Transformers is just weeks away and one of the guys behind the new movie, Roberto Orci, chats about the new film and also about a little sci-fi franchise called Star Trek.

This past weekend the IESB was able to sit down and interview Roberto Orci twice. The first one being part of a roundtable interview and the second being an exclusive 1:1 interview where we tried to dig deeper into his next project, JJ Abrams' Star Trek.

Stay tuned a little later for our exclusive 1:1 interview with Orci but for now you can read the full transcript of the roundtable interview.

Q:  You’ve been approached to do a lot of action adventure and now a lot of fanboy stuff, how early on did you guys start looking at the mythos of Transformers and how much of that did really play on the final decision making of how the script was going to come about?

Orci:  Well obviously we were fans of the cartoons as kids. The minute we decided we were going to take this gig we got all the...everything that’s ever been done by Hasbro, they sent us everything, all the comics, all the cartoons we went over it all.  Learned it and then put it away.  And with the second part, how much did it influence?  You know every iteration has kind of the basic back story and so, it influenced, I mean it's part of the movie.  It’s a distillation and it’s definitely a summary in a way, the first movie, but you can’t forget that stuff.  It was in our subconscious.

Q:  How long ago did you guys start writing the script and how many drafts did it take to get to the screen?

Orci:  Two years ago we started, it's so hard to count drafts, it was greenlit on the second draft and then from there we just kept improving it and improving it all the way up through shooting, up until about four weeks ago, three weeks ago.  We were literally still writing robot dialogue three weeks ago.

Q:  So obviously Michael [Bay] had a lot of say towards the story as Steven Spielberg is supposedly very involved.

Orci:  It's not that obvious actually, we kind of had the template of the movie before Michael even read it.

Q:  So how involved was Mr. Spielberg in the process?

Orci:  He gave us the kernel of a boy his car. When we first sat down he asked us to do the movie and we were prepared to say no because we were very worried about it's going to be a giant toy commercial.  Everyone’s you know is going to cynically approach this movie, they’re going to say it’s a giant toy commercial, etc, etc.  We were just like, what is it?  ‘Close Encounters’, we brought up to him, ‘Close Encounters’ is great, it’s this great big alien movie but really its about this family falling apart.  It’s about a guy’s obsession and it destroys his family.  So we were prepared to say, we can’t do it unless we see it, and he said, here’s a human element, it’s a boy and his car.  And that's all he had to say and that was enough for us to realize we couldn’t say no.  And so from that we extrapolated with basically with the template of the paradigm of the structure of the movie is.  And he gave notes on every draft obviously, I mean he was a truly involved producer.

Q: I’m sorry, how did you go from a boy and his car to that incredible story?

Orci:  A part of that obviously is like there’s a rich history of the Transformers, a fact that there’s this war that they have on their planet and all those characters are very much a part of the things we know already.  So we didn’t have to invent too much of that.  But, with the boy and his car allows you to focus in on a point of view that allows you to discover the Transformers through the pace of the movie.  A lot like 'Close Encounters' in a way, you’re slowly finding out that there’s this phenomenon going on.  So starting from the a boy and his car it allowed to realize the pace and the structure of the movie was going to be and how the aliens were going to come into the movie and into the perception of the humans.

Q:  How did you decide on the tone of the movie?

Orci:  That was the hardest part, um, trail and error.  We knew that it had to be infinitely more realistic than the cartoon, yet not lose its sense of fun and those two things are actually at opposition, so it was absolutely a tightrope walk.  That’s the whole ballgame right there is the tone.

Q:  Did you make this movie with the intention of just setting up the next one?

Orci:  No, our responsibility in our minds was to set up a good first movie, or a good movie period.  Knowing that no story is ever over, I mean you could think it’s over and their still going to make a sequel.  So we weren’t too worried about what it was going to be.

Q:  Because the ending just seemed like a natural segway into what happens next possibly.  I just didn’t know if that was something you guys wanted to do intentionally.  Because there’s just so many more characters you can involve into it from all the other...

Orci:  We knew it was being left open, but we weren’t like, “okay we must target all this so that at the end there’s a sequel.”  That was not our responsibility and we didn’t think of it in those terms.

Q:  You guys are writing some big ticket items, you guys go on, I mean let’s talk about the big elephant in the room, Star Trek. Do you guys read the online stuff and do you laugh about it, do you wonder who they get some of their information? Let’s talk about, obviously, Trek because that’s a big thing for a lot of people.

Orci:  Alex Kurtzman has a harder time reading stuff on the net because he takes it very personally. [laughter]  So I’m the designated new media contact and it's everything, you run the gamet, you read stuff and you go like, “Oh my God, how did they get that?” or that’s wild, you laugh, you cry, you everything.

Q:  So let me ask you, you guys are involved with Trek. How have  you been researching that, how’s that been coming.  I know you’re probably not going to be able to give us obviously story points but…

Orci:  Well luckily we’ve been researching that all our lives. [laughter]  Like all that, we read the novels, we just had it down cold.  So when it came up again we were covered.  We have a greenlight draft, we finished it Christmas, it's going, it shoots in November.  We’re in the middle of casting right now.

