170

IT is part of man's nature to try and find answers to his plot and, in Hollywood as in any society, the answers are conditioned by the culture. If a primitive agricultural people are faced a shortage of rain, their culture prescribes the making of appropriate magic to meet the situation. The answers to the writers' problems are likewise conditioned by the Hollywood social system.

The nature of any particular writer's problem depends, in part, on his position in the success hierarchy. For the young and inexperienced, the question is, How can they learn the craft of writing, get jobs and screen credits, and rise in the salary scale? For the successful writers, particularly those with talent, the problem is, How can they gain more control over their material and so increase their personal satisfactions?

There is, of course, more than one answer to each problem.

For the first group, there are the traditional Hollywood techniques: "playing the game" and "knowing the right people." However, although the community emphasizes the breaks for everyone, there is more recognition of the necessity of the writer's having some skill than there is for the actor or producer. Most think the writer should be, at least, a good craftsman.

But the industry as a whole sponsors very little formal training. Two of the major studios had, at different times in the past and for limited periods, an apprenticeship system for young, promising writers. One selected twelve such writers on the basis of something they had written which seemed to show talent, and gave them six weeks' training, during which time they were paid $75 a week. The group met one night a week with three of the producers. They were given assignments, such as writing a scene to show conflict between two characters, or one which would bring the two

171

together. The scenes would then be discussed and criticized by the producers and the members of the class. After that the students did original story treatments which were discussed in the same way. At the end of the six weeks, the studio employed a few of the writers who had done usable story treatments or who showed promise. The apprenticeship plan was abandoned after a short time, but even when it was in effect, it was unimportant because it involved so few individuals. Outside of this formal apprenticeship, studios have sometimes given contracts to promising writers and kept them on the payroll for a year or more in the hope that they would produce something good. But during the year the writer often sat alone in his office and it was only rarely that he received anything resembling training or experience.
The writers themselves are not in agreement about training. While all recognize that telling a story in the movies differs from telling it in a novel or on the stage, there is considerable disagreement on the importance of these differences and on techniques of learning about the movie medium. One group, which emphasizes the differences, believes very strongly that a script writer should learn everything about how a movie is made, by being on the set, watching director and cameraman, going into the cutting room, seeing the daily rushes, and listening to discussions of why some are better than others. In this way, they say, the writer would know the potentialities of the camera and learn, for instance, that glance indicating anything from love to hate may be more expressive than any dialogue.
Most of the young, ambitious writers with no previous success as novelists or playwrights complain that they are not allowed to get this kind of training while they are working in a studio. Some say that they are prevented from going onto the set, that they are told they are hired to write and that they should remain in their own offices writing, and not roam around poking their noses into other people's business. On the other hand, some producers and directors say that the writers are too lazy to do anything not required of them and that they would rather play gin rummy or gossip than go into the cutting room to learn how things are done there.

172

The situation varies from one studio to another and one individual to another. There were a number of writers who had access to sets and cutting rooms who took full advantage of it; there were others who did not. And there were still others were prevented from going onto the set or into the cutting room; many times it was impossible because, after the writer had finished his script, he was at another studio or unemployed. It is certainly not an accepted part of studio mores, though many of the young writers wish this were otherwise.

A good number of the successful movie writers with established literary and playwriting reputations, however, see no value, least for themselves, in learning the technical aspects of movie production. One of them feels quite strongly on the matter and says that there is nothing for the writer to learn on the set, that the beginner has to learn only a few simple points, such as that the camera can shoot anything which is visible to the eye and that a sentence never begins with "He says" but starts with the acute dialogue. He likewise thinks it is easy to learn simple directions - such as "long shot" if an actor enters from the far end of the room, "medium shot" for a corner of a room with a few people in it, or "close-up" for the face of one actor. If the script calls for something very different such as shooting a whale in the bottom of the ocean, that is up to the cameraman and the director to worry about, not the writer. In the first script this writer worked on, he learned that it was an unnecessary expense to have a character walk through a hallway to get from one room to another and that it was better to have people grouped by a window instead of in different parts of a room. These are small details easily grasped; if mistakes are made in the beginning, a director can quickly catch them.

This writer insists that the biggest mistakes of the writer have nothing to do with the camera or cutting, but are primarily in thinking about people and the situations in which they move. He says that the business of the writer is to know people and society, be able to dramatize conflict situations, and to know how to write dialogue. He thinks that the writer will learn more if he

173

goes to the corner saloon, or to a political meeting, or to any other place where people are gathered, or if he sits home and reads a good book. Good taste, good judgment and a knowledge of people, he continues, cannot be learned on the set.

