, I mentioned that to them, and pretty soon they said, “Why don't you adapt it, and we'll produce and direct it and see what happens?” So, I just dug in, and we met a couple of times a week for a year and worked on building a movie.
2. What was your writing schedule when you wrote the screenplay?
It's been a long time ago, but if I remember correctly, everybody was working on other things. I wrote whenever I could. I think I was working as a receptionist or something. So, I wrote at night, and then I met with them on weekends. Sometimes, we met during the week. I think we did at least 14 or 15 drafts of the script before we even started working on a shooting script.
3. What was your experience working with Jay Russell in this film?
Yeah, it's funny. Jay and I are in Hollywood. You have Hollywood friends, and you have real friends. Jay started out as kind of a Hollywood friend, I guess. Well, I knew him socially first, but we had a good time working on the movie, and we've stayed really close friends. I mean, he's the godfather to my son, and we sometimes spend holidays together. I went out to Palm Springs with his wife. We're really good friends.
So, we had a good time working on the movie. We especially had a good time with Willie Morris, who was really funny and a prankster and a practical joker. He was just a lot of fun, too. So, the three of us had a great time.
4. Were you ever on set? If so, could you tell me your memorable moment?
Well, one of the most memorable moments for me was when I was on set. I didn't talk to Willie Morris while I was working on the script. The producers and Jay didn't want me to talk to him because we were inventing. The book itself is very evocative and has a lot of imagery and memories, but not a lot of plot. So, we were inventing a story to make the movie work, and they didn't want me to be influenced by him or vice versa.
So, I didn't meet him until we went down to Mississippi for the kickoff of the film. Willie and his wife, Joanne, had a big party at their house in Jackson for the film crew, the stars, their neighbors, and other people in Mississippi. It was a really lovely party.
At the party, I met Willie, and he was very complimentary about the script. But I was a little nervous because I'd made things up about his life that weren't in the book to make the movie work. So, I was standing there talking to Willie when some of his friends walked up and started talking to him about the script. I think people had read the script. People involved in the movie had obviously read the script. They said, “Willie, tell us about that guy who lived next door to you who went off to the war. I had no idea that was a part of your story.”
Willie said, “Yes, that young man”—and he talked about the character. Dink was his name. “He was just a phenomenal athlete, and I really looked up to this guy.” He went on talking about it, and then, when the other people moved on, I said, “Willie, am I losing my mind? I thought I made up that character.”
And he said, “You did. You invented that character. But you didn't make the story more factual; you made it more true. So, I've just now decided to go ahead and adopt that character into my past.”
It was really funny because I'd been so worried about him being mad that I was going to make things up about his life, and he just went ahead and adapted what I made up into his life story.
5. Did you ever consider making a cameo in the film adaptation? If not, why?
No… I don't know why I didn't. I didn't think of it. It was a very kind of down-and-dirty production. The whole production had a really good vibe around it. We were all having a great time. Everybody loved the project.
So, I didn't have a cameo, but I did help paint sets, set decks, and all that kind of stuff, which was really fun. The guy who was the production designer, David Bomba, is a really big-deal production designer. David just made this movie look amazing.
My mom and her sister and brother came to visit on the set, and they grew up in the same era that Willie grew up in. They were just blown away by the recreation of the 1940s house and garden and everything. It was very cool.
6. Actor Frankie Muniz plays the lead character, which is author Willie Morris as a young boy. Did you talk to him? If so, could you elaborate your experience working with him?
He was really young then, so he was a kid. His mom was around a lot, as you would expect with a child working on set. He was really surprisingly adult and professional, not in that kind of precocious, gross child-actor way, but in the way that he was aware that he was there to work and not to play. He took all of his work really seriously.
He was a lot of fun when the cameras were off. He was a cute kid, and when the cameras were off and there were other kids on the set—his friends on the set—they all ended up playing together and hanging out. They also were super cute with Willie. Willie had really good BS with young kids, and that was really, really fun to watch.
It's been kind of fun to watch Frankie grow up. I don't keep in touch with him—but I think Jay does. He turned out to be a really nice young man. I almost feel like family when I see him now, like I do when I see my grown-up nephew.
7. The film has an amazing cast that include Diane Lane, Luke Wilson, Clint Howard, Kevin Bacon, and Harry Connick Jr. Could you mention any interesting facts about any of them?
