A super movie blog KidInTheFrontRow.com has this exclusive interview with screenwriter Scott Rosenberg. His writing credits include Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995), Beautiful Girls (1996), Con Air (1997), High Fidelity (2000), Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000), and some TV series including “October Road.” (19 episodes, 2007-2008) and “Life on Mars” (17 episodes, 2008-2009).

Here is an excerpt from the interview in which Rosenberg talks about how he came to write Beautiful Girls:

I’d like to start by talking about ‘Beautiful Girls,’ because it’s one of my favorite films. I wish there were more films like this. Did you know it was going to be something special when you wrote it?

“BEAUTIFUL GIRLS’ came about because I had been working for months on the script for “CON AIR”. In those days, the studio would make you write a detailed treatment before sending you off to script (it was a way for them to avoid paying a step). Between “THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU’RE DEAD” and “CON AIR”, I was fully submerged in a kind of nihilistic porn: violence, anger, racial epithets, death. I was numb as a statue. And I found myself, back in my hometown outside of Boston, during one of the worst winters ever. I was waiting for Disney to approve “CON AIR”. I had just broken up with my girlfriend of seven years. The snow plows were driving by my window. Many driven by my buddies from high school. When it occurred to me: “there is more quote “action”, going on with my buddies here -with turning 30 and not being able to deal with the women in their lives – than in twenty Jerry Bruckheimer movies. I remember very clearly, saying to my kid brother: “I am going to go into my room and write a script called “BEAUTIFUL GIRLS” but it’s going to be all about guys.” Five days later I emerged with the script. It just poured out. I didn’t think it was special. It was a piece of catharsis. It was entirely written for myself. Which is probably why it resonated with so many people. And, inexplicably, still does to this day…

I think it’s the kind of screenplay that everyone tries to write when they begin screenwriting, the script about a bunch of friends in a small town figuring their lives out. But rather than having the complexity and subtlety of ‘Beautiful Girls,’ they tend to be quite boring and soap operatic — were you concerned about this when you were writing yours? How confident were you?

Nah. Because I don’t think it was such a common trope then as it is now. There was the gold standard, of course, Barry Levinson’s “DINER”. But I tried never to even think of that one. Because then I would have just been paralyzed. Because that film is nearly perfect. A few years ago, I was skiing in Colorado, and I was in a bar and some snow-boarders in their early 20s came up to me. They had heard I was the dude that wrote “BEAUTIFUL GIRLS”. And they wanted to tell me that their whole group of friends watch the film once every few months. I told them that is so cool. And that MY friends and me used to watch “DINER” once every few months. And the snow-boarders shrugged and asked me: “What’s ‘DINER’?” And I realized that “GIRLS” was for these kids, what “DINER” was for some of my friends. And that was perhaps the coolest thing of all…

It’s a great interview with one of Hollywood’s top screenwriters, well worth the read. Hit the link for more.