Chris Columbus

In Hollywood these days, writing the screenplays for three Spielberg films is probably the next best thing to being Spielberg himself. That makes 27-year-old Chris Columbus the hottest item since edible underwear in moviedom's town of renown.

Columbus, a self-proclaimed Charles Dickens fans, wrote Gremlims, Goonies, and Young Sherlock Holmes, and is currently sitting on or near the top of the film-writing pile.

Columbus plays blase: "I still see it as what it is, a job," he says. "After two hours of film, it's over." As for Hollywood living, "I don't despise it," but he doesn't plan to get caught up in the glitter.

It's been less than a decade since Columbus's first feature film--Reckless, which he wrote in college. Inspired by the music of Bruce Springsteen, the movie "celebrated escape," Columbus says. It was a dismal failure: the film company "took the script away from me and added 20 minutes of sex. The film was originally rated X. It was just a mess."

Speaking of carnal knowledge, Columbus notes that teenagers are not "the sex-starved maniacs" that Hollywood makes them out to be. Columbus's Spielberg movies all feature youngsters, and he tries to sculpt them differently from the mainstream teenage flick--more "precocious," he says.

His latest youthful leading man, the pint-sized Sherlock Holmes, is so precocious as to be almost wholly unchildlike. Columbus says he scoured Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's books for hints at the genesis of the "cold, emotionless bachelor" that Holmes was to become. At one point, Columbus reports, one of young Holmes' instructors tells the youngster never to "let your emotions distract you."

Paramount Studio probably expected something contemporary about a teenage detective in New York. "They probably thought I would do anything but a Dickens or Victorian style film," he notes.

How does Columbus manage to capture the child-protagonist in script after script?

Columbus says he still feels young himself, but he also draws on the experiences of his wife's seven sisters and brothers.

Even with in-laws to draw upon, it can take a long time to write a successful script. Gremlins took nine drafts, including one which killed off most of the family. Goonies was tapped out much more quickly, under studio pressure, but Young Sherlock Holmes's first draft took nine months and the second draft six, as Columbus tried to wipe the script clean of any "Americanisms" or anachronisms.

As for the future, Columbus plans to direct one of his own scripts, a black-comedy. "celebration of death" that he calls a "complete departure" from his previous work. Also, he is writing the third of the Indiana Jones series