Graham Moore is the 31-year-old author of one best-selling novel, one screenplay in production with Benedict Cumberbatch, another novel in the works, and a just-finished screen adaptation of The Devil in the White City . He still thinks about quitting.
Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing on the set of The Imitation Game
WENN
Graham Moore grew up on the north side of Chicago, the son of two lawyers who divorced and then married two other lawyers. "I feel very Midwestern, at my core," Moore told me recently over iced coffee on the east side of Los Angeles. "Half of me wants to be this difficult, rebellious enfant terrible who is pissing everyone off and doing whatever I want to do, and the other half of me is this Jewish kid from Chicago that just wants everyone to like him and hates conflict and hates yelling and wants everyone to get along, and be nice. That's the part that's very Chicago."
His love of mystery stories began when he was young and learning to read, passing copies of Agatha Christie books back and forth with his mother, late at night. As a teenager, he thought music was going to be his career — most of his time was occupied either reading about or playing in various bands. It was the '90s, and long nights were spent arguing over the merits of Urge Overkill. When he got into Columbia University, he figured he might as well see what college was about. That's when things got interesting. (And way more confusing.)
These days, despite his modesty, he's emerging as one of the most sought-after screenwriters in Hollywood. And...Cumberbatch is involved. Lots and lots of Cumberbatch.
What follows is an edited transcript of my interview with Moore.
What was your college experience like? Columbia and New York.
GM: New York was obviously very exciting. I liked Columbia, but it was like high school in that there was this big social world that I was not part of. I existed on the side, far away. That might be temperamental, my own fear of large groups, more than anything else. But I had a handful of professors who meant a lot to me.
What are the classes that stuck out for you?
GM: My first class at Columbia was taught by a guy named Peter Pouncey. Every year I think college got better for me, so at the end I was really enjoying it, but at the start… I did not enjoy it very much. Except for this class.
What was it on?
GM: It was a "Great Books" survey, so The Illiad and The Odyssey, going through Western literature. I am entirely sure that I would have dropped out of school if it wasn't for professor Pouncey. He said something to me that I still think about: If you're going to try to do anything, you should try to do it for about five years or so. Anything less than that isn't really trying because it takes that long to get halfway decent at anything. He told me that if I was going to try New York, to give it a couple of years, not just one. Everything is bad after one year. I think it's true. Becoming a writer, I certainly wasn't good for five years. I guess there are people who are, but that wasn't me.
You can't skip failure. It's necessary.
GM: Being bad at stuff is hard and we all deal with it every day, because we're all bad at stuff. I sat at my desk this morning, looking over all the things I've been working on lately. Just going over the really bad parts, thinking, Wow, I'm terrible at this.
But the only reason you know it's bad is because your taste is good — good enough that you can look at your work objectively and know it's not where it needs to be.
GM: In spending your days making things, you're constantly recalibrating how much of an editor you need to be, how much you need to trust that hopefully someone will make some merit in what you're doing, but at the same time be easy on yourself enough so that you can keep going. But you also have to be hard enough on yourself so that you don't think that just any thing is the most brilliant thing in the world.
Going back to college, you're there, you think you want to leave, and this professor talks you into staying. What kept you there? Was it just about being in New York?
GM: It was about friends and New York. I was playing in a bunch of different bands.
What kind of music?
GM: Rock. None of the bands I played in did many shows: We were always more into recording, and that's when I found out I really loved the studio environment and sound engineering. I started collecting studio equipment.
And where was this studio?
GM: I built a little studio with a friend of mine and my brother in the basement of a heavy metal art gallery on Rivington Street. Everything they sold looked like the cover of Appetite for Destruction. It was a lot of monsters and stuff.
Oh right, monster art.
GM: The studio was called Thunder and Lightning and Lightning. Eventually people we didn't know started to hire us for things. There was a series of Garnier shampoo commercials that we recorded that paid my rent for a year, which was nice.
Graham Moore
