A Exclusive Dolphin’s Tale Interview With the writers Karen Janszen and Noam Dromi

DOLPHIN TALE in cinemas on October 14, is inspired by the amazing true story of a brave dolphin and the compassionate strangers who banded together to save her life.

DOLPHIN TALE has a great cast including Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick Jnr, and Ashley Judd alongside many wonderful animals. But the real star is “Winter”, who plays herself in the film, and today serves as a symbol of courage, perseverance and hope to millions of people.

The film is in it’s second week in US Box Office swimming all the way to the top ‘flipping’ off possible Oscar Contenter Money Ball (Brad Pitt) and next week its the British & Irish turn, we caught up with the writers Karen Janszen and Noam Dromi and asked about their experience working on DOLPHIN TALE….

 

QUESTION: Do you think that your work on Free Willy 2 helped you get the writing assignment on this film?

KAREN JANSZEN: I’m sure it did. [Laughs] I also wrote Duma, about a Cheetah.

QUESTION: Did it just sort of happen that way or do you have an inherent affinity for animals?

KAREN JANSZEN: It’s strange. They find me. It’s not all I write; it’s often what get made of what I write.

QUESTION: What do you think it is about your writing that allows you to bring these unpredictable animals to a human level?

KAREN JANSZEN: When you write a character, you always think of them as human.

QUESTION: So you’re anthropomorphizing these animals?

KAREN JANSZEN: You have to. I mean, I always say they’re all kind of a boy and his dog stories, even E.T. The woman who wrote that had to think of E.T. as a thinking, feeling, sentient being. And I always, always imbue that animal character. Otherwise, there’s nobody strong enough for the human characters to interact with.

QUESTION: What drew you to the project in the first place? How did you get wind of this?

KAREN JANSZEN: They came to me and said, ‘We have a true-life story. What do you think?’

QUESTION: And, Noam, how did you become involved in this project?

NOAM DROMI: In 2006, shortly after the real Winter story had started to get national prominence, Richard Ingber—one of the producers—and I came across the story. We felt that it had the underpinnings of a great film. You know Winter’s real story—the ‘tail tale’—and how the community of Clearwater and specifically the aquarium had said, ‘We want to save this dolphin.’ We were just immediately enthralled by it, went to the company Alcon and painted the broad strokes of it. They were as enthusiastic about it as we were and then brought someone of Karen’s expertise in to really shape and shepherd that story.

QUESTION: How long did it take you to write it then?

KAREN JANSZEN: I think I had it, through many, many drafts, a year and a half.

QUESTION: Can you tell us about the true story of Winter? How did you find it?

NOAM DROMI: The story started to gain national prominence throughout 2006. So, to answer the question specifically, we first saw it on The Today Show and then, when I began to do the real research, the local paper was obviously a very important resource in that respect. It was just really understanding who all the players were, realizing that Kevin and Dan created the tail. But Karen used a good expression earlier that makes sense—the real story was not movie-sized.

KAREN JANSZEN: The only thing that was real was Winter. She was rescued and she lives at the aquarium in Clearwater, the hospital, and there were people there who were caring for her. And there were two doctors who devoted their own time and energy to creating a tail for her. That was what I had to work with. And then I had to create a whole fictional story world because the actual story is not movie-sized. It might be a newspaper story or a magazine article. But a whole fictional story world had to be created, the whole context, people, emotions, the whole thing. The drama had to be created. So, her story is kind of the core that’s holding everything together, but everything else is invented.

QUESTION: Is there a real Sawyer?

KAREN JANSZEN: No, no, no. There are two real doctors who created the tail. There is somebody who runs the aquarium, but not anything like the man who plays him or the story. There are no children, no single mom.

NOAM DROMI: No returning vet.

KAREN JANSZEN: Nothing.

QUESTION: You mentioned a boy and his dog or Free Willy 2 is a boy with his whale. Here we have a boy with his dolphin. Did you start with that idea at the beginning?

KAREN JANSZEN: I did. In this case, [a boy and his dolphin] made sense for me because I knew I was creating a whole world, including a returning vet who would be a surrogate brother to the boy who I created as somebody who was introverted, who was feeling small and lacking in power because his father had left.

I’m a single mother. I created Ashley Judd’s character as a single mother. I saw that he would also have a surrogate father when he started working at the aquarium in Hazel’s father.

So, a boy made sense for this story. And the dolphin’s female. So, I kept her as a female. And it worked for me in this case.

QUESTION: And you have a girl in the movie too.

KAREN JANSZEN: Yeah, Hazel is very much like my daughter. Yes.

QUESTION: So, your daughter talks a lot?

KAREN JANSZEN: Oh, yeah. [Laughs]

QUESTION: Did you decide to combine the two real life scientists into one character?

KAREN JANSZEN: Actually, we didn’t. There is the one scene where Morgan Freeman’s character goes to the parts’ place. That’s the second doctor.

NOAM DROMI: Yes, when he says, ‘I’ve got a job and there’s no money.’

KAREN JANSZEN: ‘Who’s the patient?’

NOAM DROMI: ‘An animal.’ Yeah.

QUESTION: Was Morgan Freeman involved by then?

KAREN JANSZEN: No, no, no.