Another successful writer has a different point of view about training. he thinks it necessary, but should consist of understanding how a novel, play or story is transformed into a movie and that the best training is to read the novel (or play or story) from which the movie is made and then the script; and finally to see the film a number of times. The point is for a movie writer to be movie-minded rather than camera-minded - that is, to see the whole continuity of the movie, not just the shots. He does not think that this can be learned on the set by watching director or camera-man, but by the study of the movie itself.

One of the most important differences between the novel and the movie is that a character is never explained in terms of description, dialogue or background, but rather in terms of action. If, for instance, it is necessary to show that a middle-aged man is abnormal, the point can be made very well by having him slide down the banisters without saying a word. This is the kind of thing learned from seeing movies, just as a novelist learns from reading good novels, or a playwright from reading and seeing plays. But this man says most writers look at movies not for the purposes of analysis and study, but merely to mechanically reproduce what they see in them.

The answer to what is the best training for movie writing is not in the either-or class. A knowledge of life and people and the intuitive, sensitive awareness which are the stock in trade of any distinguished writer, whatever his medium, cannot be taught, nor are there any substitutes for them. But the movie writer, like any other writer, is also a craftsman. Just as playwrights learn a great deal by seeing their play in the process of being produced, the movie writer would be benefited by understanding the techniques used in transforming the novel, play or story into a script and that into a film. It is more important and more difficult to understand the essence of the movie medium than to know the jargon of long

174

and medium shots, and the elementary points of how to, break a script into scenes and sequences. Hollywood is, however not the only place with a tendency to mistake a knowledge of terminology for understanding. This is true also in many a classroom.

The second problem, how a writer can gain more control over his material and thereby increase his self-respect and satisfaction is important only for the able ones, a few of whom have a strong and passionate interest in what they communicate through medium. For the majority of Hollywood writers the problem does not exist-they neither have anything to say nor any convictions, passionate or otherwise. But the gifted writers are important far out of proportion to their numbers, just as are the small number of talented directors, actors, producers and others, because it is these people who set the standards for the best pictures and through whom the further development of the medium may be expected. The problem is likewise serious for the individual able writer, who is apt to degenerate creatively, and perhaps personally, if he consistently works below his potentialities. It concerns the front office too because a system which does not utilize the talents of its most gifted employees is wasteful financially. A number answers are given to the problem. Among them are writing originals, becoming a writer-producer or writer-director, entering a more or less permanent relationship with a sympathetic and producer or director, making temporary alliances with a producer or director and manipulating the relationship so as to dominate and finally, being so much in demand that considerable control written into the contract or secured informally.

The solution most frequently advanced is through the writing of originals. O f the 463 screen plays which were in production or awaiting release on June 4, 1947, Variety indicated that 235, or more than 50
per cent, were based on originals. Of the remaining 278 properties, 187 were adapted from novels, magazines, stories or biographies, and 36 were from plays. These figures are misleading, however, because the 187 adaptations form the base for most of the A pictures, while the majority of the originals were for B pictures, Westerns and other small-budget films. Two years later,

175

Variety indicated that 70 per cent of the stories were new. While of these were made into A pictures than two years previous, the majority are still used for the smaller-budget movies. However, the new trend not to depend so completely on successes in other mediums for A pictures is important.

The word "original' may be deceiving. The writers of many of these originals for B pictures pick a formula, of which there are a number. One deals with two brothers engaged in a dangerous occupation. The younger one is reckless and always getting into trouble, from which he is rescued by his more mature older brother. Another is the father-son situation in which the son rebels against his father's authority, but eventually redeems himself.

However, some scripts written for A pictures are, in the more usual connotation of the word, original. One writer, a former Broadway playwright of considerable prestige, writes in much the same way as he wrote for the stage. His originals stem out of his own experiences or from his interpretation of what he has keenly observed. Sometimes he is employed to do the script from his original story. At other times, it may be given to five writers in the usual assembly-line manner. But even if he is employed on his script, he has no control over changes which may eventually be made in it. It is significant that he has recently become a producer, because, he says he wants to recognize the film which is made from his original.

