Christine Aylward: Tell us. How did you become what you are today? When did you know
that you wanted to make movies and write, and what was your
path?

Craig Mazin: I have a very untraditional answer here to be honest with you. I did
not plan on going into movies. I had a very middle class
upbringing. I was actually studying to be a doctor, studying to
be a neurologist, which I still may get back to at some point.
It's still on the back burner.

I love movies, but to me the idea of actually going to Hollywood
and writing or directing or producing was something that idiots
did and failed at. Nobody ever seems to succeed, and it just
seemed like an imprudent thing to do. But I did fall in love
with . . . I mean, I like entertaining people, and I was a
little bit of a class clown. So I kind of fell in love with the
idea of production. There was a radio show that I worked on in
college.

Following that, I decided, I'll drive out to L.A. and I'll give
it a shot, but I'll try and be an executive or something like
that. That seemed like a more feasible career path, and it
turned out that the skill that I had that was rarer than
executiving was being a writer. I was actually a marketing
executive for a couple of years, and then my boss said, "You
should try and write a script." I had a writing partner at the
time, and we did. It got made and that was . . .

Christine Aylward: But how do you have a writing partner if you're not that keen about
writing scripts?

Craig Mazin: Well, I see how you've trapped me there. So here's the thing. I had
it as a kind of . . .

Christine Aylward: He was really a writing partner from college?

Craig Mazin: Here's the truth. He didn't exist. No, he did exist. It was kind of a
silly dream. It was just a dream, like let's . . . the two of us
had jobs. We were working day jobs, but we thought, well, let's
try and write some stuff together. It was really just a hobby. I
mean, I thought of it as a hobby. I thought of it as a hobby
until the day that they called me up and said, "You just sold a
pitch to Disney, and they want you to write the movie." Then
suddenly, we realized that we had to figure out how to write a
movie really quickly and we did.

Christine Aylward: But how does that work? It's a hobby, and you have another full-time
job, and you have a pitch. How do you get the pitch to Disney?

Craig Mazin: I was working there, and I always tell people this when they're
trying to break in. I always say, whatever your Plan A is - Plan
A is to be a writer, director, filmmaker, whatever - make that
Plan B, and make Plan A something that gets you in a position
where you actually can exploit your talent, because the truth is
it's really hard, particularly now. Listen, this is another
time.

The mid-1990s, Disney in combination with Touchstone, Hollywood
Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures, Miramax, which they own, they
put out over a movie a week one year. I think it was 60 movies
in a year. So there was an enormous amount of opportunities. If
you could be in the right place and you had some talent and an
ability to work within that system, and again I was very young.
I was 24, I think, at the time. It would happen, but you needed
to have something else that you were doing to get there.

So even now I tell people, look, if you're going to move out to
Los Angeles and really chase it, I encourage that. I want people
to succeed, but while you're here find another gig. You can
write at night. I always tell people who are young, you should
theoretically have a lot more energy than I do, and you probably
don't have a wife and don't have kids and don't have baseball
games to go to and don't have parent-teacher conferences. You
have a lot more time. Work during the day. Write at night. Make
it happen.

Christine Aylward: So you sold your pitch to Disney, and then that was it for you. You
were done in marketing and off to full-time screenwriter.

Craig Mazin: Yeah. That was the last time I wasn't a screenwriter was 1995, '96,
something like that. Yeah, I think it was about 15 years ago,
and that was it. I've been doing it ever since, amazingly.

Christine Aylward: What was the biggest surprise for you?

Craig Mazin: In my life or about that?

Christine Aylward: Well, you can answer in your life. I'd be curious about it.

Craig Mazin: I'm biologically a woman. They just told me that the other day.

Christine Aylward: Craig, come on.

Craig Mazin: The biggest surprise for me?

Christine Aylward: As a screenwriter.

Craig Mazin: Well, first actually I have a written answer for this although I'm
biologically a woman. The biggest surprise for me was and
continues to be the experience of seeing the first assembly or
the first showing of a movie that you've written. Screenwriters
need to go through this trial by fire, and it's a bit of a shame
because the way our business is set up you can write a lot of
scripts. You can sell a lot of screen plays before you ever see
one made.

Christine Aylward: Right.

Craig Mazin: But until you see what happens in that kind of transformative fire
that burns away the pages and turns into a movie, it's very hard
to realize exactly how it all works, and it's a shock. It's a
shock. You realize how far off the mark you may have been and
what you imagined things would be like and how they actually
turned out. Of course, some of it has to do with who makes the
decisions, the director and the cast, but some of it is just
there is a process of realizing the material that you have to
experience before you can write better.

Christine Aylward: Yeah. It's always interesting to me the screenwriting process, and if
as you're writing a screenplay you're actually visualizing the
set, you're visualizing the cast.

