Script’s Archives: Spec Script Spotlight with Graham Moore, on the Sale of “The Imitation Game”

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Originally published in Script's January/February 2012 issue.

When I first read about screenwriter
Graham Moore’s first spec sale, The
Imitation Game, it wasn’t the first
time I’d heard the title. Earlier that
night I had done a webinar for Final Draft,
Inc. with WME agent Cliff Roberts (who
does not represent Moore) who explained
to the webinar participants that the hottest
script in Hollywood on this very day was
one called The Imitation Game. It had been
described by many as one of the best scripts
they’d read in a long time. Sure enough, later
that evening the news broke—it had sold to
Warner Bros. for seven figures and carried
with it the interest of one of the only stars in
Hollywood who needs only one name: Leo.
Yet, while I’d heard about the script, I’d never
heard about the writer. Some quick research
told the story of a guy who is just at the very
beginning of his career. Then, I read the script
and had lunch with him ... revealing a much
cooler story.

Jump back in time about eight years and
you’ll find Graham Moore living in New York
City, nearing his graduation from Columbia
University. He’d never really dreamed of writing
a screenplay, but his childhood best friend
had recently made a NYU student thesis
film that had received some attention. Like
college kids tend to do, they were drinking
on a fate-filled night: “I lost a drunken bet to
my friend Ben Epstein who I’ve known since
we were six. We went out drinking, and you
know how you say the same joke over and
over throughout the night and somehow it
keeps getting funnier?” The joke that night
was about writing a script together, but from
that point forward, the joke was over. “The
next day we were talking and said, ‘So, do
you actually want to write a movie together?’
[In doing so,] he taught me and showed me
everything.”

The two friends wrote a number of scripts
together. They’d secured representation early
on, because of Ben’s short film, but had since
moved on to a new manager, Tom Drumm
at The Safran Company. As Moore recalls,
Drumm’s dedication to Moore and then partner
Epstein was indeed life-changing. “We
were living in New York and had just written
a spec that didn’t sell ... our fifth or sixth. I
felt so dejected and thought that there is no
way I’m going to be a professional writer. I
said, you know what, sometimes it works and
sometimes it just doesn’t.” It’s a familiar feeling
for just about any emerging writer and, too
often, the end of many potential-filled careers.

[Script Extra: Surviving a Screenwriting Career - Hope vs. Faith]

“I called my manager and told him I was
going to do something else with my life,”
admits Moore, “I can’t keep handling this,
I can’t keep going through this rejection.”
What Drumm did next deserves much praise:
“Graham and Ben had come super-close to
selling their feature that we worked together
on, The Confessions of a High School Secret
Agent, while still in New York. It was painfully
close. I wanted them to move to L.A.
but Graham had a job offer in Washington,
D.C.,” recalls Drumm. “I vividly remember
my meeting with Graham where I started it
off by telling him that he ‘wasn’t allowed’ to
take the D.C. job. I told him he would always
wonder ‘What if?’ unless he gave Hollywood
a chance.”

Moore remembers well how he got that
chance. “[Drumm] said, ‘I love you and
believe in you, but you need to come to L.A.
and live here a little while. I guarantee if
you come to L.A., I can get you a job in two
months and a career in six.’ He actually, and
I say this with pride, personally loaned me
the money to move out here, and I lived in
his apartment for a week when he went out
of town. He really cared and believed in us.
He got us our first job in seven weeks and
got us our first rewrite job in seven months ...
took him a little longer than planned,” Moore
jokes. “I’ve been very lucky to have people
around who, even when things weren’t going
well, believed in us.”

