Cowboys & Aliens screenwriters Mark Fergus (First Snow, Children of Men, Iron Man) and Roberto Orci (Star Trek, Transformers, Fringe) beamed down to The Los Angeles Film School the night before Cowboys & Aliens opened to share observations about life in the warp-speed lane with students and fans.
The film begins in the old west when a stranger (Daniel Craig) with no memory of his past stumbles into the desert town of Absolution. The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. He discovers that the
people of Absolution don't welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). When monsters from the sky invade their town, Absolution must turn to the stranger for help.
The Q&A, which launched after the applause for the movie died down, was moderated by Jeff Goldsmith as part of a continuing series held at the school on Sunset Boulevard.
The writing credits for Cowboys & Aliens go on and on. Mark Fergus was on the team which gave the film its final form and tone and Roberto Orci was part of the team, as a producer, too, which shepherded the script all the way through production. According to Orci, Fergus had to leave when the success of Iron Man made Fergus such a hot property “…we could no longer afford him.”
Why so many writers? Cowboys & Aliens goes back to 1997. It had several runs of popularity at several studios but never made it to production. It then resurfaced as a graphic novel and began another round of sparking interest at studios and production companies. One day Ron Howard and Steven Spielberg where having lunch together and realized that they both had an interest in the property. That began the current successful production.
Goldsmith asked about the fact that Steve Oedekerk (Ace Ventura, The Nutty Professor, Bruce Almighty) had a “Screen story by” credit.
Orci explained that a lot of people had done drafts of the script. “They did great creative things and we enjoyed reading them. In Steve’s case he had taken a 
Men in Black approach. Ultimately though we decided we wanted to go more with a ‘hard Western.”
Orci pointed out that both Ron Howard and Steven Speilberg had a great respect for the Western genre: “Ron was in John Wayne’s last move, for Pete’s sake!”
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Article comments
1 - El Bicho
good write-up