Boaz Yakin famously sold his first screenplay when he was a sophomore at NYU. He was 19. Since then, he has written and directed three independent films, including Fresh (1994), which won the Filmmaker’s Trophy at Sundance, A Price Above Rubies (1998), and Death in Love (2008).

When he’s not making indies, he’s either writing studio scripts—for films like Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) and Now You See Me (2013)—or directing studio films, such as Remember the Titans (2000), Uptown Girls (2003), Safe (2012), and Max (2015).

And when he’s not doing anything film-related, you might just find him taking an improv comedy class in the city. It’s an opportunity to stay in the beginner’s mind space—a space, as Yakin says, we tend to forget that we’re actually always in.

Boaz Yakin

Randall Michelson/ WireImage/Getty Images

Could we talk about your start in the industry? There are a lot of aspiring writer-directors who would call yours the dream start to a career.

It’s so long ago now, it’s hard to remember these things, but yeah—I wrote a screenplay when I was in college. My dad got it to a producer he knew, who thought it was okay, and he gave it to an agent, who optioned it to a different producer. I got some money, but it never got made—and then I left college to go out to LA and start working as a screenwriter.

I wrote scripts for a few years. And then there was a moment where I thought I didn’t want to do it anymore, and I left the business—and then a few friends of mine did really well and pulled me back in.

When was that moment when you thought you didn’t want to do it anymore? What period was that?

I keep thinking that all the time, by the way—that’s been my MO for the last thirty years, unfortunately. But I came into it when I was about 19 or 20, and when I was about 23—actually, right after I had made my first really big sale, which was a Clint Eastwood and Charlie Sheen movie called The Rookie—I was like, wait, I’m not doing the kinds of things I really want to do. So I left for a year and a half. I moved to Paris and did what young Americans do when they live in Paris, and wrote a novel.

But at that point, my friend Lawrence [Bender] got connected through another friend of mine with Quentin Tarantino and produced Reservoir Dogs, and Lawrence came to me and said, “Look, if you write a script that we can make for a low-enough budget, I think I can get it made.” So I went, okay, let me try to do this. I wrote the screenplay for Fresh, and we raised the money, and by the time I was 28 I had made that movie.

So Lawrence Bender and Quentin Tarantino, when did those relationships begin? Where were you when you first started developing those friendships?

I was in LA. Most of my friends were about eight or nine years older than me at that point, because they’d all finished school—I’d only done two years of school. And Lawrence was one of my good friends. I actually put Lawrence together with a friend of mine who made a horror movie, Scott Spiegel, and Scotty had written Evil Dead II with Sam Raimi. Lawrence produced Scotty’s first feature, this low-budget horror movie called Intruder. Basically, Quentin was introduced to me and Scotty just about the time when I was going to leave for Paris, and then Scotty introduced Lawrence to Quentin, and that’s when they made the film.

So you went to Paris. And if Lawrence hadn’t encouraged you?

Yeah, weirdly enough, if Lawrence hadn’t made Reservoir Dogs and come to me and said, Hey man, then I might have just continued on my merry way and never tried to do this again.

Here’s something I will say—one of the most important things you can do is put yourself in an environment where there are other people trying to do what you’re doing, who will both support and compete with you. And if you want to be in the movie business, you sort of have to be in LA.

LA as opposed to New York?

Or New York, there are no rules. But wherever you are, you need to find a group of like-minded people, develop a little network, and create that type of energy for yourself. The downside of LA is that everyone there is trying to do this, but the upside is that everyone is trying to do it.

Of course, these days you can afford to do movies anywhere, and if you and some friends get a decent camera and put together a little production, you could break out wherever you are. But eventually, even if you do something that gets noticed, you’re going to have to find your way to LA or New York. But I’m not necessarily a big fan of LA, or what it does to people, by the way.

What does it do to people?

I think it’s a very draining, usurious place, especially the business aspects of it. They’re like sharks circling the water for talent. There’s no sense of nurturing, no sense of development, no sense of support. It’s all, “What have you got now? Let’s suck it up as soon as we can.” So for people who succeed, in some ways LA can be a hell of a lot worse than for people who don’t succeed for a while.

