Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/832212
21 Q2 2017 / CINEMONTAGE Bruskin remembers. "And the writing was so good that I found it hard to think what it could be. How come it just wasn't feeling right?" In his attempt to answer that question, Bruskin's coverage suggested changes to the screenplay that Ziskin said influenced the final direction of the film. His part in the evolution of the project also led to his temporary transition from story analyst to Director of Development at Laura Ziskin Productions. A native of Philadelphia, Bruskin was first introduced to story analysis in 1984 in a semester-long class taken while pursuing a Master of Arts degree at the University of Southern California's School of Cinema- Television. Then, in 1987, as Bruskin pursued his Master of Fine Arts degree at USC, screenwriting instructor Jim Boyle connected him to the story department at Warner Bros. (where Boyle himself was employed as a story analyst). "At the time, Warner Bros. was just beginning to transfer its decades-old paper story library onto computer," Bruskin recalls. "The story editor, Kimberly Brent, asked me to do a project for which I would interview everybody in the department, find out what they did and then compile a sort of operations manual with a flow chart." After his graduation, Brent contacted Bruskin with a job offer. "She called me back months later and said, 'Warner Bros. has just acquired Lorimar, and we have to go through the entire library of material they have — and all of the union story analysts are working, so this is a very rare chance for me to hire off-roster,'" Bruskin remembers. "So in March 1989, I started reading for Warner Bros., and that was the beginning of my career." As a story analyst, Bruskin was tasked with delivering written coverage on a given screenplay within about four hours of receiving it. A top sheet included grades on concept, plot, characters and other categories, using scores of excellent, good, fair and poor. "I wrote a synopsis and comments with a recommendation as to whether they should consider buying it or not," Bruskin reflects. "When I first started, I wasn't reading important stuff because they didn't know yet if they could trust my taste in material." In November 1989, Bruskin left Warner Bros. and in early 1990, joined the story department at Columbia. Within the year, the Columbia story department relocated from The Burbank Studios to the old MGM lot in Culver City. "The reason that's important is because some story analysts did not want to drive all the way to Culver City," Bruskin reflects. "I happened to live in Palms, which is literally two minutes from Culver City. So, some of the senior people did not go, and as a result of that, I got to rise up a little bit in the hierarchy." Bruskin began receiving more consistently high- quality material, including Hero. As a co-writer of Blade Runner (1982), Peoples was already widely acclaimed, while Ziskin and Oscar-winning screenwriter Sargent had just collaborated on what would become the hit comedy What About Bob? (1991). Hero had much going for it on paper, and Bruskin was taken with the project as a whole. "In addition to all the issues that it entertainingly presents about the media and journalism, it also deals with what real heroism is," he comments. "It was incredibly rich and was done in such an easy-to-swallow package." Still, on reading the next draft, Bruskin was vaguely dissatisfied. "By this point, I had come up with a diagnostic system for when I was on the fence about a piece of material," Bruskin recalls. "I'd start at the end of the screenplay and run down a list of questions in a particular order to see if my answers provided a hint as to what was bothering me." He ultimately concluded that Hoffman's character lacked a well-defined goal and need. "In the paradigm of a movie's dramatic structure, you have a protagonist with a goal that he actively pursues and a subconscious need that he should resolve if his character is to grow by the end of the story," Bruskin observes. "Then you have an antagonist, who is not always a villain but a force of change." In the case of Hero, these elements were muddied. "What is Bernie's goal? He starts with a negative goal — a little harder to do in drama — which is to stay out of jail after he's been convicted of yet another petty crime," Bruskin says. "Bernie's appeal to the judge is that his young son needs a dad — Bernie is divorced from the boy's mother [Joan Cusack] — but we suspect he may be using his son just as an excuse to stay out of jail. "Bubber has nothing to do with jail or the boy, but his existence as the faux hero keeps challenging Bernie," Bruskin continues. "This makes Bubber the antagonist, even though the two characters — except for one earlier scene — don't interact until the climax, which was another concern; protagonist and antagonist MY MOST MEMORABLE FILM Hero. Columbia Pictures/ Photofest