QUESTION: Do you ever write with certain actors in mind?

KAREN JANSZEN: I do. I won’t tell you because it doesn’t matter because I’m just the writer, honestly. The casting happens a year or two later. I’m all about who’s available and who’s right for the part at the time. And the children had to be found. They used unknowns, and they’re amazing kids.

QUESTION: Did you contribute to the family aspect of the movie?

NOAM DROMI: Just a lover of it. I mean, the entirety of the family dynamic is Karen’s creation. I’m a fan of her body of work and, certainly, consider myself very fortunate to share something of this magnitude with her, but that family aspect is really of her creation.

QUESTION: It’s interesting to me that’s there are no specifics about where Kyle goes to, what war he’s off doing. I guess we have to assume that he’s in Afghanistan.

KAREN JANSZEN: I wrote Iraq at the time.

QUESTION: Does it say Iraq?

NOAM DROMI: It does. At that very beginning scene when the swim coach asks him where he’s going, he makes a reference that if you knew you would know is Iraq.

QUESTION: But there’s no particular political bent. When did the idea of having a vet in this come to you?

KAREN JANSZEN: I think we both noticed that vets are a larger proportion of Winter’s fans when you go visit Winter. When I was there, there would often be one or two wheelchairs, people, amputees, children, vets sitting there reaching out to her being with her. And the documentary footage at the end is real. That’s really what was happening.

QUESTION: So, that was the inspiration?

KAREN JANSZEN: Well, I also saw The Best Years of Our Lives. I watched that very closely when I was writing this. That was one of the inspirations.

QUESTION: Did you write the hurricane scene?

KAREN JANSZEN: No.

QUESTION: Because when I saw that I was like, ‘Man this movie really touches all the bases.’

KAREN JANSZEN: It’s another way to make the story movie-sized.

QUESTION: Why is Winter named Winter?

KAREN JANSZEN: I think she says in the movie it’s because their last one was Spring.

NOAM DROMI: It was Summer, and it’s a season name.

QUESTION: Was there ever an idea to have a romantic connection between Clay and Lorraine?

KAREN JANSZEN: Yes, I wrote it actually. It was definitely implied and I really like the gentle approach. Yeah.

QUESTION: Have you given any thought to making a sequel built on the discovery of the other dolphin during the wrap party?

NOAM DROMI: Hope. You never know. I mean, that could be a lot of fun. But no.

QUESTION: Tell us more about that.

NOAM DROMI: During the wrap party, there was a weird moment where the folks at the aquarium were sort of off huddled in a corner and everyone was looking curiously. And then they all took off and it turns off that they were, right in the thick of it, rescuing a new dolphin, who at the time was nameless. She was found with her dead mother. And just a little bit about dolphins in terms of their ability to be all right in the wild—they’ve got to spend at least two years with their mothers before they can do that.

She was rescued. Her health was very much in question. Clearwater Marine Aquarium put forth the opportunity for people to give her a name. They named her Hope.

QUESTION: That is a crazy thing that happened.

NOAM DROMI: Just a wonderful kind of alchemy, but, as Karen pointed out, nobody’s talking about a sequel or thinking about it.

QUESTION: Is that a trap that she was caught in?

KAREN JANSZEN: A crab trap. It really was a crab trap in Winter’s case. It was the ropes that entangled her.

NOAM DROMI: Wrapped around her fluke.

KAREN JANSZEN: That cut off her circulation.

QUESTION: How challenging is it to make a family movie that will work for kids but be entertaining for adults as well? How do you find that fine line?

KAREN JANSZEN: It is a fine line. It is. I just try to write the best story I can in making sure that there are real adult characters. I mean, I like to write children. So, writing the children for me is the easy part, and then you have to make sure you populate the whole story with grown-ups that also feel real to interact with the children. And grown-ups go to see the whole thing. They want to see grown-ups in movies.

QUESTION: Was Sawyer’s summer school situation inspired by real life as well?

KAREN JANSZEN: Yeah, I think the home schooling thing also. I really wanted to show that children can get excited about things outside the school, get away from the computers, get away from the television, get out of the classroom, spend time in the fresh air, do something real. Sawyer and Hazel are doing something real. And it’s very empowering for children to see that grown-ups listen to them and that their actions and their thoughts can develop into real things in the real world.

QUESTION: Right, so you have the wonderful Frances Sternhagen saying nobody would believe that this is…

KAREN JANSZEN: Eleven-year olds. [Laughs]

NOAM DROMI: And I think to Karen’s point, it’s just so amazing when you see folks saying, I just took my family and my kids to see this film and my daughter turned to me and said, ‘I want to be a marine biologist because I saw this film.’ So, clearly, if it’s inspiring young people in that way, that’s a really beautiful thing.

QUESTION: Do you do that with your own kids?

KAREN JANSZEN: I do. I’m a single mother. So, that dynamic is very real to me. My daughter likes school more than Sawyer, but your child is your child and you’ve got to work with what you have and what their interests and who they are as a person. And if your child is someone who’s not turned on by school then you’ve got to find what else—that’s part of your job as a parent, to spark your child and to help them be the best person they’re going to be. So, I try to do that with my daughter.

DOLPHIN TALE SPLASHES INTO CINEMAS 14TH OCTOBER.