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Post by topbilled on Nov 12, 2022 20:00:22 GMT
It occurs to me that very little discussion ever occurs about screenwriters. At least not compared to what is said about directors.
Who are your favorite Hollywood screenwriters?
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Post by dianedebuda on Nov 12, 2022 20:22:44 GMT
Billy Wilder Dalton Trumbo Charlie Chaplin
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Post by ando on Nov 12, 2022 20:52:51 GMT
Let’s see, three right off the bat… Dalton Trumbo Paddy Chayefsky Akira Kurosawa have to think about the others...  Sam Fuller Joseph Mankiewicz Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
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Post by ando on Nov 13, 2022 2:22:14 GMT
Just to take topic a bit further here’s a quote from AK -
With a good script, a good director can produce a masterpiece. With the same script, a mediocre director can produce a passable film. But with a bad script even a good director can't possibly make a good film. - Akira Kurosawa
What constitutes a good script? And how do your favorite screenwriters fit the bill?
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Post by MacGuffin on Nov 13, 2022 15:56:13 GMT
Great question! My favorites probably run on the obvious side.
From the classic era: John Huston, Joe Mankiewicz, Billy Wilder and his writing partners I.A.L. Diamond and Charles Brackett.
From the modern era: Robert Towne, Lawrence Kasdan, David Mamet, Robert Benton, Quentin Tarantino.
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Post by ando on Nov 16, 2022 10:56:12 GMT
All About Mankiewicz is a rare doc featuring an extended interview with Joseph covering the arc of his professional career with an emphasis on the subjects he preferred to write about and eventually direct and produce, though the old latter in many of the classic Hollywood studios had producing below directing. Mankiewicz never stopped writing scripts. Nice copy of the doc on facebook. |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Nov 30, 2022 22:37:54 GMT
This isn't really to the point, but I've always wondered how screenwriting (or playwriting) collaborations would work. I like to picture Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon shoving a typewriter back and forth across the kitchen table as they wrote Adam's Rib and Pat and Mike, but I'm sure it didn't play out quite that way. Or with Wilder and Brackett. Were they in the same room even? It was obviously before fax, and telephones seem like an iffy way to get that kind of work done, so did they simply divide it up scene-wise and then make edits on each other's hard copies? To me it seems like an exciting thing to do, to collaborate that closely with someone, but I have trouble imagining how it would actually happen.
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Post by jamesjazzguitar on Dec 1, 2022 1:08:37 GMT
Screenwriters deserve a lot more love from movie fans. I would say they are the backbone of a film, while the director is the glue.
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Post by briannh2ok on Dec 1, 2022 2:15:41 GMT
I certainly won't argue with anyone who puts Billy Wilder at the top of the list.
But I would like to offer my number one pick -- Preston Sturges. For flat-out, non-stop verbal fireworks, no one comes close to this man. Even when he wasn't directing the picture, you knew he wrote the thing. I contend that he is responsible for the best Christmas movie ever made -- "Remember the Night." Every screenplay, just rockets to the moon and back again.
And now, on the more serious side, I would go with Robert Bolt for his historical dramas. Also, I'll mention the team of Brickhill, Clavell, and Burnett for "The Great Escape." This movie, for me, comes about as close to screenwriting perfection as you can get. Not a second of screentime is wasted. It all moves like clockwork, just like BigX and the entire operation. It is superbly just right for the movie -- no more, no less.
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Post by BingFan on Dec 1, 2022 2:19:52 GMT
Screenwriters deserve a lot more love from movie fans. I would say they are the backbone of a film, while the director is the glue.
Some of my favorites: Albert Hackett and Frances Goodrich; Billy Wilder and his collaborators; Samson Raphaelson; Preston Sturges; Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon; and John Huston. (I suppose a complete list would really have to include all of the writers of my favorite movies.) |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 1, 2022 2:21:19 GMT
Screenwriters deserve a lot more love from movie fans. I would say they are the backbone of a film, while the director is the glue. Not to derail, but just wanted to say Hi. I was DougieB at TCM but wanted to start over here. I've fessed up here publicly already but wanted to connect with you in particular because I always enjoyed your posts. Glad to see you have your z back and I like the new avatar. ando quoted Kurowsawa above saying that it takes a good script and a good director to make a masterpiece. The screenwriter is that essential. As you said, the backbone. I can't remember this topic ever being brought up, so I'm glad TB thought to do it. |
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 1, 2022 2:41:00 GMT
Lots of playwrights have tried a hand at adapting their own work for film but not always successfully. (Same with novelists.) One of the best was Sidney Howard. TCM has shown Dodsworth a couple of times recently, probably due to a new restoration, and it's indeed a wonder. He adapted Sinclair Lewis' novel for stage and then again for Samuel Goldwyn as a film and the result is truly stunning. He apparently became a very reliable script doctor and Selznick actively pursued him for Gone with the Wind, even allowing him the unheard-of luxury of working from home on the East Coast. His script was rewritten (Of course. It was Selznick) but Howard won the Academy Award that year posthumously as the scriptwriter of record. (He died in an accident at his farm.)
P.S. The subject of script doctors might be an interesting side discussion here. People like Nunnally Johnson had very respectable careers of their own, but were often called upon behind the scenes to "fix" troubled scripts.
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Post by dianedebuda on Dec 1, 2022 3:03:07 GMT
Carrie Fisher spent a decade as a sought-after script doctor. I read that she finally got fed up with the business practices involved and quit.
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Post by I Love Melvin on Dec 1, 2022 13:40:11 GMT
What constitutes a good script? And how do your favorite screenwriters fit the bill?One thing a good script can (though probably not must) feature is a solidly detailed central character around and through which the story can be told. Not too long ago I rewatched Horton Foote's A Trip to Bountiful (1985) with Geraldine Page as a basically serene but also fully determined woman defying her son and his wife, with whom she's living dependently, in order to revisit her old homestead one more time before she dies. Page's performance was beautifully shaded; a lot of it seemed to be happening behind her eyes without being spoken, yet her meanings were clear. I think that was only possible because Foote wrote it that way; he wrote a character who had been forced inward by circumstance, who was discouraged in her household from expressing herself, and yet still had a spark of self-determination within her. Geraldine was brilliantly following a path Foote had set for her. Geraldine won the Academy Award that year and Foote was nominated for his adaptation of his own stage play. |
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Post by mike65 on Dec 1, 2022 13:52:03 GMT
I believe Preston Sturges wrote his way into finally Directing his own material. He is a fave of mine as well as Billy Wilder.
Christopher Nolan is one of my favorite recent vintage writer/directors as well as the imaginative screenwriter Charlie Kaufman.
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