From The Vaults: Paddy Chayefsky story
I’ve been going through the numerous files I’ve collected over the years — interviews, articles, notes. Finding some great stuff I’ll be posting here over the next several months, things that aren’t available online. And just some plain bizarre stuff about which I have no recollection. For example, evidently I wrote something for the TFI Reporter (Television and Film Institute for Screenwriters) because there I am, Vol. 2., #1, Summer ’92 in a piece entitled “The only way out is through” (a quote I attributed to Rita Mae Brown). In this piece, I recount a story that was told to me by producer Howard Gottfried. Howard produced most of Paddy Chayesky’s movies and I got to know Howard during the Siegel & Myers days. Here’s a story Howard told about Chayefsky, taken from the TFI piece:
“This producer [Howard Gottfried] told me that Chayefsky had the same work schedule every day… went into his dank, dark little office from twelve to four. And he pounded out pages. [Gottfried] told me that one time, during the writing of Network, Chayefsky was stuck on one sequence of events, a couple of scenes. He wrote, then re-wrote them every day for a month. In that time, he had amassed almost a hundred pages of different dialogue, action, etc. Finally came the catharsis. He [Chayefsky] understood what he needed to do… then proceeded to write the problematic sequence… in twenty minutes. But he never would have gotten to that point without writing what he did for a month. It was the process of writing which enabled him to come to understand the characters more clearly, to ‘hear’ their voices.”
Now the point I would take from this story at this stage in my life is not that every time we get stuck in a story, we must gut our way through it via head-to-head combat; sometimes the best solution comes from approaching the problem counterintuitively or indirectly. However, I do think the basic tenet of the story is still a valuable one: If we hit a seeming dead end, don’t turn back; instead dig deeper. I’d wager that nine times out of ten the main reason we get stuck is because we haven’t immersed ourselves in our story as much as we need to.