Some writers do not consider it good business to write originals. They say it is better to write first for publication and then have the studio buy it. In this way they make more money and have greater satisfaction since in writing they do not have to follow restrictions of the Production Code and the other conventions of Hollywood. Others say they cannot afford to take time to write an original/ One man figures that he would need eight or ten weeks to write one and that if he sold it he might get about $30,000. He says that the chances of selling it are only one in six. If he works at the studio for the same eight weeks, he sure of $20,000 against a possible $30,000 for an original. He does think that the $10,000 difference is a good risk against a sure

176

$20,000 when the chances are one in six. There is also no guarantee that if he is successful the final film will resemble his original, any more than the film will be like his script based on someone else's story. A writer may, of course, utilize considerable originality in; doing an adaptation. One man practically writes an original when he adapts a story. It gives him an idea, from which he develops a script completely different from the story, and the studio may like his story line better than the one it purchased.

The problem of greater control for the writer over his material was discussed in the magazine of the Screen Writers' Guild1 when Producer Sam Goldwyn recommended the abolition of the salary system for writers and urged them to work on a profit-sharing system. He thought the movie writers should take the same chances as the novelist or playwright and not "sacrifice their artistic aspirations for the security of a weekly pay-check." The following month the same magazine carried an answer by writer Paul Gangelin. He respected the intentions behind Mr. Goldwyn's remark but differed in conclusions. His contention was that in the theater, producers, directors and actors, as well as playwrights, take a capital risk every time a play opens and that the gamble is a co-operative one. To achieve this in movies the author suggests that if the writers are to put their salaries into the "kitty," let the producers do the same and let the writers have "a proportional drawing account, based on the amount of money the picture can be anticipated to gross . . . and THEN, after the picture has run its course, as is the case of plays, let the property revert to us."

A comparison of the systems in the publishing and theatrical worlds with that of the movies points up some of the major differences. The Broadway producer and the New York publisher see what they are buying and, if they do not like it, they do not buy. But if they do buy there can be no changes without the writer's consent. He is guaranteed a percentage of the sales. Except in the purchase of originals the studios do not see in advance

177

what they are buying. Even then the producers are free to make as many changes as they please. When they hire a writer by the week, he writes according to a producer's dictation. The story belongs to the producer, since he is responsible for the inclusion or exclusion of every idea and line in the script, and its legal ownership rests with the studio.

Many more writers favor the solution of becoming a producer or director in order to gain more control. One works as a freelance writer-producer without being tied to any one studio. He recently sold an original movie script, which was ready to be shot. The studio paid him $95,000 plus 10 per cent of the net profits, and met his conditions that he be the producer and select the star. He had already picked and received the consent of the star before the picture was written. As the producer he controls also the entire casting and can see that the script is produced as he intends. The actual business end of the production does not worry him or take up much of his time. This man believes very strongly that the writer, or anyone else in the creative end of production, can make good pictures only if he gets into an executive position which gives him control.

A former writer, who has become an important producer at a large studio, says, however, that his power is limited to doing one picture he likes out of every three or four he makes, and the only way he gets that one is by having a record of success at the box office. With a number of box-office hits to his credit and with the reputation of being a "good boy" doing the assignments handed to him, the studio wants him sufficiently to humor him now and then and allow him to produce a picture of his own choice. He accepts this situation in a matter-of-course manner.

Another writer-producer had been a successful movie writer, but then ceased functioning as a writer. He produced from stories handed to him by the front office and scripts written by others. Eventually he was disgusted with the quality of the movies he was turning out and, weary of the succession of films for which he had no respect, he asked and received permission to take a long vacation.

He tried to think through the whole matter. He had enough

178

money in the bank to live on for several years. He hated the idea of going back to the studio and reading all the terrible scripts which would be presented, and of producing some of them. He decided to quit. Then the executive head of the studio wired asking him if he would return as a producer to work only on his own scripts, and he accepted this offer. Recently he branched out as an "independent," which increased his power. He is an able craftsman getting satisfaction in telling his stories through movies, as well as making a lot of money. As an "independent" these satisfactions have increased, even though he does not have complete control, since the studio, which owns the other 50 per cent stock in his company, has to give its O.K. to his pictures.

Some gifted writers become directors so that they can be sure their script is translated into film in the way they intended.

One successful writer-director in a large studio is an intuitive literary person whose particular outlook on life is projected onto those pictures which he has been able to control. These are among the distinguished movies which have come out of Hollywood and have also been successful at the box office. He started as a playwright and when rather young had a Broadway hit. Hollywood studios then made offers to him which he turned down because he preferred New York and writing for the stage. Later, after a series of flops, he was broke and glad to take a Hollywood offer.

