By Jay A. Fernandez

The rare female screenwriter working in non-romantic comedy genres, Læta Kalogridis has had her hands on a diverse array of scripts in the past 15 years — “Scream 3,” “Tomb Raider,” “Wonder Woman,” “Something Wicked This Way Comes,” “Night Watch,” and “Alexander,” to name a few. Friday, Paramount releases the Martin Scorsese-directed “Shutter Island,” her adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s paranoia-soaked Cold War thriller. And this summer Fox will let loose its action tentpole “Knight and Day,” which Kalogridis co-wrote. She also served as an uncredited helper on James Cameron’s record-busting “Avatar.” Here, Kalogridis talks about the bloody inspiration in Greek myth, female superheroes and the appeal of the “unbelievably, incredibly, outrageously violent.”

How exactly do you pronounce your name?
It’s Læta, with the diphthong—it’s Latin, actually. If it were Greek it would be Lay-eta. But it’s Latin, so it’s like Caesar.

So your ethnic background is Greek?
On my father’s side.

What’s your mom?
My mom is sort of a mutt. Her “people” are from a little town called Social Circle, Georgia. They’re a little Irish, a little German, a little Native American, a little bit of everything.

Is Læta come from a family name?
It goes back to my great-grandfather, whose name was Lætus. And in every generation of that side of the family, there’s either a male or female named that. My mom’s named Læta, then there’s me, but I had no daughters – all boys.

Are any of them Lætus?
No, my husband put his foot down.

Where did you grow up?
In a little agro-business town in central Florida called Winter Haven.

It sounds like the spot for some sort of gothic drama.
[laughs] I think it’s more a spot for a Carl Hiaasen novel.

You graduated from the graduate program for screenwriting at UCLA?
Yes, although before that I went to the Texas Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Austin, the first year that it existed, when Mr. Michener was still alive. The first year he endowed the center I was one of the first fellows. I have a graduate degree in creative writing from UT Austin.

“Shutter Island” and “Alexander” have their share of violence. As a woman writer, what’s the appeal of writing about violence? How do you dig into that material?
First off, I’d say the thing that Kathryn Bigelow has been saying all over the place lately, which is that, it is a wonderful thing to be recognized as there being something great about being female and doing well in your field. But we all long for the day when that appellation has no significance. In my particular case, I have as long as I can remember been drawn to stories that externalize internal conflict in a very physical way. I think part of it comes from my grandfather, who was a Greek immigrant. When I was a kid, he did not read me fairy tales, he read me Greek myths. He gave me all these books. And by the way, the Brothers Grimm have absolutely nothing on the ancient Greeks in terms of wall-to-wall violence. Those were the stories of my childhood, those were my favorite stories. Something about the urgency that violence tends to bring to a narrative really appeals to me.

There’s that scene in “Shutter Island” between Ted Levine as the warden and Leo as Teddy Daniels. I don’t know if it’s straight from the novel, but the dialogue keeps escalating in its violence…
The scene does come from the novel. It was not the only scene with the warden in the novel. It’s the only real scene with the warden in the movie, however. Nothing violent is happening when the warden is talking to Teddy. The violence in that scene is not physical—it’s completely emotional. But nonetheless wholly horrific. Because as you’re watching him, you’re seeing the potential there that the words are illuminating. And it’s terrifying. “Could you stop me before I blinded you?” That is such a wonderful scene—and that is Dennis. I think that’s why I was drawn to Lehane’s work, because he does find that fulcrum in the human personality where you balance what is civilized and what is uncivilized—or for a better way to put it, what we consider to be societally acceptable and what is just unbelievably, incredibly, outrageously violent. He tells you so much about individual characters as well as overall narrative. Because it’s both things: This book and this story is about the microcosm of societal violence distilled down into this one man and his experience.