But that’s why it’s so important to create a strong network of friends. It’s usually a small community, but it’s a community of people that share your dreams—and those are the people who are going to stay with you over the years. Of course, you’ll have falling-outs, but it’s important to develop that community.

In terms of the falling-outs, obviously there are a million reasons, but can you talk a little about the emotional roller coaster of success and you and your friends coming to terms with that? Is there a struggle in dealing with the aftermath of success?

Look, some people deal with success well, and some people deal with it poorly. I’m still very close to Lawrence, and I’m still very close with Scotty—he’s one of my very best friends. So I’ve had these friends for thirty years that I’m still very close with. But I have many more that have fallen away over the years. Some people find themselves doing well, and then they think their friends are only friends with them because they want their help, so they’d rather not deal with the pressure.

But in an ideal situation you’d have a group of friends that are competitive but also loving and supportive. Film is such a communal effort and experience, unlike painting or writing a novel. It’s a group effort, so being part of a group is really important.

You said earlier that you’re always thinking to yourself, Okay, maybe I don’t want to do this anymore. What is the internal struggle you’re dealing with?

I think more than anything it’s the amount of time I spend trying to make things that are interesting to me that never get made, compared to the amount of time I spend working on something that I don’t find so interesting—the imbalance is huge. I probably spend 98 percent of my time working on projects that don’t get made. In the last twenty years, I’ve made one film I find interesting. I’m in a very positive state of mind about my life, and I feel very open and connected in a way that I haven’t for a long time, but for me, movies like Max, Remember the Titans, Safe, if you ask me, do I want to do those movies? The answer would be no. It’s not what I’m interested in. I am interested in Fresh, or this movie that I had to finance, Death in Love—I’m interested in those movies.

Now, when I make a movie like Titans or Max, it’s not like I don’t try to make a good movie and think about who’s going to enjoy it and respect their attention and their desire—I do. So with Max, I tried to make a good kids’ movie, and I enjoyed it. But it’s been two and half years since I made that movie, and I haven’t worked since then. And I wrote two of the best scripts I’ve ever written, and no one’s going to make them.

No one will make them?

Yeah, because they’re seen as un-commercial. Right now, I’m in the space where I’m accepting that I’m here, and I’m not looking to do anything else, but over the course of the last thirty years, there have been many times where I’ve just been like, why am I doing this? I don’t want to be in the movie business anymore. I want to see what else I can do. And then I eventually go, I have no other skills! But yeah, it’s that lack of success in doing things that I find interesting that leads me to reconsider what I’m doing.

These two scripts you’ve written since Max, could you make them on a low budget? On a $2 to $5 million budget?

I wrote this very beautiful but experimental movie about a jazz musician, and Sam [Samuel L.] Jackson was attached, and we can’t get $5 million for it. It’s mostly black, and it’s jazz, and it’s $5 million. If I could make that thing for $2 million, maybe I could get the money for it, but at $5 million, I can’t come near getting the money.

If I could write a commercial movie for $2 million that didn’t challenge anything and had a lot of white actors in it, I suppose I could get it made. But to try to get money for movies that have challenging and provocative elements in them, it’s very difficult.

That’s not surprising, I guess.

In twenty years, the only independent film I managed to make, I actually took my own life savings and spent it all on this movie. And then I bounced back by producing a couple of horror movies and writing some scripts. I made Fresh over twenty years ago. I made A Price Above Rubies after that—and since then, not one single independent film that I’ve tried to make has happened. I’ve had a zero batting average since A Price Above Rubies.

How did Remember the Titans come about?

I’d actually passed on Remember the Titans, because I wanted to be making independent movies. And then it came back around to me, and I was like, Dude, Jerry Bruckheimer is asking if you’re interested in doing a movie, you just do it. I knew nothing about football, but I love civil rights—but I never in my wildest dreams saw myself making a Disney football movie.

It’s a great movie!

I actually struggled for years with having made that movie, because it became my most successful movie—so I was sort of defined by the thing I felt had nothing to do with me. I’m older now and more relaxed about it, but as a younger person, I found a lot of conflict with that.