He was fired after three months. He then wrote an original and sold it with the provision that he could direct the dialogue. He did not know that this was an unheard-of request for a beginner. But he was very insistent, and won his point. He says that most Hollywood people do not know what they want and that if they do, they have not the courage to fight for it. The picture turned out to be a major success.

Then he wrote another original which, however, no one would buy. In the meantime he worked as a writer under contract and reached the $3000-a-week bracket. He still hankered to be a director as well as a writer but was not given the opportunity. Eventually, seven years after he had written it, he sold his second original with the condition that he would direct it. This was not easily

179

secured. The studio did its best to discourage him, saying that he would be an inexperienced and poor director, and this would damage his reputation as a writer, now very high. He was willing to take the chance and kept on nagging and worrying the executives-so much, that they grew weary of hearing him and finally decided to let him direct, thinking that the picture would be unsuccessful and that he would then recognize his mistake. The picture was acclaimed as a most distinguished movie and was an enormous box-office success as well. After this he could more or less write his own terms.

He is an original person with more ideas than he can use. But he attained his present position and success in spite of the Hollywood structure rather than because of it. If he had not had the drive and courage to insist on his way against the wishes of the executives, he would be like any other high-salaried, able, frustrated writer who cannot bear to see the films produced from his scripts.

Another exceptional writer became a writer-director-producer. He now chooses the story, writes the script, selects the cast, directs them, cuts and edits the film. He gets no salary but instead a percentage of net profits, with the studio through which he releases getting the remainder. He was not always in this position of power. He first came to Hollywood in 1929 and took any writing job that came his way. At the end of three years, when he had saved $5000 by living simply, he began to select a bit what he would do. Soon his income and status were such that he could be more choosy. He worked with directors and chose those from whom he could learn a great deal. He constantly went on sets and into the cutting room, although this was never encouraged by the producers. His first opportunity to direct came on his own script when he managed to convince the front office, not without difficulty, that he could do it on a modest budget and utilize a star who was under contract at the studio and doing nothing. The movie turned out excellently, made a large profit, and the former writer was now acknowledged as an accomplished director. Later he took on the role of producer to increase his control over choice of story and

180

cast. He, like the others in this group, says there is nothing to being a producer, and that it takes up very little of his time.

Not all writers favor this solution. One, with a prestige literary background, thinks the writer should "stick to his last," which is writing, and not be tied up with other duties and business affairs. He says that it would have been too bad if literary geniuses of the past had had to spend half their time as publishers in order to get their books written. He thinks that when a writer becomes a producer he ceases to be a writer, or at least writes much less than he formerly did. This is true many times, but not always, and all writers who become producers are not distinguished.

Still another possibility of control lies in the independent units in which a producer, director and writer team up on a more or less permanent basis for the production of pictures. Or there may be a team of director and writer working for a studio, both so gifted and with such a record of success that no producer can "buck" them. The work of one such team is so well integrated that it is difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends. Relatively few writers can become members of such teams. Instead, they may use a temporary alignment with some sympathetic person on a picture. One able writer in the higher-salary brackets, still with high ideals for his work after ten years in Hollywood, says that on every picture he has worked there has been a constant struggle to insure a minimum of its integrity and that he has never been able to win this by working alone. He is diplomatic, with keen insight not only into the characters he writes about but into the people with whom he works. His strategy is a temporary alignment with someone on the picture against whoever is opposing him. At times he is aligned with a producer; sometimes with a director or actor-depending on the particular situation.

One struggle was with a director who was afraid to do something a bit different from the usual film, although the script called for it. The writer's strategy was to influence the actors and then let the director think it was his work. In this way the director took over many of the writer's points, thinking they were his own. An-

other time he and the producer teamed up and won a partial victory over the director. Of course, many times he loses in spite of his diplomatic manipulations.

Another writer with considerable literary gifts had a good relationship with a prestige-name producer for a couple of years. The writer was allowed to choose the story from which he would do the script. He stayed with the film after he finished the writing, made suggestions about casting and was on and off the set during the shooting, doing any rewriting that was necessary. If another writer was to be called in, it was someone of his choice. In this relationship the writer's personality was considerably stronger than that of the producer. In the end the executive head of the studio fired the writer with the excuse that there was nothing for him to work on at the studio. No one believed this, but thought the executive feared this writer was getting too much power over the producer and in the studio. The producer was upset at the writer's departure but was not strong enough to oppose the executive.

