IGN readers will likely be most familiar with screenwriter Craig Mazin for his Emmy-winning work on the weighty dramas Chernobyl and The Last of Us, so it might come as a surprise to realize he got his start penning comedies like Scary Movie 3 and 4 and the Hangover sequels.
But it was one screenplay he wrote a decade ago that prepared him for writing the traumatic likes of The Last of Us and Chernobyl. And that screenplay was for a family film called The Sheep Detectives, which is finally opening in theaters this week. (Be sure to read my The Sheep Detectives review.)
The following interview I did with Mazin has been edited for clarity.
IGN: This was not the movie I was expecting it to be from. Based on the marketing, you think it's going to be a real kid's film and it is, but what I really appreciated about it was it's the cutest, sweetest movie ever made about accepting death and facing trauma. So I'd like to ask first and foremost about writing a story that is about all that and yet it's still a kid's movie. I know you've got experience in writing about death and grief for broader audiences [with Chernobyl and The Last of Us].
Craig Mazin: Well, there was a book that I remember I had when I was a kid and it was written by Mr. Rogers. I can't remember the name of it [EDITOR’S NOTE: Fred Rogers authored two different book series that may be what Mazin is referring to, First Experiences and Let’s Talk About It]. I just remember that it was about difficult things that children might have to deal with and talking about the feelings that go along with those. And some of them were fairly mild, like you're moving and so you're leaving your friends behind and going somewhere else. [Then serious topics like] your parents are getting divorced, a parent dies. These are things that we think about as somehow having to protect children from, but children are us.
We're still children, we remember. We're not stupid as children. We know what's going on. We just need ways to process it. And it's not that I thought of this movie as a way to process these things, as much as I thought of it as a coming of age tale. It was a nice way to disguise a normal coming of age where you usually see children dealing with these things with what appear to be adults. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is playing our hero and Bryan Cranston is playing a hero. And these are adult sheep, but they are naive. They are childlike.
And what you get at the end of this, I think, is a very beautiful, earned sense of hope that you can go through these things, that it is important to go through these things, that it is important to remember and to not turn away or deny that these things happen. But what I do know, and it's important what you said, is of course the movie is for children and there's nothing in it that I think of as objectionable or any more difficult than anything we've ever seen in Toy Story or Bambi. There's no blood, there's nothing like that, but it's more than you think. I showed it to my wife and my younger daughter, and at the end they were just sobbing, but it was happy crying because the ending is so hopeful and lovely, and that's a credit to everybody that worked on the film to make that happen. So listen, please keep telling people it's more than they think.
And it is a movie that everyone can see, everyone. It doesn't really matter how old you are or where you're from. I don't think I've ever written something where I could say to anyone, "Yes, you should see it." People come and ask me like, "Is it, okay? Could I show my kid The Last Of Us?" And I'm, "How old?" "Eight." "No." (The Sheep Detectives) is meant for everyone. It's meant for humans.
IGN: I know it's based on a book [Three Bags Full], which I have not read, but it does seem like there are a lot of significant changes in your adaptation. Can you talk about making those changes?
Craig Mazin: Well, the book is wonderful. It was written by Leonie Swann, a German author, and I really fell in love with it. And there were things about it that were challenging to adapt for all audiences. The nature of the mystery, even the person who did it in the end of the mystery is quite different and it was a bit too difficult, I think, for a general audience and a little harder to tell in a single movie. So you have these challenges of taking a novel, which is lengthy and has as much time as it wants, and then you've got a movie. But what I thought was really important was taking the spirit of the main characters and the spirit of their innocence and these little moments that stuck out to me as so beautiful and important. And of course, just the notion that there was this shepherd named George, and there were these beautiful sheep.
And I have to say, Lindsay Doran, who produced the movie, told me that Leonie watched the movie and she was delighted, which was such a relief. And in a great way, she said, "Hey, these stories, adaptations are allowed to do this." She didn't feel like, "Oh, you've ruined the novel." I mean, not at all. It's a wonderful novel. And I think if you love this movie, please do read Three Bags Full. It's fantastic and quite different, but very satisfying.
IGN: Did you name Brett Goldstein's twin sheep characters Ronnie and Reggie after the Kray brothers?
Craig Mazin: Yeah, you know I did.
IGN: That's so twisted. I love it.
Craig Mazin: I'm kind of obsessed with that movie Legend where Tom Hardy plays both of them. And so we had this interesting pastiche of languages, or accents, I should say. I wrote this before I did Chernobyl even. I wrote this about 10 years ago. It sort of sat languishing for a while. And then Courtenay Valenti, who runs MGM, kind of rescued it, and now we have this movie, which I'm incredibly grateful for.
But I think maybe because I had the experience of writing all these sheep with different accents and the idea of them having different accents, that when I did Chernobyl, I was like, "Hey, you know what? It's sort of the same thing. Just have everybody have different accents. It doesn't matter. Let them just be themselves." But that was fun sitting there in a booth with Brett watching him do what he does and figuring out how they're slightly different. It was fantastic.
IGN: I didn't realize that you had scripted this that long ago. You kind of touched on it with Chernobyl there, but what lessons did you learn from crafting this story about grief and trauma and death that you've been able to bring into your other works?
Craig Mazin: All of it. So this movie really, this script was sort of my transition from what I had been doing, which I loved doing, but it was more straight comedy. And this was a transition. And working with Lindsay Doran, I think just really made me a better writer. The process was grueling in the most wonderful way. I would write three pages, send them to Lindsay. She would read them, then she would call me, and we would discuss those three pages for an hour, interrogating everything. And that rigor is something that is in my brain now, and I apply it to everything. I think to myself, "If I don't know what the answer to these questions are, if I don't see this fully, Lindsay's going to ask me and I won't have an answer." Even though she's not with me on Chernobyl or The Last Of Us, she's with me.
And I just learned so much. I think having a great producer hold you accountable for every word and really interrogating everything, at least for me, it made me a better writer and it also gave me the confidence to know that I could write things a bit more from my heart, and I took that and I moved forward with what I did next.
IGN: Which of the sheep characters were probably the most challenging to write?
Craig Mazin: I think the trickiest one was Sebastian because on the one hand, he is very much about justice and he wants George's murder to be solved. On the other hand, as a sheep, he's rather disdainful of the rest of the flock and doesn't think they are the ones who should be doing it. It's a tricky thing to balance. And of course, we have to present a gruff character who considers himself separate from the flock, but you scratch that surface and what you find underneath is maybe the most soulful of all the sheep and perhaps the wisest and the one who has experienced the most, and you come to love him. And when you write characters like that, what you're hoping for is that one day Bryan Cranston will do the voice. And then in this case, you get lucky and Bryan Cranston does the voice and suddenly there he is.
IGN: Were you involved in helping cast any of the voices? I know you have a lot more clout now than you probably did 10 years ago.
Craig Mazin: Well, the movie was made over the last two years, so they certainly were very inclusive of me, which was great. I was involved, which was nice. And all of us together, Kyle [Balda, the director] and me and Lindsay, we would all look through lists of possible voices and we would talk about who would be great. And I think the good news is a lot of people read the script probably thinking, "Oh my God, a talking animal movie. I'm going to read two pages and throw it out." And then suddenly there's Sir Patrick Stewart and Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Bella Ramsey and Regina Hall. It's quite a cast.
