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Ttulo: The `How to Write the Best Ever Screenplay' book biz. Autores: Horton, Andrew Fuente: Cineaste; Dec92, Vol. 19 Issue 2/3, p12, 3p, 4 bw Tipo de documento: Article Descriptores: MOTION picture authorship Resumen: Examines several books on scriptwriting. Features of the book `Alternative Scriptwriting: Writing Beyond the Rules,' by Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush; Features of the book `Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting,' by Syd Field; Three major problems with scriptwriting books. Recuento total de palabras: 2226 ISSN: 00097004 Nmero de acceso: 9602220003 Vnculo persistente a este informe (enlace permanente): http://www.bases.unal.edu.co:2109/login.aspx? direct=true&db=fah&AN=9602220003&amp;lang=es&site=ehostlive Cortar y pegar: <A href="http://www.bases.unal.edu.co:2109/login.aspx? direct=true&db=fah&AN=9602220003&amp;lang=es&site=ehostlive">The `How to Write the Best Ever Screenplay' book biz.</A> Base de datos: Film & Television Literature Index Base de datos de texto completo:

THE "HOW TO WRITE THE BEST EVER SCREENPLAY" BOOK BIZ

Two new books on screenwriting--Alternative Scriptwriting: Writing Beyond the Rules by professors Ken Dancyger and Jeff Rush (Boston: Focal Press, 1991) and Creating Unforgettable Characters (New York: Henry Holt & Co, 1991) by Linda Seger, the author of Making A Good Script Great--break long overdue territory in the jungle of how-to script books and they point to further horizons still in need of exploration. Their publication also suggests that a review of the entire field of scriptwriting publications in the U.S. would be instructive in more ways than they intend. Contrary to pop mythology, Syd Field did not invent the Hollywood screenplay! Since 1979, with the publication of the much imitated Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting (New York: Dell Publishing Co.), millions of aspiring screenwriters have memorized, copied, and worn out Syd Field's three act, 120-page guide,to constructing a plot-driven script ("A screenplay is a STORY TOLD WITH PICTURES," p. 7). But the format of the American screenplay was pretty much set as early as 1920, when Francis Patterson wrote Cinema Craftsmanship (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Howe). "Emphasis must be laid upon causality and the action and reaction of the human will," wrote Patterson in championing the plotcentered script that, despite genre, moved chronologically through a beginning, middle, and end. There has been no real change since then. What has altered, however, is the huge industry attempting to explain "how to write a successful screenplay." There have never been as many books, seminars, workshops, or classes, all of them promising to reveal the secrets of how to write screenplays that "work" and make money, than there are in America today. And yet, at the same time, Hollywood has never been in such a crisis about how to come up with films that will connect with mass audiences. Hollywood had a rough year in 1991 despite Terminator 2. Ticket sales were down, and 'big' films that were supposed to wow us all died silent deaths after sluggish runs. What happened? With so much talk and instruction about how to write screenplays, why the paradox of so many failed films in recent years?

David Bruskin, a head story analyst for Columbia Pictures, put it this way last summer when l asked this very question: "Everybody from writers to readers and from directors to producers goes to the same weekend seminars on 'How to Create a Strong Script Structure' or 'How to Write and Sell a Script in Twenty-One Days' and so, of course, every script reads and sounds like every other script." A December 1991 editorial in American Film warned that "playing it safe often means replaying the same thing." Many other experts I have talked to recently agree: after a decade of chasing plotcentered stories with big budgets and special effects of all kinds, the American public is beginning to be interested in something with a bit more substance, with more bite. Although lack of space here does not permit a critique of the hundreds of screenwriting courses and workshops offered from Brooklyn to Venice Beach, from Ann Arbor to Baton Rouge, I would like to take stock of the book publishing phenomenon on the subject, especially some of the bright and dim lights on the horizon, based on my dozen years writing and teaching the feature screenplay. 'How-to' screenwriting books will always have somewhat less appeal than the crash weight-loss diet, real estate investment, or how-toget a mate books, and somewhat more appeal than the how to improve your SAT scores or how to repair your CD at home manuals. Why? Because screenwriting, like the movie industry itself, is still very much a crossroads for ego, greed, art, and even, for some, the place to fight for the Good Cause while reaching millions. That's why we don't see a similar forest of books on how to write successful lyric poetry or historical fiction. In short, the glamor of screenwriting is still very much alive, despite the recent news that, Basic Instinct notwithstanding, $1,000,000 to $3,000,000 fees for scripts may now be merely another page in Hollywood history. That said, there are three major problems with almost all of the books on the market. First, most are written by people who have either never written a screenplay or who have never written one that has been made into a feature film (this includes Syd Field!). Second, none gives a truly contextual sense of the screenplay as a branch of narrative that combines oral, written, and dramatic traditions of Western storytelling from Homer to the present; and,

