On The Line with Tony Gilroy: The Final Draft

A Writer’s Respite

“It’s kind of musical isn’t it?” Tony Gilroy looks back at me, one hand on the window pane, and cracks a genuine Duchenne smile, his every feature engaged. 

I listen.  He’s right.  It’s gentler than the typical cacophonic din produced by jackhammers and drills.  A melody fills the air, a pitch that slowly rises and falls.   Smiling too, I agree.  What a unique observation.

But it makes sense:  Before “Duplicity,” before the Oscar nomination and Directors’ Guild win for “Michael Clayton,” before writing the “Bourne” series, “Proof of Life,” “The Devil’s Advocate,” “Dolores Claiborne,” and “The Cutting Edge” – Tony Gilroy was a musician.

“I can see a career path where I would have been a very mediocre successful record producer,” he says.

Turning onto a quiet brownstone-lined street on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, I was sure Tony Gilroy’s office was within one of the charming, Triassic Sandstone dwellings.   (Well, would-be quiet save for the construction crew set up mid-block, machinery whirring away.)  But as the numbers tick down to the address I sought what stood before me was a fairly non-descript, flat-front, simple apartment building, not much taller than the brownstones which flanked its either side.

Buzzer only, no doorman. Was it 6F or 6E?  I pause and dig through my always-overstuffed bag for the post-it on which I’d scrawled the unit number.  Neither.  Glad I checked.  

The speaker crackles in the way speakers are wont to do, and a voice, which I suspect belongs to my host, invites me up.  I’m suddenly nervous.  Does he remember me?  As I wait for the elevator, I think about the handful of times we’d met.  Most of them were on the set of “Michael Clayton,” where I’d worked occasionally as a production assistant.  I was so bundled to brave the cold on those days I fear I bore a striking, and not at all flattering, resemblance to the Michelin Man.

Stepping in the elevator, I recall a line from an elegant article in the “New Yorker.”  It was something about Tony Gilroy’s “easy smile.”  Was that it?  Perhaps the line referred to Clive Owen’s character in “Duplicity.”  Either way, the smile that greets me when I reach the sixth floor puts me at ease.  Mostly.  Whether Gilroy remembers meeting me before or not, he doesn’t let on, and we make casual conversation of the sort two old acquaintances might exchange after not seeing each other for a while.

So this is where Tony Gilroy writes.  The space is modest, like its exterior:  A kitchenette to the right; probably a tiny bathroom off that, perhaps another room beyond.  I peek.  Perhaps not. 

It is a classic New York efficiency apartment, complete with aged wood flooring and moldings layered with decades of paint.  It’s low maintenance, sparsely furnished and tidy:  Two straight backed chairs; an unimposing credenza on one side; a few framed photographs, others tacked to a corkboard on the opposite wall; a Vornado 660 fan on the floor; a simple bamboo area rug.  That’s it.  Facing two double-hung windows, a sturdy desk, the dominant fixture in the space, takes center stage.  Atop sits a computer.  A Dell, an HP?  I can’t tell, but it has me transfixed.  It holds the key to the burning question:  What will Tony Gilroy’s next project be?

It’s a question to which no one has the answer.  Perhaps his PC knows, but it’s not telling.  Regardless, one can’t help marvel at the fact that a guy who once had so little affinity for educational pursuits came to craft a career from weaving words into compelling stories.

Tilting back in his chair, balanced precariously on one leg, he recalls playing in bands as early as junior high (which he loved) and being miserable at school (which he hated).  His scholastic shortcomings prompted teachers to offer him an out during his junior year.  “If you’ll shut up and take a couple of extra courses, we’ll graduate you in the spring,” he was told.

By April he was applying to colleges and by fall he was a student at Boston University.  “At the time, if you could pay full freight and you were breathing, they would take you.  So they took me.”  Surprisingly he liked it.  And he was good at it, particularly at writing papers – particularly at making money writing papers for other people.  “My learning curve was quick.”  He smiles again, this one less bright…and infused with a good dose of mischief.

Also quick was his college career:  He dropped out during his second year to follow the music.  From Boston to Los Angeles and back again, Gilroy was making enough of a living, playing guitar in various bands.  Well that, and running a phone scam selling copy toner, “I made a lot of money – selling shit on the phone.”  Another mischievous smile.

But then the joy ride began to wind down.  There was a missed opportunity with a band that had a shot.  There were songwriting deals that began to fall apart.  There were habits developed that were…”of the time.”  “And sort of cataclysmically, the house that I was living in burned to the ground.  I lost everything – literally everything but a guitar.  And my car.”

He was wiped out, he says, “in a lot of different ways.”  The fire was an “epic bit of punctuation.”  So he went home.

Back under the same roof with his father, Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Frank D. Gilroy, the junior Gilroy began writing more fiction in earnest.  He was writing, his dad was writing – He pauses to think about what it was like to be back there.  He remembers it felt good.  Yet he knew he couldn’t stay forever and hadn’t a clue how he’d ever get back out.

A temporary solution came when he got a deal to start a band based on some songs he’d written.  “Temporary” because he was facing a dilemma:  He couldn’t pursue both music and writing.  For Gilroy, it had to be either/or.  So he took the job offer to get into New York City, but ultimately decided to quit music – “cold turkey,” he says.  And he never looked back.

Gilroy had been hard at work in the entertainment industry for many years – he wrote screenplays that never got sold, he sold scripts that never got made, and he cringed at some that did get shot, but “fucked up” by those at the helm.  Finally he scored big with the one-two punch that was “Michael Clayton” and “Duplicity.”  Both were critically acclaimed, both boasted the Apollo Creed-Clubber Lang heavyweight Hollywood equivalents of A-list talent, and both films featured Gilroy as not only writer but director as well.

“I very much wanted to go right away (after “Clayton”) because I didn’t want to get into this ‘what are you going to do next situation’… like I’m in now.”

Now, Tony Gilroy spends his days thinking about what he is “going to do next.”  Frankly, so do the many people who worked for him on the previous two films.  Not to add undue stress, it’s a simply a testament to the strong, positive and lasting impression he’s made on his crews. 

I leave him to his work, though every inch wants to stay a moment more.  Just one glimpse…a taste…a hint perhaps?  Alas.