Picture used in header of David used with permission. Taken by Oliver Chien from Asia Pacific Arts

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Interview by: Amanda Mack

David Hayter needs no introduction in the gaming world. He’s the voice of possibly the most iconic and legendary character in video games today: Metal Gear Solid’s anti-hero, Solid Snake. As Snake and even Big Boss in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, David’s gravelly and gruff vocals have entered the ears of millions of gamers around the world and has easily made him a bonafide god to anyone who’s ever picked up a controller to play them. But, what you might not know as you’re watching the breathtaking trailer for Watchmen in theaters right now, pre-The Dark Knight extravaganza, is that David’s touch is in that as well. As a screenwriter.

Watchmen isn’t David’s first dive into the world of screenwriting. Between the years of 2000 and 2003, David also had a hand in providing us with X-Men and X-Men 2, both of which are considered the best ones in the trilogy by fanboys and girls everywhere (including me).

On a personal note, getting the chance to interview David Hayter has completed the circle of my creativity. Without him, I would not be the writer I am today. Plain, simple, and true. Since about 2004, I’ve held David’s experiences and life up as inspiration in my own and in 2005, I got my first lessons as a real webmistress running a dot something with DavidHayter.net, a fansite I created and upkept with the most minimum of website savvy. Back then, if you would have told me that I’d be highlighting the second half of my 2008 by getting to talk to the man almost solely responsible for the huge shift in my writing process and technique, I would have shot you in the face with a Stinger missile and then laughed in it. No lie.

Via telephone, I got the honor to speak with David from LA about his excitement for Watchmen, a few of his visions for the Metal Gear Solid movie, getting “dumped”, and his future plans of becoming a rockstar.

Oh and yes, everytime David used the Snake voice, it was very similar to a religious experience on my end. Just sayin’…

Amanda Mack: You have a ton going on right now and without a doubt, the biggest thing has to be Watchmen. This has been a long time coming for you. You’ve been working on this since about 2001…right?

David Hayter: Yeah, that’s right. I think I actually first pitched it in December 2000. So, it’s been going on quite a while and as you know, the first trailers just came out with The Dark Knight and it’s really, really exciting and sort of surreal because I pictured those trailers very much as they presented them for many years. It’s very, very exciting.

AM: I’m excited myself! I cannot wait. I’m taking off days from work already to go see it. What’s the best part about finally seeing it materialized and going to the big screen?

DH: Well, it remains to be seen. I still have to see the movie but I think the best part is that it finally came together in the way that I’d always hoped it would which is with a truly visionary director who is a very pure fan of the book. It was very important to me that we make that novel into a film and not into some other thing as other people have tried to do in the past. So, the fact that it is coming together very close to what the book is really means everything to me. Plus, I also realized that despite the credit or the residuals, the best part for me is that when I build my really nice office for myself, I’ll get to put that blood splotched smiley face poster up on my wall and have it be my movie and I’m very, very excited about that.

AM: How would you explain the Watchmen comics and universe to someone who’s never really read them?

DH: [laughs] Well, with great difficulty because I had to do that for many, many different studio executives and they always tended to look at me blankly at best. The thing about Watchmen is now that it’s being made, I don’t really want to describe it to people. All I normally tell them is, “This is the best written graphic novel of all time” and I might discuss some of the scenes-the questioning of vigilante justice or the nature of man becoming God-but, I try to keep it pretty ambiguous in my descriptions because it’s such an amazing and unique story that I would rather people go into it with no idea what’s going to happen and just experience it.

AM: Fair enough. That’s fair enough.

DH: Why, do you need me to explain it you?

AM: No, no, no…that’s okay. [laughs]

DH: [laughs] Okay. You know what it is.

AM: Like I said earlier, the actual Watchmen movie has been a long time coming. It’s gone through production hell to put it lightly. Originally, it was all your script and it got shifted around to a few studios and when it got to Warner, they brought on Alex Tse and I think it’s pretty safe to say that he changed more than a few things in your original script. At this point, even after all the edits that it’s passed through, do you have any idea how much of your original vision survived all of the revising?