by narrowly focusing on the mainstream Hollywood products, most of these books limit rather than liberate creativity. It is worth considering that most of the great films we remember were written by writers who did not go through the 'how-to' mill. Many have been playwrights (Preston Sturges, Ben Hecht), novelists (William Faulkner, William Goldman, Joan Didion), journalists or knockabouts (John Huston). Given the limited focus of most scriptwriting books, what is the aspiring writer to do? Perhaps the best advice is that given by Gilbert Cates, a producer/director who is currently Dean of the School of Drama, Film and Television at UCLA. Complaining that too many students know nothing about life and real characters, he suggests that, "What we really need are fewer students and especially we need students who have lived more fully and read more widely." And part of that reading, Cates points out, should include drama, screenwriting's often ignored first cousin. A little delving in the borderland between drama and screenwriting would, for instance, put the would-be scriptwriter in touch with Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1949) which is still one of the best overall works on either drama or scriptwriting ("Drama is not life itself, but the essence of life," p. 205). In terms of scriptwriting books, which have stood the test of changing fads, genres, and swiftly revolving studio bosses? Willam Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade (New York: Warner Books, 1983) is still the best single overview of Hollywood and the role of the writer. His salty cynical perspective ("Nobody knows anything") should be a guide and a warning to all. Michael Hauge's Writing Screen plays That Sell (New York: McGraw Hill, 1988) is very much an industry specific book, but, in its close analysis of The Karate Kid and discussion of story, character, structure, and marketing, Hauge's book offers a fuller range of provocative and sensible possibilities than most books with similar titles. Of the blatantly 'commercial' offerings, Hauge's is the least offensive.

Linda Seger's Making a Good Script Great: A Guide for Writing and Rewriting (Hollywood: Samuel French, 1987) ironically is just as effective for first-time writers as for those undertaking a rewrite. Using The African Queen and Witness as her main examples, Seger, a professional script consultant, writes in a clear, jargon free style that leads readers to "rewrite what doesn't work and leave the rest alone." An unlikely candidate that is full of energy and some clever writercentered activities is Viki King's How to Write a Movie in 21 Days: The Inner Movie Method (New York: Harper and Row, 1988). Most would-be writers who would actually try to complete a feature script in twenty-one days may wind up in therapy, or worse. But beyond her trendy California prose are suggestions that any scriptwriter could well use, including her concept of a "nine minute movie." Simply put, if you have an idea of what will happen on pages 1, 3, 10, 30, 60, 75, 90, and 120, you will have an easier time in actually writing, pacing, and constructing your film (she does not suggest that you hold to the original nine minute movie slavishly: all is flux and much will change in the process). She even includes advice on how to help your friends and "mate" get through your anxieties about writing a script. Comedy is a special domain, and the most provocative work in this ever-popular genre is Milt (All in the Family, Laverne and Shirley, Mork and Mindy, and Happy Days) Josefsberg's witty and pithy Comedy Writing for Television & Hollywood (New York: Harper & Row, 1987). Of the books written by academics, William Miller's Screenwriting for Narrative Film and Television (New York: Hastings House, 1980) served a needed purpose when it appeared, though its Seventies' examples, lack of theoretical focus, and absence of attention to gender and minority issues in writing date the book today. Finally, an intriguing book that takes on Hollywood with a healthy 'do it yourself' attitude is Rick Schmidt's intelligent, personable, and carnivalesque Feature Film-making at Used Car Prices: How to Write, Produce, Direct, Film, Edit, and Promote a Feature-length Film for Less Than $10,000 (New York Penguin, 1988). I can think of a lot of studio heads who should read this one and meditate!