I got to know Diane Lane a little bit just at the beginning of the shoot. She was lovely, of course. Kevin was there. He had been a friend of Jay's from another movie in the past.
I remember one time having a conversation with Kevin about his accent. His Southern accent in My Dog Skip was perfect. Sometimes actors who aren't from the South pour on too much, and it feels a little false, but his was just ideal.
We were talking about it, and I said, “Did you grow up in the South? Did you spend time in the South?” And he said, “No, why?” I said, “Your accent is just dead-on.” And he goes, “I'm an actor.”
We laughed, and he goes, “See, I can turn this on and off.” And he showed me that he could turn it on and off. It was funny that I never really thought that that's what they do. They turn it on and off when the camera rolls.
8. When the film premiered 25 years ago, what stood out to you?
Oh yeah, that was great. It was really, really great. There were a couple of different premieres. I went to the one in Texas. I grew up in Texas, and they had a big premiere in Austin, so I went. There was a party afterward, and a lot of friends, family, and other people were there. Luke was there; he's from Texas, too. I don't think Jay was at that one. That one was a lot of fun.
I remember one of my college roommate's daughters was grilling Luke, other people, and me about whether or not it was real alcohol that the kids were drinking on the set and in the scene. We said, “No, we did not give kids alcohol on the set.”
There was another big premiere here in L.A. My family came, and my nephew, who was about five years old at the time, had his picture taken with Enzo, the dog that played Skip. There was a party after that premiere at Jay's house in the Valley. I remember my nephew and all the boys from the movie—all the cast kids—playing football in Jay's front yard after the premiere. It was really fun, and then Jay took all the kids bowling afterward.
So, that was really fun, too. It was a really, really great time.
9. I read somewhere that the author of “My Dog Skip”, Willie Morris, saw the screening of the film and praised it as a classic. Sadly, he passed away. Could you talk about that and your experience with him on this project?
Well, Willie was a really interesting character and was very emotional. A lot of things could make him cry. He could make himself cry. He made himself cry talking to me about a baseball game he heard on the radio in, like, 1945, and he'd get teary about it. I told Jay, “Willie had kind of a strange form of incontinence in that he leaked from his eyes whenever he got overwhelmed with emotion.” He cried a lot when he watched the movie. He cried every time he watched the movie, in a good way. That was a really sweet thing about Willie—how often he would get teared up and how much he loved the movie. He kind of recast his own memory of his childhood after seeing the movie.
There was a moment when we thought about having Willie do the voice-over. Harry Connick Jr. eventually did the voice-over. We thought that Willie wanted to try it, so he gave it a shot. When he came out to L.A. to record some sample voice-over, I had dinner with Willie and Joanne. They came over to my house, and Willie told us stories and cried. He also was really funny.
He was friendly with Bill Clinton. Bill Clinton was from Arkansas, and Jay's from Arkansas, too, and they knew each other a little bit from something Jay had worked on in the past. So, one of Willie's favorite things to do was prank-call Clinton when Jay was around. He would prank-call the White House.
One time, I was in Mississippi after My Dog Skip, working on another project. I stayed at Willie and his wife's house. Willie and I prank-called Jay, and Willie could change his voice and make himself sound like somebody else. I can't remember what he said to Jay, but on that particular prank call, he was super fun and funny.
It was just heartbreaking for all of us when he died. He died before the premiere, but he did get to see the movie, and he liked it. That was gratifying to all of us.
It was such a fun experience for everybody involved. When I went back to Mississippi to work on another project—maybe about a year later—Willie and Joanne, his wife, Ward Emling, the film commissioner in Mississippi, and I all loaded up in Willie's car and drove to Yazoo City, where he grew up, to have dinner.
It had nothing to do with My Dog Skip; we had all gotten to be friends and really enjoyed each other's company. So, that was a memory I'll always hold.
10. Were you able to attend Willie Morris’s Funeral?
Yes, I was. I went to the funeral with Jay, John Lee Hancock, and our other producer friend, Mark Johnson. We all went down together to Jackson. I got to say, as funerals go, that was a pretty good time, too. Willie had a lot of friends, and a lot of friends who could tell good stories. It was a very memorable thing as well.
He was friendly with Winston Groom, the guy who wrote the book Forrest Gump. Winston Groom had a cameo in the movie. He played maybe the butcher or the grocery store owner. Willie pranked him all the time, too. He was a presence at the funeral.
