I’ve really enjoyed these last few interviews, so I’ve got one more set up for you. John Heffernen, original screenwriter of Snakes on a Plane, is interested in answering your questions. We’ll go through the same drill, submit questions in the comments below, I’ll sort them for quality and then send them off to be answered. Even though there’s going to be a lot of text below this pargraph, please submit questions for John in the comments.

Now, John felt that there was a lot of background information about the film and his involvement that should be in the public record, so in the interest of creating a better understanding of how Snakes on a Plane came into being, he wrote up a statement detailing his involvement with the film. It’s long, but it’s interesting and it sets up a pretty good timeline which will answer a lot of basic questions. Here we go:

Snakes On A Plane: A (not so) Brief History by John Heffernan

To all you Snakesonaplaniacs out there:

My name is John Heffernan and I’m the original writer and one of the creators of the “most anticipated movie of the year” and my pride and joy, Snakes On A Plane. I want to start off by personally thanking Brian for his tireless work on his awesome website and for all of the fans who have contributed to this incredible phenomenon. SoaP would not be the most powerful force in the movie universe if weren’t for you guys, and I sincerely consider you all to be co-creators of this film. I mean it. Thank you.

The reason I contacted snakesonablog to write this chronicle was to fill you in on the history of the project and how it came to be. I’ve done and read a lot of interviews and seen a lot of media coverage, but no one interview or news report could possibly provide all the details of the project’s (if you’ll pardon the pun) serpentine journey through the labyrinth of Hollywood… or mention all of the unsung heroes behind the film’s progression from high concept to finished product. So I thought I’d take the initiative to fill in those gaps for those who were curious. If you’re interested, read on.

The concept of the movie was born at a company called Patchwork Productions. It is no longer active but some of its principals should be familiar to you, including award-winning producers and now studio moguls Penney Finkelman Cox and Sandra Rabins, as well as legendary composer Hans Zimmer. Way back in 1998 I was working as an assistant there to several development executives, including SoaP producer Craig Berenson. I had just gotten agency representation with my wonderful agent Ben Smith at ICM, and had sold a script to Ignite Entertainment, now part of Lion’s Gate. I was ready to quit answering phones and become a writer full time… but there was one little spark of an idea for a project that I stuck around for. That project was Snakes On A Plane.

The idea for the project first came up when we were having a margarita-fueled “brainstorming session” at Patchwork to basically just toss out ideas. After a bunch of stuff was brought up, Craig mentioned that he recalled reading a script called “Venom” submitted by a guy named David Dallesandro about ten years back when he was working at Davis Entertainment. I should state up front that I have never read “Venom”, at first because I didn’t want it to influence my own vision, and later because I lost my only copy while moving into a bigger pad. I’ll have to ask for another one someday. But according to Craig, the script concerned a handful of snakes that got loose from the cargo hold of a commercial carrier and created some havoc. Conveniently enough there happened to be a Steve Irwin/Indiana Jones type on board, and he managed to vanquish the snakes. That was about it. Nobody bought the script. But I saw a kernel of genius in all of this: you take two of people’s most common fears, fear of snakes and fear of flying, and mix them together like peanut butter and chocolate. Could be fun. Could be scary.

So I started thinking… well, what if it wasn’t a handful of snakes, what if it was more like 500 snakes? And what if the snakes didn’t get loose by accident, what if somebody put them there? And what if the reason why is because there’s an overarching storyline involving a mob hit and an FBI Agent and a witness reluctant to testify? And what if the plane was stuck at 35,000 feet over the ocean with no place to land and there wasn’t one damn person on board who knew anything about snakes and there was no turning back because you’re past the point of no return and had to keep flying? Now that, to me, sounded like it had some potential.

