Todd Komarnicki: Word Warrior

Todd Komarnicki may be known primarily around Hollywood as a producer (Elf, Meet Dave), but the man is without question a writer first and foremost. I spoke to him about his latest novel -- War, a searing, gut-wrenching tale about an unknown soldier fighting an unknown war. It's sometimes nauseating, sometimes, touching, always captivating. Here the author dishes on his inspirations, his intentions, and succeeding and failing in Hollywood.

How did you get into writing?
It was so long ago, I barely remember. I think it was on the wall of the cave when I first started writing. I told a story of an elk who was eaten by a hairy man with a spear. Or maybe that was just a night out in Manhattan. I started writing out of college. I had an urge to write, so I taught myself how to write screenplays in my furniture-free apartment in lovely Altadena.

So your dream was to be a screenwriter?
That’s been the bulk of my career. I started in screenwriting, sold a couple things, then that gave me the courage to write my first book, which was Free, back in 1993. Although I did go back and forth, I’ve spent most of my time in the movies, writing, producing, and occasionally directing. I hadn’t written a book in a decade, and I was missing it terribly, and I thought, I don’t want to be the guy who wrote two books in his twenties and then disappears.

Writing and directing aren’t easy to break into. How did you go from having no furniture outside of Pasadena to producing Elf?
I was blessed to get an early start, but after ten years of selling screenplays, none got made—which is the secret of Hollywood, that only 10% of purchased scripts ever become movies. I was in that 90%, making a living based on my reputation with about 30 people on the planet, writing a lot of movies I cared about that weren’t seeing the light of day. That drove me into producing and directing. I thought, if I put my head on the line for those things, I’d have more possibilities that the wheel might come up with my number on it.

Were you surprised at how well Elf did at the box office?
Yeah, well, Will Ferrell was still anchored down by that movie he did with Chris Kattan and studios were a little afraid of Christmas movies, so we had a lot of no’s, and then a lot of new friends once the movie was a hit. I remember after the box office success, an executive said, “Enjoy all your new friends.”

But on the flip side, you produced Meet Dave, which bombed this summer.
I don’t think it’s as good a movie as Elf. But it’s certainly not a bad movie. We worked just as hard on that movie, you care just as much about the ones that don’t land as the ones that do. So it’s sad. It hurts that audiences didn’t want to see the movie. But if they find it on DVD, I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised.

It’s got a great cast and concept, it’s got Eddie Murphy. It’s weird when something doesn’t hit.
I like to say, head down Tim Brown. Tim Brown was the greatest running back in the history of the NFL, and whether he was hit by a five yard launch or had a seventy yard touchdown, he just turned the football over, put his head down, and went back to the huddle. I try to apply that to my career. I don’t need to be pointing to the sky, waving to the crowd, getting over-excited, and I don’t need to be crying into my towel on the bench. I just need to be head down Tim Brown.

Let’s talk about the book. When did you conceive of it, how did you conceive of it, and when did you start to write it?
It all happened pretty quickly. A couple years ago I saw another of the endless stream of headlines about the death of a soldier in Iraq. And I was particularly struck by this one, because it mentioned the soldier had died in a dry riverbed, in a particular Iraqi town with a very long name, but it didn’t say the soldier’s name. They took the time to name the town that none of us have ever heard of, to describe the riverbed, and they didn’t tell me who this American soldier was who died. That shoving aside of our heroes that’s been taking place, the fact that the government has kept us from seeing the funerals, this decision to hide the shame of what is happening, my anger and frustration started bubbling and that was the birth of it. I started writing very quickly.

How did you tap into the soldier consciousness?
I was with Hillary Clinton when we landed in Bosnia, maybe you’ve seen that footage. No, I did research. We have a soldier in the family who is in Afghanistan. I spent time with him talking about what he was experiencing over there, and also the details of armor and weaponry and all the things a soldier would have. That realism was important to me. But also as a person who grew up in this culture, grew up through three major wars, it seeps into your consciousness and imagination. I felt like if I showed up and got out of the way and listened to the narrator, just let the soldier tell the story, I might have a chance of capturing some of the essence.

Did you write this as an anti-war novel?
It’s a frustrated cry. We have to re-examine how we’re taking this laying down, instead of just saying, “This is what America does, we’re the policemen of the world.” Every day after 9/11, for the next five or six months, if someone heard I had an American accent and found out I was from New York, strangers would just grab me and hug me. And they would say, “We’re so sorry. We stand with you.” And within another several months, with the war rhetoric, suddenly the American accent led to a question instead of a hug. It led to, “What the hell are you guys doing?” It’s still chilling to me how we lost credibility in the world’s eyes because of this.