Eric Roth's Advice on Screenwriting: The Man Behind Forrest Gump, Dune, and A Star Is Born

Eric Roth wrote Forrest Gump, The Insider, Munich, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Star Is Born, Dune, and Killers of the Flower Moon. Seven Oscar nominations. One win. He has worked with Spielberg, Fincher, Scorsese, and Villeneuve.

His writing advice comes from David Perell's "How I Write" podcast, No Film School, ScreenCraft, and various interviews.

Start from Page One Every Day

Roth reads his entire screenplay from page one every single day. Not from where he left off. From the beginning.

He calls this "erosion." Like a river shoring up what is falling down. "If there are things that need to be fixed and backfilled like dirt piled back up, I could see that. I see mistakes."

By the time he finishes a first draft, he has passed through every scene dozens of times. "When I'm done with my first draft, I think I've covered it pretty much. And then of course after you read it you hate it and then you say why did I bother doing this."

He is "living the material" rather than approaching it cold each morning. Roth does not care about speed. He cares about the feeling of life in every scene.

The Adventure of Creating Something New

Roth has never had writer's block. "I love that I get to write. Every day is kind of an adventure."

The difficulty comes in revision, when the adventure is over and the work becomes labor. "You've had the adventure of trying to create something new. So now you're just trying to improve what you've already written, which is fine, but it doesn't feel so adventurous."

He is not filling in an outline. He is exploring. He knows the beginning and the end. The middle is "a great big blob." He discovers it scene by scene, letting the characters surprise him.

His outline method: five scenes described in one word each. "Wedding, shootout, whatever." Enough structure to move forward without killing the adventure.

Subtext Over Text

"The great writers know how to write subtextually. They don't write what's literal. They'll say it in a metaphor or in some other way that's saying the exact same thing."

Instead of having a character say "I'm upset with my mother," have them describe a dream. The dream carries the emotion without stating it. You get multiple layers: the information itself, a life lesson embedded in metaphor, and surprise.

The worst line of exposition he ever heard: "Good morning, Mr. Water Commissioner."

He learned from Carl Foreman's High Noon. A judge tells Gary Cooper's character about something that happened in ancient Athens. He is not talking about the current crisis. He is talking about Athens. But every word applies to what is about to unfold.

"It's tricky. It's just tricky, but it's much better than two brothers exchanging information that they both know."

True to the Psychology of the Character

"What makes this person tick? Why are they neurotic or why are they giddy or why are they quiet or what makes them angry?"

Michael Cimino gave Mickey Rourke a wallet filled with details about the character's life for Year of the Dragon: a picture of a supposed daughter, an old phone number, a saying. "Mickey Rourke never looked at the wallet." But he knew it was in his back pocket. The aggregate of those details forms a life.

For Forrest Gump, the psychology came from Roth's own life. "It was as much about me looking back on my life from that point, which when I was probably 50. What had passed." He heard Gump's voice and knew the character: someone who loved three things. His mother. His girl Jenny. And something like God in America.

Bubba's shrimp monologue came from a vacation house in Canada. Roth said to his family, "Give me shrimp dishes." They yelled out every preparation they could think of. He typed them as they came. "We eventually ran out."

Theme Drives Everything

When a scene feels inert, Roth returns to the theme. "What's the movie literally about? It's not a story. This is something else. This is about what you're trying to say."

You need "more than a good story. You have to have some thematic backbone about what you're trying to say." For Forrest Gump, the theme was time, memory, and looking back at the passage of life. For Benjamin Button, aging and the cruelty of time running in the wrong direction. Both films share emotional DNA because Roth returns to the same well.

"Time is of the essence in a way. And memories and remembrances."

God Is in the Details

Roth researches obsessively. Before the internet, he had sheds in his backyard filled with research books.

For Benjamin Button, he found the Darwin Awards and pulled characters from real stories: a man struck by lightning seven times, a tugboat captain. He tracked down a man in Massachusetts who made tugboats and learned everything about how they worked. Then verified whether a tugboat had ever collided with a submarine in World War II. One had.

He made Daisy a ballet dancer because his ex-wife loved ballet. That led to Balanchine, to the sliding doors sequence, to the entire arc of her life transformed by one moment. "One thing sort of starts going on top of another."

The loss of both his parents during writing infused Benjamin Button with real grief. "I was affected by that and I said, how can I somehow translate this to the audience?" Fincher, who had lost his own father, "bent over backwards to try to make this work."

Emotion Is the Standard

A friend told Roth, "There's two movies that just make me weep every time. Gump and Benjamin Button." The same writer wrote both.

"In everything I write, I try to give some human quality to it that will make people feel something." Even A Star Is Born, which he calls "melodramatic at some point." The whole audience was sobbing. "Maybe it's kind of a cheap sob because the guy's committed suicide. But it's an emotional thing."

Elvis Mitchell told Roth that all his movies are about loneliness. Roth thinks that is true. "I'm not sure I'm that lonely, but I don't like being alone."

Find Your Home

A good opening makes the audience feel like they have found a home. Not necessarily a comfortable one. But a place they are willing to live for two hours.

The feather at the beginning of Forrest Gump: "A lot of this is true. And we see a feather lighter than air, floating, like time passing, slowly floating by." The cadence of the sentence matches the cadence of the scene. You settle in.

He wanted to end Forrest Gump with obituaries from various newspapers for all the characters, giving each one a complete life beyond the movie. Fincher decided against it, but the impulse reveals Roth's priorities. He wants you to feel you have experienced whole lives, not just watched a story.

Key Takeaways

• Start from page one every day. Erosion catches what cold revision misses.
• The middle is a mystery. Know your beginning and ending, then discover the rest.
• Master subtext. Use metaphor and indirection instead of stating things literally.
• Build characters from psychology outward. Know their backstory, neuroses, and triggers.
• Let theme drive every scene. When a scene feels dead, reconnect it to your central question.
• Research obsessively. God is in the details.
• Write for emotion. If it moves you, it may move the audience.
• Create a home. Your opening should make readers willing to stay.

Subtext, character psychology, and thematic depth require discipline, not sentimentality. The feeling has to come first. No algorithm generates the shrimp monologue.

Sources: Roth's How I Write episode, No Film School, ScreenCraft, and The Talks. Athens is an AI writing editor.