Question:  When do you think we’re going to actually hear casting stuff, are you going to Comic Con, is JJ [Abrams] planning a big thing?

Orci:  We might announce some stuff at Comic Con.  We should have significant casting by then.

Q:  As a follow up to that, and I don’t know how involved you are to answer this but, isn’t it hard to get established actors and stars to come into a franchise where they’re playing iconic characters? They are playing young versions of Kirk and Spock.

Orci:  Hard, you mean hard to convince the stars?  Or hard just from the creative point of view to want them?

Q:  To convince them, or both.

Orci:  Actually I think it’s a little easier to convince established actors, the problem is you’re not sure you want them.  Like Superman, would that have worked with you know…

Q:  But won’t that insinuate that they’re not going to big stars, that its therefore the same old Star Trek, won’t spend the money, won’t bring in the big names to make it happen.

Orci:  No, we don’t insinuate that, you mean…

Q:  No I’m insinuating that the fans might feel that way, because the whole idea that the re-launch is that it's bigger, better, even as a reboot and I’m just…

Orci:  Uh, I don’t think so, because the star of the movie is Star Trek, you know, so another way to think of it is we feel confident in what the material is and what the paradigm of the movie is that we’re not trying to shove an Academy Award winner down your throat to sell it.  Which doesn’t mean that we might not end up there but it's not our first place to go there with that.

Q:  Were you going to elaborate on that thing about what big stars might take away from playing these iconic characters?

Orci:  They become the story instead of the franchise, you know, it becomes a personality issue as opposed to really focusing on the movie.  Stars in the right place might help it too, I mean we’re not ruling anything out at this point casting wise.

Q:  I think Brad Pitt would look real good with Vulcan ears.

Orci:  [laughter]

Q:  When you wrote the script did you guys have a budget in mind or were you just writing it big and just hoping you were going to get the budget?

Orci: Writing it big, had a budget in mind, very back of our minds.  Thanks to our TV training, oddly enough, we’re pretty good at calling exactly what something is going to cost.  We told them what Transformers was going to cost before we wrote a word and we were within three million dollars.

Q:  How much was it?

Orci:  It was like 147 [million], we told them it’s going to be 150 [million], that’s what it’s going to be and that’s pretty much what is was.

Q:  How much time did you guys end up spending and I don’t mean in post, just in general, what was that process like?

Orci:  It's amazing actually in this one because we got the experience that you usually only get on animated movies, we think, which is since the robots aren’t animated until last minute we were able to rewrite their dialogue, you know normally a writer doesn’t get the luxury of rewriting your stars in editing.

Question:  Yeah you can just drop it in, in post.

Orci:  Yeah so it was amazing for that reason, we were in the editing room like able to make stuff better and able to write sequences more specifically.

Q:  Where did you guys do most of that at?

Orci:  At [Michael] Bay’s, at Platinum Dunes, his editing room.

Q:  I’m sorry for going back to this, but you’re favorite Star Trek show and Alex’s.

Orci:  I’m actually a “Next Generation” fan myself, um, and I think he’s more classic.

Q:  What’s your feeling about all the fans going on about Kirk and Spock and just everyone not being able to accept that it’s going to be a reboot, and how do you, is there any frustration on your end?

Orci:  Hmm, no, I understand it’s just like I understand everyone thinks Transformers is going to be a toy commercial and it's not until they see it.  Know that it's factored into our thinking that people are afraid of whatever it's going to be and that whatever the criticisms are without confirming or denying anything, we are, we’re aware of them and they are part of the fabric of the story, it's all I can say.

Q: You talked about tone a little bit earlier, what about the humor and what about acknowledging within the film that, boy, this is really ridiculous but we got to acknowledge it but we also got to get past that...

Orci:  So kind of two points of view on that.  So from the point of view of Shia’s character and the boy and his car, we wanted him to be take it more seriously, his reactions and the kind are very much like the wonder of, like Marty McFly was a great model for us. [laughter] There was genuine humor in that but he was absolutely genuine in his reactions.  The government side was something that could have seen, sort of, infinitely more self important and whatever, tonally imbalanced, for lack of a better word.  So that’s where we played a little bit more in terms of the soldiers take it very seriously but then you get a character like John Turturro where a sort of a riff on the Men In Black and a riff on the secret government and the one big conceit, the one big buy you get in this is the giant robots and pretty much past that you’re not going to get a whole lot more of a suspension.  So that’s where we use a little bit of the room to have fun with it and to engage in it in that way.  That was the ballgame, as we were saying, the two…

Question:  And the parents too.

Orci:  And the parents, I love them, they were great.

Question:  What was the inspiration of the parents, either of yours or Alex’s?

Orci:  [laughter] Ron and Judy are my in-laws.

Question:  Are they really?

Orci:  That’s their names, Ron and Judy are, we named them after my in-laws.

