Andrew McWhirter says it is ridiculous for film writers tend to be so under-valued as there would be no billion-dollar industry without them
ARE the kids wondering why there is no Harry Potter film this winter? Then tell them to blame the geeky screenwriters for a winter without the somewhat geekier boy wizard. The 100-day Writers’ Guild of America strike of last year has opened up a summer blockbuster void for 2009, which Warner Brothers intend to fill with the sixth instalment of the JK Rowling adaptation. What occurred in Hollywood should serve as an example to all enthusiasts of Western movies: when the scribes down their tools, not much happens.
At the inception of cinema, the director was the primary artiste, embellishing the role encompassed by his theatre counterpart; with the coming of sound, and the added expense to put it there, studios grasped more responsibility, forcing alliances between producers, stars, and screenwriters. In those talkie times, the director was the one who knew angst over recognition: to quote legendary producer Samuel Goldwyn on his 1939 Brontë adaptation: “I made Wuthering Heights, William Wyler merely directed it.” This period of collaboration didn’t do much for the “boy”, as he was so often called, who would write the silent movie placards and suggest ideas, because when big money was on the line newspapermen such as Chicago’s Ben Hecht – ironically ghosted-over himself by Sidney Howard in the writing credit for Gone With the Wind – took over with egos of their own to ruffle more than a few feathers. Veteran television writer turned producer on much-loved Elizabeth Montgomery vehicle Bewitched, William Froug, once recalled hearing a sincere conversation with another studio mogul who attempted to simplify things once and for all by saying “If we could only figure out a way to make movies without writers.”
The unsung heroes of the film business certainly don’t do it for the fame; most people would be hard pushed to name many current screenwriters – Charlie Kaufman, perhaps, and even he has taken to directing. Competing with the kudos directors receive just isn’t a viable option. If noted screenwriter and debunker of director-centricity William Goldman is to be believed, then a wagging finger should pointed in the face of the press. “What’s the punchline?” he yelled at auteur theory, citing an industry as savvy to the collaborative process already. “Someone should tell the Directors’ Guild of America”, says new screenwriter Andrea Gibb of Dear Frankie box-office success. “I wouldn’t even give a slap on the back to directors who refuse to take sole credit”, she adds. “My view is, bottom line, it’s not theirs to take in the first place. It’s false credit. Based on a lie.”
Like Kaufman, perhaps more writers should think about directing. Even if initial festival reports are strong, the final verdict of his authorial-weighted project, Synecdoche, New York, won’t emerge on this side of the Atlantic until later this year. But not all screenwriters are afforded the luxury to direct and supersede the cries of ruined visions at the hands of directors. His work is so fresh innovative, and discernable in style, that ignoring Kaufman when discussing a movie he’s written is simply ridiculous.
Celebration of the writer is more forthcoming in Europe. While feisty in defence of writers, talented newcomers such as Scotland’s Gibb, also a committee member of the UK Writers Guild, acknowledge the necessary synergy between all parties. “My position on the role of the writer is very clear. I need the director. And not just as a necessary evil. I love working with directors. Good directors. Directors who are open and inclusive and collaborative.” As analogy, Ken Loach serves well, not only in the fact that he remains under-appreciated in his homeland, but, as might be expected of a socialist filmmaker, because he champions teamwork and often uses a stock of writers. None of these is more notable than Paul Laverty, who reinvigorated the director’s career in an astounding synthesis of the writer/director relationship that benefited such great films as Carla’s Song and The Wind That Shakes the Barley.
This seems a far cry from the world Goldman is always so vocal about. He has warned screenwriters in the past that: “There is one crucial rule that must be followed in all creative meetings. Never speak first. At least at the start, your job is to shut up.”
It’s hard to imagine a film world without the screenwriter because, quite simply, they create that world from scratch. Screenwriters provide the story, plotlines, situations, the structure, characters, dialogue, gesture, mood, scenes and, in some cases, even directions for the camera. Just glance at Alain Robbe-Grillet’s screenplay for the 1960s modernist mind-bender Last Year at Marienbad, hailed for its impressive cinematography and fluid shot direction, and it becomes clear that director Alain Resnais already had a shot list provided. To prove one doesn’t have to stray from Hollywood for an example, it’s well known that the visual exhilaration of the 1971 film The French Connection resided in the purchased script before 20th Century Fox engaged director William Friedkin. A year after that picture was released, Will Froug’s dry comments revealed that, even if the screenwriter wasn’t lorded over publicly, the industry knew the importance of the role commercially: “The word ‘hyphenate’”, he said at the time, “is now an integral part of the American film language. Writer-producers, writer-directors, and writer-executives are a fact of life in Hollywood”. Which, of course, wasn’t exactly helpful to the actual writer-writers.
Those outside the United States have little problem in enunciating the importance of the screenwriter. Japanese master Akira Kurosawa’s estimation was as good as any when he said: “With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece; with the same script, a mediocre director can make a passable film. But, with a bad script, even a good director can’t possibly make a good film.”
However, the Americans usually have their own ways of making the point felt, too – more often than not anecdotal evidence of scandal, gossip and intrigue aid the lowly scribe. It was not Orson Welles but an exuberant alcoholic named Herman J Mankiewicz who wrote what is widely presumed the greatest film of all time in Citizen Kane, and most movie buffs will note the extraordinary career of Chinatown writer Robert Towne and his unaccredited voice throughout Bonnie and Clyde and The Godfather. Most famous of all is long-time Frank Capra collaborator Robert Riskin, who helped the director develop his “Capra touch” and then win an Oscar for Mr Deeds Goes to Town. He hit one out of the park for all disgruntled wordsmiths by marching into the imposing director’s office, dropping a ream of blank paper onto the desk with a thud, before turning on his heels with: “Let’s see you give that the famous Capra touch.”
Andrew McWhirter is a freelance journalist
