The diminishment of screenwriting
Salon film critic Andrew O’Hehir weighs in with his review of Young Adult, the new movie written by Diablo Cody and directed by Jason Reitman. You can read the article here. What I found most interesting was how he starts the piece with some reflections about screenwriting:
Screenwriting is one of those things nobody really understands, and I have long suspected that those who actually do it don’t understand it much better than the ordinary moviegoer. It was two-time Oscar-winning writer William Goldman, after all, who once supplied the supreme nugget of Hollywood wisdom: “Nobody knows anything.”
Robert McKee’s lectures and seminars on story structure have made him rich, to cite the most obvious example — but McKee himself has never written a credited screenplay for a feature film, and by his own admission is handing down elemental Aristotelian wisdom about narrative that was commonplace in the early days of Hollywood. His claim to have instructed at least 36 Oscar winners and 160-odd Emmy winners leads to a tautological retort: Since virtually every aspiring screenwriter has taken his course or read his books, that’s not such an impressive ratio. Personally, I suspect that imbibing cocktails at the Beverly Hills Hotel’s poolside bar leads to winning an Oscar — I mean, the correlation is amazing! (Bonus essay question: Is McKee’s real pop-culture legacy his formulaic approach to screenplay, or his appearance as a character played by Brian Cox in “Adaptation,” itself the career apogee of the ultimate anti-McKee screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman?)
A good screenplay, it seems to me, is a mysterious, alchemical combination of ingredients both familiar and unfamiliar. There are almost no general rules about screenplays that apply across the board, no matter what McKee or anyone else tells you. But if we’re talking about American movies aimed at a more or less mainstream audience, they almost always involve the application of a highly idiosyncratic voice to a formulaic structure.
Where to begin?
Screenplays involve a whole host of narrative elements: scenes, sequences, acts, characters and character types, dialogue, themes, transitions, etc.
Screenplays reflect a writer’s understanding of multiple story principles including three-act structure, rising and falling tension, Protagonist vs. Nemesis, metamorphosis, Hero’s Journey, visual writing, etc.
Screenplays can be imbued with intangible dynamics such as pace, tone, atmosphere, subtext, intention, meaning, etc.
While I like the description of a good screenplay — “a mysterious, alchemical combination of ingredients both familiar and unfamiliar” — it’s discomforting to take in that rather noxious whiff in the article of either (A) there’s really not much about screenwriting to learn or (B) if there is anything to learn, it’s not that hard. Just sidle up to a Beverly Hills poolside bar and you’re in like Flynn.
This is an example of diminishing screenwriting and by extension screenwriters when the target should be formulas and formulaic writing. That is one of the residual issues from the explosion of content created by screenwriting ‘gurus.’ Either they make claims there is some secret path to writing a million dollar spec script or the people who pay for these books, seminars and DVDs come away thinking that. In either case, the preponderance of this type of rhetoric in social media contributes to the generally dismissive perception of screenwriting apparent in O’Hehir’s article and elsewhere.
Screenwriting is a craft. In all other aspects of life, if a person wants to do a craft well, they study it and practice it. Why should screenwriting be any different?
Instead of deprecating the craft of screenwriting or the writers who learn and ply that craft, we should decry the voices who would reduce storytelling to a formula, paradigm, or set of rules.
There is no right way to write. Every story is different. Every writer is different. Story transcends rules. Story is bigger than formulas.
As much as some interested parties would like to reduce a screenplay to a collection of beats that follow a specific pattern — and my guess is movie studios would love to figure that out, thereby minimizing the importance of screenwriters — the reality is a story is not about widgets. If you want magic to happen between a moviegoer and the movie they watch, then you must hope for magic to happen in the scripting process. Widgets do not equal magic.
Screenwriting is about hard work. Imagination. Creativity. Immersing oneself in a story universe. Character development. Digging, digging, and digging some more. Trying, failing, trying again. Writing, rewriting. Every writer approaches the craft differently as well they should. How else to allow individual voices and creative visions to flourish?
But as long as there are people out there running around reducing a screenplay to a formula, paradigm or set of rules, we will not only get more formulaic, crappy scripts, we will engender a cultural mindset that emboldens critics like O’Hehir to diminish the craft of screenwriting.
Finally re O’Hehir’s observations about Young Adult, which he eventually gets to after taking pot shots at Diablo Cody for ostensibly being responsible for “Cody-like scripts loaded with self-aware, overly verbose characters and post-Tarantino cultural shtick,” it’s notable he misses perhaps the biggest single point of departure Cody takes from what is without a doubt one of Hollywood’s Golden Rules of Screenwriting (if not codified, at least conventional wisdom): A Protagonist must always be sympathetic. Instead of congratulating Cody and director Reitman for at least trying something different with the lead character Mavis, who actress Charlize Theron has described as a “bitch,” instead we get his generally dismissive assessment of screenwriting.
Meanwhile there are hundreds of hard-working writers in Hollywood and beyond, struggling mightily to craft screenplays comprised of a “mysterious, alchemical combination of ingredients.” In the interest of seeing better movies, may I humbly suggest that instead of diminishing the craft of screenwriting, it would behoove us to uplift those writers who shun formula and seek to engage story as part of an organic and creative process.
HT to Teddy Pasternak for the link.
By the way, screenwriters John August and Craig Maizin take a look at screenwriting gurus in their latest audio podcast… and aren’t terribly impressed.
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