”The writer was always the necessary weevil,” says Marshall Brickman, screenwriter and, more recently, screenwriter-director.
He rolls the word ”weevil” off his tongue slowly–”weee-vil” to rhyme with ”eee-vil”–relishing the worm-in-my-salad sound of it. Brickman is a man who enjoys words and he`s using some choice ones to describe the place of the screenwriter in the movie business.
For the last decade or so, that place has been on the bottom of the Hollywood pecking order. Lately, in what amounts to a palace rebellion, writer-directors such as Brickman, John Hughes, John Sayles, Lawrence Kasdan, Alan Rudolph and David Seltzer have starting seizing a bit of power, pulling themselves up the ladder. But these few are still the exception, not the rule.
In today`s Hollywood, the writer`s lack of stature is made clear in any number of excruciating ways.
Studio press releases have been noted to contain thumbnail biographies of everyone from the director to the set designer, and still fail to include a
”bio” for the writer. (A notorious recent case in point was the press packet for last year`s ”Agnes of God.” That movie, based on John Peilmeier`s play of the same name and featuring a script by the playwright himself, included no material on him in the press kit.)
Screenwriters themselves tell a joke about the ambitious but dumb starlet who came to Hollywood determined to make it big in the movie business. Her big move? ”She slept with the screenwriter.”
Even among feminist screenwriters, this joke meets with rueful guffaws. Sexual politics are one thing, but studio politics are something else–and something worse. As one feminist screenwriter succinctly phrased it, ”In the world of studio politics, screenwriters as well as starlets are ”f—–.”
The lowly stature of writers may generate jokes among them, but it is no laughing matter even to comic writers such as Brickman. It`s not without rancor that he tells another screenwriter joke.
”You know the story about the studio that made a mega-flop? Heads would have rolled, but in questioning what went wrong, they realized that they had made the wrong movie. A directive came down from the top: `Okay, you worms. From now on, somebody has to read the script.` ”
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Once upon a time, people did read the script. High-powered writers were lured to Hollywood because the studio heads and producers realized that good scripts made for good movies. Those were the days when filmmaking was rightly regarded as what it is–a collaborative art form.
Old-time Hollywood realized that there was a certain number of
”elements” necessary to the successful realization of any film–writer, director, actor, cinematographer, editor and, of course, the producer who assembled all of those elements and set them running.
Throughout the 90 years that movies have existed, one or another of the elements has often temporarily achieved ascendency. There was an era earmarked by great producers. David O. Selznick signed his films as surely as any author. His was the guiding vision behind any Selznick film, although many gifted writers, directors and stars labored in his behalf.
As the power of the producer waned in the early `50s, the star rose in the west: We entered an epoch of actor`s ascendancy. Under the old studio system, stars were ”developed,” then ”showcased.” Films were chosen to present stars in their most appealing light. As the system broke down, more and more power went to the stars themselves. Without the studios calling the shots, stars began showcasing themselves–chiefly to bad effect.
When film projects presented themselves, the stars, as actors, naturally focused very particularly on their own roles. Left to their own devices, actors frequently chose for themselves great parts in terrible films–remember Barbra Streisand in ”On a Clear Day You Can See Forever”?
They could not see the ”holes” any better than they saw the ”wholes,” i.e. ”whole script.”
It was in part as a reaction to the star syndrome that the next era arrived in the late `60s: the director as superstar. (”An actor should consider himself blessed to work with such a genius,” ran the revisionist wisdom of the day. Dubbed the ”Auteur Theory,” this proposition states that the director is the real ”author” of a film.
No surprise, really, that the auteur theory was the brainchild of a young French film critic named Francois Truffaut. (Yes, that Truffaut.) Soon to be a director himself–and already a writer–Truffaut possibly was unable to distinguish the contributions of the two creative functions within himself. Unfortunately, his director`s mystique became the mistake of a generation of American moviemakers.
”He could direct the phone book,” is the tag line of this thinking–the theory being that it is a director`s inherent genius, his ”way with a scene,” that determines the success of a film. This theory blithely ignores the fact that a phone book is still a phone book and not a script.
Alan Pakula (”Klute,” ”All the President`s Men”), with a becoming modesty for a director, believes that ”the auteur theory is half truth, because filmmaking is a very collaborative effort.”
Screenwriter William Goldman (”Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,”
”All the President`s Men”) considers the auteur theory nothing short of
”dangerous.” To his mind the danger lies not only to screenwriters but to directors as well.
As a species, Goldman notes, directors are ”not immune to flattery.” He cites the example of Hitchco*ck, a fine director until he was enshrined by the auteurists in his own mystique.
”Encased in praise and immured to any criticism,” Hitchco*ck finished his career with a flurry of undistinguished films although he was
”technically as skillful as ever.”
