 Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott
by Brad Cook But not Zorro. The character who has been in countless movies, TV shows and novels since 1919 makes another dashing entrance this weekend in The Mask of Zorro. Anthony Hopkins plays Don Diego de la Vega, who has emerged from prison to train his successor Alejandro Murietta (Antonio Banderas) in his struggle against the tyranny of Raphael Montero (Stuart Wilson). Catherine Zeta Jones plays Elena de la Vega, Don Diego's daughter and Alejandro's love interest. "We wanted to do a heroic adventure film where the hero actually gets to smile throughout the movie," explains screenwriter Terry Rossio, who scripted the film with his writing partner Ted Elliott. "Where the colors are bright, the music swells on cue, and when the hero leaves the room, he's allowed to swirl his cape a little as he goes out the door. As Ted says, a film that Errol Flynn could have starred in." The film was simply called Zorro when they inherited it, and Rossio came up with the new title while he and Elliott were working on their screenplay. "Yeah, I was in love with the idea that The Mask of Zorro would be listed in the film guides right after The Mark of Zorro," he remembers. "How cool is that? Then someone pointed out that the Jim Carrey movie The Mask would be stuck in between them." He laughs. Both writers had always wanted to work on Zorro. After they turned in their own draft of Godzilla - when TriStar was going to do the film with director Jan deBont (before the film moved into the hands of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich) - they pitched a story to Steven Spielberg on three days' notice. Three other writers had already worked on drafts of the Zorro film, but Elliott and Rossio weren't allowed to see those scripts. Working from the character's history in feature films and Republic serials, the pair decided to re-tell his origin and combine that with historical elements, such as the gold rush in Southern California during the 1820s. "We looked at this film as a continuation of the Mark of Zorro, a continuation of the Zorro tradition," Rossio says. "We were able to slip in a fair number of references to previous Zorro films -- they're in there for those who want to look for them." "We also tried to make the movie as historically accurate as possible," adds Elliott, "but a lot of that was lost in the translation to the screen. For example, at that time, not all the people of Los Angeles were Mexican/Californio. About twenty percent of the population was black. Not a lot of people know that, and it would be been nice to provide a little education with the entertainment." Not only was historical accuracy important to them, but the film's theme was crucial as well. While Spielberg and the development executives at TriStar liked Rossio and Elliott's initial pitch, Spielberg had a story of his own which involved Diego's desire for revenge upon his release of prison and his training of Alejandro, who also wanted vengeance because of the death of his brother. That set-up, though, was a little different from what the two writers had in mind. "At the very foundation of Zorro is one simple idea: Zorro is a hero who rescues people," explains Elliott. "Revenge is a very ignoble and unheroic motivation. **BREAK "But then we hit on the idea that by training Alejandro - imparting the spirit of Zorro to him - Diego regains his own sense of hope and nobility that had been stripped from him. The revenge story becomes a story of redemption. In a sense, both men are rescued by Zorro." The draft which they turned in is the one which made it to the screen, minus a couple elements such as Montero's lover, a Russian Countess who represented the international ambitions of his evil plans. Since they wanted to follow the lead of previous Zorro stories, they knew they had to give the audience everything it would expect from the character. "We were able to construct the story to include a sequence of Alejandro playing the fop," Rossio says. "We thought, it just wouldn't be a Zorro film without that element. It was a tough thing to layer in, as it gave Zorro essentially three identities in the course of the story. But it's in there, and it feels right for the movie." Rossio and Elliott enjoyed working on the film without the ghosts of the previous screenplays hanging around. Many writers brought on board a project late in development are given the task of reworking the latest draft of the script, an assignment which can feel limiting to some when compared to simply creating a story from the foundation up. "In this latest phase of our careers," elaborates Rossio, "we have been drawn to working on films that will actually get made. Turns out those tend to be projects with directors attached, and that means an existing script. With Zorro, though, it was one of those cases of going in and writing without looking at any prior scripts. So to us, it felt like writing an original." Zorro had been in what is called "Development Hell" in Hollywood lingo for several years before finally making the leap to the full-blown production phase where casting choices are made and filming begins. Along the way Mikhail Solomon jumped on board to direct before giving way to Robert Rodriguez, who eventually left in favor of Martin Campbell. Elliott and Rossio worked on drafts of the script with all three, and Rossio feels that Solomon and Rodriguez were "keeping the movie warm for Martin Campbell, who was the right director all along." TriStar also shuffled the release date of the film, moving it from winter 1997 to spring 1998 and then to this summer. "Initially," explains Elliott, "Sony and Amblin' were worried that The Mask of Zorro would disappear if it was released in the summer. That's why it was originally scheduled for the winter of '97, when its only competition would be a little movie called Titanic. Fortunately, TriStar moved it to early spring, still worried it wouldn't hold its own during the summer. "And then they test-screened it. It scored very highly with that all- important males-ages-16-to-29-or-whatever demographic, which was expected from an action-adventure movie. But the unexpected development was that it scored even higher with females. TriStar went 'Date movie!' and Zorro became a summer release, which is what it always should have been, in my opinion." Advance word from the current round of preview screenings has reached various internet sites by now, most of it positive. Considering the lukewarm state of some of its big-budget competition, Zorro has a good chance of making a tidy profit. "It's the romantic, swashbuckling movie that I think audiences are hungry to see," says Elliott, "that they wanted Robin Hood: the Prince of Thieves and Cutthroat Island to be. I always wonder why modern filmmakers can't approach heroism without cynicism."
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