DH: There was a credit arbitration process and they sent me the shooting draft so, I was able to go through it and actually a lot of my original stuff is there…and keep in mind, Alex and I were both doing the same thing. We were both not writing our Watchmen scripts, we were writing Watchmen and trying to adapt that book as closely as possible. So, there are a number of things that I put in that are still in there that sort of support the story and move it from one place to the other and braves some of the concepts that I put in. But, there’s also a lot of stuff that Alex put in and I was really happy with the script and so, when it was time to write my letter to the arbitration committee, I said, “I think this is equal parts Alex and myself and I’m very proud to share credit with him and I think it was the exact right outcome.”

AM: Over the years as you’ve gotten older and more experienced, do you find your writing process has changed at all?

DH: Well, I’ve gotten a little slower.

[laughter]

DH: I’ve started to burn my brain out a little bit. But, my process is pretty much the same. I try to identify a story-whether it be an adaptation or original story-by its skeleton, sort of putting together the spine of the story…the basic act turns and the basic character arcs. Then, I turn that into a more flushed out treatment and then I give it to the producers and we go through it and then I turn it into an even better treatment and then I write the script. That’s really the only way I know how to do it. I’m sure other people have different techniques but I don’t know what they are.

AM: That’s really interesting that you said you had slowed down some because I was listening to an interview last night where you said that you punched out about eight pages a day.

DH: I can still do that though that’s really the peak of my output. I mean, after that, the words start to get fuzzy on the page. I do less now because I think it’s easier. I probably do about five pages per day on average, which may not sound like a lot but it’s a lot. That’s a good two full scenes and that takes a lot of tweaking and rewriting and readjusting the script as I go. That seems to be a pretty good pace for me and I’m able to still get a good two or three scripts done in a year if I need to.

AM: Are you picky at all about the atmosphere when you’re writing? Like…how quiet the room has to be or anything like that?

DH: Yes… well, Stephen King said that to write properly, you need a locked door. You just need no distractions and you need to be able to be alone with it. What people don’t realize is you sit down for forty minutes to start working and it takes you that time to really sort of warm up your brain and really get into the process. If someone comes and distracts you for five minutes, says “Oh, there’s this phone call” and you talk for five minutes, it didn’t set you back five minutes…it really set you back to the beginning of that initial forty minutes. It is best to work, I think, alone and undistracted. However, when I was working on Watchmen in England with Paul Greengrass, I was in this hotel room for months on end working on the script and it just got so miserable and boring that I’d go down to Starbucks or something and put my feet up and put on some headphones so people wouldn’t bother me. But, just to be around human contact while I was writing was kinda helpful in that event so, that was sort of an exception to my rule.

AM: I know being a writer completely changes the way you watch television and do just about anything but do you have any guilty pleasure TV shows or movies that you’re enjoying right now?

DH: No. I don’t watch a lot of scripted television for that exact reason. My wife watches Law & Order and I’ve gotten so good at examining the structure that just by looking at what they’re doing and seeing what time it is, I know who the killer is and whether it’s that person or whether it’s going to be a surprise person down the road. So, that kind of kills it for you. I did turn on Generation Kill the other day which looked pretty good so, I just set my DVR to record that. I just like things with really good writing so, when the Sopranos was on, I watch the Sopranos. I watched Battlestar Galactica. I don’t have any guilty pleasures. I’m not guilty about anything.

AM: [laughs]

DH: Don’t have any guilt in your life. That’s my motto.

AM: That’s great advice!

DH: Yeah…regret nothing.

AM: I know you presented a treatment for Metal Gear Solid (the movie) that was ultimately turned down and recently you’ve been picked up to adapt Lost Planet but is there any other game out there that you’d love to have a part in taking to the big screen?

DH: Well, there’s a lot of games that I love. I think Assassin’s Creed, for example, would make a great movie. I’d be interesting to see what could be done with a Grand Theft Auto movie, I suppose. In fact, I just went to my door and found another copy of the Lost Planet artwork book to inspire me. That’s the beauty of my job. People just drop off cool books on your doorstep.

