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Screenwriting
The Thinking:
Tony Philpott, writer of On the Nose among other
features, muses on a strange insidious parasite that burrows
away at scripts after their completion.
It's called 'The Thinking'. It's a monster.
As a produced screenwriter, both here and in North America,
I know the beast well.
It's a lurker, remaining silent, skulking on
the outskirts of the development process waiting for its moment.
But 'The Thinking' doesn't pounce, it infects. It only manifests
itself when the writer's resistance is strongest: the more
the screenwriter resists, the stronger 'The Thinking' becomes.
In a review of my film On The Nose a
critic cited flaws in the film as being attributable to me,
the scriptwriter. Fair dues. The film was indeed flawed. I
don't blame him at all for saying so. But his critique, too,
was flawed. For two reasons: he didn't read the script I wrote.
And he doesn't know about 'The Thinking'.
I was one of the Hollywood 10:
Before the gurus, before the weekend seminar, there was
J.H. Lawson. Mark McIlrath casts an eye over one of the greatest
guides to screenwriting ever published.
John Howard Lawson's Theory and Technique
of Playwriting and Screenwriting was published in 1949.
Lawson was the first 'president' of the Writer's Guild of
America. A member of the Communist Party, he later suffered
during the McCarthy era, becoming one of the Hollywood 10,
and was sentenced to a year in prison. He died in 1977. His
book remains one of the most perceptive and intelligent guides
for the screenwriter. A copy will cost you $250. If you can't
get your hands on a copy, you might be interested in the following,
a rough summary of the man's thoughts on screenwriting.
The McKee Machine:
Karl Doyle reviews the Robert McKee 'Genre' weekend London
11th-13th July 2003
To say that the Robert McKee comes to this,
his bi-annual visit to lecture in London, with something of
a weight of expectation is an understatement. The room is
filled with eager students, most of whom have a well thumbed
copy of his Story book tucked into their bags and briefcases.
We've read the
book now we want the man in the flesh, who is here to lecture
not on the topic of story and its construction, but on Genre.
The full article is printed in Film Ireland
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