As the 90s is the current era we are all nostalgic for, it seems only right that we take a look back at the second highest grossing film of 1991, Kevin Costner starring Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. Despite there being two other versions of the legendary noble who robbed from the rich to give to the poor, the 90s classic will be remembered and celebrated for far longer. But before the fights in the forest, Bryan Adams' theme song and Alan Rickman delivering some of the best lines of his career as the Sheriff of Nottingham, there were Pen Densham and John Watson who write the now classic Robin Hood film. We talked with Densham and Watson about how the script came into being, the hero's journey, balancing humour and drama and who came up with the famous spoon line.
KH: Why Robin Hood and why the time?
Pen Densham: That's a very good question. Both John and I grew up in England and both of us grew up watching Robin Hood with Richard Greene. I was also a giant fan of the Robin Hood that Errol Flynn played. When you watch that movie, he's so buoyant, his feet don't touch the ground. But there is a serious answer. As John and I worked together over the years we became philosophical and optimistic and upbeat kind of films and I had the privilege of having a child with my wife and I was watching Stallone and Schwarzenegger making movies about killing people like bowling pins which was considered success, we actually worked with Stallone, we'd salvaged a couple of his films including Rocky 2, and having a kid I wanted to make an adventure movie that was actually humanistic instead of full of death and heroic success by murder.
The idea came to be me about doing Robin Hood, by putting a rich asshole on the screen who's spoiled silly, who burns his childhood's friend's hair and what he ends up doing is learning to risk his life for the future of peasant children. That is what I defined as a maker of life, someone who is willing to put their life in the way of helping others as opposed to a taker of life who is someone who murders and considers that success.
The other thing that had come to me was, John and I had made a lot of short films, we'd been nominated for Oscars for our shorts, was a film called ‘Why Man Creates' by Saul Bass which was very influential on us and in it was a little animated sequence about the history of humanity including this moment when an Arab invents the Zero and they all say what this, nothing nothing. It always stayed with me, corny joke and I thought what if we put a sophisticated, intelligent Arab with a Christian and the two actually learn from each other. As opposed to defining Muslims and Arabs as killers, torturers and terrorists.
Those two things where the driving issues in Robin Hood was just this familiar warm story, this folktale that we both loved. We pitched at three different studios and all of whom said it was the stupidest idea and they didn't believe that anyone wanted to see men with swords, historical movies don't work, just guns is the only thing the audience wants. John encouraged me to start writing it. Other the years I had learned that what I call ‘life scripts' these things that have a mission sometimes the story tells you and this was one of those instances where my body wanted to write this. That became a daily thing and I'd be giving John my pages and getting encouragement because when you're writing you can't judge what you're writing.
John Watson: There was a couple of other things for me. I was a little English brat running around the wood in Sommerset, firing fake bows and arrows, it was very much in my DNA. The other thing, I think its just a universal story. I was watching Zylensky (Ukrainian PM) yesterday, he was talking to the American Congress and he's a Robin Hood, he's going up against impossible odds. Putin is the Sheriff, they're fighting for good against evil, it's the Robin Hood story. Its inspirational to watch him and hopefully, its inspirational to watch our movie.
KH: My family used to watch the film together after walks in the wood, bike rides even to Burnham Beeches where some of the film was shot. We would watch the theatrical version which did not included some of the more sinister elements of the story. Do you feel that these parts of the film should have been kept it the theatrical cut?
JW: I think what we put out in the theatres was best version at that time. I didn't think we wanted it to be any longer. I have a hatred of long movies personally and I think the studio was looking for a movie that was less than 2 and half hours in those days. The pieces we added in are great but they don't necessarily enhance the core plot or core character relationships. There was more of Alan Rickman which everyone wanted having seen the original movie but we stand by our original version, we thought it was the right way to go at the time.
KH: There is a big reveal that was kept out. In the theatrical version you don't find out that Mortianna is the Sheriff's real mother.
