JOHN LEGUIZAMO ON DEVELOPING HIS STORYTELLING TECHNIQUES AS HE MOVES INTO WRITING COMIC BOOKS
![https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/carlitolegend.jpg](https://www.angelfire.com/de/palma/carlitolegend.jpg)
The Hollywood Reporter's Aaron Couch interviews John Leguizamo, who is creator and writer on PhenomX, published next month by Todd McFarlane's Image Comincs:
Leguizamo and McFarlane reconnected three years ago at New York Comic Con and started talking about collaborating. Leguizamo was already an Eisner-nominated writer at that point for his graphic novel Ghetto Klown, but McFarlane gave him some tough love on how challenging it is to make a successful comic.“Just because you are a celebrity does not mean this is just automatically going to work,” McFarlane recalls saying. “You need to deliver a story that people are going to want to read.”
Leguizamo recalls feeling pressure to deliver something McFarlane would approve of.
“It was very sobering talking to Todd. He wasn’t trying to discourage me, he was trying to make me sharper,” says the writer-actor.
As an actor, Leguizamo has worked with acclaimed directors such as Brian De Palma, Spike Lee and Baz Luhrmann and has studied storytelling from them. Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge was a formative experience, with the actor recalling the script was originally a whopping 300 pages. (A two-hour movie generally has a script that runs about 120 pages.)
“We’d read it every Friday, and he kept reducing it until it got to 150. That process became a part of me. I got to write one of the scenes in the movie, which was an incredible opportunity,” recalls Leguizamo. “Brian De Palma, when I did Carlito’s Way, he let me improvise like crazy. There are so many possibilities in a moment. A moment could go anywhere and still be part of the plot and move the plot forward.”