Craig Mazin: Well, you're visualizing a set that cannot exist. When we do this in
our minds and we can't help it - we can't not do this- we
compress time and space in our own minds because our imagination
is thankfully not as boring as real life. So people can move
across rooms. They're just there.

Christine Aylward: Yeah.

Craig Mazin: There's no question that it's interesting because it just happened in
your mind that way. Then, you get on a stage and you're watching
a great actor say nothing as he walks slowly across a space, and
you're like, ooh, this is boring. Having that experience, you
begin to internalize some of the realities that you know you're
going to be faced with sooner or later.

One of the things I often do is I try and get really specific.
Even if I don't write it down on the page, I get very specific
in my mind about what the space is, because I never say they
walked into an office building. In my mind, I know what kind of
office building it is.

Christine Aylward: Right.

Craig Mazin: Because even if that doesn't need to be described, even if they don't
find that office building, it will help me not make stupid
mistakes on the page, like suddenly they're in a place that they
can't be. So I try and be accountable to future production. When
you work with a really good director, I think it gets even
better. If you can write with the director, then there's almost
no question that you've gotten in that pocket.

Christine Aylward: So that's really interesting. I've written a screenplay, and I
remember when I was writing it, you have people reviewing your
drafts and giving you all different counsel, and they're like,
take those words out, too many words. Put more words in. How do
you write for the character, like he sat there perplexed. He had
a crazy grin on his face.

Craig Mazin: Everybody's different, I'm sure. For me, the best way to write for
characters is to be a little crazy yourself, the way actors are
a little crazy, because actors have to sort of subsume their own
sense of identity into somebody else's, an imaginary person's.
When you're a writer, you don't have to do that quite so
publicly, but you do have to sort get a little schizoid about
the work, because when you're writing characters, you have to
think like they think. The only way you can think like they
think is if you understand who they are fully, and the only way
you can understand who they are fully is to really, really
create another person.

This is just an extension of what we did as kids and made up
imaginary friends or took little action figures and created
desires and motivations for them and conflicts. Then you just be
real about them as best you can, if you're writing that sort of
movie. Try and be true to the person that you've created, and
they theoretically will turn out interesting if you're true and
real to them, but you have to do the work. You have to do the
work, and you have to understand people, be a little bit of a
psychologist.

Christine Aylward: Let's talk "Hangover Part II" for a second.

Craig Mazin: Sure.

Christine Aylward: You did not write "Hangover."

Craig Mazin: No. I wish. It's so awesome. I love that movie.

Christine Aylward: I loved that movie also.

Craig Mazin: It's a great movie.

Christine Aylward: I can't wait for "Hangover Part II." So you're brought into a project
where there's already an existing piece of material. How were
you brought in? Tell us a little bit about that.

Craig Mazin: Sure.

Christine Aylward: And then I'll ask the second question.

Craig Mazin: Well, I've known Todd for a long time. We had worked together briefly
when we were both sort of in the Weinstein world of Dimension,
and we're friends. We kind of hit it off, and we've been friends
for many years. We always wanted to do something together, but I
was doing this, he was doing that, and it just never worked out.

Then one day he called me up, and he said, "Hey, do you want to
help me write "Hangover II?" Yeah, I kind of do. I guess they
had set it really early. I think the studio knew, even before
they released the first "Hangover," that it was going to be
great, and they had sort of set the machine in motion to do
another one. He was going to do it with Scott Armstrong who he's
done a lot of movies with. I think they were looking at the
reality of their release date, which was really aggressive. I
think Todd figured we kind of need all hands on deck here to
make this date and get the script done in time.

So the three of us just sat together, and we started it. Todd's
got this awesome place in Malibu. So we would sit out on the
beach and just figured it out, just figured the story out, and
then we wrote it.

Christine Aylward: How was that for you coming into the Part II? Was that tough as a
writer because it's not you coming up with characters on your
own? They're already existing characters.

Craig Mazin: Everything poses challenges. Everything is hard in its own way. What
I loved about it in a sense was that the movie and the actors
who deserve a ton of credit for this really did create these
enormously realistic portrayals of human beings, interesting
human beings. So, so much of the hard stuff was done. However,
the problem that doing a traditional sequel like this poses is
that you have to be somehow interesting again.

At the end of the first movie, the character, Stu, who is in the
strict dramatic sense the protagonist, has had that life
changing moment where he's abandoned his abusive girlfriend and
is sort of ready to move on. So, the question then you begin
with when you start talking about a sequel is what's the
problem? Are there any more problems for this guy or any of the
other guys, and what do they have to go through to get that
figured out? Then, of course, there was the whole and we'd
better no screw this up, which is the big one.

Christine Aylward: That's a tough one. I would love to have been part of those
brainstorming sessions with you guys because "Hangover" was so
funny. So funny, like the more you see it, the funnier it gets.
It's like you go on to the next, it's got to be just as funny.

