This much can be said about Mike Rich, author of the screenplay for “Finding Forrester”: He has a fertile imagination.
How else to explain how this fresh-faced guy from northeast Oregon — who never once set foot in New York, let alone the Bronx, before putting pen to paper, and whose alma mater is nicknamed the Beavers — could presume to tell a believable story about the students and teachers of a Manhattan prep school, a reclusive novelist and a hip-hopper with a genius IQ and a mean jump shot?
Yet, that’s exactly what Rich has done with “Finding Forrester.” The 41-year-old Portland radio host has hit a long home run with his first-time inspirational story of opposites attracting in a most unlikely place, and he almost certainly will be a key player when Oscar nominations and writers guild honors are handed out.
“There’s an old rule that you should write what you know, but I’ve never believed in it,” Rich said. “I think you should write what moves you.”
Directed by fellow Oregonian Gus Van Sant, and starring Sean Connery in a delightfully robust performance, “Finding Forrester” tells what happens when worlds collide in a bleak corner of the Bronx. Connery plays the secretive one-hit-wonder, Forrester — loosely patterned after J.D. Salinger — who becomes a reluctant mentor to a gifted 16-year-old writer and basketball star, Jamal (Rob Brown).
Although his grades border on mediocre, Jamal’s writing catches the eye of an observant teacher and a recruiter whose prep school could use another good hoops player. With full-ride scholarship in hand, Jamal blossoms both in the classroom and on the hardwood.
Meanwhile, after Jamal and Forrester meet under awkward circumstances, the eccentric Scotsman helps Jamal turn his writing from merely promising to unbelievably good — so good, in fact, that it raises the suspicions of his famously snooty English teacher (F. Murray Abraham). Not surprisingly, Jamal ultimately is forced to defend his honor in a dramatic classroom showdown. This confrontation also tests Forrester’s commitment to the boy’s future.
“Finding Forrester” will remind audiences of a dozen other inspirational high-school-based stories, including, most recently, “The Dead Poets Society” and “Good Will Hunting,” which also was directed by Van Sant.
“I got the idea for `Forrester’ from a discussion we had on the radio about famous authors and how some of them were so reclusive and odd and eccentric,” Rich said. “For me, it was interesting to speculate on what would happen if someone was able to break through that barrier. I was never intimidated by the fact that I had never been to New York … I was just trying to create great characters, within a great story.”
Although he’s likely to find himself in some pretty heady company come Oscar time, Rich’s route to stardom was deceptively smooth.
“This was my first everything: my first screenplay, and my first produced film, etc., etc.,” said Rich, whose voice was well known in the Northwest by virtue of years spent hosting shows on Seattle’s KREM and Portland’s KGW and KINK. “I tried other screenplays, but would run out of gas by the time I’d get to page 50. That experience was valuable, but it also was important for me to study a lot of screenplays.”
Downtown Portland is blessed with one of the best bookstores in America, Powell’s, and Rich logged a lot of time in the section devoted to cinema.
“At first, I couldn’t get anyone to read my screenplay, of course … nobody can,” Rich continued. “That’s the miracle. Up until the time I entered the contest, mine was a typical screenwriter’s story: finished the screenplay, couldn’t get a call back.”
In 1998, a friend encouraged Rich to enter his work into the motion-picture academy’s prestigious Nicholl Fellowship competition for first-time screenwriters. That year, 4,500 scripts were submitted, from all over the world, and his was one of five winners.
“I didn’t use the available screenwriting software, and the version of `Forrester’ I submitted was all wrong … it was a train wreck,” Rich said. “After being selected for a fellowship, my phone started ringing, especially from agents. The day before the announcement, my phone was quiet … the day after, there were 50 messages.
“They were from agents, and small- and medium-size production companies. On the one hand, I had production companies saying, `Send me your screenplay,’ and on the other, I had agents saying, `Don’t send anyone your screenplay.'”
Within a week, Rich had secured an agent, who almost immediately sold the picture to Columbia. After a couple of rewrites, one of the producers faxed — faxed! — the entire “Finding Forrester” script to Van Sant, who was in India.
The author was welcomed on board when the filmmakers set up shop in the Bronx.
“I actually went there two days before rehearsals started, and I was very pleased, because I felt as if my words actually reflected what I was seeing,” Rich said. “The other thing I was struck by, and I was so glad Gus took this approach, was that he didn’t present it as …`OK, here’s the despair of the ghetto, and you should feel bad for these characters.’
“No, this was home for Jamal and Forrester, and that’s what I was trying to get across.”
Somehow, Rich also was able to capture the jagged rhythms of urban street lingo and inherent poetry of hip-hop.
“I wrote it for my own ear,” Rich said. “When I got to New York, though, Busta Rhymes, Rob Brown and Lil’ Zane all said to me, `I can’t believe it, but, you’ve actually got this pretty close.'”
Van Sant also decided to call for three weeks of rehearsal, which tightened the script — Forrester wasn’t quite as reclusive in earlier drafts — and enhanced the performances.
“Sean suggested little things, like wearing his socks inside out … because that’s the way he wears them himself,” Rich said. “It was on the second draft that we decided to create one of those urban legends around Forrester and have the kids call him Window.”
The choice of a name for the lead character paid homage to one of the screenwriter’s favorite teachers.
“We only had 200 kids in the whole school, but I had a wonderful English teacher by the name of Sharon Forster, and she was the one who inspired me,” he said. “She would take us to Shakespeare festivals and really challenged us. So, in effect, this film is a tribute to her and what she meant to me.”
Despite the fact he’s already working on another screenplay, for Disney, Rich insists he’s trying to keep everything in context and not go Hollywood.
“I don’t scour the Internet now for reviews and gossip, and won’t do it after the movie opens,” he said. “I understand that it’s extremely rare for a film to get uniformly positive reviews, and this one will be no exception. What I concerned myself with from the moment I knew this was going to be made into a film was to stay on the project by writing the best shooting script that I could, and, hopefully, landing a good director who could turn out a good product, and that happened.”
In a season that’s already given us such inspirational tales as “Remember the Titans” and “Men of Honor,” “Finding Forrester” tries to reiterate their messages of hope when it comes to dealing with racial stereotypes and fear of the unknown.
“I never wanted this to be a story about a gallant white guy, Forrester, coming in to save this young black man,” Rich said. “He does do that, but, more so, Jamal saves Forrester. In an ordinary world, he found someone extraordinary.
“That applies to both characters.”
