Ted Tally

The following story was posted over at the Space.com web-site.

He won an Oscar in 1992 for his adapted screenplay of The Silence of the Lambs.

Most recently, he was brought on to rewrite the script to Mission to Mars in an effort to enrich the characters, saving the film from becoming yet another piece of sci-fi twaddle "about hardware and science."

His next film, All The Pretty Horses, adapted from the 1992 Cormac McCarthy novel, is scheduled for release in October. Whether he's adapting neo-classical western or a SF work, Tally's focus remains on the human drama.

SPACE.com: Were there any special challenges in writing the M2M script compared with your work on Silence of the Lambs and All the Pretty Horses?

Ted Tally: I wasn't the first writer; I rewrote the script, so I didn't have to do anytech heavy lifting.

One challenge was trying to re-imagine the layout of the spacecraft to make it work for the suspense sequences, to stress the physical aspects of that environment.

You know: to what extent were they going to be weightless? Can you find a way that's not scientifically outrageous to have artificial gravity in the spacecraft?

Also, trying to imagine a place where no human being has ever been.

With any science-fiction movie, you want the greatest amount or realism as you can, but you have to fudge things a bit.

You have to say, "Well, they can walk around normally a lot of the time."

Did you consult with NASA while developing the script? What kind of research did the job entail?

I didn't consult with them directly. I got a lot of stuff online, read tons of books and articles, everything from high science to fantasy.

I read [Robert] Zubrin's book [The Case for Mars]. I reread The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury, a lot of history and folklore and pop-cultural histories of Mars - the way we look at Mars in pop culture way back to ancient times.

The whole idea of the face on Mars, which has now been debunked -- people genuinely believed the face was put there, which [they claimed] proves some form of extraterrestrial life.

What distinguishes this movie from other recent sci-fi films?

The fact that it cares more about the human drama and is character driven.

I think sci-fi buffs will be pleased - there's plenty of ILM magic [Industrial Light & Magic, George Lucas' famed special-effects house]. But to me, it's always a human drama.

It's also kind of an unusual story. There's no bad guy in the traditional Hollywood sense. There's a lot of conflict, danger, and tragedy, but there are no giant wormy creatures jumping out of dark places.

Did you use previous films as a model?

Well, 2001 was always in our minds. That movie is a work of great beauty. It has very credible technology, yet it also has an element of the mystical that goes beyond the realism. It's very poetic.

What is it about Mars that people find so captivating?

I think there's a real hunger for it. It's no accident that two-thirds of the top movies of all time are science-fiction films. It has replaced what the western once was. The frontier is now outer space.

Also, it's so relatively close.

People have always wondered about Mars. There's atmosphere, you can see clouds. There's no chance that there's any degree of life down to the amoeba on the other [inner] planets. So it's still a sexy enough question that NASA is pushing enough into Mars exploration.

People will tell you that the technology exists today to go to Mars. It's very dangerous, but it's not impossible.

What was the collaboration w/ Brian DePalma like? How is he different compared with the other directors you've worked with?

He's much more confident in himself.

This is his 25th film. He has a wonderfully detailed imagination. He develops scenes in visual terms. He left it to me to work out character details, but he knew how he wanted everything to look on the screen.

He had such joy in doing this movie. He'd never done sci-fi before.

Jonathan Demme [director of The Silence of the Lambs] told me that every director, whether he wants to admit it or not, wants to do a film that scares the pants off the audience.

Do you think there'll be more sci-fi work in your future?

I was a huge sci-fi buff when I was a teenager and in college. Working on this film reminded me that it doesn't have to be about hardware. At the heart of every good sci-fi story is a human story.