Craig Mazin: Yeah. Well, whatever nerves I had about doing a sequel to one of the
most popular comedies of all time were allayed to a great extent
by the fact that I was doing it with Todd.

Christine Aylward: Right.

Craig Mazin: He did it. He did the first one, and he has tremendous specificity in
terms of his voice and in terms of tone. In my mind, there was
never a question that we would do something bad. The only
question was can we do it good? In other words, it was either
going to be good, or it wasn't going to happen because I don't
think Todd was ever going to do it, and I don't think the cast
would do it. I don't think that Bradley or Zach or Ed were ever
going to allow themselves to be in a sequel that was bad.

Christine Aylward: Are they involved at all in the process, not the screenwriting
process, but the process of when you're coming up with the
outline and what it's going to be? Are you talking to them about
anything?

Craig Mazin: Todd would check in with them pretty frequently. I think they were
great in that they gave us the room that we needed to sort of
explore and find our legs, get it up and then sort of get the
script up on its feet. The first thing that they read probably
was actually the first two acts, because we kind of needed to
make sure that everybody wanted to do it.

Christine Aylward: Right.

Craig Mazin: They were really supportive and great. Then we finished it up, and
then those guys, you have to say they're terrific in that the
way that they approached the material was more about . . .
rather than kind of studio noting it, on the day we would sort
of stand there, and they would run through the scene the way
that a cast does. Then they would just start finding stuff, and
they were terrific.

Christine Aylward: So a bit of improv.

Craig Mazin: Yeah. The thing about the improvisation that they did was never
wildly outside of the lines of what the dramatic intent of any
particular scene was. Todd has a great sense of how to keep the
story on point, how to keep the characters on point. But they
would find often ways within those boundaries of doing it that
were far more interesting. That's just a function of the fact
that they are those characters, and once you're also in the
place, when you're in a physical space, where you're standing in
a dirty alley in Bangkok, you're going to have things that come
to your mind that obviously three guys in a room at Warner
Brothers would have never imagined.

Christine Aylward: I'm really curious. When you have a comedy and a lot of improv and
people with dynamic, strong personalities, how do you keep on
point? How does the director or you . . .

Craig Mazin: It's Todd. That's his job. He's the director. He has to direct, and
he directs everybody. He directs me as I write. He directs the
actors as they perform. He directs the costume designers and the
set designers and everybody, ultimately. It's the hardest job.
I'm telling you, directing is the hardest job. It's hard because
no matter how many people are there to help you - it seems like
there are hundreds of people there to help you - you're alone
because ultimately you have to make the final call, and your
taste is the determining factor. It doesn't matter. Bradley,
Zach and Ed have an amazing relationship with him. That's
something that I'm still the rookie. Those guys, those four guys
together having gone through the first movie, there's a trust
between them that's extraordinary.

Christine Aylward: So the name was changed from "Hangover II" to "Hangover Part II".

Craig Mazin: Yes.

Christine Aylward: Is that because Part III is coming?

Craig Mazin: No, because Part III could have come from "Hangover II" also. Here's
what happened. When I was in Bangkok with Todd, we came back
after a scout and we were writing. He was particularly pleased
that day with how it had been going, and he said, "This is going
to be a good sequel. This is going to be a really good sequel."

We had a brief discussion about how few good sequels there are.
The greatest of all sequels is the "Godfather Part II." He said,
"I'm going to call this 'The Hangover Part II.'" We pulled up
the title page and made the change right there, "The Hangover
Part II." It's got Roman numerals and everything.

Christine Aylward: I like it much better.

Craig Mazin: I think it's cool. I mean, look, the whole thing about him and this
movie is that it's a very confident movie. "The Hangover" is
very confident, and this movie is a very confident movie. The
title is such a strong move. Let's put it that way.

Christine Aylward: It's amazing what one word can do.

Craig Mazin: Well, it just sort of sets it apart and makes it a little special,
and I think it is a special movie. I really do.

Christine Aylward: It's really interesting because I think the perception, the fan
perception is, oh my gosh, these guys had to have so much fun on
set. Everything had to be one big laugh.

Craig Mazin: No. We do have fun. Don't get me wrong. It was fun making the movie,
but when we were in Bangkok, it was brutal. Purposefully, we set
the movie in a place that was very strange to these three
characters. They were lost. They were hot. They were sweating.
The places that they go aren't particularly nice parts of town,
and that is, in fact, where we are for real.

There's a sequence where we shot on a street called Soi Cowboy,
which at night is one of the big kind of night life places,
strips joints everywhere. I'm being charitable when I call them
strip joints.

Christine Aylward: I can imagine.

