Screenwriter Eric Pearson once spent an entire week watching Captain America: The First Avenger in five-minute increments. His mission: find split-second moments in which star Chris Evans could add lines such as “head to the base!” during ADR to help tie the movie together.

Massaging dialogue into a movie that’s essentially completed is considered grunt work for a screenwriter. There’s no opportunity to really shape the story, and for Pearson, there would be no credit. But the scribe, then an up-and-coming employee of Marvel’s Writers Program, had the mantra that there was no such thing as grunt work when it came to writing. He was just thrilled someone was actually paying him to do it.

Screenwriter Eric Pearson once spent an entire week watching Captain America: The First Avenger

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