Everybody has somebody he or she looks up to. As a writer, I’ve read and bonded with Carson McCullers, Emily Bronte, Anton Chekhov, and J.D. Salinger. Friends reading it for the first time say The Catcher in the Rye sounds like I wrote it.But there’s one writer whom I’ve known most of my life, who has inspired me personally: my cousin, screenwriter/director Chris Solimine.
Busy as he is, he always finds time both to encourage me in my own writing and to “burst my bubble” when necessary. On my recent trip to L.A., he put me up for four days, even though Ben Franklin said, “Guests and fish stink after three [days].”
And, busy as he is, Chris was kind enough to grant me this interview about his past successes and most recent film, Moscow Chill.
Cindy: Cinema-Russia magazine said “you made a film that is not loaded with Western (meaning American) banality, but filled with Russian color and flavor…”
What brought you to Russia, originally? And why did you set your film there?
Chris: I became deeply interested in Russian literature in college and grad school: the big
names like Dostoevsky and Tolstoy,but also lesser-known Soviet-era writers like Platonov. When I met and began collaborating with the Russian director Andrei Konchalovsky, I was able to travel to the world of Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground. I learned that Dostoevsky did not invent those people who animated his works from thin air. They were taken from his real-life experiences, and similar characters still lived in and around Moscow. I found Russia to be a rapidly evolving, breathing culture that was combining old ways with new, struggling with keeping parts of its past while attempting to enter “modernity.” This seemed like the perfect place to make a film about an American tossed into a fascinating world. Cindy: Cinema-Russia called you “the most interesting filmmaker to emerge from the ‘Konchalovsky School’ of Russian Cinema.” What is the “Konchalovsky School” all about?
Chris: Andrei Konchalovsky is a giant of Soviet and Russian cinema. As a filmmaker, he loves to explore the medium’s visual nature. Imagery and visual details are used to enhance the narrative; not simply landscapes and beautiful shots, but also the human face. Konchalovsky is a master at displaying emotion and inner life through the actor’s face. I don’t agree with all his artistic principles—I’m fonder of dialogue—but learning how to deal with actors, and make them comfortable before the camera, is a huge part of this method.
Cindy: When did you first get serious about writing, and screenwriting in particular?
Chris: I’ve always liked to write stories and also loved to draw and paint as a kid. I found, and still believe, that movies are just moving paintings with people inside them telling stories. So screenwriting is the perfect combination of both. I began to study film seriously in college, but since the art form is only 100 years old, I studied literature and creative writing, in order to better understand storytelling and human behavior.
Cindy: What other careers have you had where your writing skills came into play?
Chris: I was a high school English teacher; not a very good one because I was always dreaming of my own work. I’ve helped advertising directors put together campaigns on products I found uninteresting, so imagination and wordplay were essential. Other times, I took manual labor jobs to support my writing habit, until I was paid to put my film ideas down on paper. But if you consider studying human behavior part of the writing process, all work is part of writing, and understanding people is important in every job.
Cindy: What were the challenges of adapting a classic like Homer’s Odyssey for the screen?
Chris: First was reverence for the text. Since it’s basically the work on which the Western canon is founded, you can’t fool people by making things up or altering them too much. There was the length: You have to choose what episodes are most important; otherwise the film would be more like 6–8 hours. Then there was the challenge of audience. While the network appreciated the material, it wanted the maximum viewership possible. So you’re trying to walk the line between great literature and mass appeal. I’m sure the script would have been much different if we were making The Odyssey for Masterpiece Theater instead of Hallmark and NBC. Finally, since imagination played such a huge role in Homer, it was extremely difficult to render certain portions of the text in realistic, visual ways. What may have been emotional on paper or in speech, might seem ridiculous when portrayed onscreen. A few scholars gave us grief for leaving some things out, but I believe they have no grasp of visual storytelling and could not envision what certain “essential episodes” would have looked or felt like.
Cindy: What advice would you give to teenagers who are interested in screenwriting?
Chris: Well, if they want to write blockbusters based on comic books, the answer is obvious— Learn the formulaic rules taught by all Hollywood screenwriting “experts.” But then they will be contributing to the end of movies. If they want to write quality scripts, they should read a lot of short stories to learn concision. If something is worth being included in a script, it must be worth putting a crew in a certain place, taking tremendous effort to get it on film, and then be part of a movie that usually lasts less than two hours. They should also read great novels to learn about fully-formulated characters that are also worth putting onscreen. For me, it’s most important to study human behavior: listen to the details of people’s lives and how they talk. It will surprise them how much great material is right at their fingertips.
Cindy: What are you working on now?
Chris: We just completed a big production of a musical based on The Nutcracker. I’m trying to convince several production companies that there is still room in the film world for projects based on history and literature. I am now writing a satirical comedy about Henry David Thoreau’s turning his back on society and going to live on Walden Pond. I’m also doing a contemporary version of Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
[To sample Chris Solimine's work, watch the Cyclops scene below from The Odyssey.]
The dangers of present-day piracy are small compared to the scale of pirate operations in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean Sea. In antiquity, pirate craft came in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The pirates of the 
Rome took action against the Cilician pirates when they became powerful and active enough to threaten the city’s grain supply. In 67 B.C., Pompey the Great was given authority to end the threat of famine by driving the pirates from the sea. His first action was to secure the sea lanes of the western and central Mediterranean. With 60 warships, Pompey drove the pirates back to their bases in Cilicia and pursued them eastward. Only 49 days after leaving Italy, the Roman general had subdued the last pirate strongholds in Crete and Cilicia. Pompey’s campaign is the best known and most successful anti-piracy operation conducted in antiquity. However, Pompey’s victory was made possible by his promise of mercy to those pirates who surrendered to him and the promise of resettlement in agricultural regions depopulated by war. The policy was successful only in the short term. Within twenty years, piracy again became a problem in the Mediterranean.
