A History of Screen Writing, Part 5

Raiders of the Lost Ark, ‘a film by Lawerence Kasdan’?

Within the years 1960 to 1980, screenwriters encountered another obstacle in their quest for recognition and expression. This took the form of the coined phrase, ‘director adulation’ where the director is hailed as the superstar. This evolved from the development of the ‘auteur theory’ which was employed to isolate a single person in the film making process and make him or her the author of the film. It was part of the argument to define film as art. Proposed by François Truffant in the late 1950’s, he maintained that the dominant creative personality behind a movie was the director. This was spoken in European terms where the film makers worked within a different process than the Hollywood style. In Hollywood the term was taken literally and although it was acknowledged that the process was collaborative, the director was made author and owner of the films he or she directed. The relationship between the screenwriter and director became polarised as the writers continued to scream for recognition. After almost fifty years of struggling the screenwriters knew what they were worth, they knew, “…that there is nothing more ludicrous than a director without a screenplay he can auteur, like a Don Juan without a penis.”[1] This point can be reversed on screenwriters in that they don’t have an audience without the director and therefore cannot succeed. The writer therefore submits knowing that the director’s name will appear above the title. Steven Spielberg is perhaps the most recent film maker who exemplifies this practice. Jaws (Universal, 1975) is a film written by Peter Benchley and Carl Gottlieb, based on Benchley’s novel. There were also unaccredited contributions by Howard Sadler and John Milius, but who knows that? Its a Steven Spielberg film. It was the great directors who dictated the rules, that’s why audiences have never seen a title like: Raiders of the Lost Ark, ‘a film by Lawerence Kasdan’. The writers were being given a credit for their work, the screenplay, but not for the completion or the success of the film.

Throughout the 1980’s and into the 1990’s the problem of recognition persisted. The entertainment industry is one where an artist can become famous. For screenwriters, the creators of the material that drives Hollywood, it was and still is near impossible to gain the same type of recognition as the actors, actresses, directors and even producers. According to Mark Rosenthal, a screenwriter who wrote Jewel of the Nile (1986), screenwriting is seen as something through which they, the writers are moving through, whether to become directors or producers.[2] When it comes to receiving credit, James V. Hart, who wrote Hook (Steve Spielberg, 1992) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (France Coppola, 1993) points out that the last person to receive credit for a film’s success is the screenwriter.[3] Hart suffered at the hands of Spielberg and Francis Ford Coppola in the sense that his screenplays became their films. According to Lem Dobbs the age of the great director has not survived into the nineties and that control within the industry has resorted to the executives. Directors are not as powerful as they were twenty years ago. The studio executives are running the show as it was during the golden age of Hollywood. Screenplays are being submitted and then are re-written. Contemporary writers are dissatisfied. It seems that writers have never been satisfied and this is mainly due to the lack of control they have. What is happening today is that more writers are falling into the category writer/director, where film makers are writing material for themselves to direct. Joel and Ethan Coen divide responsibilities when they write, direct, produce and even edit their own films such as Fargo (1996). Woody Allen has been doing it for years, writing, directing and staring in Mighty Aphrodite (1995) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994). Oliver Stone; Platoon (1986), JFK (1991), Neil Jordan; The Crying Game (1993), Michael Collins (1996). As Quentin Tarantino says, “I’ve never considered myself a writer writing stuff to sell, but as a director who writes stuff for himself to direct.”[4]

In present day Hollywood the successful screenwriter can make as much money as those directors, producers, actors and actresses who don’t command exorbitant fees. If a successful writer wishes to do so, and this seems to be the general consensus, screenwriting can be a pathway to glory, power and wealth in the sense that many are writing in the hope of becoming directors or producers. Because of the dramatic rise in production costs over the last ten years, it is important that the story is good as the emphasis is now on quality and not quantity. Screenwriters are respected for their work as screenwriters, even if they are not praised enough for a film’s success. They can even earn millions of dollars for their work. Joe Esterhas sold his screenplay Basic Instinct (1992) for $3 million while  Shane Black sold Long Kiss Goodnight (1996) for $4 million. The era of the screenwriter is at hand; their time has come.

Bibliography

Literature:

Baláza, Bela, ‘Theory of Film’, (New York 1972)

Brady, John, ‘Craft of the Screenwriter’, (Touchstone USA 1981)

Buhle, Buhle, Georgakas, eds., ‘Encyclopaedia of the American Left’, (Urbana & Chicago: University of Illinois Press USA 1992)

Giannetti, Louis, ‘Understanding Movies’, 5^th ed., (USA 1990)

Hunters, Allan, ed., ‘The Wordsworth Book of Movie Classics’, (W&R Chambers UK 1992)

McGilligan, Patrick, ed.,  ‘Backstory’, University of California Press 1986)

McGilligan, Patrick, ed.,  ‘Backstory 2’, University of California Press 1991)

McGilligan, Patrick, ed.,  ‘Backstory 3’, University of California Press 1997)

Schrecher, Ellen, ‘The Age of McCarthyism’, (Boston St. Martin’s Press USA 1994)

Sturges, Sandy, ed., ‘Preston Sturges on Preston Sturges’, (Faber and Faber London 1990)

Published Screenplays:

Tarantino, Quentin, ‘Reservoir Dogs’, (Faber and Faber 1994)

Periodicals:

Dobbs, Lem, ‘Writers Talk’, Sight and Sound, (BFI Publication Vol. 2, Issue. 2, 1992)

Sheehan, Henry, ‘Trust The Teller’ , Sight and Sound, (BFI Publication Vol. 2, Issue. 3, 1993)