What was the most interesting piece of input or criticism that Scorsese gave you when you were working on this script?
[laughs] I’m trying to think of a specific thing he said, because it was honestly a bit more like the total approach—bringing all those movies to this, and as they were doing rehearsals where we were adjusting the script for the interactions between the actors as they started inhabiting the characters. This is a terrible thing to say, but he said the script felt so whole from the first time he read it, that it felt so much of a piece, that everything that we needed to do were these surgical small adjustments. And he was so protective of the story and complimentary of the way it was constructed. It was a really amazing experience to look at how much you can improve something in tiny ways, in surgical ways, not throwing the baby out with the bath water when something’s a little bit wrong. I think sometimes there is a micro-instinct to reorder things or throw out a whole scene. The macro instinct is: Get rid of that writer and get another writer. So the thing that was most profound that I took away from it was the way in which he digs with the writer and the actors to find it. There’s no easy, fast solution for him. He gets in and he’s committed and he does it. And maybe the right word is old-fashioned, but that’s not really how I think of it. The way he approaches moviemaking, there’s a really classic elegance to it. I think sometimes that’s often missing in our business now.

You alluded to this earlier, and this is the kind of question that may annoy you, but from my perspective one of the ways that you stand out is that you’re not working in the romantic comedy genre. You’re working with male directors who deal with violence in typically male genres like sci-fi and action—Oliver Stone, Martin Scorsese and Jim Cameron. Does it feel like that work stands out to you? That your position as a screenwriter in the industry is unique at all?
I have something of a schizophrenic response to that. As an undergraduate, my period of interest was Shakesperean, Jacobean/Elizabethan dramas. So consequently, I’m a little hyperaware within the field of scholarship of how—and actually within the field of the literary canon—of how hard it has been historically for women to establish themselves in certain genres of storytelling. Going all the way back to the 1500s, if not earlier, when women weren’t reading and writing. So given that I certainly consider myself the beneficiary of a centuries-long sisterhood that struggled not only for just basic rights and literacy, but also for the right to be taken seriously beyond your gender as a writer. I feel very, very strongly that those things can be taken for granted and that it’s something of a disservice to all the women who came before me to say that it doesn’t matter. Simultaneously, I feel like because of all of those women and all of the things they sacrificed, and because of men like Jim Cameron and Oliver Stone and Marty—who could give a damn what my gender is, they only care about the work—I think that it’s important to note that the work is the work and for the most part if people get hung up on your gender and think about that before they think about what’s on the page, it’s a great pity!

It’s almost like the industry works that way without being conscious about it.
My personal experience has always been—just to be really clear, I have never felt in any way looked at any differently because I was female. I’ve certainly in my life from childhood been regarded as odd. Especially growing up in the South because of what I was interested in. The things I was interested in were more stereotypically male. But that said, I also think that there’s an element of self-limitation occasionally that happens. One of the best things about working with Mr. Michener at UT was he pointed out to me once that the most important stories that you tell are the ones that you want to tell, not the ones that you think you’re supposed to tell. I do think sometimes artists and writers can make a pre-emptive decision about what it is they’re supposed to do. Which is something Virginia Woolf actually wrote about—having a little angel sitting on your shoulder saying, ‘Oh, don’t write something that’s too violent,’ ‘Don’t write something too dark,’ ‘Don’t write something that people won’t like.’ So yeah, I hope certainly that what I do will make other people, male and female, think less about gender in terms of product and more about whether or not it’s any good.

If you had just a few words each to differentiate the collaborative styles of Stone, Scorsese and Cameron, what would they be?
Oh, that’s really awful! [laughs] They’re so different!

I know—that’s why. I want to know how they’re different from your perspective.
I don’t know that I could actually do that here. If you did a long and involved conversation, you might be able to get somewhere close to it. But to try and narrow it down… I think in a weird way, the work speaks for itself in terms of their different interests, their different focus. It’s interesting you picked those three people, all three of whom tend to work over and over again with the same people, to not fire writers serially, to incur a kind of obsessive loyalty and are just the pinnacle of their crafts in a lot of ways. Mostly what I notice about them is what’s similar, not what’s different. And I’m tight with all of them.

