William Monahan with some strong words about screenwriting

Over at The GITS Club, Peter Nason posted this interview excerpt with novelist and screenwriter William Monahan:

The thing about this business is that you have to come out of your shell and deal with certain realities of commerce and collaboration and still come up with a masterpiece at the end of it. And you know what? The masterpiece also has to make money. It’s not easy to walk into that set of problems and come out with a work of art at the end of it, but it can be done. As far as getting notes is concerned, I‘ve spent thirty-odd years studying English drama, so I’m personally at a point where I’m post-conscious about craft, but that’s a pricey personal evolution, that’s a thing I chose to do, and you have to remember not everyone’s had time for it, any more than you can expect some other guy off the street to know kung fu or biochemistry. So yeah, there I am, and I sure I know English drama, plus film, and sometimes the other guy knows what somebody at a class told him a screenplay needs, and there’s a difference, but I tell myself what I’d say to my kids or anybody else: when your boss is talking, you listen. The studios catch a lot of crap from the peanut gallery but they’re the guys who pay for the movies and they are rightfully concerned about their investments. I don’t expect an MBA to be Northrop Frye, but I do want to hear his opinions and I’d ask for them were they not given. Do I want to hear “arc” and “journey” and how does someone “change” through the course of the movie? No, I do not. People change in stories about people changing, not in every story. Not every story is A Christmas Carol. You get this crap about “story” because of these chuckleheads out there running script classes, who really prey on confusion about art and people’s genuine desire to learn. It’s shameful what they’ve done to discourse about motion pictures and to film itself. Writers literally get fired in this business because they aren’t providing enough “journey” in a story that doesn’t call for any. There are no general rules to any sort of writing. Each work has its own inherent rules. You discover them. You don’t import them.

Probably safe to say that Monahan isn’t much of a fan of Joseph Campbell.

In one sense, I agree. As I’ve said many times: Each writer is different, each story are different. There is no one paradigm to fit every screenplay. 

And yes, as we’ve also discussed, there are stories where the Protagonist doesn’t change or transform, although I maintain that most movies, at least mainstream Hollywood films, do have transformation as a central dynamic.

I’m confused by his use of the word “journey.” Unless the movie is about something entirely static, aren’t all films some sort of journey? Maybe they don’t go anywhere geographically, but what about emotionally and psychologically? Isn’t it a prerequisite that in a movie something happens. And as a result of that event, something else happens… and so on? And aren’t the accumulation of those events, the interweaving of what happens in the plot and the underlying emotional world of the story, equivalent to a journey?

Another point to remember: Monahan is speaking from the perspective of someone who has been a working, professional writer in multiple formats — novels, screenplays, essayist — for many years. So I suspect the way he writes is more instinctual at this point. That is whatever he learned about writing in any formal sense has ‘settled’ into him somewhere — consciousness, subconsciousness, soul, whatever. And that is a wonderful place to be, where a writer has managed to move beyond the theoretical artifacts of a writing education.

Perhaps in a way, the words of Buddha are relevant in describing that creative state:

While the Tathagata, in his teaching, constantly makes use of conceptions and ideas about them, disciples should keep in mind the unreality of all such conceptions and ideas. They should recall that the Tathagata, in making use of them in explaining the Dharma always uses them in the semblance of a raft that is of use only to cross a river. As the raft is of no further use after the river is crossed, it should be discarded. So these arbitrary conceptions of things and about things should be wholly given up as one attains enlightenment.

Again wonderful place to be. But what about people who are learning the craft? Yes, it’s important to remember that the story should emerge from within that story world, not a formula or paradigm imposed on it. However writers, like all humans, need to learn to crawl before they can walk, and walk before they can run. 

And if aspiring writers need to use ‘rafts’ to learn the craft, what’s wrong with that?

You can read the entire interview with Monahan in Collider here.


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