One possible solution to the problem of control is for a writer to attempt to make it part of his contract that no changes can be made in his script without his consent. But this is extremely difficult and almost impossible to attain. Still another answer, not often suggested, would be for the Screen Writers' Guild to fight for the writers' control of their material-that is, to make it part of every writer's contract that he should have the final word on the script. The Guild is, however, not strong enough to fight for such a concession, which would be bitterly opposed by the studios, and the membership of the Guild as a whole probably would not think such control desirable. A large number of the writers would not be sufficiently capable of using this control. Many times the scripts turned in are so poorly done that changes have to be made, either by other writers, or by directors, producers, or actors.

An answer by a small number of the talented group of writers is not to give all their time to writing movies but to continue writing novels or plays. Their agents are annoyed with them because they

182

could earn so much more money if they devoted all their time to movie writing. One agent figured out exactly how much his client, and incidentally he, lost every time the former wrote a novel. But the client continued to write his novels. Their solution is to accept the Hollywood organization more or less, but to use it only enough to secure sufficient economic security to work in other mediums, which give them more control and make better use of their talents.

The larger proportion of talented writers are sucked into the Hollywood system and eventually give up trying to be creative. A writer is asked to work on a script because he is known to have a fresh, new approach, and then the producer is afraid to use the script because the approach is different. Or he may never get suitable material to work with. One man with a reputation on Broadway as a serious playwright was assigned to writing musical comedies. During the four years he has worked at a studio he has only once been given the opportunity to write a script which was within his abilities and which he enjoyed doing. And before this script was finished, the producer for whom he was working left the studio and the successor did not want to take anything his predecessor had worked on. So the script was shoved into the discard and never used, much to the chagrin of the writer. He has received several screen credits but is ashamed of the pictures; he never mentions them except when talking to a producer and when they are necessary to get a job. This man could and does get considerable satisfaction out of functioning as a good movie craftsman. But his forte is melodrama; he cannot get any pleasure out of the second-rate musical comedies he is employed to do. However, he accepts the situation because of the large financial returns, and he has become habituated to it.

Many take out their personal dissatisfaction in cynical wit. One quite able writer, who seems to have accepted the situation, says that the writers have devised "an exquisite torture of dollar bills dropping on their heads." He adds that eventually they get buried under the dollar bills. One story is about a writer complaining to someone about all the restrictions which he has to observe, such as punching a time clock, being at the beck and call of the producer,

183

not being able to write as he pleases because of the Production code, or because a star interferes with him, and so on. At the end of his long tale of woe he asks rhetorically, "And what do I get out of it' . . . A fortune!"

Hollywood abounds with clever stories, with witty remarks, with groans about frustrations, and with tirades against the Production Code, or the front office, or a particular producer. But there is almost no thoughtful analysis, by writer, producer or front office, of this situation in which the large majority of writers write about life not as they know it, but as the producer or front office understands it, in dull imitation of the last box-office success, and to suit the personality or whims of a star. Nor is this question asked: Is there anything inherent in the production of movies, admittedly a big business and popular art, which makes the present system inevitable? There are a sufficient number of successful aberrations from the system to indicate that the answer might be "no."

There are obviously too many writers, at least several times more than are needed in times of greatest prosperity. Of course, any employer likes a large pool of workers from which to pick and choose. The typical insecure producer, without knowledge of storytelling, seems to find some comfort in large quantities, whether it is all the unused story properties owned by the studio or a large number of unemployed writers. He does not stop to think that this process attracts a large number of untrained and mediocre men. It may be that producers do not encourage writers to learn about the various parts of movie making, because of fear that increased knowledge and competence would reduce their own power and status. At the same time, those in power who maintain the system are dissatisfied with the writers it attracts and continue to search for talented novelists and playwrights, to whom they are milling to pay enormous salaries. Then they insist that the gifted men work in a structure that has the effect of voiding their special abilities.

Perhaps it would be advantageous to the writer, to the industry, and to the audience if scripts were written by writers rather than

184

assembled by producers. Then able men might be attracted for other reasons besides the fabulous salaries. Then they would not have to spend time and energy in manipulating the Hollywood system in order to use at least some of their skills and talents to the advantage of the movies as well as to themselves.
But that is not one of the answers offered by Hollywood.

1. April 1948.

Link to Chapter 10