Well, one day you’ll work with a really respected filmmaker…
…and I can feel like I’ve arrived?

On the other hand, you’ve worked on scripts involving Joan of Arc, Wonder Woman, Lara Croft, Bionic Woman, the ladies of Birds of Prey—these are all notable female icons, and many of them are tough sells in Hollywood…
Well, Wonder Women doesn’t appear to be on anybody’s schedule.

What’s the appeal there? Do you feel any of sense of being drawn to that kind of character because of its female-ness?
Something else I would actually to some degree credit Greek myth with and a Southern upbringing, in which strong women are very much a part of the culture itself. I find them equally interesting, men and women, in heroic stories. If you look at it from a Joseph Campbell perspective, which is deeply informed obviously by Greek myths, I feel like the journey of the hero is the journey of the hero and the gender is meaningless. And this is an interesting thing for me: People do make the distinction from a business perspective.

That’s what I’m getting at. Obviously, you’re right in the sense of drama itself, but in Hollywood that’s not the same thing as, What’s actually going to make it onto a screen?
It’s a difficult knot to untangle perception versus reality in terms of business. In other words, being in a position where you are someone who greenlights films believing that something can’t make money, and then being a creative person and being quite sure that something could, and it’s all so subjective that it’s not as easy as saying, ‘Well, only movies of one kind can be profitable,’ ‘Only movies cast with this sort of person can be profitable’—every single time someone says that the movie will come along that hops out of that box.

But you know you’re working from the get-go with a little bit of a disadvantage with a female lead, don’t you think?
It depends totally on the property, on the talent specifically, who are you talking about casting in that part, and on the filmmaker. I would certainly call “Avatar” pretty straight up a two-hander. You can’t look at that film and feel like we didn’t make a commercial film! It’s weird, I understand what you’re saying, which is the idea that there’s some disadvantage to female leads.

It’s really a question to you. I’m not in these meetings. It sounds like you’re saying…
It’s a one-off thing. It’s case by case. And that’s the good and the bad of it. When you look at the world that we live in now in terms of branding being the single biggest issue that people consider in making tentpole films, that’s why “Tomb Raider” was a makeable movie. As ridiculous as it sounds, it’s not as much a question of gender as it is a question of source material and whatever risk that source material can [mitigate]. That has become a much larger issue than gender within the kind of tentpole franchises that we’re talking about—science fiction and action films.

Will there ever be a true superhero movie for women, or girls? And what will that look like?
I feel like Wonder Woman is a fantastic superhero movie that should be made. It’s the last great first-tier unexploited property. You have Spider-Man, you have Batman, you have Superman and you have Wonder Woman—those are the big first-tier properties to my mind. There’s only one of them that doesn’t have a movie. So, if I were picking a female-lead superhero story, that would be the one that I think would make the best and most commercial movie with the most cross-over. But I would distinguish that from the idea of a “woman’s superhero movie.” In a perfect world, great superhero movies speak to boys and girls. You’re angling for that place where we think about it first as a movie and second as a girl movie or a boy movie. I don’t consider “Spider-Man” a boys’ movie at all. I don’t really think of “X-Men” as a boys’ movie. To me, there’re really good superhero movies and not-so-good superhero movies.

In the last ten years, things like “Elektra” or “Catwoman,” they tend to be…
“Elektra” and “Catwoman”—I think I should just point this out, because people often use them as examples to me—those are not superhero movies. Those are anti-hero movies. Both Elektra and Catwoman are villains. Which is interesting, because people lump them in, and I’m always surprised by that.

It shows my ignorance of comics.
No, an anti-hero story is very different than a hero story by nature. And also, it’s worth bearing in mind that Catwoman itself as a story abandoned the comic source material all together. It had no relationship to the Batman world. In terms of the universe in which Catwoman exists as Selina Kyle, it’s always been very much a story that involved Batman. And by not going that direction in some ways I think even calling it “Catwoman” was something of a misstep.