PD: That was a lovely twist that I came up with that sort of explained the Sheriff's weird behaviour. It didn't make the cut because there were other things we were fighting to get into the film at that time. One of the key things at the time, as I was writing the very first treatment, it turned out to be 100 pages. I started crying because I wrote a scene where Little John's wife, Fanny, is having a baby and it's a caesarean operation. I'm crying because my wife when having my son went through an emergency caesarean operation. I suddenly realised I had just exposed this purpose of life and how much fight there is in creating a child. That scene was shot but it was not included in the movie.
I felt that in some ways I was defining, in that scene, the purpose that Robin had of fighting for nobility which was this child's future. So, we went to a meeting with the heads of the studio and the financiers, a very interesting eccentric mogul called Jim Robinson, and I asked if I could edit this scene. They look at me, say the film is already over length but they allowed me to do it. We ran the scene, which was about 4 and half minutes which is a long time in a movie and we're watching the studio heads talking to each other down the front of the screening room, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get this scene in the film. But they turned around and said ‘you know we ran Doc Hollywood last week and that had a birth scene in it, the audience liked it, put it in'. I felt like we had won my movie. The thing that was pivotal was this humanistic perspective and that scene was much more important than the kind of cleverness of finding out that Mortianna had switched the babies.
KH: As that was a personal scene to write, were there any other moments that you felt needed to make the final cut?
PD: I think the idea of having an Arab, a Muslim character side by side with a Christian character was very much a formative process for me. But then when I finished my draft of the material I gave it to John, we were not rich filmmakers at that point, well nor are we now really, I had to go write a horror movie to pay to keep our company going, so John took over the material. He added many elements when he went through and formatted it, added elements to the characters. The script got better and each layer that we added, such as when Costner asked for rewrites, which I did while we were shooting, it got better.
The things that were key to it were still the sense that there was a love for the father that he had regretted when he went off to war. He had been a young arrogant man and he realised if he hadn't have gone his father would be alive. Then this anguish that he had, which was very Joseph Campbell, if you know about the myths and legends that Campbell talks about, he an expert on these things. George Lucas used this when creating Star Wars. Your character has to go to a certain point in a movie where they fail at everything, called the belly of the beast and this is where they are metaphorically reborn. What I wanted was that the character of Robin would go into this disaster having used the woodsman for his revenge and then realise he had brought misery to their lives. Then he would change and decide he was going to become the person who was willing to put his life on the line for their futures. That was a very seminal part of the story for me because that's the hero's journey and it was necessary for the movie because as John was saying, if you're looking at heroes they are people who have to change and learn so that that they can bring us with them.
KH: Going on from that, there is a moment when Robin doesn't realise how much he hurt Will Scarlet and we don't find out that they are brothers until the third act. Is this a part in the hero's journey where there's a part of his redemption that isn't quite redeemed. Robin didn't care about Will Scarlet until he finds out they're related.
PD: Do you remember how we ended up making Will Scarlet the brother?
JW: We wanted to pay tribute to the iconic characters and moments from the original story such as Friar Tuck, Little John, the fight on the bridge etc. The idea of making Will Scarlet the brother just seemed to be an interesting element of Robin's past that he needed redemption for. We thought it a rather poignant relationship when he does eventually redeem himself and saves Will's life. We really battled for that, there was quite a lot of debate near the end about which elements of the movie should be in. The question of whether Will Scarlet's relationship was an important was one that came up and we thought it was. I think we really emphasised Robin Hood's personal journey and this was the part of the movie that we wanted to protect and save. His love relationship with Marion, his relationship with Azeem was really crucial for us and Will Scarlet in the same token. I'm glad you mentioned the hero's journey because that is very much the classic form of Robin's where he battled odds and his own personal demons in order to succeed and help others and ultimately be a hero.
