How They Write A Script: Jay Presson Allen

“She is one of a handful of first-rank screenwriters of the post-1960s who also happens to be female. This has figured into her trademark of flamboyant female characters, stories that often focus on divorce and marriage or explosive relationships, family matters (including the pilot episode of the prestigious television series Family ), or occasional subjects with the interests of children at heart. But she hates being typed, can’t be typed, and reminds you that she writes compelling male characters too; after all, she wrote and produced Prince of the City, one of the quintessential, New York true-life street stories about police and corruption, with nary a female character worth mentioning.”

That’s how the forward to the interview with screenwriter Jay Presson Allen (Jay is short for “Jacqueline”) begins in the book “Backstory 3: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 60s,” one of a 4-part series edited by Patrick McGilligan.

Allen’s writing credits include Marnie (1964) , The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969), Cabaret (1972), Travels with My Aunt (1972), Funny Lady (1975) , Prince of the City (1981), and Deathtrap (1982).

ON HOW SHE BECAME A WRITER

I don’t think I ever wanted to be a writer. I became a writer by default. I was a show-off kid who got a lot of encouragement. I wanted to be an actress, from the earliest age, and I never presumed to be anything else. I came to New York at the first opportunity and discovered rather quickly that I only liked rehearsal. I discovered I didn’t like to perform. It was a shock.

So I married the first grown man who asked me.[*] Then I lived in southern California during the Second World War, in a small academic town called Claremont. I had two friends who were in the movie business, but it never occurred to me to aspire to that world. It was exotic. It was not a business as far as I knew. My innocence was profound and sublime.

When I chose to leave that marriage, I felt guilty because my husband’s big fault was marrying someone too young. I’d always read an enormous amount of trash, and I couldn’t imagine not being able to write as well as a great deal of the stuff I was reading. I’d always written facilely, in school and letters. So I decided to write my way out of that marriage, and I did.

I wrote a novel. It was published by a well-known house in ’46 to ’47. The name of it was Spring Riot. Don’t ask me what the title means. I haven’t a clue.

I was so ignorant — I thought if you wrote a book, it got published. It never occurred to me that you could write a book which nobody would pay you for. The ignorance was breathtaking.

It was smart-ass: what I’d seen of Hollywood — and what I’d seen I didn’t understand. There’s nothing as dumb as a smart girl.

My agent was Marsha Powers, who had been Sinclair Lewis’s teenage mistress, and whom he had set up in an agency. She was clever and active. I can’t remember who sent me to her, but she took the book and sold it instantly.

ON HER FIRST BIG BREAK

Then I wrote a play, which was optioned by producer Bob Whitehead. I was ambitious for that play. I think that was the first real ambition I ever experienced. I liked that play and was proud of it. I picked out this particular producer because he had produced Member of the Wedding, which I loved, and my play was also about a child. I thought he would like my play, so I sent it to his office. Ere long, I got it back, rejected, and was astonished.

I didn’t send it anywhere else for a couple of months. Finally, I came to this conclusion; “I bet some reader rejected my play. I bet Mr. Whitehead never read it.” So I sent it back. And I had guessed right. The reader who had read the play and rejected it had now gone off to Mexico with a beautiful actress. This time Bob read the play himself and instantly optioned it. The reader who had rejected my play came back in a couple of years, and I married him. (Laughs. ) That was Lewis Allen, my husband.

ON HOW SHE CAME TO WRITE “THE PRIME OF MISS JEAN BRODIE”

Because Bob Whitehead had become a good friend, and he was very encouraging. He pushed me: “Do a play, do a play, do a play.” One day I picked up this little book [The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, by Muriel Spark (London: Macmillan, 1961)] and read it and thought it was wonderful. I could see a play, instantly, in that book. I called Bob and said I had found this book which I wanted to adapt into a play. He read it and said, “Do you really want to do this?” I said yes. He really did not think it would make a play. However, he was very generous, and insisted that I go to Scotland and do some research, which never would have occurred to me. I did; then I wrote the play.

ON HOW SHE ENDED UP WRITING “MARNIE” FOR DIRECTOR ALFRED HITCHCOCK

People like [Alfred] Hitchcock have always had their finger in the agencies. Stuff is sent to them early. Preproduction. Hitch read Brodie, called me, and asked me to do Marnie.

He was a great teacher. He did it naturally, easily, and unself-consciously. In that little bit of time that I worked for him, he taught me more about screenwriting than I learned in all the rest of my career. There was one scene in Marnie, for example, where this girl is forced into marriage with this guy. I only knew how to write absolutely linear scenes. So I wrote the wedding and the reception and leaving the reception and going to the boat and getting on the boat and the boat leaving . . . I mean, you know, I kept plodding, plodding, plodding. Hitch said, “Why don’t we cut some of that out, Jay? Why don’t we shoot the church and hear the bells ring and see them begin to leave the church. Then why don’t we cut to a large vase of flowers, and there is a note pinned to the flowers that says, ‘Congratulations.’ And the water in the vase is sloshing, sloshing, sloshing.”

