Brian Helgeland has been a prolific name in the Hollywood screenplay writing business for 30 years. The 57-year-old’s pen has churned out classics like LA Confidential and Mystic River, as well as box-office hits like Man on Fire and The Taking of Pelham 123. This month, Sony Le Plex HD is celebrating three decades of the Oscar winner by airing some of his films, including A Knight’s Tale, Robin Hood, 42 and Legend. A t2 chat with the man who’s currently working on a Game of Thrones spin-off.

You’ve been in the movie business for 30 years now. How do you look back?

I think as your life progresses, your interests change, and the things you used to be interested in are not what you are necessarily interested in anymore. I just keep carrying on. I don’t really have a plan… I write what I am interested at that moment in life and I keep hoping that it’s something people want to see. 

Did you naturally gravitate towards writing or did the other aspects of filmmaking also interest you?

When I started out, I went to graduate school for films. I wanted to direct a film, but didn’t have enough money to finance one. I switched from directing to writing because it was a lot cheaper (laughs). I just needed a pen and paper. That’s how I started. I wrote a script and entered it into a screenwriting contest. I won the contest and that’s how I started writing. But I had no ambition to be a writer. Some people say they wanted to write ever since they were teenagers, but I had no such ideas.

What is your writing process like and does that change with every film?

It stays pretty much the same. I try and wake up before the sun comes up and write. Basically, I work all day and everyday till a script is done. The process varies. For example, for 42, which was a biopic of Jackie Robinson (American baseball player) and which I also directed, I read up a lot and met many people. For Legend, I travelled to London and met the people who had been around as the same time as the Kray twins (gangsters who were the chief perpetrators of organised crime in the England of the ’50s and ’60s). If it’s a book adaptation, I obviously read the book and try and understand it deeply, try and figure out what’s written between the lines. If it’s my own story, it’s a bit of a different process.

LA Confidential is a cult film now. When you were writing it, did you ever think it would become the phenomenon it is today?

(Laughs) No… no! I loved the book and I thought it was a great challenge to try and turn that into a film. Since it was a well-loved book, the responsibility on me was all that more. I was only interested in telling a story, without realising it would become a cult film.

You won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for LA Confidential. Though it happened 20 years ago, do you remember the moment when you went up on stage?

This may sound arrogant, but we won all possible awards for adapted screenplay that year, and so by the time we made it to the Academy Awards, I was sure I would win (laughs). So I was actually sitting there at the ceremony wondering who was going to give it to me! I know it sounds horrible! (Laughs) Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau came out to present the award. I am a huge Walter Matthau fan and I was wishing he would give my Oscar to me… and that’s what happened. 

You are only one of three people in cinema history to win an Oscar and a Razzie in the same year. And you actually landed up to accept your Razzie, which only three other people have ever done!

(Laughs) I know a few people to have won both, but I am probably one of the few people to win it in the same weekend (Helgeland won the Razzie for The Postman, that released in the same year as LA Confidential). They just announced it, but they never called me for the show. I had to call them and ask, ‘Where’s my Razzie?!’ (Laughs) They had to make one to give me. Honestly, I am proud of my Razzie. When you make a film, there are so many things that can go wrong. I had as much hope while making The Postman while I was making LA Confidential. One turned out great, the other was a disaster, but it could easily have been the other way round.  

What is more creatively satisfying  — writing a film or directing one?

I think it’s a lot harder to write a film than to direct. Not to say that directing a film is easy. When you write a film, you sit all alone and do it; when you direct a film, you have 200 people helping you. Directing is a lot more fun than writing, though. When I direct a film that I wrote, I like to think that the process of directing is the reward I went through while writing it! (Laughs)  

Which films of yours do people come up and talk to you most about?

That would be LA Confidential, Mystic River and Man on Fire. It’s always one of these three films, if not all three. 

You are currently working on a number of projects, but what has intrigued us the most is a Game of Thrones spin-off. What can you tell us about it?

It’s top secret at the moment! (Laughs) All I can say is that it will be in the same world of Game of Thrones, but will be tonally quite different.