Veteran Screenwriter Ed Solomon Relearned All the Rules for Steven Soderbergh’s Two-Hander ‘The Christophers’

The screenwriter talks about reuniting with director Steven Soderbergh for an entertaining two-hander written specifically for Ian McKellen and Michaela Coel — even though Solomon and Soderbergh had no idea if the actors would be available or willing.

The last time screenwriter Ed Solomon worked with director Steven Soderbergh, it was on the sprawling HBO series “Full Circle,” an ambitious ensemble piece that wove dozens of points of view into a dense, intricately plotted narrative. For their latest collaboration, “The Christophers,” Solomon and Soderbergh went in the opposite direction, moving from a six-episode epic with dozens of speaking roles to a 100-minute feature film that focuses almost entirely on two characters.

“Each project has its own rules and requirements, and this is something Steven and I talk about a lot,” Solomon told IndieWire. “So much of this job is not about applying what you learned from the last one, but dropping what you’ve learned — still keeping it in your toolkit — and looking at this new thing and asking, what does this one want to be? Sometimes it’s so baffling because nothing you’ve learned from past projects applies to the new one.”

That said, there are interesting connections between “Full Circle” and “The Christophers,” even if the projects initially appear to be polar opposites. “‘Full Circle’ required a whole world-build, but ‘The Christophers’ is also a world-build,” Solomon said. “It became a world-build in terms of building the inner lives of these people and exploring the journeys of their full lives and histories, even though you’re telling a story that takes place in the present day. The challenge on ‘Full Circle’ was to find the small and the personal in this big, interweaving world. And the challenge on ‘The Christophers’ was to take this very contained world and keep it from feeling small.”

Indeed, what’s remarkable about Solomon’s work on “The Christophers” is the way that it creates its own unique sense of scale, extrapolating entire histories and worlds from the conversations between a cranky aging artist (Ian McKellen) and the art restorer (Michaela Coel) his children have hired to finish his abandoned canvases. What begins as a sly crime film in which Coel’s character accepts a gig forging McKellen’s paintings without his knowledge evolves into a complex meditation on betrayal, art, and identity — and how they intersect with and are informed by talent, money, criticism, and more.

If this sounds overly intellectual or complicated, it must be said that above all else, “The Christophers” is wildly entertaining, a two-hander as funny and absorbing as it is heady. Solomon’s script is exquisitely crafted for maximum concision and clarity, with each line operating on multiple levels and each perspective both honored and satirized; the film has the razor-sharp incisiveness of one of Soderbergh hero Mike Nichols’ chamber pieces (“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?,” “Carnal Knowledge,” “Closer”), but pairs it with genuine affection toward the characters — even McKellen’s greedy kids, played hilariously by Jessica Gunning and James Corden.

Solomon attributes much of the film’s depth to an extensive rehearsal period during which he and Soderbergh went through the script line by line with McKellen and Coel. “It was incredibly special,” Solomon said. “Even if the movie had gotten shut down and the whole experience ended after that rehearsal process, it would have been worth it. To watch Sir Ian McKellen reading one line of dialogue, then discussing the subtext and speaking with Michaela about where she is at that moment before moving on to the next line…I felt like I was taking a master class at the deepest level from one of the greatest actors who ever lived.”

If the roles in “The Christophers” feel tailor-made for McKellen and Coel, that’s because they were; Solomon wrote the script purely on spec based on conversations he and Sodebergh had about the story, but he wrote it with McKellen and Coel in mind — even though he had never met either of them and had no idea if they would be available or willing. “Writing for very specific people is a very stupid thing to do,” Solomon said, but he and Soderbergh never had any conversations about a backup plan. “I don’t think either of us wanted to let the possibility that we wouldn’t get Ian or Michaela into our brain.”

Solomon and Soderbergh discussed the 1983 drama “The Dresser” as a film with limited characters and locations that they both admired. But for Solomon, working on “The Christophers” was less about looking to other movies than about creating a set of guiding principles. “When I start a movie, I ask, what are the rules?” Solomon said. “ We know we’re only going to have two characters with two supporting characters. We know we’re going to shoot in very limited locations. We know the tone of the film, we know the general trajectory of where these characters are going. Within those rules and limitations, there’s great freedom to explore.”

Another question Solomon asks himself early on in the writing process is, “Whose point of view is this from?” Although McKellen’s Julian is colorful and riveting, Solomon saw Coel’s Lori as the protagonist from whose perspective the movie would largely be told. “The movie belongs to Michaela in a certain way,” Solomon said. “Julian is a big, massively flamboyant character who’s very verbose and presentational, and that’s fun to write. But Lori has this kind of X-ray vision where she can see what he really is, and his trajectory is to listen to her and acknowledge that she is right — he’s the broken man she sees him as.”

Initially, Solomon and Soderbergh saw the film as a more conventional heist film, but it evolved into what Solomon calls “an emotional heist,” which returns to the idea of finding the ideal way to tell any specific story. “The thing itself wants to be what it wants to be,” Solomon said. “We can get in the way of that, or we can try and identify it and help it manifest. At every stage, you’re reconceiving based on what the movie is telling you. It’s just like when you have a child. That child goes through stages, and as a parent, you are not trying to force your idea of what you think this child should be onto the child. You’re working with the child in a kind of collaboration to guide and shepherd the child into being the truest manifestation of who that child is.”

For Solomon, questioning one’s initial assumptions is a key part of the process, even if it means ending up in a very different place with the material than he intended to start out. “There’s the original conception that gets you excited to start,” he said. “But then it becomes a process of questioning and being surprised as it develops — and of becoming aware of the surprises and looking at them as gifts rather than anxiety-producing changes. And then the actors come on board, and they don’t just change it; it grows in a massive way and gets richer and deeper. So now you’re not writing to service an original idea — you’re working to guide the script to what it’s supposed to be with these new people involved.”

The fact that the work continues to surprise and challenge Solomon seems to be one of its greatest pleasures. “Who wants to do what you’ve just done?” he said, adding that philosophy applies not just to the content but to the process. “I never want to get into a routine where I’m like, ‘This is how I write. This is what I do.’ I don’t ever want to fall back on old tricks.”

Neon will release “The Christophers” in select theaters on April 10.