AM: [laughs]

DH: But, I don’t know of any other games that I would want to adapt. I don’t really think of things that way. If I do see something that I like, I’ll hunt down the rights and figure out who’s got it and then see if we can turn it into a project. For the most part, I’m pretty busy. I’m sort of booked up a couple years in advance and so it’s usually the other way around. When somebody has the rights to something, they’ll call me up and ask me to come in and if I’m interested, we’ll discuss setting it up.

AM: Now, I want to get into talking about Metal Gear Solid 4 for a minute…

DH: [in Solid Snake's voice] Me too!

AM: [laughs, dorks out] Oh gosh! Now, for my own perverse curiosity…collectively, how many hours of coughing, hacking, and gagging do you think you did for that game?

DH: I don’t know. It was absolutely brutal. I literally just last night played through the part where he goes through the microwaves and he’s just absolutely at the end of his life, essentially, and it made me ill just listening to it. People ask me, “Well, do they have a library of you just grunting and barfing and getting shot or whatever” and the answer is no. We do all of that stuff fresh every single time. I don’t know how many hours. Straight, I couldn’t even tell you…ten, twenty? We recorded that game from February to October of last year to give you an idea how long the entire game took. And out of that, just the horrible hacking and wheezing…

What they’ll do…actually, this is an exclusive for you. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this but I get the hiccups if I do too many strike sounds. So, Kris Zimmerman, who’s the English voice director for all the Metal Gears so far, keeps all the really brutal, physical stuff until the end of each session. So, we’ll go through and do three and a half hours of voicing and a half an hour of just…getting punched or barfing or getting electrocuted.

AM: …which I know you personally hate. The vomiting and the electrocution.

DH: I don’t hate it! That’s not true. I appreciate it because I feel like some of the great heroes that I loved when I was growing up like… Harrison Ford, for example, or Mel Gibson in the Lethal Weapon movies, these guys knew that it’s not just about being tough, per se, it’s about illustrating the amount of pain that the character can go through that makes him heroic. Where as Schwarznegger was sort of an action hero who was Teflon, things couldn’t really seem to hurt him, Harrison Ford would get beaten up and show it. You’d see that pain on his face. I think it was really important to see how human Snake is. That’s a big part of making it real for people and so, I do appreciate that but that is the one part that is really tough on my body and on my voice.

AM: I have to say Metal Gear Solid 4 is such a beautiful and amazing game.

DH: Oh, thanks. I didn’t create it but I tend to agree. It’s pretty amazing. It’s astounding what they did.

AM: It really is…and you, Quinton [Flynn, who voices Raiden], and Christopher [Randolph, who voices Otacon] all owe me boxes of Kleenex.

DH: [laughs]

AM: Christopher, maybe he owes me two…

DH: I know! It’s sad, eh,…everything that happens to Raiden and Otacon. Although, I don’t understand, and I’ll probably get in trouble for this as well, but I don’t understand why Otacon was so worked up over Naomi who all she ever did was inject people with FoxDie and screw people over and she sort of brushes his hand once and then he’s all busted up over her dying. I really didn’t understand that.

AM: You know, me either…and I think it was just one of those things I didn’t understand along with, and I hope I’m not being too spoilerific here but, the whole Meryl and Johnny hook up.

DH: Oh my God…and that made me mad! I had to watch that whole thing and I’m like, “Oh yeah, great…while I’m getting microwaved? Thanks!”

AM: [laughs] Yeah, exactly! It was complete bullshit to me. That’s just my opinion. I’m very happy you agree. For a minute, I thought it was only me ’cause people were kind of embracing it and I’m like, “What are you doing? This isn’t right!”

DH: Well, it is funny in that this guy with the chronic diarrhea has been around for all this time and he ends up falling for Meryl but the fact that she would throw me over for him is a little shallow, I think. C’est la vie. Snake wasn’t meant to last anyway, so…

AM: Yeah. Sad, but true. Now, you’re probably not a very shy person but do you find that process and atmosphere of doing voice acting intimidating at all?

