In Memoriam: Syd Field (1935–2013)
News today of Syd Field’s death. Word first broke from Raindance:
Beverly Hills, CA — November 17, 2013 — Syd Field, long considered by the global film community as “the guru of screenwriting,” died on Sunday, November 17 of hemolytic anemia at his home in Beverly Hills surrounded by his wife, family and friends. He was 77.
Field was the author of eight best-selling books on screenwriting. The first of these, Screenplay was initially published in 1979, and is universally considered to be “the Bible” of screenwriting. It revolutionized how screenwriters and filmmakers approached story and the art of filmmaking and has been published in 23 languages and is used in over 400 colleges and universities around the world.
Born on December 19, 1935 in Hollywood, California, Syd Field received his B.A. in English Literature at University of California, Berkeley in 1960. He began his career at Wolper Productions in the shipping department, earning $75 a week. Field went on to research and write for the original Biography television series, among other Wolper Productions.
Acclaimed by CNN as the “guru of all screenwriters,” and by The Hollywood Reporter as “the most sought after screenwriting teacher in the world,” Field is celebrated as the first writer to outline the paradigm that most screenplays follow, which is the classic three-act structure.
During his more than 50-year career, Syd Field has chaired the Academic Liaison Committee at The Writer’s Guild of America, West, served as lecturer on the faculty at University of Southern California and AFI and has been a special script consultant to 20th Century Fox, the Disney Studios, Universal, Tri-Star Pictures as well as an annual The Visual Art of Storytelling workshop for the scientists of JPL and NASA.
My ‘formal’ screenwriting training when I wrote K-9 was three scripts — Witness, Back to the Future, Breaking Away — and a borrowed copy of “Screenplay: The Foundation of Screenwriting,” Field’s first book.
I’m guessing there is a generation of screenwriters, perhaps even two, who first learned of concepts like “plot point” and “three-act structure” from Field’s books.
Beyond that, Field helped to put a spotlight on the importance of screenwriting and the screenplay to the filmmaking process. While we can argue the pluses or minuses of the floodgates having been opened to the masses and the spawning of the whole ‘screenwriting guru’ cottage industry, clearly Field loved movies and storytelling, and he had something of importance to say about the craft.
I’m not surprised to have seen the many acknowledgements from screenwriters, professional and non-pros, about Field today. I know I never would have broken into the business without the insights into the basics of screenwriting his book gave me.
Here is what John August tweeted earlier today: “RIP Syd Field. We can argue about formula and dogma, but Field introduced countless screenwriters to the craft. He was an inciting incident.”
Feel free to post your thoughts on Field’s passing, reflections on his contribution to screenwriting, and if you see any good quotes from writers on Twitter or elsewhere, that would be nice, too.
Godspeed, Syd Field.
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