Week 1 Discussion
When Field describes screenwriting as a story told with pictures, in dialogue and description, and placed within the context of a dramatic structure, he positions it as a craft of immediacy. A craft of the moment which is by necessity minimal and concentrated enough to support the subsequent cinematic layering of performance, location, music and editing and retain its potency. More than just a limbic bridge between source material and screen. And far more than blueprint for production. Screenwriting offers something more compelling in capturing a purer observable truth of what is happening in the moment. It doesn’t direct us how to feel, but draws attention to what’s visually important, so that others may breathe ‘sound and fury’ into the writer’s words, using conflict as a dramatic structure into which we can take viewers through the story’s three stages of set-up, conflict and resolution.
Screenplays offer more than linear direction from opening titles to closing credits. They allow us to experience the story in richer, deeper ways, especially when we view the film and then return to the screenplay. This is especially potent in Robert Towne’s Chinatown, where the memorably violent scene of Gittes getting his nose sliced by a vicious Roman Polanski cameo is written simply as ‘smaller man’. The character is played differently, more confidently by Polanski than Towne writes him, but it becomes impossible not to see the ‘small man’ as anyone other than Polanski once it makes the final cut. The script mentions nothing about the character’s thick European accent or his immaculate dress, but does provide emotional direction which Polanski discards in his performance.
If Field is developing rules for screenwriting, they’re also there to be judiciously broken. Field stresses that screenwriting should only sparingly include camera direction, if at all. Yet Welles and Mankiewicz’s Citizen Kane is laden with it from the start as a consequence of Welles’ co-roles as writer, director and actor. The screenplay produces an incredible technical puzzle of pacing as Kane’s life is told in a swift sequence of flashbacks. As viewers, but also as readers, we know the end of the story, but we can’t explain it until the end of the story, both in the screenplay and the movie. This is Field’s compulsion for writers to ensure the pages of the story keep turning, just as they do for Kane’s newspaper empire and on his crumbling personal life.
Welcome Discussion
As far back as I can remember, I always loved the movies. They have been a constant in my life around which the world has turned. Many of my memories are tied up in the films of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and David Lynch. I am fascinated by their connective ability to reach beyond the screen, take our hand, and show us a way of looking at ourselves we previously thought unique to us. Going to the theater isn’t entertainment. It’s a restorative ritual which gives me life.
Originally from London, I’ve spent my life working in media and television. I’m currently the Head of Product for the NBC News Group in New York, where I oversee all of the digital products and experiences for NBC News, MSNBC, CNBC, The Today Show, E! Entertainment and Telemundo. Days are consumed with the cacophony of the news cycle, and in particular the forthcoming election. By night I retreat into the safety of the movies, but have also begun to find a voice for my own writing, and a deep curiosity to be in this class to blend both worlds through screenwriting. Now a senior at Penn, I write for and run The Penn Moviegoer, Penn’s only film and media criticism publication.
I have written about my favorite moviegoing moments here. My all-time favorite movies are The Empire Strikes Back, Withnail & I, Zulu Dawn and 2001: A Space Odyssey. I love anything by Stanley Kubrick, Werner Herzog, Sergio Leone or Mike Leigh.
