In this multi-faceted form of
communication, it is hard to indentify precisely what the most important
component, or who the most important team member, is. However, there is a
strong case to support the notion that the most vital piece of a film is the
screenplay, making the screenwriter a film’s most valuable, and often
underappreciated, player.
It is impossible to envision a film
without a script, as the script is the base for what appears onscreen; it
contains, as Assistant Professor of Film Debbie Danielpour explained at the Boston
University (BU) College of Communication (COM), what is both seen and heard.
This includes a film’s structure,
its dialogue, and perhaps most importantly a description of the scene’s most
significant action.
Moreover, it is almost impossible to envision a good film with a bad screenplay.
Syd Field, the “Father of Structure” and author of Screenplay has spoken at length on this issue. Field said
definitively, “You can never make a good movie out of a bad screenplay.”
Indeed, it is possible to have a good script with poor
production value and subsequently a poor film, but challenging to see the other
way around.
Field continued, “A screenplay is the foundation of a movie.
If it’s not there, like in any building, it’s gonna weaken and crumble.”
This idea
of the screenplay as the start, the spawn, the foundation of the final work of
art seems the strongest support for the idea that it is therefore the most
pertinent piece of the product.
However, Professor Danielpour, who also created
the Screenwriting Certificate Program at Emerson College, says she is “not
sure” that “the most critical aspect of the success of a film is the
screenplay.”
Professor Danielpour argues that, “depending on
what sort of film it is, the direction could be more critical to its success.”
Though she noted in her response that, “in a narrative film, it’s essential to
start with a strong script,” Professor Danielpour clearly could not commit to
the claim that the screenplay was the most important key to a film’s success.
Her colleague, Associate Professor of Film
Charles Merzbacher, was more ready to accept the idea. “I wouldn’t dispute your
assertion,” he said. “I often say that any director who has a good script and
the right cast is well on their way to success.” Merzbacher is acknowledging
the collaborative process that filmmaking requires (the director, the cast) but
could not find his own genuine argument against the screenwriter’s position as
the most important.
Before acknowledging and responding to Professor
Danielpour’s point, it would be best to briefly do the same for Professor
Merzbacher’s noteworthy mention of the cast. Though more actors are far more
famous than screenwriters (when one refers to a “star” one is probably speaking
of a lead actor than even an award-winning screenwriter) and though a given
actor’s name is slammed on the movie poster or ad campaign, this only proves a
disproportionate admiration and acclamation for the cast over the most critical
component of the crew.
Though Philip Seymour Hoffman’s portrayal of the
title character in “Capote” might have been challenging and sensational, he
was, in the end, memorizing and reciting lines Dan Futterman wrote on the page.
To further illustrate this point, Katherine Atwell Herbert’s Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love addresses
the issue of actor versus writer in the industry. She writes, “We know that
bankable stars are important... but it’s really the script. Leonardo diCaprio,
considered the hottest ticket around since ‘Titanic,’ didn’t save ‘The Man in
the Iron Mask’ from a stifling box office... And even the hyper-kinetic Robin
Williams couldn’t get ‘Jakob the Liar’ to sell any tickets.”
These
examples speak to the way in which the quality of the script (which should
translate into good reviews) often outweighs the talent of an actor—even a
celebrity like diCaprio and an Oscar-winner like Williams.
This brings us to the key and common argument
Professor Danielpour made before: the director might be the most important
player on the team. Indeed, the screenwriter is not even usually on the
set—where the very product in question is being shot, acted, and put into film.
Furthermore, films are often marketed or credited as (for example) “a Steven
Spielberg film” or “a film by Martin Scorsese,” putting the director in the
center and accrediting almost the entire process and product to the individual
who directed the movie.
Paul Aaron—a director, writer, producer,
traveling professor, and president of his own production company, Suntaur
Entertainment—claims that this stigma arose during the French New Wave.
