Jennifer K MahalComic books were David Hayter’s...

Jennifer K Mahal

Comic books were David Hayter’s closest friends as a child. Because

of his father’s job as a troubleshooter for a large biotech company,

the 34-year-old screenwriter spent his childhood moving every six

months to a year.

“I don’t want it to sound like a sob story, because it was a

pretty good life. But I didn’t have a lot of friends because I didn’t

have time to get to know people,” said Hayter, who has sole

screenwriting credit for “X-Men” (based on the Marvel comic book

about a band of mutants) and shares story credit on its sequel,

“X-Men United,” which opens today.

Comic books became his way of having familiar faces around.

Everywhere he moved, Hayter would cart an ever larger number of boxes

with comics such as “X-Men,” “Daredevil” and “Batman” inside.

“I think it’s an incredibly undervalued genre,” said Hayter, who

has worked on scripts for “The Hulk” and “The Watchmen.” “Like the

movies, they offer us extremes of fantasy and worlds in which

anything can happen. I think that has very much fueled my attitude

toward work and toward life, which is that anything is possible.”

At 9, the brown-haired, brown-eyed boy and his boxes moved to El

Toro. It was while living there that Hayter got interested in show

business, after landing a part in the Costa Mesa Civic Playhouse’s

version of “Pinocchio.” He played Thieving Weasel No. 1.

“It was a very fun kind of character part. I had this weird little

weasel voice,” said Hayter, who is now the voice of Solid Snake in

the “Metal Gear Solid” video games. “I was kind of disappointed that

I didn’t get to play Pinocchio, but once I threw myself into it, it

was my first experience understanding how important the character

roles are and how much more fun they are to play, usually, than the

lead.”

Hayter remembers he had to wear a felt costume that was hot and

that he had a crush on the girl who played Thieving Weasel No. 2.

“She was very, very cute, but we were 9 and I think our

relationship was doomed from the start,” he said with a smile. “I

have a picture of [us] signing my first autographs, which was really

cool. From then on, I was hooked. That’s what put me in the

business.”

Eleven years later, Hayter moved to Los Angeles to pursue an

acting career. He had modest success in commercials, character parts

and in the movie “Guyver, Dark Hero.” His big break came in an

unexpected way.

Hayter met director Bryan Singer and screenwriter Christopher

McQuarry at Domiano’s Pizza in Los Angeles. Neither man was famous

yet “The Usual Suspects.”

“The incident is remarkable in that neither Bryan nor Chris had

enough money for a slice of pizza on their own, so they split it,”

Hayter recalls. “We were all just as broke as broke could be, and

Bryan was in debt. A few months later, Bryan’s film ‘Public Access’

won the Sundance Film Festival, and he got the money to do ‘The Usual

Suspects.’”

Singer executive produced Hayter’s film, “Burn,” about a man with

writer’s block whose best friend turns up with a completed

manuscript, a publishing deal and a girlfriend. After touring the

festival circuit and winning a few prizes, Hayter found himself

nearly bankrupt. He called Singer, who was doing “X-Men,” and asked

for a job answering phones.

“During the course of that job, [Bryan] started to talk with me

about the script, which he was having some problems with at that

time, and I provided some suggestions, which he put into the movie,”

Hayter said. “Then over the course of the next 13 months, he began to

take all of the script problems to me and we would work them out

together. Through a remarkable course of events, I ended up with sole

credit on that movie, which was technically my first writing job.”

“X-Men” tells the story of a band of mutants led by Professor

Charles Xavier who must fight terrorist mutants led by Magneto and

save the leaders of the world. Intertwined are themes of prejudice,

racism and finding a place to belong when you’re different.

Hayter said that for him, screenwriting is an organic process.

“Once you have the basics of the story, the story will tell you where

it needs to go,” he said, which is why “X-Men United” opens where

“X-Men” left off.

“In the first film, we really set up that there’s a war coming. In

the second film, the war comes, and both Magneto and Professor

Xavier, with their two opposing viewpoints, fight it in the ways they

deem worthy,” Hayter said. “In ‘X-Men 2,’ part of the intention was

to take everything we had seen in ‘X-Men,’ everybody’s characters,

all their motivations, and turn them on their head.”

“X-Men United” introduces some new characters, most notably

Nightcrawler, Pyro and Deathstrike, to the stable established in the

first movie -- Wolverine, Cyclops, Dr. Jean Grey, Rogue, Iceman,

Mystique, Storm, etc.

His intention with “X-Men United” was to “sort of illustrate the

ambiguity of good and evil and illustrate how difficult a highly

charged political issue, like this theoretical mutant [registration]

issue, is and what it can do to people and their actions.”

* JENNIFER K MAHAL is a freelance writer and former features

editor of the Daily Pilot. She can be reached at [email protected].