Screenwriting 101: Neil Simon

“I think the best ideas come together at the same time. In other words, the most interesting characters plus a very interesting conflict. If I just have one without the other, then I’m not sure where the thing is going. Those kinds of conflict always interest me. When people are confined in a physical space, or in a situation, and must deal with each other. It’s why marriage as a subject interests me, because you must deal with it.

I try not to write villains per se, because I think life is the villain. I think how we cope with life is the conflict. And so it just seems too easy to write about somebody who is an out and out villain, because the audience makes up their mind very quickly. You’ve made up their minds for them. But when the two people are equal in their conviction of what the particular problem is they’re dealing with, then it’s like a badminton game, the audience doesn’t know which side to be on.”

— Neil Simon from “Word Into Image”