Do you have a comics collection?
[laughs] Yes, I have a couple of closets.

How many are we talking?
I haven’t counted them. You know they make those storage boxes that you can keep your comics upright in the plastic sleeves? I have two closets full of those. They’re your regular, normal closets.

How did you get involved with the “Avatar” script? How long did you work on it, and what did you contribute?
I have worked with Jim for a little over eight years now, and we have written a couple of other scripts together. And when he was working on “Avatar,” as he said at one point, I sort of dug myself in like a tick. And I don’t know, in a way that I think writers often do when you’ve spent a lot of time together and worked on a lot of things together, I just got pulled in. There was stuff that we bounced off each other and things that I hope I was useful for. The process went on for a long time—the movie went on for a long time! Unfortunately, I missed the live-action shooting in New Zealand because of the strike, which was a total bummer.

So you were working with him on “The Dive” and “Battle Angel” before you became a backseat collaborator on “Avatar?”
Yes. Literally, I do think of myself as someone who is useful to Jim when he needs to throw stuff against the wall. And that’s what writers do—all of us do that. And before he’s anything else, he’s a writer. He’s a really tremendous writer.

I assume he bounced sequel or follow-up ideas off you. Do you think you’ll be involved with anything like that?
You’d have to call Jim to talk about anything to do with that.

“The Dive” and “Battle Angel” are both still set up at Fox, right?
Mm-hm. To the best of my knowledge.

Obviously, the guy works very deliberately. Is it exciting or crazy-making or both knowing you’ll work on these things and it could take 10-12-20 years to see it on screen?
Oh, it’s exciting. Because you may wait ten years, but what you will eventually see will be something amazing, or something that no one else could have done. And I learn so much all the time from the people I work with—one of the really huge benefits of working with visionary directors. There is no film school that could be anything close to what you learn from hanging out with these people and working with them.

What was your involvement with the script for what’s now being called “Knight and Day?”
I came on when Scott Frank had to step off for a little while because he was working on another picture. I stayed on for a month and a half or two months, up through the picture being greenlighted and Tom coming on board. I did some work with Jim and the actors. But then I had to go on vacation with my mother and my stepdad and my kids and my best friend from college—I basically had to leave town for a trip that I had been planning for three years. [laughs]

At that point was it a relief or was it a drag that you had to leave the project?
It was a bummer to leave, because Mangold is a trip. Mangold is tremendous. Truly, again, I was learning so much. I had worked with Kathy Conrad ages ago on “Scream 3,” so part of it was I had this amazing comfort level with them—they’re just wonderful people. And it was fun, we were having a good time, I was sorry to have to go. But at that point the train was out of the station. I had so many obligations with so many people that I probably would have ended up divorced and disowned if I hadn’t gone. And then they brought Ted [Griffin] on for a little while, and then I think Scott came back for a bit, and then I think Ted again. I’m supposed to see a cut in a couple weeks.

They haven’t determined credits for that, or they have?
I don’t believe so.

It looks like Tom back in “fun Tom” mode.
Certainly working with him, even for the short time that I got to: amazing instincts. Really amazing instincts. Really fun.

You figure you don’t get to that stage without knowing a thing or two about what you need in your part.
The fascinating thing is he worries about the movie as a whole. It’s not about his part. It’s about the entirety of the film. He really is functioning as a creative producer. Very, very cool.

“Dune”—are you actively working on that?
No, I’m won’t be doing “Dune.” I was supposed to do it. But because I’m doing “Ghost in the Shell,” the overlap was too crazy.

So that’s the one you’re focusing on now.
Yeah.

Anything else I should know about that you’re working on?
[laughs] You know… there’s some other stuff that’s out there but nothing that’s official yet.

And what would those things be?
[long pause] Nothing official.

I know, I’m just breaking your balls. I’m just kidding.
[laughs]

Good talking to you. Hopefully I’ll run into you somewhere.
Well, it’s entirely possible that at some point I will leave the house. So it could happen.