Exclusive Interview: Marilyn Anderson Talks How To Beat A Bully

How To Beat a Bully, on DVD in April, is a fun yarn about a boy who moves to a new town and immediately forced to content with school bullies. To save himself, he pretends his father is a hit man for the mob. Marilyn Anderson is one of the writers of the project. Read on to check out the full interview.


AMANDA DYAR: Marilyn, thanks for chatting. How long of a journey has this been for you?

MARILYN ANDERSON: It’s been a lonnnnnng journey! It depends where you want me to begin. For this particular script, it’s been over a 20-year journey. We first wrote it after “Home Alone” came out in 1990. Our screenplay was optioned by various Hollywood producers, year after year. After writing it, we had so much interest and a ton of meetings all over town that our agent thought there was going to be a bidding war with a quick sale. Unfortunately, several other family films came out after “Home Alone” that ended up being flops. So all of a sudden, the studios no longer wanted to do films in that genre. Yet, our screenplay kept getting attention and even won two big screenwriting contests. Every few months, producers would call and say, “Whatever happened to my favorite script? Is it still available?” When the option would expire, someone new would option it for 6 months or a year, promising to get it produced… and nothing would happen. After optioning it 8 times with 8 different companies, I finally decided “no more options.” That’s when things started rolling! I found an investor who loved the project and put up funding for it. Then I teamed up with Dream Factory Entertainment who brought in another investor. Within 6 months, we were cast and in production. Now the film is out – and it’s very gratifying after all this time.

If you want to start at the very beginning of my journey, I wrote my first screenplay in 1982. (I was a mere baby then, of course. That one was finally made as a Lifetime movie in 2008!) So that project only took 26 years to get produced. Bottom line, never give up! If you believe in your work and keep putting it out there, wonderful things can happen. Many of the most popular Academy Award Winning movies took decades to get made. So we’re in good company. Part of my journey also included writing for TV shows like “Murphy Brown,” “FAME” and even “Friday the 13th-the Series.” I was on the writing staff for “Carol & Company” that starred Carol Burnett, along with Richard Kind and Jeremy Piven in their first TV roles. I also wrote a humorous book on relationships, “Never Kiss a Frog: A Girl’s Guide to Creatures from the Dating Swamp.” All of this writing helped me continue to develop my craft and comedy sensibility. That’s all been part of my journey.

AMANDA DYAR: Why a family film? What interested you about contributing to the genre?

MARILYN ANDERSON: Many parents we talked to complained there weren’t enough good films to which they could take their children. They were either juvenile movies that bored the parents when they watched with their youngsters, or big budget studio pictures with too much violence or adult themes that weren’t right for the kids. Then “Home Alone” came out and was a huge hit. These two factors made us want to come up with a fun family film. My partner, Richard Rossner and I thought it was a great genre to work in where we could provide smiles and laughs to kids and families, yet still hit upon some meaningful issues. As we pitched ideas together, we thought about making it about a boy moving to a new town and being picked on by bullies. We also wanted to make it a good father-son story and one that had positive family values. And of course, we wanted it to be hilarious.

AMANDA DYAR: Did you look at other, similar films before writing your screenplay?

MARILYN ANDERSON: I’m a movie fanatic. So I like to see everything that comes out. As mentioned above, we had seen “Home Alone” and that film was one of the things that inspired us to write “How to Beat a Bully.” I also liked “Little Miss Sunshine” which was quite different, but it was a comedy with a family on the move and some eccentric characters in the household, along with a little girl who didn’t “fit in.” I had also seen “Liar Liar” and liked the father-son dynamic. Of course, we would have loved to have starred Jim Carrey in our film, but even though we couldn’t get him on our budget (LOL), we think the actor who played the dad (Eric Lauritzen) did a terrific job – as did all the actors. I hadn’t seen “Diary of a Wimpy Kid,” but that’s another film (and book) to which people have compared our film.

AMANDA DYAR: Were you on the set at all?

Pictured: Co-writers on set of "How to Beat A Bully"

MARILYN ANDERSON: I was on the set most of the shooting days. But the truth is, the filming went so fast, it was hard to have a lot of input once the cameras started rolling. As the screenwriters, there were things my partner and I wanted to say or add, and once in a while I would whisper something to the director – but there are so many things going on, and we had a short shooting schedule and lots of kids, so it was difficult to really give feedback or add anything during the actual filming. Except for one day at the stables, I discovered that the two horses, who weren’t supposed to be in the movie, would nod their heads over and over as if saying “Yes, yes, yes” …and it was hysterical. So I made myself very forceful and insisted that we film the horses – for a funny beat in the film. After the filming was completed, I did learn that the place I would really like to have more of a presence in – is the editing room. My writing partner and I realized we’d like to be able to give more feedback and input during the editing phase, since as comedy writers, we know the pacing and jokes so well – and would like to have more impact in this process.

AMANDA DYAR: Are you happy with the film?

MARILYN ANDERSON: I’m very happy with the film. There might be little things that I would tweak if I could, but overall I’m quite proud of it. Of course, when it was originally supposed to be done with a Hollywood studio, it was going to have a much bigger budget. So when we finally decided to make it ourselves, and it had a lower budget, we had to make some changes to accommodate that. We had to remove some of the complexity of our original script, so it would have fewer scenes, fewer characters and fewer physical stunts. It was amazing to us that even after cutting out a lot – the story and humor still totally held up. Of course, we’d be happy for a big studio to come to us now and say they want to do the re-make from the original screenplay! My writing partner and I are also now completing the Young Adult Novel “How to Beat a Bully” – and we are using our bigger budget version to base it on – so it will be more complex and have even more twists and turns.

AMANDA DYAR: You’re working at Blockbuster Video and have to put the film back in its category. What category would you choose?

MARILYN ANDERSON: At any video store, book store, online or Walmart – it will be in “Family Films” or “Family Comedies.” Or on the shelf that says: “The cutest, funniest, sweetest family comedy to watch today!”