KH: We've talked about the hero and we're going to have to talk about the villain. Alan Rickman has some iconic lines in the film and like others I've heard that Rickman liked to put his own ideas into the script. How much input did he have on his dialogue? Or were these your words?
JW: Quite a lot. In the end Alan was somewhat reserved to being in the movie because he felt he was being pigeon holed as the villain. So part of the deal we made with him was that he could improvise wherever you want as long as you also say the lines that are in the script. If he wanted to expand on it, have fun with it, we told him to carry on. The unsung heroine in here was the comedian Ruby Wax, they were very close friends, they did a lot of Shakespeare together. They used to get together and read scenes. He told me that Ruby had a lot of ideas that he used in the movie. I don't know which ones came from her or him. But certainly, he added something really significant to the movie. There's no denying that the Sheriff of Nottingham is one of people's favourite thing about the film. It took us by surprise, we really weren't sure during the production process whether it was over the top or if it was working but as soon as we tested the movie with audiences, we realised that people really enjoyed the villain.
PD: Also the director left the movie as soon as he finished his cut and we went back in and shaped the film. John and I made the film closer to our original vision. Some of the time we would make sure the Sheriff's lines were entertaining but didn't destroy his ability to be a villain. No one would remember David if Goliath was 5'6. We didn't want the Sheriff to be so funny that you lacked fear from his evil and so that was our blending that we did at the end. He still had to scare you, it could be insanity but couldn't be Monty Python.
KH: There's a good balance of the character, there's moments where you're terrified; he kills his own cousin, threatens random people in the corridors, he's an overall great character. There is one particular line I wanted to ask about, when the Sheriff says he wants to cut Robin's heart out with a spoon…
JW: I don't think Pen or I wrote that line. Where it came from, I don't know. We can't take credit for it but of course in the end, we take credit, our names are on the script. But clearly it worked, people loved it. Interesting little side story, we were so far into the process before we actually hired Alan (Rickman), we'd been filming for about a week and Michael Wincott who played Guy of Gisborne was so good and so strong. We got a call from the studios saying make Wincott the Sheriff but said we think he's a pretty damn good Guy of Gisborne we're going to keep trying for Alan Rickman.
KH: Didn't know that Rickman joined so late.
JW: It was a week in. The movie was a scramble, it was becoming Winter before we had started rolling cameras, it was nearly October before we started shooting. We started before Kevin Costner arrived as he was still back in the states finishing Dances With Wolves. We had to find scenes that neither the Sheriff or Robin were in.
KH: Just to go back to the fact you both had to go back and edit the film, what state was the film left in?
PD: It was an excellent state. When you're working on a movie, you're trying to get the best out of each actor so the reason we were happy to have Alan contribute was that we knew we were getting the things that made him feel more committed, the same thing with Kevin Costner. I was writing scenes with Kevin to make sure his vision of how he would interpret the character. What we did was we had a test screening, which is standard, and then you learn from that test, you learn how an audience reacts.
Some of the most obvious things you think are really clear, audience may not understand. We call this ‘Asshole Proofing' which is very rude but if the audience doesn't understand something they don't get the movie. Sometimes a scene is too long and the audience is getting jittery. We also have a thing where there are can't be any dead time don't let an audience out of the dream. So when we went in, we had had the privilege of looking at the audience responding to the movie and fine tuning the script and making sure the integrity of the movie was tight. We do that all the way through the process.
JW: The movie treads a fine line between drama and comedy and we had to try and figure out what fit and what didn't, what humour was taking you out of the film. As an example, Christian Slater's famous F-bomb in Nottingham when characters fly over the wall, we didn't know if that was going to work or not but we tested it with an audience and they loved it! People named it as one of their favourite things in the movie.
KH: Some would refer to this version of Robin Hood as the ‘Hollywood Robin Hood', what are your thoughts on that?
