Interview: ROBERTO ORCI TALKS 'FRINGE', 'STAR TREK', 'TRANSFORMERS' AND 'MATT HELM'

Roberto Orci and his professional partner Alex Kurtzman are two of the busiest and most successful writers/producers in town. They co-wrote two of the year’s biggest feature film hits, TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN (with Ehren Kruger) and STAR TREK, which they also executive-produced with director J.J. Abrams. Along with Abrams, they created the Fox series FRINGE, continuing as show runners on the science-fiction skein’s second season, which opens where last season left off – with the revelation of an alternate reality in which John Kennedy is still alive and the World Trade Center remains standing.

At a Fox event for the Television Critics Association, Orci talks about all this and more. He explains that he and Kurtzman divide up various duties as producers. “Crises we just split up as they come. Writing we do together and we spent a certain amount of our day writing, and then on the various projects that we’re developing, there’s one or the other who becomes responsible for it, and we try to be together at both, but when we have to divide it, he develops half of our slate and I develop half of our slate with our team. Any time when we’re writing [FRINGE], we write it together. On FRINGE, [the producer on point is] me.”

Has there been an element of FRINGE that’s really surprised Orci during its first year that wasn’t part of the original premise? “Well, actually” he says, “the idea of the parallel universe was something that [fellow FRINGE producer/Abrams colleague] Jeff Pinkner and the staff came up with together, once we had the pilot already shot, [although] we [already] had an inkling that we wanted some single answer that explained what was causing the fringe [phenomena]. So here we are, talking about what the second season’s going to be, and it was the team that we assembled who came up with it.”

Originally, the revelation for the parallel universe had been planned for the end of Season Three. What would the first three years of FRINGE have been like if that had remained the case? Orci replies, “We would continue along the list of unexplained things and a more centralized version of asking that question – what one thing is causing this? How can this stuff be explained? What single answer can explain this?”

In FRINGE, in our reality, scientist Walter Bishop (John Noble), his son Peter (Joshua Jackson) and FBI Agent Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) spend their time investigating scientific irregularities. Is the weird science in the alternate universe the same as weird science over here? “That’s a good question,” Orci laughs. “Nothing we’ve done yet makes that distinction. Until we determine otherwise, [the alternate universe will] start with the same laws of physics. But that’s an area to play with, that’s interesting.”

A FRINGE staff writer created an alternate universe newspaper with headlines and photos that point up the differences between that dimension and our own. “We’re trying to have kind of the big events in history altered, so Kennedy is alive, the World Trade Center is standing. Some of these things are hopeful in a way. As you see in the little paper, it says, ‘Former President Kennedy to Address the United Nations.’ [The Obamas] move into the new White House, because the White House was hit, not the World Trade Center.”

Even in the FRINGE alternate universe, the STAR TREK movie is a hit, although, Orci notes, “It actually opened to less. That’s because TORN has been so big for weeks,” he jokes.

Speaking of the STAR TREK films, how much longer does Orci expect himself and Kurtzman aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise? “Expect is a dirty word, I think. We’ve got to take one movie at a time. With STAR TREK 2 being out two years from now. It’s hard to say in three years, ‘Yeah, sign me up for three!’ [Orci, Kurtzman and LOST producer/showrunner Damon Lindelof] are going to come up with a story together and obviously, in consultation with J.J. [Abrams] and Bryan [Burk], and then we’re going to write up the story together, us and Damon, and then Alex and I will write a script.”

Lindelof won’t be working on the actual STAR TREK 2 screenplay because he’ll be wrapping up LOST, which has its own set of alternate realities. Orci says he trusts his coworkers to make sure LOST and FRINGE don’t overlap. “I don’t know what goes on over there [on LOST]. I tell them never tell me anything, because I don’t want to steal any of their ideas. I haven’t even seen the show in two years. To me, that’s a whole other world. Enough people [who work on FRINGE] watch LOST that I hope they’ll tell me if we’re doing something similar.”

After writing two TRANSFORMERS films with Kurtzman, Orci says it’s likely another scribe will pen the third installment. “It’s what’s best for the franchise, just put some fresh blood in there. We agreed with [TRANSFORMERS producer/director] Michael [Bay], from the very beginning, that we wanted to make sure that each movie was its own movie. So we didn’t come into this with a trilogy in mind. It’s not like we’re leaving midway through a concerto. We’ve done two of them, each was its own movie, and may the best idea win.”

Orci and Kurtzman have also been working with TRANSFORMERS executive producer Steven Spielberg on the possible revival of a spy movie franchise. “You know MATT HELM?” Orci inquires. “It was an old series of great books about kind of an American James Bond. Dean Martin played him, very much in a tongue-in-cheek, Austin Powers kind of a way – [he] takes a martini when he wakes up in the morning, kind of campy. So the idea of updating it for now and making it kind of a cool, sophisticated, America’s answer to James Bond is the way we’re thinking of it. We’re producing that with Jerry Weintraub, who’s amazing,” Orci relates. “Paul Attanasio is the writer, and we’ll see if that’s one of the ones we can get up and running. There hasn’t been an American James Bond that has that slight swinging sensibility without it crossing over into parody. [Spielberg] is still very involved. He helped us develop it as something we all still working on together and he is no less excited about it.”

Meanwhile, back at FRINGE, Orci and Co. have found a way to make sure research into real cutting-edge science continues to drive the storylines. “That’s probably why we made the technical consultants staff writers,” Orci points out, “so that they can be both in-house staff writers and our in-house research team.”

Actor John Noble does some extraordinary things with the eccentric Walter, Orci observes. “You say, ‘In the background, Walter is inspecting whatever thing that’s catching his eye.’ You’re not even sure what he’s doing yet until you get over there. It’s still very [scripted], but John’s improvs [improvisations] are like underlines and exclamation points on the scene. One line can change a scene, it can do so much to everything that came before. You can’t make some of [what Noble does] up, for God’s sake. It takes a team of people. But he really knows the character and he can get in and out of character without a script.”

For newcomers to FRINGE encountering the alternate universe for the first time, Orci says, “The trick is to have new people come in and not be confused. We didn’t want to change something unless there was a real good thematic reason it had to be different. It can’t just be ‘red is blue’ just for fun. Let it resonate because it’s something major like we see in the papers.”

At this point in Orci’s career, are there books and films that he still finds inspiring? “Absolutely. Mainly nonfiction. There’s always stuff coming out that reinterprets what we already think we know, and that’s part of what FRINGE is about – reinterpreting what you think you know. You think you learned that George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, and maybe he didn’t. Columbus discovered America? Not exactly. Growing up is a process of seeing that the lessons you learned that you already knew are not exactly what you think. So I love reading biographies, new history, seeing documentaries, science, all that kind of stuff.”

Will any real-life issues – health insurance, the bailouts – find their way into FRINGE? “We’re playing with those ideas. Part of the benefit of doing something that’s sort of genre is that you can disguise it a little bit. We’re already turning into it by even featuring the World Trade Center as being around, by touching on JFK, so we’re testing the waters slowly. That’s always been one of our interests. If you’re going to have the time on TV to do whatever you want, you might as well make it a little bit challenging in that area as well, so we’re sticking our toe in there.”

http://www.ifmagazine.com/feature.asp?article=3522