Not everyone agreed. First, there was that title. And one of the questions I’m most frequently asked is, “Where did the title come from?” Well, here’s the truth: the title wasn’t so much created as much as it willed itself into existence. At first “Snakes On A Plane” was more or less a shorthand we used to refer to the project for lack of anything better. But the more I thought about it, the more it occurred to me that the reason there wasn’t anything better was because there wasn’t anything better. It was the perfect title already. Honest and straightforward, bereft of all metaphor and without hint of pretense. It was like Ziploc, or McMuffin; you got it immediately. It was sui generis, something so uniquely itself and relatable that it didn’t need some flashy moniker to sell it. That was the beauty of it; it wasn’t trying to sell you. It was what it was, you either got it or you didn’t. While every other movie in Hollywood was selling flash, we were selling honesty. This, I knew, just had to be the title of the movie.

Craig contacted David Dallessandro and offered him a “Story By” credit on the film in return for letting us take over the creative reigns, and David agreed; after all it was a script he wrote years ago and was just gathering dust. That’s where David’s creative involvement with the film ended, but we were as good as our word and got him his “Story By” credit. Then the real story process began, and I put together a pitch to take to the studios. Unfortunately, no one was buying.

To say that studio execs didn’t really get the idea would be an understatement. During the pitch process we were met with everything from outright laughter to horrifying blank stares. To pitch an idea to a room full of utterly stone-faced studio executives is a terror I hope none of you ever experience. They all wanted to know, “So, what’s the tone of this movie? Is it a horror film? An action thriller? A when animals attack kind of a thing?” Well, the answer is all of the above. But that’s not exactly what the execs wanted to hear. We weren’t having much luck… until we pitched it to David Gale, then-President of MTV Films. He got the concept immediately. If it weren’t for him, Snakes On A Plane never would have been. David arranged a follow-up pitch to Paramount, and the executive chosen to hear it was Don Granger, a veteran studio exec who was responsible for some of Paramount’s biggest hits. This was exciting but also very intimidating, especially as I would be pitching it alone, as Craig was away at a family function. So in I went like Gary Cooper in High Noon, fighting this battle solo. But to my surprise and amazement, it turned out not to be a battle at all. Don loved the idea. He thought it was great, and he bought it in the room. And Snakes On A Plane was born.

The script came together, people were happy with the pages, and in the summer of 2001 we were looking at a greenlight from the studio. That’s when things started to go awry, as they often do, at the worst possible moments. The first bad thing that happened was that Don left his position at Paramount for his own reasons to become a producer and co-president at Mutual Films. Losing your exec can have unsettling consequences on the development process, and we struggled a little. But the second bad thing was worse. The second bad thing that happened was unimaginably worse. More chaotic than the loss of an executive, more horrifying than anything you could ever write in a movie. The second bad thing was September 11.

I cannot begin to imagine the nightmare that the passengers on those flights suffered. But I do know that sitting there, watching it all on the news as we all did, was the worst experience of my life. And not because of the movie; it didn’t even really occur to me until days later that this unthinkable tragedy might have some effect on our film. But of course it did. And with good reason. No one wanted to do airplane disaster movies then, least of all me. I literally couldn’t sit down and write a horror movie that took place on a plane with those images so fresh in my mind. Nor would anyone have wanted to read what I might have written had I been able to. The project was immediately put into turnaround, and everyone went on to other things. This, I thought, was the end of the journey.

But time has a way of healing wounds, and although we can never forget such tragic events, we have an obligation to move past them. Disasters happen, disaster movies happen, and I guess there’s a time and a place for all things, good and bad. Don Granger, with his veteran tenure in Hollywood, understood this cycle better than anyone, and about a year and a half after the events contacted me and said he still believed in the project and would like to meet with me to discuss getting back to writing it. I met with him, and he convinced me that this movie idea was just too good to abandon. So he and Mutual bought the turnaround rights from Paramount. Don had notes, all of them good, and asked me to do one rewrite, then a second, then a third. I think it was around the fourth rewrite request that I got a little impatient, as I thought the new script was ready to go, and told him I’d do one more draft… in return for a small part in the movie. Don consented, and that’s why you’ll see me onscreen as the “FBI Dog Handler” guiding a German Shepherd sniffing for bombs in the cargo hold of the 747. Too bad we weren’t sniffing for snakes. But then we wouldn’t have a movie, would we?