One of the funny things about the film is that Winston Groom was enormous. He was a huge man, like six-five. He had these massive feet, and the wardrobe department had a very hard time finding period shoes in whatever size he wore.
When Winston decided to have a cameo in the movie, Willie rewrote the scene that Winston was going to be in, just as a prank, to make it really silly and not something Winston would want to be a part of. He gave it to Winston the night before and simply made some script changes. And, of course, we didn't know what he was doing. He just wanted Winston to say, “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I don't know if I want to do this after all.”
11. Skip helped Willie through childhood, who helped you through our childhood?
I had dogs growing up. People always kind of assume that I'm a real dog person because of Skip. I think we're all kind of dog people. I had pets that were important to me, but I also grew up in the kind of environment that Willie did, albeit 25 years later, in a small town where everybody rode their bikes. Everybody knew the dogs in the neighborhood by name. You would walk into your friends' houses and get a glass of milk from the fridge.
So, I really related to what his childhood was like. One of the things that was kind of funny about working on the script is that I grew up as a girl—I'm a girl. A lot of times, I would write a scene where they were playing football or something. I can't remember exactly how it went, but I was writing a bunch of very snappy comebacks from Willie to the guys who were bullying him and making his retorts very verbal.
When I showed the pages to Jay and John, they took a big X and put it through the dialogue I had written and said, “No, just have them punch him.” And I'm like, “What?” And they go, “Yeah, boys don't talk that much. Just have them punch him. And he cries.”
So, I did grow up a lot like Willie, but in some ways I didn't. I was lucky to have creative partners who filled in the other parts, who had all gotten punched out in some form or another on a football practice field.
12. Are there any novel/novella/short story/article that you would like to see adapted into a film or TV series?
Like I said, I was a big fan of Willie's work and really came to love Mississippi and Jackson. I had also grown up being a big fan of Eudora Welty and really liked a lot of her novels. I adapted one of them for Masterpiece Theatre years ago. I wasn't wild about how the project, you know, came to pass, but I would like to see a lot of Eudora Welty's works adapted.
13. Could you talk about how being a journalist has helped you write screenplays and your experience as a journalist in Houston?
I was not a terrible journalist, but I wasn’t really cut out for it. I worked on feature stories more than breaking news, so longer Sunday stories. My editors would say, “Wow, your prose is just pretty seamless.” It was seamless because I would think about how I wanted the story to go before I even interviewed the subjects. Then I would drive the subjects in that direction. And that's not really the way they like to do it in journalism. You're not really allowed [to do that].
I always felt like, when I was a journalist, I could make this story so much better if only this guy said this or did this. So, I realized pretty early on that journalism probably wasn't the best long-term path for me.
Bonus Question #1: Did Journalism help in some way with writing screenplays?
Yeah, I mean, stories are stories, right? When you have a good feeling for a story and what makes a story good, it's almost like cooking, where you feel like, “This is missing something here. It needs something more, or something less, or whatever.” So, in adaptation, you're really given that leeway to sweeten the story or spice up the story or do what you need to do to make the story flow better. In that way, I really love adaptations. This one, My Dog Skip, was kind of the ultimate. You couldn't ask for a better experience than this one was.
Bonus Question #2: So how was your experience in Houston, in general?
Oh, it was good. I lived in Houston for a long time. I grew up near there, and I worked for the daily newspaper. I had a column on Sundays for a while, and I enjoyed it a lot. I enjoyed working in the newsroom. The newsrooms—I don't know if they're still like that—but they were a really fun place. A lot of smart people goofing off, and that was really great.
When I started writing books in Houston, I felt a little out of it because all my friends were teachers or lawyers or something else, and I was sitting at home in my office writing all day while everybody else was out among people.
But when I moved to L.A., everybody is like me. You go to the coffee shop at 11 in the morning, and it's filled with people with notebooks. So, I like it quite a bit here, but I'm homesick for Texas a lot, too.
14. Looking back 25 years ago, in one word how would you sum up your experience with the film?
Nostalgia, I guess.
Even I felt kind of nostalgic back then, right? It was so much like where Willie lived, and where we shot was so much like where I grew up. Everybody involved with the film felt like people I had known from my previous life. So, it was really very much like family.
When I think of it now, I feel the same way I do when I think of, you know, fun times in my hometown.
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