Question:  Were you doing that kind of an element to also to like bring the parents, and bring their kids into it to give them something, a little bit.  Did you want to provide something for every demographic with this.  Because it seems really broad, like you have the really hard core action, then you have the comedy then you have the kind of jokey family stuff, you know, all those elements.

Orci:  Maybe subliminally and certainly the studio would want that, but if you’re a seventeen year old who’s going to go get a car, you have parents they’re just, so it would be an omission not to have them.  It wasn’t like, oh we need to have a parent, but it happens…

Q:…it was really a full you know, chunk of the movie right there, the scene at the house it was really a part of it.

Orci:  Yeah I think that was also Michael Bay’s favorite part.  That was the thing he wanted to, that’s why he locked in on it, he’s like, this is going to be my first kid’s movie.  This is his kid’s movie. [laughter]

Q:  So as life long fans, I’m going back to ‘Trek’, what was it like to get the keys to the kingdom?

Orci:  Insane, I mean it like getting a Lamborghini, it's crazy, it was insane, terrifying, but safety in numbers too.  We’re doing it with JJ Abrams and Damon Lindelof both the creators of Lost and we knew that if the four of us, the five of us couldn’t do it, then that was it.

Q:  How involved was Damon in the process?

Orci:  He was very involved, we read the story with him very early on and he’s a gigantic fan as well.  In fact, he said that the inspiration for “Lost” was “Trek”.

Q:  And can I ask you what the tone for the “Star Trek” that you are creating, is it more, are you looking to keep it on the same tone as the previous ones or are you looking to take it to that more darker, raw aspect of the way Batman Begins went…

Orci:  No, I don’t know about darker but definitely to update the tone.

Q:  Going back to ‘Transformers’ you said, I think you’ve been quoted somewhere that’s you’re not, you guys are not writing the sequel.  Someone else would be doing that, any reason why you guys chose not to go back to write the second film?

Orci:  You know as a screenwriter we’re going to be lucky to live through this one, I mean, we knew going in there was going to be like, “Oh it’s a toy commercial, oh the action is always going to sell it, the story’s not part of it, the dialogue’s irrelevant, the screenwriter’s irreverent,” and that’s if it’s a good movie, that’s if people like it, forget about if they hate it.  So we were lucky to live through it, we did our duty for God and country. [laughter]  And if we had, if we really knew what the next one should be that would be a different thing, but we don’t want to just do it because we’re like,”hey we did the first one and we should do the second one,” and you know, if we come up with something, great, great.  But we want to have a reason to do it, not just say, “it’s a business, it’s a franchise, we’re going to go do the second one because that’s what we do and we’re going to get the big money,” and Star Trek by the way is taking up kind of all of our time. So...

Q:  When you guys came up with using the Secretary of Defense, were you guys thinking of Donald Rumsfeld, was it like part of the thought?

Orci: You can’t escape it.  You know…

Q:  Yeah nice jab at Bush by the way, that was pretty funny, was that in the script?

Orci:  [laughter] Yeah.

Q:  The spanish dialogue, I’m assuming …it was hilarious you know, what looked like Dominican.  Was that all you?

Orci:  Alex speaks Spanish too.

Q:  Oh does he really?

Orci:  Yeah he lived in Mexico City for a year.

Q:  Did you guys do much writing once the big action starts in the movie or in a sequence?  Did you guys write it out much or just “chase down the freeway?”

Orci:  No, no, it’s very detailed.  Yeah, I’m sure the script will get out someday, check it out.

Q:  Well I mean a lot of the moves and a lot of the actions were first written in the script?

Orci:  Yeah, yeah absolutely.  I mean Michael takes it to another level, but you know, you just can’t write big frickin' chase here, you got to kind of block it out.

Q:  Are you guys going to be day to day involved in Trek or are you also working on other projects?

Orci:  We’re working on multiple things but we’re going to be day to day working on Trek, we’re also executive producing it.

Question:  I have to ask about, you just mentioned about the script, did the experience of Transformers with the early script reviews getting up there, has that effected the way you guys are guarding the Star Trek script?

Orci:  You bet your ass. [laughter]  You bet, especially since Star Trek is much more dependent on the story being fresh.  You know, Transformers we knew that even if it leaked you were not going to be able to imagine Transformers until you saw it.  The spectacle does buy us a little bit of leeway in terms of it you know what’s going to happen.  Trek does not have that gimmie, Trek’s been around, people have seen it, so it’s infinitely more important that the story be new when you get to it because it does matter.

Question:  So how do you guard it nowadays with the internet, with all the leaks?

Orci:  We have encryption programs, we have a trusted made man fly it everywhere.  He’s like the mob boss in “Casino,” with the handcuffs, you know it’s…

Question:  Is it really becoming an issue these days with just the advent of technology and you feel you have to give away more of the show, like do you give away parts of a movie out just to like satisfy people to they’re not digging and getting things?

Orci:  No, try not to.  However the odd experience of having stuff leak on Transformers made us engage the internet fans because we had to.  And that was a good experience.

Stay tuned for our exclusive one on one interview with Bob Orci.

Transformers