Lovely shorthand. I often think of that. When I get verbose, I suddenly stop and say to myself, “The vase of water.”

He was wonderful to me. So was his wife, Alma. She was very influential in everything Hitch did. She had been a successful editor before they were married, and she contributed a lot to his films. She was around a lot, though not for script sessions. But it was all very easy and open. Alma was knowledgeable, more sophisticated than Hitch. We were together all the time and got along well.

I should say they tried to teach me to write a script. I couldn’t learn fast enough to make a first-rate movie, although Marnie did have some good scenes in it.

It is a very flawed movie, for which I have to take a lot of the responsibility — it was my first script. Hitch certainly didn’t breathe on me. He loved the script I did, so that he did not make as good a movie as he should have made. I think one of the reasons that Hitch was fond of me and filmed a lot of the stuff I wrote was that I am frequently almost crippled by making everything rational. There always has to be a reason for everything. And he loved that.

Another reason is that Hitch was very concerned with characterization when he could get it, and basically, that’s what I do.

ON HOW SHE GOT INVOLVED WITH “TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT”

The inception of that particular project, I am almost certain, was Kate [Hepburn] wanting to give [the director] George [Cukor] a job. He was not getting work, he wanted to work, and there was no reason in the world why he shouldn’t work. So he and Hepburn had teamed up with Bobby Fryer [who had produced Brodie as a film] to do Travels.

They called me, and I was involved in something else. I suggested Hugh Wheeler. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t all that crazy about the material. The characters were wonderful, but I didn’t really know how you were going to string all that into a movie. Bobby called me back several months later. They were unhappy with what Hugh had done. I agreed to take a shot at it.

I went and met George, and just adored him. I did a pretty straightforward, quite a competent script. At the beginning, George was very reasonable to deal with. We only locked horns on a couple of things. For one, George wanted to show Kate as a young woman in a flashback, but I thought it was a disservice to her and to the film. I believe in the film they show Maggie [Maggie Smith, who took over the role] as a young woman — which is more reasonable — but I desperately thought they shouldn’t with Kate, and George was very, very determined to do that.

I don’t think George was great with script. Storytelling was instinctive with Hitch. George was great with feeling and with the mood he wanted, but structurally, he didn’t have Hitch’s knack. However, George was a creature of the theater, and he was wonderful with actors. Hitch wasn’t all that good with actors, whereas George was wonderful with them. He was a cunning psychologist.

What happened between the cup and the lip is that Kate went into The Madwoman of Challiot [1969], and it was a kind of disaster for her. By the time I came out with my script, she didn’t want to do Travels anymore. She didn’t want to play another crazy old lady, not an unreasonable position. However, she would never admit it. She was loyal to George and reluctant to let him down.

George wanted desperately to work, and as she began to withdraw or find problems, he became frantic — like a boiling pot. He couldn’t afford to deal with Kate, the real problem, because he would lose the project. He was genuinely devoted to Kate. They were bosom buddies; they laughed a lot and comforted one another. As we began to flounder, I think he panicked.

I rewrote and rewrote, trying to satisfy Kate, but I knew it was not going to work out. What she really wanted was to get the hell out of the project, and she was unable to face that. At some point, she had worked on parts of the script herself. I had once, a couple of years before all this, read a screenplay that she had written. It was pretty good. Now, I read what she was trying to do with Travels. It was talented and interesting, and I felt I had run my course; so I spoke to George, then to her: “Kate, you ought to write it yourself.” So she did, and I went merrily on my way, happy to escape.

Kate wrote and wrote. My guess is that she was happy enough writing it, but she still didn’t want to play it. Everybody was made very nervous. Jim Aubrey, who was running MGM at the time, had a very rough reputation, and he got a bellyful of all the toing and froing. So Aubrey called Kate up and said, in effect, “Miss Hepburn, report to work on script number fourteen on Monday morning.” And she said exactly what he knew she would say, “Get yourself another girl.” Of course, Bobby [Fryer, the producer] had Maggie Smith, who had done Brodie, standing by, and they were very compatible. So MGM gave George about thirty-seven dollars and sent him to Spain to make the movie.

The script they went with had one big speech of mine. Otherwise, it was all Kate’s. It had nothing of Hugh’s. One big speech of mine. I got a call from Bobby in the middle of the night from Spain, and he said, “We’ve run out of money, and we’re only on page — something — what the hell do I do?” I said, “Just say, ‘Cut.’” (Laughs. )

But when I saw the movie, I thought it was pretty darned good. George’s work, considering the circumstances, was pretty darned good. It’s a nice picture.

When credit time came up, I got a call from the Guild, asking me what I wished to claim. I said, “Oh, I didn’t write anything in that movie. I don’t want any credit. That is Miss Hepburn’s script.” The Guild’s attitude was, in effect: So what? She’s not a member of the Guild, no credit. Hugh was furious that I wanted to take my credit off. Hugh was furious anyway. He wanted that credit. Bobby said he’d paid me a lot of money, and he wanted my credit on the picture. Everybody seemed mad at me, so I just shrugged and left my credit on. But I’ve never made any bones about writing that movie.