Moore wrote The Imitation Game without
his best friend and writing partner. It was a
passion project for him from the beginning,
but again, one he couldn’t have done without
help from some friends. He was having dinner
with his friend Nora Grossman, who is
a former executive at DreamWorks Television.
Grossman told him about a book that
she and another friend, Ido Ostrowsky, had
recently pooled their own money to buy the
rights to. Moore, a self-proclaimed lifelong
computer science nerd, didn’t need the
explanation from his friend regarding what
the story was about, he just needed to hear
the name: Alan Turing. As Moore admits, “I
flipped out and launched into this 15-minute
speech about why I wanted to write it.
A few days later, she agreed.” He spent the
next four to five months researching, then
another six months writing, all done very
closely with his friends and producers. “They
are among the unsung heroes of this process.
Part of this feels a little unfair that I’m getting all the credit, because they worked so hard.
We talked every day and about the difficult
stuff to figure out in the story. It’s based on a
600-plus-page biography, and then I read another
half-dozen other biographies to prepare
for it. There was a lot to get through. A lot of
information to figure out.”

[Script Extra: A Starter Guide to Researching World-of-Story]

For those who aren’t aware, Alan Turing is
the British mathematician who was responsible
for creating the machine that helped
crack the coding of the Germans’ war orders
during World War II. He was also a homosexual.
Years after his suicide, brought on in
large part by the mental anguish caused by
his high-stress position and the inability of
the society of the time to accept his sexuality,
the machine he created that ended the war
became the platform for the very machine I’m
writing this article on ... the very one you and
Moore write your screenplays on. Of course,
I mean the computer. For Moore, who not
only loves computers but also has a love affair
with history, this was the project he wanted
more than anything. “This was the thing
that I cared about the most. It was the story
that everyone told me not to do.” When he
says everyone, he means everyone, including
Drumm. “When I first said I was going to do
it, my manager spent half an hour begging
and pleading with me not to. I said, ‘Thank
you, I appreciate it. You’re right and I see why
this is a bad idea on every level, but I’m going
to do it anyway.’ And God bless him, he said,
‘Okay, how can I help?’ He’s been wonderful
ever since, and now we laugh about it.” They
laugh about it because the script sold for, as
Moore notes, “a truck full of money.”

I asked Moore how he had found out that
the deal for one of the biggest spec sales in
recent memory had closed. “I found out the
deal closed about an hour before it went out
on Deadline.com,” nods Moore as we joke
about how quickly Nikki Finke and her team
capture the stories of these deals, but Moore
had an idea it was getting close. “We had sort
of agreed that Warner Bros. was where we
wanted to do this and then it was a question
of making the deal work.” And when Moore’s
lawyer told him what the agreed-upon amount
would be, he could only muster a few shocked
and confused words, “Are they sure?”

It should be mentioned that Moore is more
than a screenwriter. Although he’d written
about a dozen specs before The Imitation
Game, he’s also an accomplished author. His
debut novel The Sherlockian has received rave
reviews from various outlets, including The
New York Times. He had been nearing completion
of a second novel before this latest sale. (Editor's Update: Moore not only completed his second novel, he is now a New York Times bestselling author.)

Moore’s writing habits vary, which is on
purpose, sort of like a gym rat who changes
up his workout. “[My habits] keep changing.
Whatever will trick me into working. The
hardest thing about writing is actually writing.”

Moore likes detailed outlines to start from,
but, as he explains, he uses them just as a
“safety net” of sorts. “I write really detailed,
20- to 30-page outlines and then put them in
a drawer and never look at them again. But,
if I get stuck or lost, I can pull them out.
They’re like the bumper in the bowling lanes.
They steer you back in the right direction,
but they don’t really resemble the movie at all.
They’re like a cheat sheet.”

What comes next for Moore is as much a
mystery to him as it is to us. He will complete
his second novel and continue fielding the
many biopic opportunities being sent his way.
At press time, The Imitation Game does not
officially have Leonardo DiCaprio attached
to star and Ron Howard attached to direct,
but those are the people putting themselves in
line for the respective jobs, so the promise of
this project reaching the silver screen is good.
Early buzz about the script is that it will be
Oscar®-worthy as a film. Of course, so much
must go well for that to be realized; but having
read many great scripts from Oscar®-winning
scribes, from this journalist’s perspective,
Graham Moore may want to go get fitted for
a tuxedo sooner rather than later.

More articles by Zack Gutin

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