Goldman`s anti-auteurist remarks go a long way toward answering the
”what went wrong” questions addressed to the teetering careers of Coppola, Cimino, De Palma and the like. Auteurism fails to recognize the collaborative nature of filmmaking.
”Directing is overrated and misunderstood,” asserts Brickman, himself quite an able director. ”The movie is still in the script. There is a lot more to writing a screenplay than just typing. By the time the cameras roll on the first day of shooting, 80 to 90 per cent of the important mistakes have already been made.”
Brickman–although seconded by Horton Foote who likewise declares himself ”cautiously optimistic” about the writers` improving lot–may in fact be overly otimistic in casting the writer`s servitude as a thing of the past. But it does seem that the writer-director may indeed be the wave of the future.
Anthony Loeb, director of Columbia College`s film department, sees the distinction between writer and director as a largely artificial one, a trend in critical thinking that bore little relationship to the realities of filmmaking. As a young filmmaker, he nearly subscribed to the theory he now rejects.
”I grew up in an era that regarded writing and directing as two separate functions,” Loeb recalls. ”I don`t believe that anymore. If a student comes in here telling me he wants to be a screenwriter, not a director, I am immediately suspicious. My experience is that that student is afraid to feel his own creative power. My experience is that screenwriters certainly can be screen directors. They should be screen directors. In my department, I aim at training `filmmakers`–that is, people who make films, not just write them, not just direct them. Students here learn to write, direct, shoot and edit. They learn their entire art form.”
Viewed holistically, as Loeb views it, directing would be a natural extension of the writer`s craft. Many of today`s writer-directors speak of it in just such terms.
”Wanting to be only a screenwriter is like aspiring to be a co-pilot,”
Brickman has joked, kidding on the square.
David Seltzer, who wrote ”The Other Side Of the Mountain” and ”The Omen” before writing and directing the critically acclaimed ”Lucas,” feels that it is the ”integrity” of vision that determines the success of a film. Not surprisingly, he feels that integrity may be best served by being a director as well as a writer.
Loeb`s theory of holistic filmmaking runs counter to Hollywood`s assemblyline thought process. One person writes. Another shoots. Another edits. Someone else acts. And, yes, the studio oversees them all, giving them permission to do their jobs.
In this system, there is no place for a full-service filmmaker such as Loeb proposes. In this system, it would take a Rambo to launch a one-man war against the powers-that-be in order to alter things in the filmmakers` favor. In fact, it did take a Rambo–or at least a Sylvester Stallone–to shake things up. While the name Stallone may be a joke word among critics, other filmmakers tend to regard him more favorably. (”A shrewd and skillful screenwriter,” Goldman calls him.) Stallone, after all, is a triple hyphenate: a writer-director-actor. And he got to be one by refusing to play by the rules.
A young actor with a hot script, Stallone refused to sell ”Rocky” to prestigious producers Chartoff-Winkler unless he could star in the movie. Unable to talk him out of his absurd stance, they finally took him up on it. How many other screenwriters would have knuckled under? Undoubtably most. The logic would have been: ”If I go along with them, at least they`ll make the picture. And then, next time, if I cooperate this time. . . .”
In Round 2, Stallone upped the ante again. As a star now, he had additional bargaining power–and he used it. This time, he wanted to direct. With varying degrees of critical success, he has been directing ever since. Other screenwriters, far from envying Stallone`s massive success, find themselves wishing for his chutzpah. If very few of them can muscle in on the studios` power as Stallone did, they increasingly find themselves turning to independent production.
John Sayles, the writer-director of ”Return of The Secaucus Seven,”
”Baby, It`s You,” ”Brother From Another Planet” and ”Lianna” has launched an independent filmmaking career from the flatlands of New Jersey. His may well be the profile of the prototypical new independent filmmaker–he shoots small and fast and from the hip. His techniques owe more to film school than they do to the studio system.
Alan Rudolph has carved a career for himself on the edges of Hollywood by stubbornly writing and directing his own iconoclastic visions of reality
–”Choose Me,” ”Trouble in Mind.”
Ironically, he has done well enough on his own that he is now ”hot”
with the studios as well.
John Hughes–who began his career as a writer, added directing and has now added producing as well–straddles two filmmaking worlds. On the one hand, he is now very hot in the studio system. On the other hand, he still shoots most of his films in Chicago and hopes to develop an ensemble of repeat players that he will use over the years. In this, he is mimicking the good work of John Cassavetes, godfather to all of the independent writer-directors, whose films ”Husbands” and ”Woman Under The Influence” made him one of the most widely respected American directors in Europe.
It is no coincidence that this year`s batch of films features a distinguished collection from writer-directors. As one screenwriter explains the growing phenomenon, ”We have stopped asking their permission.”