As discussed in Associate Professor of Film
Studies Roy Grundmann’s November 24 COM lecture, this was a period in the late
1950’s and 1960’s in which a group of French filmmakers (Grundmann cited
Francois Truffaut as one) were seen as artists as opposed to merely directors.
Grundmann described this author-function as a
profiting sect of the industry wherein Hollywood could make money off the
artist, specifically the 1960’s and 1970’s “movie grad generation” alum like
Francis Ford Coppola or Martin Scorsese. Aaron, who says the French were
“director-centric” as the author of the film “switched from writer to
director,” seems to reject the myth of directors (despite being an
award-winning one) being the center of the art. In fact, he rejects film being
called “art” at all. “It’s a craft,” he argues. “It’s an assemblage of people
dedicated to illuminating the same story—editors, directors, actors, designers.
And because the story begins with the screenplay, although people argue because
of the final result that it is the director’s vision onscreen, the director
couldn’t have a vision if he didn’t have a script.” Aaron rightfully finds this
rather unfair: “Everyone remembers Frank Capra directed ‘It Happened One Night’
but no one remembers who wrote the screenplay.”
There is an unfortunate status quo in both
Hollywood and society that
disregards the writer, or at least marginalizes him or her, in monetary and
fame-related terms. There are very few famous screenwriters that the average
American can name, yet the famous movies any American can name would not have
existed without that nearly anonymous writer.
One potential reason for this is due to the
glory, or lack thereof, of roles in the process: it is more glamorous to be an
attractive and made-up actor with a trailer, or a director in charge of bossing
around a cast and crew, than a man or woman drafting alone at a typewriter or
laptop computer screen. With the insertion of New Media into the picture, there
are even more issues surrounding the respect of the writer.
This was best illustrated by the Writers Guild
of America strike in 2007 and 2008. In November of 2007, WGA members began a
strike over the Minimum Basic Agreement contract with the Alliance of Motion
Picture and television Producers.
The issues in the contract surrounded DVD
residuals, animation and reality TV writers, and New Media technology. This
technology included internet downloads,
streaming, IPTV, and smart phone programming; 1.2% of revenues from one-time
online stream viewings went to writers, but nothing from website-downloaded
content. Casts and
crews from countless television series and films picketed in support of the
working writers, citing their utter necessity in the industry and the need for
greater monetary respect in the modern-day market.
Yet even those living in Hollywood and immersed
deeply in the industry, like Paul Aaron, know how important and furthermore how
under-appreciated the screenwriter is. “The only time when a film is perfect,”
Aaron says, “is when a film is well-written.” He went on to create an analogy
between a film and a song: “the song is still written by the composer. You can
rearrange it, you can raise the volume—but you’re still playing the song
written by the composer.”
Film is indeed a craft, combining the talents of
hundreds upon hundreds of craftsmen. These craftsmen are united in the common
goal of telling a story to the best of their ability. But what story? There
must be a starting point of the product—and that starting point is the
screenplay, the offspring of the screenwriter. This is not to suggest every
screenplay births from the idea of the screenwriter—not all scripts are “spec
scripts,” or those written without the invitation from a studio or company.
In
fact, countless ideas for movies are invented by a producer, a company, a
director, or a powerful actor in the industry. However, it is the screenwriter
who establishes the fundamental themes, structure, characters, dialogue, and
action (what is seen and heard onscreen) for the film. The screenplay is the
most significant aspect of the entire medium of film, and oddly enough, often
the least appreciated.
References:
Vivian, John. The Media of Mass Communication (9th Edition). Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon, 2009.
Herbert, Katherine Atwell. Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love. New York: Allworth Press, 2000
.
Mina, Rosanna, and
abs-cbnNEWS.com. "Screenwriting guru: Bad screenplay = bad movie | ABS-CBN
News Online Beta." ABS-CBN News Online Beta.
http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/features/03/11/09/guru-gives-tips-screenplay-writing
(accessed November 9, 2009).
By Koome Kimonye (Isaac)
By Koome Kimonye (Isaac)
