Screenwriting: Life Out of Sequence

21 Grams is one of the year's most talked-about films, Joe Griffin talks to screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga about his non-sequential narrative and the challenge of writing in a second language.

JG: Question:Is it true that this script took three years from conception to birth?

GA: Yes, that's true. I'm a perfectionist, and I like to write rewrite, rewrite, rewrite and rewrite! I think that's why it took so long. It's the same with my novels. The first page of one of one of my novels, I would easily write it 800 times because it gives you the tone...

That's the mood for the following 300 pages.

Exactly. And my first drafts are nearly always very bad. Because that's when you 'act' the story.

So how do you know when you're happy with it? How do you know when to hand it to the director?

I always hand the director the bad draft. And he has the chance to look at it. Iñárritu said that he didn't like it. So I went away for eight months by myself and wrote and rewrote it. And then I came back and he said: 'Okay. Now I like it.'

It must take a lot of discipline...

It's work; it's a job. I don't think you question having to deliver an article; you don't question that! I think a bank clerk doesn't question his job. He has to go to work! So I don't think a writer has to question why he has to write.

Do you ever suffer from writer's block?

I have exactly the opposite problem. I have a lot of stories that I want to tell and I don't have the time! Right now I have in my mind two novels and two screenplays and not enough time to sit down and write them!

The full article is printed in Film Ireland 98