Written Interview: William Nicholson

Screenwriter William Nicholson ( Gladiator, Les Misérables) in a BAFTA appearance. An excerpt:

Screenwriters do not write dialogue. This is a misunderstanding. People often say, ‘Which lines did you write?’ Of course we do write dialogue, but that’s not the big thing we write. We write story, we create stories. You can have an entire movie without a single line of dialogue and every moment has been written by a screenwriter.

The screenwriter imagines what’s going to happen, puts it on paper and some minor functionary called a director comes and actually makes it happen. We write what you see; it’s all there on paper. There’s a whole extra argument to be had, which I expect we will have, which is, ‘How come nobody’s heard of us?’ That’s another matter.

I am here to tell you we write story and that’s important because stories matter like hell. Screenwriting matters like hell. Why? Because stories form our culture. I profoundly believe that. The storytelling impulse is built into us and it’s the way we explain and describe our entire lives, all the time.

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