DH: No. When you do a movie, like a live action movie, that-and that doesn’t intimidate me either-but that can be more intimidating for people because you got hundreds of people watching you, you have to step into the light, everything’s focused on you, and you really have to carry it off. And anything you screw up is going to cost them tens of thousands of dollars in reset time. Doing voice over is a great job. You go into the booth, everybody’s really nice…with very few exceptions. Especially doing Metal Gear. I’ve known all these people for 10 years and we just have a great time. Plus, I’ve been playing the character for so long, I have a grip on how I like to play him. So Kris, the English voice director, and I barely speak anymore. She just goes, “Um…could you give it…could you make it more Snakey?” and I go, [in Solid Snake's voice] “You got it!” and off we go.

AM: There’s no doubt in my mind that Solid Snake is a apart of you after voicing him for 10 years. Have you ever found yourself saying or doing things that you thought Snake might?

DH: Yeah…well, I found that as I get older, the voice tends to creep in a little more in my daily life. I try not to act like him because that’ll really get you in trouble but he and I do have similar personalities in many ways. Yeah, I think I’m slowly becoming Solid Snake in my real life.

AM: [laughs] That’s fantastic, cause…I was actually gonna ask too how do you think Solid Snake would translate to real life? Not in a movie sense but in an actual human being living his life…

DH: Well, I think he’d be like he is. There are those guys out there…these Special Forces guys. And being in the Special Forces is primarily a young man’s game so, you train these guys to fight and kill and do all of these extraordinary things and they have these amazing adventures. I have a good friend who’s an Army ranger who’s been through all this stuff and I think afterwards, there’s this strange sense of having seen a side of the world that most people don’t get to see, that people don’t want to see, and sort of being saddled with that knowledge and the knowledge that people don’t really understand you. So I think for the most part, those guys tend-I mean, I don’t want to generalize. I’m just talking here-but they tend to live their lives quietly and calmly. Or, they go crazy and fall apart. That’s your other option.

I think it’s very what Mr. Kojima did with him by send him out to Alaska and saying “Okay, I’m gonna retire him.” I think that’s a very true sort of assessment of what happens to that Special Forces personality type.

AM: For the Metal Gear Solid movie, do you have a director that you’d personally like to see attached to it?

DH: Oh, I don’t know. Somebody good. I’d just like to see it done well. If I’m not working on it, then I don’t care who [laughs]… That’s not true. I’d love to see Bryan Singer [X-Men, X-Men 2, The Usual Suspects] do it. All I can think of are the guys I love…like Jim Cameron [Titanic, Terminator franchise]. I’d like to see Zack [Snyder, Watchmen, 300] take a shot at it. And that’s an interested idea: Zack Snyder, Metal Gear Solid. Something that is real and shot in camera but shot in a stylized fashion would be sort of interesting to me ’cause I think Snake needs to remain in a somewhat heightened world. I think the danger of a movie like that is if you put it in too real of a world, then you’re sort of making another Rambo or just a typical war movie and we don’t really need that.

AM: I know that the Metal Gear Solid storyline would need some reworking to successfully translate into a movie but is there any scene or moment from the series that you could see staying as is and translating perfectly into live action?

DH: Well, if I were going to do it, I would take the scenes and the sequences and keep them as close as possible. The version I was pitching was really centered on Shadow Moses Island, really taking from the first Metal Gear Solid. So, I would want to keep that stuff but you know, games are so much longer than a movie. Your average movie scene, you’ve only got two and a half to three minutes and…there don’t seem to be a lot of scenes in Metal Gear that take two and a half minutes. So, I do think there would be a lot of translation to do. Not to mention the fact that with the exception of Watchmen, because Watchmen is so well written, I don’t think you ever want to go too much into a direct translation of a Metal Gear, for example. Because as fans, we’ve all seen those scenes. I think what you do is you try to give the same essence of the game but take it to a new level, hit people with new surprises and then that way, even the fans have something to look forward to.

AM: So, again for my own perverse curiosity here, is there any weapon from the series you wish you could own?