PD: The Errol Flynn and the Douglas Fairbanks weren't of course. I guess the 1952 Disney film wasn't Hollywood either. This was as English as you could get, two guys that grew up in England writing it, John Graysmark did a lot of the selection of the crew, he was the production designer, costume design. It was shot in England; all these people are making it in the way their heritage told them. I always find it kind of funny that there were these critics saying Costner's accent wasn't right. But as I understand it, after 1066 most of the nobles were trying to speak French because they had to suck up to the King.
JW: Probably American critics complaining. There are a million variations of the English accent, there's three examples right here. We moved to Hollywood to make movies so I guess it's not a bad thing.
KH: I see the film as the classic Robin Hood film because it was what I grew up with.
JW: That was the plan. Reinvent Robin Hood for that sensibility to the 90s with a little Raiders of the Lost Ark thrown in and the crucial element, Morgan Freeman's character into the story.
KH: This was mentioned earlier on but I wanted to go back to Azeem. Usually, Robin Hood is seen with his band of Merry Men, but this film offers a new version of the legend. Could you expand more on the inclusion of Azeem.
PD: When I'm writing something I like to collect ideas and I will look at history. I have a great book called ‘Timelines of History' and I'll look at 100 years before the story will be set to try and get a sense of what was going on before. I actually met with Beowulf experts, that is actually where the idea for the witch came from because it was traditional in the concourse of story construction for that period. Also there was a lot of knowledge being held in the Arabic world. The King of Germany had an Arabic doctor in his court. Arabs were known for Astronomy and actually having caesareans on horses and so those things had a bearing on it.
The idea of having sophisticated and intelligent people contributed to the ragged ass English scrubbers, it had an appeal to it. I also had a talk with a friend who was running the research department at Warner Bros. and asked what was it about Batman the movie that made that a success and he said we had researched the Batman TV series and people thought it was frivolous and stupid so we created this thing called The Dark Knight and the whole idea was to divorce the audience from that previous image and to take them on to a new fresh journey. That's why I started the movie in a Arabic prison with a man about to have his arm chopped off. I wanted to take away that percentage of people that would see this as the same old Robin Hood if we had started the story in England.
JW: That inspiration carried on into the movie itself. I remember one day in Burnham Beeches, there was Morgan (Freeman) in his magnificent robes, this tall charismatic character surrounded by a group of extras who were playing peasants in their rags. They were all complaining on how cold and wet they were and not getting paid enough, then Morgan said ‘Do you know how lucky you are to be here, thousands of people would give their eyes and teeth to be working on a movie about Robin Hood, lets celebrate!' they all said ‘yes I guess you're right'.
PD: I honestly find it humbling and a bit surprising that our movie is still alive. There's been two other Robin Hoods since our film. When people ask what I might be known for, that's the movie I mention even though John and I have done 16 movies and 200 hours of television and all the body work we did in Canada, that film breaks barriers, there's hardly anyone who hasn't seen it. I think that's a wonderful life tribute to have.
KH: The latest two other Robin Hood films haven't hit the right notes. There's something special about Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.
PD: John was much more involved the physical production which was gruelling. We should also acknowledge that (Kevin) Costner is the reason the movie works. He elected to join our Robin Hood. When the studios passed on my pitch we thought this was a dead script but we finished anyway. Costner had read our script and had been given other Robin Hood projects but then ours sold in a bidding war. His commitment to the movie and to promote it and that performance was the reason the movie was really a success. We created it and brought it to life but it lives on that screen through him not us.
JW: He's a true movie star, it takes an actor like that to make a movie like this work.
PD: We wanted to do Robin Hood because we were passionate about it. When we sold the script, John moved into the offices of the company so that he could be there every day moving the project along to get it to beat the other ones that had come out of the woodwork. Nobody wanted a Robin Hood now there's two others now. We made it because John invested his heart and soul into it, we had passion to fight for it and cared about it and took emotional risks and proudly so.
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is now available on Limited Edition 4K & Blu-ray from Arrow Video
