Screenwriters: 20/20 Vision
ANNA HAMILTON PHELAN
Mask, Gorillas in the Mist
"For me, great screenwriting is more about character than plotting. On the Waterfront--written by Budd Schulberg--has a main character we take a journey with, and you get involved in all the shifts and turns during the journey. I must have seen that movie 15 times. Sunset Boulevard also has that journey, and so does Midnight Cowboy. But in On the Waterfront the character's victorious in the end, so you identify with the little guy overcoming the system."
ABRAHAM POLONSKY
Body and Soul, Tell Them Willie Boy is Here
"How could I possibly choose any script except one of my own? But I can't do that either. I'm torn between being called vain if I name one of my scripts and being called a liar if I don't. Actually, a perfect screenplay is The Maltese Falcon, written by John Huston. Of course a perfect screenplay may not make a very important picture. A very imperfect movie like Glory can actually change people's minds. But The Maltese Falcon is a script one could use to teach writing. It's great in terms of character, structure, revelations. There's not a dull scene in it. And it has a marvelous hidden theme. A man unmasks the mystery of who killed his partner, and he didn't even like his partner. That raises very interesting questions."
FREDERIC RAPHAEL
Darling, Two for the Road
"Screenplays don't tend to age very well. I always thought of All About Eve as a very witty screenplay, but I saw it again recently, and except for a couple of lines, I found it ponderous. So I would lean toward a more recent movie. Tootsie I thought was a very fine screenplay, and it breaks all the rules. It was written, not by one solitary artist but by many people, among them Larry Gelbart, Murray Schisgal, and Elaine May. Whoever's words they were--probably about 300 people's--they were wonderful. I hate to mention that movie, because it vindicates every shit's notion of how screenwriters should be treated--except that I gather they were paid well. Of course, it didn't win the Oscar. It was beaten by Gandhi, which represents the triumph of the significant over the worthwhile."
IRVING RAVETCH
Norma Rae, The Long Hot Summer, Hud
"Grand Illusion, written by Jean Renoir and Charles Spaak, is one I would choose because it is most like a great book. It has the resonance and texture and humanity of a classic novel. It captures the complexity and paradoxes of human nature and the indomitability of the human spirit in terrible circumstances."
ALAN RUDOLPH
Welcome to L.A., Choose Me, Love at Large
"Dr. Strange-love may be the best script of the last 25 years. It was written by Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George. I like it for its savage comic perceptions. It proves that you can tell a story in that kind of wild format and bring it home to some frightening truths. When I first saw that movie, it awoke me politically. It made me see the potential power of translating politi¬cal thought on screen. I think the movie should be shown every year as a public service."
ALVIN SARGENT
Julia, Ordinary People, Dominick and Eugene
"Whenever I sit down to write, I almost always think of Adrien Joyce's script for Five Easy Pieces. There are certain times that inspire me, that epitomize standards I try to reach. Five Easy Pieces moves so beautifully for me. When I first saw it, I was deeply affected by the workmanship of that screenplay. It begins sparsely, with just an open field. You have no idea of the background of the character. Then it continually grows in interest. Only gradually do you learn of the deep trouble in this man. New characters keep being introduced. It's a movie full of surprises and full of people. It is almost Chekhovian."
TOM SCHULMAN
Dead Poets Society
"Ikiru is one of the most moving scripts I know. Other scripts of Akira Kurosawa's are very broad. To see him do something that sensitive is surprising. But it has tremendous humor as well as sentiment. So many moments are memorable. After the main character is told that he's dying, he goes home, and he's in his room winding his clock. And he realizes how few times he has left to do that. I don't think of that as a directorial touch. Writers think of moments like that. What I also like about Ikiru is that it's not a classical piece of storytelling. Structurally, it's all over the place. The main character dies in the middle of the film, and then it goes off in a whole different direction."
ROGER L. SIMON
Enemies: A Love Story, The Big Fix
"The purity and the farce construction of The Palm Beach Story are absolutely classic. There is an elegant perfection to that screenplay by Preston Sturges. It doesn't mean anything at all, but it is one of the best farces since Plautus, and it moves like a bullet. I must say I have tremendous respect for beautifully structured art--everything from Mozart to Ross Macdonald."
DANIEL WATERS
Heathers
"The first time I saw Network, I was under 18, and I had to sneak in. Maybe I respond to Chayefsky because he has the same flaws I have as a writer. A character will stop and give grandiose speeches. Some people don't like that constant verbal energy, but I have a taste for writing that never really coasts. Writers don't show the same attention to dialogue today. They think movie dialogue has to be either the way people always speak or reminiscent of other movies. The language of Network is neither. Chayefsky created a new language. I also love Lolita, but there I'm not sure who did the writing, because Nabokov's published script is un¬wieldy, and not at all the same as the movie."
______________
Stephen Farber is the author of Outrageous Conduct: Art, Ego & The Twilight Zone Case and writes on film for The New York Times.
Subscribe to the new Movieline on YouTube