Craig Mazin: But we're not there at night. We're there during the day when they're
like mopping up and it's gross. You can't lean against anything.
It's kind of sticky, and it's a little depressing. So it's not a
laugh a minute. It really isn't. It's hard work. I'm glad people
think that making these movies is fun because they're supposed
to be having fun. That's the point. I don't want anybody to
watch a comedy and stop laughing and go, oh, these poor guys.
But it's work.

Christine Aylward: So why Bangkok?

Craig Mazin: Well, there were a couple of things that Todd told me that he sort of
said, "Look, this is what I have," when we sat down and first
started talking about the sequel, and one of them was Bangkok,
which made total sense. These guys woke up in Vegas. It's Sin
City in the first one. When you're in Vegas, you can get in
serious trouble. Well, Bangkok is kind of that in large. Bangkok
is the ultimate Sin City. They have no idea where they are. It
takes them completely out of their element. It's just so much
more disorienting, and it's a little more epic.

I like the way that Todd sort of takes comedies that sometimes,
I think, pointlessly get small in scale and opens them up and
makes them really big in scale. It seemed like a great choice to
me to get some guys in trouble, and we definitely do.

Christine Aylward: In the process of writing the screenplay, do you go over to Bangkok
and are you . . .

Craig Mazin: Yeah. Yeah. Todd and I went to Bangkok. It was August. That was hot,
and we scouted for a couple of weeks. That was a great process
because we would go to a location, and we'd say, okay, this is
great. This will be for this scene. Then we would go back to the
hotel and rewrite the scene because we had seen where it would
be, and that is a fun thing to do, to be able to write for where
you're shooting. That's why I like writing with him so much
because you're writing with the person who is going to be doing
it. It's just so much easier than writing it for a committee of
people that won't be doing it.

Christine Aylward: Right. What do you do when you have maybe not a disagreement but just
a difference of opinion in terms of what the scene should be?

Craig Mazin: Well, we talk it through. I will give him a ton of credit. As
decisive as he is, he's incredibly open. He's very egoless when
it comes to what will be best. I think, like all good film
makers, the thing that motivates him more than anything else is
a fear of doing something that's bad. So doing the right thing
is all that any of us care about. If we have a disagreement, we
hash it through. But because I know how specific he is, when he
says, no, no, no, I go, "Okay. Then, definitely no. It wouldn't
work."

He's got to shoot it. It's his movie. I can tell at this point now
when he goes no, no, no, I'm like, "Okay, that's definitely no,
no, no." I don't ask twice because in my mind it's okay. That's
the value of being specific.

Christine Aylward: Right.

Craig Mazin: I often joke. I have a couple of other friends who have written some
work for him, and the highest praise you'll ever get from Todd
is it's actually not a bad idea. That means it's a great idea.
It's actually not a bad idea. Zach laughs about this all the
time, because Zach will say something really funny. They're
rehearsing a scene. Zach will say, "What if I do something like
this?" Todd will go, "Well, that's actually funny." It's like,
"Oh, it's actually funny, like you're surprised that I was funny
today?" Oh, that's actually funny. It's his favorite word.

Christine Aylward: That's funny, actually.

Craig Mazin: That's actually funny.

Christine Aylward: That's actually funny. That's actually really . . .

Craig Mazin: But I never get that's actually funny. I just get that's actually not
a bad idea.

Christine Aylward: You've got to have a lot of self-confidence.

Craig Mazin: Yeah, congrats. You didn't fail. That's great. Good for you.

Christine Aylward: All of us have seen "Hangover." What do you think the biggest
surprise will be for fans for "Hangover II?"

Craig Mazin: Well, I think the biggest surprise is that we did not . . . I think
sequels normally get sillier and lighter and fluffier. I think
the biggest surprise for fans of "The Hangover" is that the
sequel gets darker and it gets more dangerous. It is really
funny, but we do not pull back. If anything, we hit the gas a
little harder on this movie. It is a wild ride, and we do things
to these characters that frankly I don't think any movie has
ever done to any characters, at least, not any comedy. We really
put them through something. So I think people are going to be
surprised at how legitimate and how risky this movie is. It's
risky, and we dance on the edge with this one.

Christine Aylward: When you're making a risky movie, do you get push back from the
studio that it's too risky?

Craig Mazin: Not this one. Let me tell you something. Warner Brothers has been
spectacular. I give them a ton of credit for knowing that they
had a guy in Todd Phillips who made a spectacular movie with a
great cast, and they said, "We trust you." By the way, I trust
him. Everybody trusts him. You have to, especially when he's
making a sequel to his own breakthrough movie.

Warner Brothers was great. They really had sort of one major
note that they gave us along the way that we thought was
excellent, and we implemented and it actually made a big
difference in the movie. But by and large, they just sort of
said, "We like it. If you like it, we like it." They were really
supportive.