And so Round 2 of the SoaP pitch process began. Except now we were armed with a completed and polished script. New Line Cinema bought the script, and it turned out to be the best possible place we possibly could have landed. New Line is an extremely open-minded studio, very hip, very risk-taking, very open to new ideas. It was just the environment we needed. The execs on the film, Stokely Chaffin and Jeff Katz early on, joined by Toby Emmerich and George Waud later, were a true pleasure to work with. They let us do everything we wanted. They took the script out to directors and Ronnie Yu was for a short time attached, but soon dropped out over creative and budgetary differences. But when one door closes another door opens. Two doors, in fact. And through them stepped David Ellis and Samuel L. Jackson. David was the perfect director for this film. He got the concept immediately and with his background in action movies and stuntwork he had a lot to bring to the table. And Sam… well, what can I say about Sam except that he’s the coolest motherf&@er on the planet. As soon as he heard the snakes on a plane movie was being made, he wanted on to be on board. Literally. And when Samuel L. Jackson asks to star in your movie, there’s really only one thing you can say, and that’s… yes.

Once the star and director were in place we were on our way. New Line brought in Sebastian Gutierrez, a great writer, to polish my script, and I give him huge credit for leaving all my good stuff alone and adding some great stuff of his own. Pre-production began, and Snakes started slithering up to Vancouver. There were still a couple of bumps along the way, the biggest one being, once again, the title. New Line wanted to change it. I’m still not sure exactly why; the reasons I heard were that one, the title was sending up red flags with the Canadian Dept. of Agriculture and making it difficult to import the snakes into the country, and two, that actors weren’t reading the script because they weren’t taking the title seriously. So it was changed. Originally the ill-fated flight was known as Pacific Air Flight 1021, which is a little screenwriting easter egg: my birthday is October 21^st. Then someone thought shortening it to Flight 121 sounded better. So first they called the movie Flight 121. Then Pacific Air 121. And finally Pacific Air Flight 121, which someone pointed out to me didn’t sound like a movie you’d want to see, it sounded more like the flight you just missed ten minutes ago. But the new title remained… until Sam found out about it.

Sam quite correctly believed that Snakes On A Plane was the best title for this movie and as far as he was concerned, it was damn well gonna be the title of the movie. And when Sam Jackson talks, people listen. And with good reason. He’s kind of scary. Now I don’t know if it’s the first time in film history that a studio has reversed its stance on a decision like this, but it might be the most significant. Because it is this title, and the concept it so brazenly purveys, that sparked the embers of what would become a worldwide phenomenon. Screenwriter Josh Friedman started writing about it on his blog, others like Brian caught on, and before anyone knew what was happening, we had a cult hit on our hands long before there was even a one-sheet, let alone a teaser or trailer. And that’s all you guys. And you guys are a powerful force. So powerful that when you said you wanted to hear Samuel L. Jackson use his favorite curse word, you convinced a whole studio to change its original PG-13 target rating to a gorier, bloodier, downright ass-kicking-er R-rated ride of over the top thrills and chills and dark humor. New Line ordered five days of reshoots and good lord did David Ellis make the most of them.

So that’s where we stand today. The movie opens August 18, and although no one can tell for sure how well it’s going to do, I remain cautiously optimistic. But one thing I can promise you is that this movie will meet and exceed your every expectation. It is an absolute rollercoaster, a horror/thriller/action blend that delivers everything you could possibly want in a genre film. And while the critics may never give it its proper due, I predict that many of them will be shocked and stunned by just how great this movie came out. I know I was. And you guys made it all possible. So thank you, one and all, for helping to create Snakes On A Plane. We couldn’t have done it without you.

Phew, well, now you know everything.

Anyway, please submit questions that I can forward along to John, preferably skipping over anything he’s already covered in his voluminous statement.

All previous Fan Interviews.