Ron Bass - Hollywood Screenwriter

How do you go about writing?
I write with a pencil, I don't possess a computer. I've co-written scripts with other writers who work on lap tops and they always try and convert me but it hasn't happened yet. They say you can take laptops everywhere but you can't really, the batteries can go down and so on, inevitably during a long dialogue run. What I really don't like about computers is the delete button. You can change a line and then think the one you had twenty seconds ago was better, but you can't get it back. I think this would make me hesitant, which is not good. So I like to write with a pencil on a loose leaf note book. I fax it to my team and they type it up. I can write anywhere and I often write outside, in parks or in the backyard. It's much nicer.

Did you always want to be a writer?
I always wanted to be a novelist. I was bedridden as a child. My heroes were Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Dostoyevsky. When I was 18 or 19 I wrote a novel but it was never published. So after that heartache I tried another profession. I got a Masters degree in International Relations from Yale, became a Congressional intern, then at Harvard I earned a law degree, and in that profession moved towards the movie and TV business. And scripts followed.

Have you written about politics and the law?
Not that much, considering. A few of my films have courtroom elements like Snow Falling on Cedars and I do enjoy legal dramas. I did a film which was made for TV called Swing Vote with Andy Garcia. It was a suspense story around the court decision on abortion, an issue I had a keen interest in.