John August has enjoyed an illustrous career as a Hollywood screenwriter, putting pen to paper for Tim Burton's The Corpse Bride, and Big Fish. He's also the scribe behind Charlie's Angel's: Full Throttle, Charlie's Angels and Go. Now, he's taken up the challenge of directing one of his own creations, The Nines.

The Nines is an incredibly complex film - how do you sum it up?

You know when I have to describe it to a stranger on the street, I say it's three short films starring the same three actors. And as you go through it you realise that they're really not separate stories, they're not really separate characters, there's really something more going on. On a bigger level it's really a movie about what a creator's responsibilities are to his creations. So it doesn't matter whether you're creating a TV show or a video game, at some point you may need to walk away.

Is it fair to call the film a love story?

I think so, it's a love story in the sense of you fall in love with this life that you've made for yourself and yet you realise you have responsibilities beyond what you've done. And you literally have this guy that's torn between the two loves of his life and he has to decide between them. It doesn't feel like that kind of story for most of the movie but ultimately that's the kind of question that gets raised.

The concept of time shifting seems to be a recurring theme in a lot of your work, like Go and Big Fish, what's the fascination?

Well Go kept, you know, recycling, kept going back in time, and Big Fish kept moving back and forth between past and present. With The Nines it's like you're not really moving through time, it's just like there's multiple levels of reality just stacked up on top of each other, and I was just fascinated by that as a concept and as a way of approaching a movie. It's the kind of thing I would love to do in one of my more complicated Hollywood movies, but in an independent film there's really an opportunity to be more experimental like that and not worry about some people getting lost. I think when you make a movie for a more specialised crowd you can try things, take big risks that you're not allowed to take on other pictures.

So who would you say you were making this film for?

Well I think ultimately a science-fiction audience is going to be the most immediately receptive crowd to it, because even though it doesn't feel like a science fiction film at the start, it ends up asking questions which usually would be in a science fiction context. It's like one of those short stories that asks a big question in an unusual way. I don't think it will appeal necessarily to one demographic as much as a psychographic of people who like challenging movies, and who will sit down to watch a film not strictly with the expectation of being entertained, but of being provoked.

Your screenwriting CV is impressive to say the least, with Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, Charlie's Angels, and Go to name a few, what made you want to Direct?

You know, it wasn't a burning need to direct, it was more that these were really interesting ideas to me and as a writer there's generally this swarm of ideas that are sort of in your head and eventually they get so loud that you just have to do something with them. And these three ideas had kept coming back to me and I realised that they were all part of that same question, of a creator's responsibility to his creation. And as I started to figure that 'OK, this is a screenplay' it was clear that I wasn't really going to hand this off to another really talented director. There was so much of it that I really needed to be there, moment by moment, that I was going to have to direct it myself. So it wasn't really a choice that I needed to direct it myself, it just wouldn’t make sense to hand it off to someone else.

So this project felt like your baby more that anything else you'd written?

It felt like my baby and also the middle section of it is shot like a documentary, it looks like a documentary but we really shot it like a documentary, and while there were parts that were scripted, a large part of it wasn't scripted, so I needed to be there moment by moment creating those scenes with the conversations as they were occurring. It had to be written and in place.

Is the middle section the most autobiographical for you? Is it close to you and your character.

Absolutely. In the middle section Ryan Reynolds is playing a fictionalised version of myself and it's sort of conflating a couple of experiences I had on my first television show and and on different projects. As the creator/show runner it’s a double responsibility. We're trying to keep everything in the fictional universe straight. My first time when I tried to do that when I was a newer, younger screenwriter, I did approach having that nervous breakdown. I really had a hard time differentiating between my real life and my fictional life. That's very applicable to what a bigger creator's responsiblities would be. I wanted to include the traps of television and the traps of the industry by recognition of my own failures and challenges.

Was it a form of therapy, to write that and direct those scenes?

I wouldn't say it was therapeutic. I really have got over my issues that happened there. What's nice about revisiting the past is that you recognise that the people you portrayed in films were just caught in the same storm as you were caught in. It was a bad thing that happened and you were stronger for having gone through it. It was strangely rewarding to go back and re-visit it.

You've collaborated with Tim Burton quite a bit. Did he give you any advice on how to tackle a directing role?

Tim didn't really know that I was directing this movie. I've watched how Tim works and how other directors I've worked with have interacted with their crew and actors. How they planned their work of the day. I was always taking mental notes and trying to figure out how I thought I would do it. I would say my style isn't like any one of theirs. I try to cherry pick from what I thought was the best.

Have they seen the film? Have they given you feedback?

Doug Liman came to see the premiere at Sundance - I think he's the only one of my directors who's come to see it so far. Tim's said he'll try to see it, but I don't think he sees many movies.

You mentioned Sundance - how did the film go down there?

My very first movie played at Sundance and I had a great experience with that. Sundance was always my goal. You hope that you get in, you that you get a good reception and we did, so it was a good experience. If I have a frustration from the Sundance experience it's that it's a story of finance and those movies that sell for 10m dollars, and that was never really the purpose of the festival - it was to showcase new ideas and to challenge and to provoke. I was happy that one of those movies was my mine that sort of did that. I'm hoping that they come back to that sort of spirit. It's not about making money, it's about making better movies.

When you wrote the lead male character, three male characters in the film, did you have Ryan Reynolds in mind?

I didn't have Ryan Reynolds in mind. I wrote it blithely thinking that we could find some actor who could do all three characters and, as the producers and I sat down and started making our list, it was a pretty short list because we realised that the guy who was going to be great at playing a TV actor isn't necessarily going to be able to do the show runner. Ryan was just the right guy, he could do it in just the right way. Whenever you cast someone, you call other directors who they've worked with before and get recommendations. You need to know what the experience is like of working with them in person. Ryan has a great and well-deserved reputation because he works his arse off and gives you everything. Every director I talked with was dying to work with him again.

The only actor I wrote for was Melissa McCarthy, who is a friend of mine, and I knew she could it, but I was nervous about finding the actor to play all three.

I read that you're working with Tim Burton on Frankenweenie - is that right?

That's actually not correct. I talked with Tim a while back about doing Frankenweenie, but I don't think I'm doing it. A lot of times I'll say I'm not working on a project and then a week later I end up doing it. I can't say I'm not, but I don't think I am involved with that. There's something that's not announced that I am working on with them that I'm really excited about.

Can you reveal anything?

Hopefully when this strike is resolved I can. I will say I hope to be writing with Tim Burton again because it's a tremedous joy.

The Nines opens in UK cinemas on Friday, 30th November 2007.