Kate got screwed on the credit. And did you see what she wrote in her book [Me: Stories of My Life, by Katharine Hepburn (New York: Knopf, 1991)]? She got to the part about Travels with My Aunt and wrote, “It was not a very good script . . . “ But she didn’t ascribe the writing to herself! (Laughs. ) So I have taken the rap for it. That’s all right. I did get paid a lot of money.

ON “PRINCE OF THE CITY”

Of all my work, Prince of the City is my absolute all-time favorite. I like scenes from everything else. That’s the only one that I like in totality.

The book [Prince of the City, by Robert Daley (New York: Dutton, 1975)] was reviewed very late in the game. I read the review, and went and bought the book. I thought, “Oh yeah. This is Lumet!” Instantly, I called the publisher to see who the agent was, but the book had already been sold. It had been sold to Orion for David Rabe as screenwriter and Brian De Palma as director. I didn’t think that two men who leave their prints so richly on material would be able to do this book, because there wasn’t any room for the screenwriter and not all that much room for the director. The material just dictated what was to be there.

I didn’t think they would ever come out with the film, so I called John Calley at Warner Brothers — at that time Warner Brothers umbrellaed Orion — and said, “If this falls through, I would like to get this for Sidney, and I want to produce it, not write it.” He said, “If it falls through, it’s yours.” At that point, I showed the book to Sidney, and he just flipped. We had to wait to see what would happen. Well, we waited and waited and waited, and it seemed as if nothing would come of it. And Sidney was within twenty-four hours of signing up for another movie when we got the call.

But I didn’t want to write that movie. I was tired. I just wanted to produce it. I thought it seemed like a hair-raising job to find a line, get a skeleton out of the book, which went back and forth . . . all over the place. I thought it was too big a job. I told Sidney there were other writers we could get. But Sidney said he wouldn’t do it if I didn’t write it. He said, “Would you write it if I do an outline first?” I said, “Do the outline, and we’ll see.” So we sat down together and went over the book and the scenes, and agreed on the scenes and characters that we felt we absolutely had to have, as well as a general thrust for the movie.

We were sharing an office, and he would come in every day with a legal pad, and sit at his desk: scribble, scribble, scribble, Mr. Gibbons. I was horrified because I knew he had to be writing scenes. I thought, “Well, this is the end of a beautiful friendship, because he’s going to turn this stuff in, I’m going to read it, and I’m going to be forced to reject it.” Anyway, two or three weeks pass, and he hands the pages to me. If memory serves, something in the neighborhood of one-hundred handwritten pages. My heart really, really sank. I went home and read the pages, and he had written scenes, and most of them were not right. But the outline was just wonderful. I went back to him and said exactly that. Then I took what he had done, and went to work.

It was the first time I had ever written anything about living people — so I interviewed almost everybody in the book. And I had right next to me — the minute I was stuck on anything — all those phone numbers to dial. I could dial the real characters and say, “This doesn’t sound right to me . . . “ Mr. Daley, a good Catholic boy, was more a believer than I was. Eventually, I sat down with my interviews, what Sidney had done, the book and the telephone numbers, and turned out a three-hundred-and-some-page script in ten days.

The studio was so generous. A three-hour movie is very, very hard to sell. But we didn’t know any other way to do the movie. We said, going in, “We’re going to have a three-hour movie. Do you want to do it — if we can make it for ten million dollars?” They let us do it.

ON WRITING CHILDREN

I love writing children. Because they’re fun. It’s almost impossible to write a dull kid. Writing children? — that’s an only-child syndrome. I’m an only child, I have an only child. Only children think a lot about their childhood, and it maintains interest. In any case, I find itty-bitty babies the most riveting things on earth. They are little learning machines, and there’s a kind of violence in their madness to take everything in. Children are fascinating. It’s exciting to be around them. Exhausting but exciting.

ON WHAT CHARACTERISTICS SHE HAS THAT MAKE HER A WRITER

Well, I am a chronic reader. Compulsive, chronic reader. I could never get enough of books. I was and am a bookworm. And I’ve always been interested in the why of human behavior. I think most dramatic writers are natural psychologists.

ON HER WRITING REGIMEN

I don’t do anything but write. I get up and I write and I write, until I have to go to sleep; then, I get up, eat something, then go back to work. I do a script very fast, because I don’t stop. All day. All night, until I’m too sleepy.Of course, I do a lot of rewriting. A tremendous amount of rewriting.

I take a little exercise now and then, a little run. I use an old Underwood 1949 typewriter, which takes a lot of pounding and gets a lot of aerobic stuff going for you.

The easiest part is going into some kind of overture. When you come out, you don’t know who wrote it. That’s kind of wonderful. You start writing at eight o’clock in the morning. The first thing you know it’s two, and you don’t remember that time. That’s when all the good stuff happens. If I have to labor and sweat, it’s never any good.

[Originally posted December 14, 2009]