Meet the mind behind ‘Event Horizon’

“After seeing the new movie Event Horizon I asked myself this question: What kind of person could create a crazy story about a haunted space ship that controls your mind by taking your worst fear or memory and playing it out in front of you over and over? He must be some kind of psycho with an over active imagination, I thought. To my surprise, when I interviewed Philip Eisner, screenwriter for Event Horizon, he actually seemed like a pretty normal 31 year old man.
Eisner had always wanted to be involved in the film industry. Although his first goal was acting, after receiving his undergraduate degree in communication from Stanford University, he realized his talent was writing. Although writing a salable screenplay requires a great degree of talent, Eisner said, “I don’t know what talent is, but you can always bear down and do the work.” Eisner certainly bore down to create his latest screenplay about a haunted house in space that leaves audiences everywhere shrieking.
Eisner said that Event Horizon is, “Not a science fiction movie in the sense that Contact was a science fiction movie. Event Horizon is very much a horror film. It is very much a journey into what the characters are afraid of.” Eisner felt that the actors, including Laurence Fishburne, did a great job of portraying his characters horrified by a ship that seems to have gone to hell and back. There is in the movie an element of mystery, fueled by the question: “Did the ship really go to hell?” Eisner said he..”left that deliberately vague. Some people think the ship did go to hell.” He personally doesn’t believe that the ship has been to hell.
Currently, Eisner is working on a screenplay entitled Necronauts, about an anthropologist recruited by the government to map LAD, Life After Death. In the future, Eisner hopes to someday direct.
As far as advice for teens, Eisner emphasized that what you’re doing now with your friends is important. Don’t feel like you have to turn around and do something you don’t enjoy just because it’s practical. Keep doing things you like to do. For example, Eisner made a home movie with friends when he was a kid. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, but it was part of what inspired him to do what he does today.
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