Photo by Aaron Salcido.
Nate Moore is Vice President, Development and Production at Marvel Studios; he worked on Black Panther, and previously on Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Captain America: Civil War. Before taking part in a Zócalo/UCLA panel discussion titled “Will Black Panther Really Change Hollywood?” at the ArcLight Hollywood, he spoke in the green room about superheroes, his high school theater teacher, and the value of looking for good ideas in bad scripts.
What superpower would you most like to have?
I have thought about this a lot. The superpower I’d like to have is the power of teleportation, the power to get any place instantaneously. You could see the world in an interesting way. And if you had to fight crime …. It’s a really interesting power in a macro sense, because it shrinks the world down even more than it’s shrunk down.
What dessert do you find impossible to resist?
Ice cream, by the pint, specifically. My wife and I were recently introduced to Salt & Straw here in town. I sincerely cannot, not eat the full pint.
What teacher or professor changed your life, if any?
I’ve had a lot of really good teachers. My theater teacher in high school [at Buchanan High in Clovis, California], Brent Moser, was pretty instrumental in opening me up to the world of storytelling. We got to faux produce our own plays.
Where do you go to be alone?
The beach. I live in Hollywood, but I used to live in Marina. I just go to run or watch the surf.
Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime?
My wife and I watch the most shows probably on Netflix. We recently dove into Amazon Prime. Hulu is great, which is how we watch current shows.
How many pages of a script do you have to read before you can make a decision?
I read a script front to back. I think it’s a good habit. I’ve been told it’s a bad habit. But sometimes there are really ingenious ideas in the back half, and sometimes you can reconsider your position on a writer.
As a kid, who was your favorite superhero?
I was a big X-Men kid. I grew up on the [Chris] Claremont X-Men.
What do you most often buy at the movie theater snack bar?
Reese’s Pieces. If I’m at the ArcLight, I get the sausage because it’s good.
What do you miss most about being a student at UCLA?
I miss a lot. I miss just being able to learn without the pressure to earn a paycheck. There was a flexibility of schedule that you don’t get as an adult. I loved living on the campus—I did it for two years. And I’m a big sports guy, and I didn’t mind that the Rose Bowl was so far away.
You once were Director of Development for Participant Media, led by Jeff Skoll. What was the biggest lesson you learned from him?
That it is OK to be ambitious and to make films about something. Sometimes the notion of having any sort of significant thematic content in movies is made to be antithetical to commercial movies. At that time, Jeff was one of the few people putting his money where his ideological mouth is.
You do improv comedy. What has it taught you?
To never say no to an idea in development. It’s sometimes easy to go, ‘That sounds stupid.’ Instead, if you say, ‘That idea is not valid, what else is valid around it?’ sometimes you end up with a better idea because you did not deny the first idea. And it keeps you open to your partners.
You run triathlons. What was your best triathlon experience?
Probably the second one. I joined triathlon because I wanted to learn how to swim. My first triathlon I got injured on the run. I took time off, and the second time I was able to do it completely healthy.