DH: Yeah, I wish I could own all of them! I’d like the stun knife for when I’m waiting in line for groceries. The sleep gas mines, those are pretty cool. The weapons are amazing and his [Kojima] research into those weapons is amazing. I’d take any of them. I have a 4-year-old daughter so it’s dangerous to keep, like, a bazooka around but…it sure is fun!

AM: As you know, I talked to Christopher Randolph earlier this year and he easily admitted that you’re probably the cast member with the most Metal Gear Solid related items, um-

DH: [laughs] Yeah, he said that! I’m not sure where that came from.

AM: [laughs] I know you have a lot so, I’m not going to ask you to list everything but, do you have one in particular that you’re especially fond of?

DH: Well, the interview with Christopher sort of made it sound like I was out buying Metal Gear items and that’s not what happens. What happens is people give me this stuff and Mr. Kojima has given me many things over the years, which I cherish immensely. I have a box of CalorieMate sitting up on my shelf from Mr. Kojima. I have a model of the Shagohod that he gave me. He also sent me a pewter statue of Solid Snake pointing the SOCOM pistol with his bandana flying that I had on my desk at Universal for a long time…until they kicked me out. I got a lot of stuff but really, either fans gave me these things or Mr. Kojima did. They all mean something to me. The whole experience has just been so great. You know when I became a writer, I was kind of sad that I was giving up acting because I love acting but being a writer is a marginally more satisfying career for a lot of reasons and because of Metal Gear, I get to keep doing it and in a very cool way. And so, all that stuff means a lot to me but I don’t go out and buy a lot of merchandise.

AM: You’ve acted, directed, written, produced. Is there any other achievement you’d like to see added to your resume?

DH: Well, I’m picking up the guitar. I keep threatening all my friends that when I turn 40, I’m gonna start a rock band and add rockstar to my list but that’s probably not likely to happen in reality. You know, it’s really not about adding titles to my career…it’s just a matter of doing what I think is fun. And there are some movies where I get to come in or some projects that I get to come in as a producer and that’s really fun. And there’s some where I get to write it from the ground up, that’s great. I’m really focused on directing right now and I’d like to make a name for myself in that arena and from then on, it’s all gravy. I don’t know what I’ll do after that. Maybe I’ll retire.

AM: I love that you mentioned the guitar thing ’cause I heard-a little bird told me-that you picked up one about nine months ago…

DH: Yeah, how’d you know that? [In the Solid Snake's voice] How’d you know that?!

AM: [laughs] A little birdie told me! No, actually, you said it in one of the last interviews you did.

DH: Oh, I did.

AM: Yeah…and I was kind of wondering have you kind of ventured into song writing yet or are you still just trying to learn everything?

DH: Well, it’s funny. This short film that I directed, I’m waiting on my composer to start putting together the score but he’s very busy and so it occurred to me the other day that I could essentially write out what I want on the guitar and take the basic chord progressions and take them to him and he can develop them into richer scores. I thought about it a little bit but as I said, it’s only been about nine months. I play enthusiastically if not terribly well.

AM: Well, I’d still like to hear some one day so…

DH: Alright. I’ll pick up my guitar.

[Note: I was not expecting David to actually start playing his guitar! How awesome, right?]

DH: I have a spectacular Gibson Les Paul.

[David strums a few chords into the receiver of the phone. It's a quick yet nice display of his budding guitar skills.]

DH: Alright, that’s a little bit of back and forth on the guitar. If I do too much, it’ll get out on the Internet and everyone’ll make fun of me.

AM: Oh, I don’t think so. I think people are somewhat afraid of you since you’re, you know, the voice of Solid Snake.

DH: Yeah and I’m mean, too! People don’t understand cause I’m really nice when you meet me but, boy, they write something nasty about me and you get a big face full of Dave.

AM: I know, such a jerk. They should have heard you before the interview started…

[Laughter]

***

Note: I didn’t think I’d ever have to do this but for any future misconceptions that may arise from the last part of the interview, David and I were kidding around. He was absolutely ace and a pleasure to talk to.