"Get Smart" About Screenwriting with Tom Astle & Matt Ember

Get Smart is positioned to be one of this summer’s blockbusters. Take a known entity, gently mix in a new take, sprinkle in comic genius, and you have the recipe for a summer smash.

Screenwriters Tom Astle and Matt Ember spent years in television before they started writing for the big screen. They sold their second spec—Failure to Launch—and it was on that work (the film had not yet been released) that director Peter Segal asked if they wanted to pitch their take on Get Smart. Steve Carell was already attached to star in it.

The duo came up with an idea and pitched it to Segal and his producing partner Michael Ewing, then to other producers, Steve Carell, the studio. The list goes on and on.

“We pitched it 75 or 80 times, I think,” Tom Astle says.

“One thing not everyone realizes is that writing a spec script is one thing, because you control the process,” he continues. “But when you are coming up with a pitch, particularly something that’s based on existing material, you do a lot of work before you get paid. And that’s just the reality of it. But it was worth it, because I have to say it was probably the most fun I’ve had working on anything.”

“If you can’t enjoy writing Get Smart, you don’t belong in comedy,” Matt Ember adds.

“The expectations are certainly the most daunting part of doing something like this,” Ember continues. “Add to it the fact that the series was created by idols like Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.”

“We both grew up watching the show. We were huge fans of it,” Astle explains. “We decided we wanted to do an origins story, [because] we thought it would be a way for us to explain the world of Get Smart and the characters of Get Smart to the part of the audience that didn’t know the show.”

According to Astle and Ember, putting the gadgets and catchphrases from the original series was imperative. But there was much more to creating it than that. The film still had to be different.

“We started with the idea of making a comedic Bourne Identity,” Ember says.

“And the other thing is in terms of tone, the Get Smart series was very goofy and spoofy and intentionally so, as it was supposed to be.”

While Get Smart the series had almost created the spoof spy genre, many films, such as Naked Gun and Austin Powers, had come out since then. So, the screenwriters didn’t want unfamiliar audiences to think they were copying those movies.

“We wanted the action to be real action and the danger to be real danger, which if you really examine the old Get Smart series ,that was the case,” Astle adds. “People really got shot and people really were sneaking around. There were real stakes.”

“In a pure spoof you never feel any danger. You’re not meant to. That’s not the intent of it. But in this we thought, let’s make an action movie, but it’s also a comedy.”

The series Get Smart was out at the time of the Cold War, so what better time to reinvent it than now, where terrorism and the threat of terrorism is very real, the screenwriters believe.

“I think part of why Get Smart was so successful, apart from being funny, was that it captured that fear that was in the world at the time, and helped alleviate it by making fun of it,” Astle explains. “It feels like [now] is the right time to do the movie.”

Astle and Ember say that there are similarities to writing romantic comedy—Failure to Launch—and an action comedy with a romance in it.

“At the heart of Get Smart is a romantic comedy too: the story of Max [Smart] and [Agent] 99 and getting them together,” Ember says. “But they’re very different kinds of movies.

“One’s a straight romantic comedy with a lot of talking and one is an action comedy with a romance in the middle.”

“Our approaches to it are quite different,” Astle explains. “A movie like Get Smart has large action set pieces and it takes a lot of planning ahead of time to work on those. Sometimes one of those [action sequences] will drop out and then you’ll replace it with something. It’s not like they’re LEGOs exactly, because of course when you make a change, it cascades whatever comes after it.

“We worked really closely with the director on that,” he continues. “[Segal] would even have stuff storyboarded out and we could look at it while we were writing it.”

A stunt coordinator was involved, as well.

It also helps, the screenwriters say, to know the actors’ voices.

“You write a spec script, you might have actors’ voices in your head a little bit,” Astle says, “you may be writing it for somebody specific.

“But in the case of Get Smart, we know it’s going to be Steve Carell. And as people are cast—Anne Hathaway, Alan Arkin—you are adjusting to that as you go. It’s a very different thing. You are trying to capture the voice of a particular actor. Their cadence is different, the jokes sound different out of different actors’ mouths.”

“Once you lock in your cast it really helps,” Ember explains. “Then you go back to the script and try and make everything fit those people as best as possible.

“And then, as you are shooting it, you do things every day to fit them.”

“Some of it is based on their voice, some is based on what’s practical for the scene,” Astle adds.

Astle and Ember say that writers who want to write high concept need to watch a lot of movies.

“Study them to see how they are put together, how they’re structured especially,” Astle suggests.

“Don’t write what you want,” Ember says. “Remember, it’s a business. If you are an aspiring screenwriter, you have to understand what you are aspiring to; it’s to be part of business. The business is all about what can sell and what will make money for other people. So if you are writing a spec and you want to sell it, write something that will sell. Don’t write a personal dark story and then say why doesn’t anybody like it or why doesn’t anybody want to buy it. If you are trying to make money, you have to write something that will sell.”

“It depends on what kind of writing you’re interested in doing, too,” Astle adds. “If you want to make independent films, that’s a separate kind of thing. That’s not only a legitimate but a wonderful thing to do

“If you are trying to break into Hollywood, then be smart about what you write. Study characters. Study how things are structured. Make sure your characters are active. I’ve many times read things from young writers and you realize the main character of the movie doesn’t have a clear want or desire. Those are fundamental things, but they are really important.”

Astle says one of the hardest thing for a writer to learn is the importance of rewriting.

“Don’t assume that when your draft is finished it’s perfect,” he says.

“We must have done 80 drafts of Get Smart and probably 80 drafts of Failure to Launch,” Ember recalls. “It’s never done until the movie’s put out.”