Friday, Jun. 18

Film Is Not A Screenwriter’s Medium

Bret Easton:

I don’t think films are a screenwriters medium. You don’t know how many times it was rewritten by someone else and they just got the credit. A film is really a director’s medium. I tend to go to movie’s where I like the director really more than whoever wrote it. The things that I’ve admired a lot lately have been on television.

Sadly, the best writing is on television. At least, sad for those who like great stories on 60-foot screens.

To be a screenwriter, you have to let go of control. That’s part of the process. Your writing is alone, but still writing a script is very collaborating. There are other demands coming in from the people who are paid to develop the idea, the director who has ideas, and if there are a couple of actors who want to have their say, you have to listen to them too. Screenwriting is just a very different story from writing a novel because, you’re right, and you have quote-unquote “the final cut on it.” Screenwriting goes through so many different levels of collaboration, that by the time you see it on the screen, it doesn’t really match up to what you initially did, and you have to be okay with that. And I am.

Screenplays are a medium steeped in compromise.