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" Thirty-year-old screenwriter James Vanderbilt has absolutely no fear of failure. In 2004, with just a few semisuccessful screenwriting credits to his name--Basic, The Rundown, and Darkness Falls--Vanderbilt spent a year of his own time writing a spec screenplay for the mother of all slasher tales, Zodiac, based on Robert Graysmith&amp;#039;s books of the same name about a serial killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area. He managed to get it in the hands of Fight Club director David Fincher, who liked the script enough to sign on to direct the film for release next year. Currently, Vanderbilt is deep into writing the screenplay adaptation of former terrorism czar Richard Clarke&amp;#039;s memoir, Against All Enemies, one of the most desired and challenging Hollywood projects of 2005. He has called it &amp;quot;All the President&amp;#039;s Men for the twenty-first century.&amp;quot; --ROSS JOHNSON  ESQ: Do you find that people get pissed off when some kid gets a deal with Warner Bros. two days before he graduates from USC film school and now, just six years later, is getting to work on Clarke&amp;#039;s book?  JV: I&amp;#039;ve done well because I&amp;#039;m lucky and I&amp;#039;m willing to be collaborative with the one thing you don&amp;#039;t want to be collaborative with: your writing. In this business, know when to compromise, but know when to draw the line. Because if you take every note and the script doesn&amp;#039;t work, movie executives aren&amp;#039;t going to say it&amp;#039;s their fault and apologize. ESQ: In Clarke&amp;#039;s book, he takes the time to write about the roots of Al Qaeda&amp;#039;s anger toward America. Are movie audiences ready to see a movie about 9/11 in which Al Qaeda is not a group of stock villains?  JV: Absolutely. I want the movie not to be about &amp;quot;these guys bad, these people good.&amp;quot; In many ways, Against All Enemies is not about politics; it&amp;#039;s about looking at Clarke&amp;#039;s strengths and his failings and what he tried to do.  ESQ: People who adapt books for movies are always trying to externalize events that are only hinted at in the book. How much are we going to see Mohammed Atta in the Against All Enemies movie practicing his flying?  JV: If I have my way, it will be like what I did on Zodiac. You won&amp;#039;t see a single scene in the movie that doesn&amp;#039;t come from someone who is alive and can confirm what happened. If you&amp;#039;re doing a true story, you shouldn&amp;#039;t go out of your way to make shit up.  ESQ: You mention Zodiac. What is it that makes it the big kahuna of serial-killer stories? JV: For one, Zodiac was never caught. He&amp;#039;s also the first modern-age serial killer. He named himself, he branded himself with a logo, and he wrote not to the police but to the newspapers. If nothing else, he&amp;#039;s a marketing genius.  ESQ: Clarke&amp;#039;s book doesn&amp;#039;t reveal much about him as a character. How do you fully portray a man on film who doesn&amp;#039;t reveal much about himself? JV: I had to spend a lot of time with Clarke. One of the fascinating things about him is he didn&amp;#039;t have a family life like many people of his station. His life was his work. That&amp;#039;s his family. And what&amp;#039;s interesting is that here&amp;#039;s a guy whose job was his whole life, and it took a hell of a lot of guts to stand up in front of the 9/11 Commission and risk the one thing he had. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a23/esq1205bbvander-208-1/>