Hollywood Tales

“Well paid though they were, screenwriters suffered the frustration of sharing a script with several other writers and never knowing what would come out in the end. Screenplays went through numerous revisions by one team after another, so that it was sometimes difficult to determine who contributed what. Producer Walter Wanger had two writers under contract for $2,500 a week named Towne and Baker, both good idea men who understood film. Town was practically illiterate, saying things like, ‘Bring that dame in here and she’ll do this… Then the punk comes in…’ The more dignified Baker put their material on paper after the two had worked out the action. ‘Oh, this stinks,’ Towne would say, ‘Nobody will ever stand for that.’ Wanger claimed they wrote every sequence on toilet paper, which they hung on the wall. When they were ready, the producer would go in and comment, ‘That seems a little to long. There might be a dead spot there.’ If the writers agreed, they’d simply tear off a couple of sheets of toilet paper. Once the blueprint of the action was completed, Wanger would bring Dorothy Parker to rewrite the material and insert the dialogue.”

 — Of life as a writer in the old studio system from “The Real Tinsel” (Macmillan, 1970), pp. 85–86

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