My Day On The Set Of “The Silver Linings Playbook”

You may recall a Business of Screenwriting post about my first day on a movie set. I suppose that image — you, your story, the location, the crew — is one that helps to propel aspiring screenwriters to keep trying, even in their darkest hours.

Here’s more fodder for you.

Author Matthew Quick recently blogged about the experiences he had during his first day on the set of the movie adaptation of Quick’s novel “The Silver Linings Playbook.”

The Weinstein Company and David O. Russell are making THE SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK movie, starring Robert De Niro, Bradley Cooper, and Jennifer Lawrence.

The movie’s logline: “After spending four years in a mental institution, a former teacher moves back in with his mother and tries to reconcile with his ex-wife.”
 
Here is an excerpt from Quick’s blog post:

1 — Filmmaking is a lot like writing.

Perfection doesn’t often happen in one take.

Imagine working with the same dozen or so words; making the same movements with your body; fighting fatigue, doubt, and frustration over and over again for hours.

Sounds like writing to me — only with a crew of dozens, movie stars, and eager assistants ready and willing to bring you hot drinks. (I really want an assistant now.)

After arriving on set, I watched Bradley Cooper, John Ortiz and Julia Stiles film the same two scenes over and over again. The scenes they shot used dialogue directly from my book, and included one of my jokes.

David O. Russell had them film it one way, he experimented with another take, and then tried something completely different — again and again — all in an effort to make the ninety seconds the audience will see seem like effortless magic.

What impressed me most was how concerned David was with every beat the actors pronounced. He’d often make the actors say the lines over and over — having them emphasize different words. They’d say a line, he’d interrupt the scene and say the line the way he wanted it, and then they’d repeat it. (It was almost like the actors were his musical instruments — he was sounding them — getting the best out of each.) I watched him do this for a long time and never once did he hit a wrong note. Each tweak improved the scene, heightened the comedy, upped the tension. He was a master at work.

“Perfection doesn’t often happen in one take.” Leave it to a writer to derive that bit of wisdom from the actual process of making a film. Indeed that sounds Post-It Worthy for your writing space, does it not?

Quick also offers this:

David [Russell] and I had a chat about the differences between my work and his — the book and the movie. It was my baby that I had brought up and he was now raising it through the teen years — that was the general metaphorical thrust of our conversation.

That is a great metaphor… in an ideal world with a director who is in sync with and grasps the nuances of the story on which they’re working [in this case, Russell wrote the screenplay himself]. For some movies, however, the metaphor may include something about being stuffed into a woodchipper… fortunately for “The Silver Linings Playbook,” that doesn’t seem to be the case!

For more of Matthew Quick’s blog post, go here.

The movie’s IMDB page.

HT to Angela DiOrio for the heads-up on the link.