Oscar-Winning Screenwriters On Screenwriting: The Award-Winning Best in the Business Discuss Their Craft

by Joel Engel

Hollywood's most respected screenwriters tell intriguing and instructive tales of their successes, failures, aspirations and inspirations in the movie business. Academy Award-winning movies such as American Beauty, Shakespeare in Love , and Forrest Gump are remembered, long after Oscar(R) night, for their stellar performances, their breathtaking beauty, and their transcendent scenes. But before any of these films were directed, lit, performed, or edited, they needed to be written. Screenwriting is, arguably, the most important and underrated role in Hollywood. Now Joel Engel brings together interviews with the best screenwriters working today, each of whom has won an Academy Award for his or her work, and each of whom shares a wealth of knowledge, insight, and experience about this little understood facet of moviemaking. In each essay, writers such as Alan Ball ( American Beauty ), Eric Roth ( Forrest Gump ), Marc Norman ( Shakespeare in Love ), Tom Schulman ( Dead Poet's Society ), Kurt Luedtke ( Out of Africa ), John Irving ( The Cider House Rules ), and many others explore and explain their craft and technique. Anyone interested in writing, making, or learning about movies will enjoy this behind-the-scenes compilation of wisdom and advice from Hollywood's natural-born storytellers.

Genres: Writing, Nonfiction

200 pages, Paperback

First published February 13, 2002

About the author

Joel Engel authored or co-authored more than 15 books (including a New York Times bestseller)—narrative nonfiction, essays, sports, satire, pop culture, biography, and autobiography. As a journalist for the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, among other papers and periodicals, Engel reported on everything from politics to hot-air ballooning, pregnancy to cancer research, pop culture to business. Engle has also sold several feature-film scripts to Hollywood and produced about 60 hours of (cable) television.

Reviews

[Kathryn Baron · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Often amusing. Quite often unintentionally. It was written over two decades ago so the bits on current culture & movies are problematic. However, the insights into the process of writing are intriguing. Be prepared to look up a variety of movies & writers. There's an expected knowledge base that I do not have.

INTRODUCTION **

WILLIAM GOLDMAN ***
"I'm about to start writing a screenplay, one that's based on a book. What I've been doing is reading and rereading the source material, and each time I come to something that seems strong or important, I make a mark in the margin with a different colored pen. By the time I come to do the screenplay, if there are five of more different marks in the margin, I'll know that scene or thought is going to be in the movie. If there's only one mark, I know it won't be. ... I'm trying to find the spine, the story, So that I can write it."

ROBERT BENTON ***
"My later drafts are usually done after the picture is cast (often during the shooting) because I think it is critically important that the writer take into account the actors' voices."

RON BASS ***
"I like not having to begin with a completely empty page. In I fact, worked this way before I ever had my own team; I had my own notes, accumulated over time, so I never had to really face the "Oh, my God, what do I do here?" blank page. Ideas beget ideas, which is why some of the most interesting ideas come out conversations with people you don't necessarily agree with. Looking at ideas on a page stimulates your own thinking. In the end, though, when I write I'm writing alone."

MICHAEL BLAKE ***
"I don't ever start out on something unless I really feel that it has a good shot to sustain me through whatever else might be going on ... I think the choice of the material itself is probably the first and the most critical component .../element in any writing project."

JOHN IRVING ***
"I've always believed as a writer, that the most important and essential element of writing is rewriting. My sense of things is that the first drafts of my novels are no better than anybody else's, but I believe that I have a capacity for revisiting a book over and over again, and that capacity may be a little greater than some other writers. I believe in revision."

TOM SCHULMAN ***
I usually write a screenplay over a few days-a few days that follow months, even years, of planning what I'm going to write. ... During the first draft I concentrate only on, well, finishing the first draft. ... By the time I actually sit down to write I usually have at least fifty and sometimes a hundred pages of an outline. ... I'll put everything in one computer file, print it out, and then slice apart every paragraph, every line of dialogue, so I have hundreds of separate strips for every idea. I'll lay it all out on the foor and go around and say, "Here's the beginning," and assemble all the other notes that seem to go with the beginning, then "Here's the next scene," and assemble all the notes that go with the next scene, and so forth. ... [It] is a sort of freeing experience physically because I'm standing up, moving around, looking here and there, and letting other ideas come. ... When it's all done, I take those notes and Scotch tape them down on 8 X 10 pieces paper and put those pages in a notebook. Then I sit down with the notebook and use it to write the screenplay."

FRANK PIERSON ***
"Plot logic has to derive from the characters. The way I work is to think about a character who's gotten into a particular situation, and then decide what he'd say or do to resolve the situation for himself, and then whatever comes out of that drives the next scene-and then I start the process over again to lead to the following scene."

BO GOLDMAN ***
"I was looking for whatever those usually unnoticed things and moments were that made up life on the street ... [I] know what a thing is. I think my talent is—it's knowing what a thing is, knowing what the dramatic possibilities for a thing are and recognizing what it means to life. I approach writing the way Michelangelo approached a big block of marble or granite from which a statue was trying tofight its way out. The pain that you go through to free a story is incredible. I do enormous amounts of research,
and I don't have a computer; I fnally stop researching when I can't stand anymore—and then I g0 write the movie."

MARC NORMAN **
"I suppose very writer has a different standard for knowing when the writing's going well. For me, it's when I surprise myself. Sometimes I can get into this zone where stuff just comes, as though someone's whispering in my ear. When the work is going well, I'm not aware of the day passing, and I wake up in the morning having dreamed scenes. Look, I don't know how to get into the zone; I just know that if I keep pounding my head long enough, it seems to happen."

ALAN BALL ***
"My years as an actor have a lot to do with my being a writer now. It's as if I can channel my characters the same way actors do; I'm aware of what upsets them, for instance, and a lot of times it's not what upsets me."

STEPHEN GAGHAN **
"Because of all the characters and the overlapping story lines ... we operated by the principle: "What's the least amount of information we could give [the audience] and still have them get it?" It's a wonderful way to work."

[mia · Rating 4 out of 5]

can't believe this is how i find out peter weir didn't also write dps 💔

[Vivek EVHS Menon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book provides great insights into the struggles and hardships many screenwriters went through to finally achieve that Oscar glory. This book really motivates aspiring screenwriters to keep on writing no matter how much rejection and pain you suffer, and eventually your efforts will pay off.

[John Devlin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some amusing anecdotes dot this collection.

[Ignacy Frederik Heringa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth checking the summarising questions I wrote down at the last page of the book.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight about getting into the biz and inspiration.