Returning to the latest entries in the field, Dancyger and Rush offer some much needed tonic for Hollywood's current woes by focusing their book, Alternative Scriptwriting, on "alternatives" to the Syd Field plot-driven model. Taking a "mixed-genre approach not only to its content, but to its form," they delineate alternatives to mainstream genres, plotting, characterization, and the classical three act form. Examples are drawn generously from Eighties' films--from Mystic Pizza and Field of Dreams to sex, lies and videotape and She's Gotta Have It--with attention paid to minority films and filmmakers. Despite such an excellent orientation, however, the book disappoints. Once more, there is no overreaching context for the screenplay established within the history of drama and narrative, no consistent theoretical perspective which could build on, for instance, David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson's impressive study, The Classical Hollywood Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), a curious lack of discussion of European cinema as an alternative influence (Godard is listed as "nonAmerican"), no discussion of postmodernist or alternative cinema, and no real mention of American independent cinema/television. More surprising still is the sloppy misuse of grammar (I quit counting after fifty mistakes in the first third of the text) and facts that are plain wrong: they list Oliver Stone as the director of Scarface, for example, rather than Brian De Palma! How do you guide students when the teachers don't care enough to get it right? Also missing is any personal touch to the book, discussing, at least in passing, the many scripts and films they have made themselves. And in terms of analysis, while it is fine to see Raging Bull selected as an example of alternative American filmmaking, the absence of any of the splendid scholarship on the film--such as Robin Wood's exploration of the role of suppressed homoeroticism in the film ("I don't know whether to fuck him or fight him," says De Niro at one point)--is hard to understand. We are therefore left with a scattered, impersonal, and inaccurate work with a promised "alternative" unfulfilled. The wait continues for a text which is truly more alternative and far reaching than this one Linda Seger's Creating Unforgettable Characters, on the other hand,

successfully builds on her previous work, Making A Good Script Great. Seger's book rightly sees the need for stronger characters and characterization throughout the entire narrative media field: films, TV series, advertisements. novels. and short stories. Thus, while useful attention is paid to character development in Rain Man and Ordinary she also provides insight into the formation and ongoing productions of Murphy Brown and Cheers. Jimmy Swaggart and Dick Nixon make it into her discussion, under the heading of the sense of paradox at the center of all of us! This synthetic approach helps us see both similarities and differences between the mediums, genres, and demands. Seger has further drawn upon her personal contacts with industry writers and producers to turn interviews into what almost becomes a `talk show' of a book. as everyone from Judith Guest, the novelist of Ordinary People, to lames Burrows, one of the creators of Cheers, explain their respective crafts. Finally, she has brought in post-Freudian psychology in enough detail to go beyond simple Freudian labels. Her chapter on the need for more minority and female characters has long been needed and her chapter on "nonrealistic characters" should help with those taking an future E.T.s and Terminators. Any writer can profit from this unpretentious, easy to read guide which she ends up calling an "adventure." Despite its wide range and the expert advice, Seger's book leaves us realizing that there is still a need for more work on character. We need a book which considers the full range of character concepts in Western narrative and drama and which draws more fully on contemporary efforts to delve into a theory of character, both literary and psychoanalytic. What we also need are books on scriptwriting that take more chances. Perhaps this is one of the messages of the success of Thelma & Louise, that this could be the year, or the years, for living dangerously. "I guess I went a little crazy, huh?," says Thelma near the end. "No," replies Louise. "You've always been crazy. This is just the first chance you've had to really express yourself." PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): Syd Field

PHOTOS (BLACK & WHITE): Book covers

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by Andrew Horton

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