So with Max, I just said, Okay, look, you’re in a similar situation now that you were in when you did Titans—you’re in a situation where the best option for you is the family movie. So do it, but do it with openness, without feeling like you’re failing. Just enjoy it. And I managed to do that. So I think Max was a way for me to take that Titans experience and do it in a way that didn’t eat me up for a few years. I don’t know why that’s a lesson I had to learn, but it was.

It’s interesting to hear that you have this internal struggle, because you’re so good at telling stories in a way that kids can digest—not too heavy, just the right amount of tension so they can process it.

Maybe. I think maybe it’s about being in touch with how I felt about things when I was a kid—remembering the approach to movies that made me excited and that I enjoyed. And also remembering how I liked to be treated when I watched a movie when I was younger, I guess. So it’s about accessing that aspect of myself.

Directing child actors as compared to adults. How would you describe the difference?

Yeah, it’s weird—kids haven’t developed the ego issues that adults have developed, the insecurities. They’re just present, so it’s actually a lot easier to focus on the work when you’re working with kids. Adults, it’s like being a psychiatrist and a director and a friend. It’s so complicated working with adults, because adults have developed so many issues.

I can’t blame them. I’m taking improv comedy classes right now. I’ve been doing it for the last two months, and it’s been amazing, because being a professional for so many years, to do something where basically at that moment you’re literally worse than anyone doing anything anywhere in the world—it’s a terrible feeling, but being physically present, it makes you understand how emotionally challenging it is to be an actor. I’ve always had respect for actors, but it renews my respect for them. When it’s your face up there, your ego, it’s so challenging. But kids don’t have that problem. In a lot of ways, when I see a kid walk onto a set, I breathe a sigh of relief.

How was it working with Dakota Fanning?

She was very precocious, very brilliant. I haven’t seen her in years, and she’s a young woman now, obviously, but at the time she was one of the smartest, most intuitive kids I’d ever met. She was also very emotionally mature and had a kind of patience and wisdom that was pretty amazing. She was a very special person.

In terms of the collaborative nature of filmmaking as compared to the independent nature of screenwriting—since you do both—do you have a preference? Do you like one more than another?

Well, don’t forget—screenwriting, if you’re working in any fashion that will yield an actual movie, it becomes collaborative, since you end up working with people who give you notes. But obviously, when you’re writing the first draft, unless you’re with a friend co-writing, you write by yourself.

I really love to write. I think that’s my favorite part of the process, because you’re home and just being creative in your mind, and the limitations and pressures of actually being out don’t exist. But for me, I get lonely at a certain point, so I’ll spend a year or whatever writing, and then I’ll have this feeling of wanting to work with other people.

More recently you’ve been co-writing.

I tend to co-write the more commercial ones, because honestly, my brain doesn’t work that way anymore. And just getting up in the morning to think about a commercial script, I can’t. The stuff that’s more studio-oriented, I tend to co-write, because it turns out better that way. They look for material that has less personality and more general appeal, so with two people, you have a better chance that your strange proclivities aren’t going to take over. You’re actually trying to write more generically if you’re trying to sell screenplays to Hollywood, so if you can write with skill but in a somewhat generic fashion, that’s how you’re going to succeed.

I’m not talking about people like Wes Anderson and P. T. Anderson and Quentin. They’ve managed to be the handful of people—the Coen brothers—who have cracked through with their individual voices and styles. But if you’re trying to be a professional screenwriter, that’s not really what people are looking for.

Now, TV is a whole new world. When I started out, feature films were where you could explore interesting subject matter, but the home-viewing revolution started to shift everything. And now, I think there are 350 scripted television shows being made. What you can do in cable TV creatively, thematically—it’s eons above what you can do in feature films now.

Have you thought about directing for TV, or creating your own show?

I’m working on developing a limited series with Sam Jackson for TV. I’d never wanted to do it before, but he actually had the idea of taking an old screenplay of mine and turning it into a show. We’ll see in the next two months whether it comes together.

So what are you giving people to look at right now? The pilot?

I wrote the pilot, and I wrote what they call a bible, which explains where the show’s going to go more or less. And I’ve actually written the first six or seven episodes on spec. We’re not showing everyone all those, but we’re going to go out, Sam and I, with the pilot—so we’ll see who wants to do it, if anyone wants to do it.

