to do until it becomes either cost-prohibi-
tive or just doesn't make sense with the
brand." The screenwriter compares having
the whole Marvel Universe available to
him with having a gigantic dessert tray
where he can't decide what to taste first.
"If anything, it just made me want to work
harder at servicing every one of them. But
I think we've done a pretty good job of
tempering that and making sure it doesn't
just turn into a Jackson Pollack. Everyone
has a purpose in the film and I think as
long as each one of those characters is
well-defined and as long as they're pur-
pose-driven, then at the end of the day, it
just feels like a great big fun movie as op-
posed to a big, you know, cluster," he says
with a laugh.
Favreau and Feige, and bounce ideas off of
them," Theroux says. He praises both men
as well as Downey for the constant stream
of ideas and feedback he got throughout
the intensive development process. While
he worked up numerous outlines and
notecarded many sequences with the oth-
ers, Theroux takes a very straightforward
approach to writing. "At a certain point,
you just have to start trucking through the
deep snow and shoveling your way into it
-- or out of it," he says. "When it actually
comes down to writing I prefer to just
wake up in the morning, make a cup of
coffee and just sit down and start ham-
mering pages. I write fast usually, and
hope the director can help guide me. I'm a
big believer in being in service to the di-
rector as much as possible."
Iron Man writing teams had years to work
with Favreau to hone and polish the script,
that movie's phenomenal success meant
Theroux was coming onto a project that
already had a release date set in stone, one
that required them to start filming in less
than a year. "While you're doing it you re-
ally try not to realize the pressure you're
under," he says with a wry smile. "You try
not to focus on it. You have to fake it and
pretend you have all the time in the world
to create it because if you put a calendar
up and start X-ing days off, you'll go
crazy." Even though he handed in a pro-
duction draft that the assistant directors
of, he says they continued to revise and
polish the script as filming began. "Once
we had the schedule for what we were
shooting, we then knew we could go back
in and really start finessing it. So I was
working on stuff on set all the way up
until the very last day of shooting."
universe wherein a wiser, more in-control
Tony Stark can make a cameo at the end
of The Incredible Hulk. "I feel like Marvel
has a great tradition of screwing the next
writer," Theroux says with a chuckle.
"When they first started interweaving it,
[cameos] were considered afterthoughts.
Now they're starting to put a lot more
thought into it and seeing it as a larger
scheme. We have things in our movie that
are doffing their hats or perhaps
pen in other movies. That's probably as
much as I can say. It wasn't like we had a
big meeting with Kenneth Branagh about
Thor. There's just enough cross pollination
to make it interesting, but not enough to
start eating into other people's sand-
wiches. Once Avengers is up and running,
you'll start to feel the cumulative effect of
those little jigsaw puzzle pieces getting
put together."
third Iron Man. Diehard fans picked up on
the name of the terrorist group in the first
movie, "The Ten Rings," a reference to an-
other classic villain, the Mandarin. "I'm
not confirming or denying that remark,"
Theroux says with another laugh. "I think
that's still in the distant future. But I
would say if people looked for it, they
would definitely find it."