Lisa Carroll
Although it took him awhile to find his footing as to a career, Graham Moore struck gold when it came to writing; his adapted screenplay based on the book “The Imitation Game,” was recently nominated for an Oscar. A few years earlier, Moore’s screenplay also led the 2011 “Black List” of the best unproduced scripts in the entertainment industry.
Below, Moore tells us how bad he was at both computer programming and journalism, and also how very frightened one insurance salesman became during filming.
Moviehole: How did you get your start in writing?
Graham Moore: I wasn’t sure I wanted to be a writer when I was growing up. I thought as a teen I would work in computer science. I was a techy kid who went to space camp and I had a grand plan to go to MIT and become a computer programmer, but I was really bad at it. In college I wanted to be a journalist and I was on the school newspaper – I had an internship at “Newsweek” but again, I was really bad at it. I had friends who were really good at writing and more suited.
Through the process of trial and error, I found my way through writing fiction. Then I had a friend who went to film school, who was my best friend, and one night we were in New York City and up until 4 a.m. and we had a running joke for a screenplay. We called each other the next morning and said “how about writing it?” So we started writing a few scripts together and I started my first novel (“The Sherlockian”). I’ve been very lucky to bounce around books and films. My first novel came out in 2010 and the second will come out this year. My first book took six years, I was learning how to do it, and there was the process of revisions. With the second book, I started it in 2010 and then I put it on hold to write “The Imitation Game.”
Moviehole: What was the biggest challenge about writing this film?
GM: I was a techy teenager, I was exposed to history very young – to a techy kid to know about Alan Turing who never fit in, he was a tremendous inspiration. There were great books and a great play about him (Turing) but no film – I thought if anyone deserved a film it was Alan Turing. I wrote it on spec, it was just me and the producers working on it. We felt it needed to be told, we knew how important it was to tell Alan Turing’s story fairly and accurately. His legacy and contributions were hidden during his life and afterwards. We wanted to put Alan back at the center at WWII and computer science.
Moviehole: What about getting the film made in the first place?
GM: When you call around Hollywood and say, “I really want to make a film about this gay mathematician in the 1940s,” it’s not the buzzword that Hollywood wanted to hear. We were lucky to have producers that helped get the word out. It took years of fighting to get this made as it was such an unconventional story. But we had collaborators who said how come people have never heard of this before? We had interest starting from our director and our whole cast – Benedict (Cumberbatch) raised his hand very quickly and said “I can’t believe you’re making the Alan Turing movie.”
We did it on a really low budget and we shot it in eight weeks. We all did it because we felt passionately about it. We were such an international production – I’m American, the director is Norwegian and we had an all-British cast and crew. We wanted to shoot on original settings and shot at the actual beer hut at Bletchley Park. We shot all the scenes at Sherborne, the boy’s school, it was important. We wanted to feel the sense of power, that this is a real story.
While at Bletchley Park, one of the actors said if we walked around and dusted for fingerprints we could probably find Alan Turing’s fingerprints. We used real props, every machine was a real Enigma machine and off-screen there was a very terrified insurance man who was afraid we would break it while we were typing on real Enigma machines!
Moviehole: Why do you think this film resonates so much today, even though it took place decades ago?
GM: I think it deals with issues that will always be relevant – it’s a film about outsiders from society, I think it’s a film about gay rights which is still an issue we are dealing with today, moreover it’s an important story about a person who wasn’t treated very well when he was alive. This is a man who Churchill gave the single greatest contribution to winning WWII. I think it’s amazing what an effect you can have without knowing it. Turing essentially invented the modern computer but he didn’t get to see the laptops and iPhones. I hope he would feel pride if he did. It’s a good lesson that one’s ideas can last a lot longer than you might think.
Moviehole: What do you have coming up as to projects?
GM: I have a book coming out, another historical piece about a true story which is a legal thriller set in New York City set in the 1880s, which has taken a lot of research. I also wrote an adaptation of “The Devil in the White City,” for Warner Brothers and everyone seems happy with the script, it’s a fantastically expensive film. I have two TV pilots coming up and I just finished one for Sky (UK cable channel) and HBO. I’m coming to the end of a lot of different projects.
Moviehole: What do you advise young writers?
GM: Keep writing, don’t ever stop writing, don’t be afraid of drafts or missteps. Some people get it right the first time, but I never have. I cannot tell you how many dozens of drafts I did of “The Imitation Game.” Both of my novels have gone through many, many drafts. The hardest part of being a writer is having the courage to fill a blank page with words and then having a sense of humility to cut out those pages of words to try and make it better. Courage and humility is a tight rope to walk, but never stop filling up pages of words and don’t be afraid of throwing out pages of words.