Say Showtime wants to do it, would you want to direct as well?

Well, I’ll direct the pilot and a few of the others. I don’t know whether I could survive directing ten shows in a row. Very few people do that. It’s almost unheard of. Some people have directed six or eight. I think this one’s going to be ten, and that might be too much. So what I’d want to do is probably direct half of them and have somebody else direct the other half. That’s what I’m thinking about.

I have to ask you about Batman. I read you dropped that project voluntarily. You decided you didn’t want to continue after one draft?

It’s funny that something that was like two months of your life keeps showing up as if it was some major event. After I made Remember the Titans, I pitched a futuristic version of Batman to a studio that was trying to figure out what they wanted to do with it. And I wrote a draft and then realized that I didn’t think it was going anywhere—and I honestly didn’t think they were ever going to make it. I could have been wrong, but I basically felt like I didn’t want to make a big commercial superhero film, so I just split. So yeah, that whole experience was about two and a half months in my life.

And the decision to split, did that feel like a big decision at the time?

It’s always a big decision, and the executive at the studio was very angry with me, and that probably caused me to not be able to work at several studios for several years afterward. So yeah, it’s possible that it had that effect.

So when that happens, is that emotionally challenging to deal with, or not so much for you?

It’s very challenging, but I find that the whole film business is very challenging emotionally all the time. It’s always uncomfortable and difficult and challenging.

What’s the remedy for that—talking with friends in the business, or friends outside of the business?

I don’t know that there is a remedy. If I have to be honest, I think it’s to find a positive, harmonizing, spiritual practice in your life that connects you to creation —and to allow that to be something that guides your movement, whether in relationships or work or whatever. I’ve come to realize at this stage, finally, that in addressing the details, which is something we always try and do, it’s sort of like trying to deal with the smoke when there’s a fire happening. So how you feel about work, or your marriage, or something that happened during the day—all those things, I’m understanding now, are outgrowths and manifestations of your basic connection to life, to creation, or whatever you want to call it.

So for me, the most I’ve been able to create a positive, emotional connection to the vicissitudes of the business is to address my connection to creation, and then just let the chips fall where they may. So suddenly a situation that may be frustrating or challenging—it’s not that it isn’t, but my entire state of being is such that it doesn’t affect me in the same way.

It helps put things in perspective.

Yeah, it puts things in perspective, and the things that used to drive you crazy just become things that you can move past more easily. It doesn’t mean they don’t affect you. It just means they don’t overwhelm you in the same way.

And this is something you’ve come to later in life?

Yes, the last couple of years probably. I think those of us who get to live a little longer are very lucky. I thank God every day that I got to live to be 50.

Speaking of the insight you get as you grow older … I watched A Price Above Rubies again last night. I haven’t see it in a decade probably.

Me either.

There’s this monologue that Renée Zellweger has about a fire in her stomach that had always served as an engine, almost, that kept her warm when she was growing up, but more recently it’s been burning and painful. I don’t remember noticing that monologue when I first saw your film, but now that I’m in middle age, it really resonates with me. You were so young when you wrote that. I’m wondering if you remember what you were intending with that monologue—what you were exploring.

If I remember correctly, I think it had something to do with the idea that when you’re younger, this excitement or energy or creativity or passion—whatever you want to call it—it doesn’t have limitations on it. But as she got older, all these other factors came in to keep that thing from becoming something that she could externalize. And when you can’t externalize or act on the things that move you the most, they become painful—and you can become self-destructive or destructive. I think that’s what she was talking about—that thing that’s supposed to be so great, this passion for life and excitement and sexual energy and emotional energy and all that stuff that develops in you when you’re young, when it gets stifled, it starts to eat you up.

Do you ever look back on what you wrote when you were younger and think, Wow, isn’t it amazing how I knew that then?

No, I look back and I’m like, I can’t believe how stupid I was! But then every once in a while, I’ll read something I wrote and go, Okay, I wasn’t a complete idiot. There was something in there. But no, I don’t tend to think, How did I know that? I tend to be really grateful that I’ve managed to grow and learn new things.