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Private Audience
A Review by Chris Bolton

Long before I typed the words "FADE IN:" on my first screenplay, I was devouring every book of interviews with screenwriters I could get my hands on. There are any number of how-to guides cluttering bookstore shelves -- from Syd Field's seminal 1982 text Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting to more recent tomes by "gurus" like Robert McKee and Linda Seger -- but I still believe the two best ways to really understand screenwriting are to: (a) read the actual screenplays, and (b) read/hear about it directly from the screenwriters themselves.
Kevin Conroy Scott's Screenwriters' Masterclass aims to be the mother of all screenwriter interview books. As Scott writes in his introduction:

I envisioned a book wherein aspiring screenwriters could learn about the craft from professionals as they revisit their work. Imagine the possibilities: instead of poring over charts or pondering mythical archetypes, the student could have a private audience with the professional screenwriter as they are guided through the creation process...

Scott sat down with such modern luminaries as Scott Frank (Out of Sight), Wes Anderson (Rushmore), Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (Election), Alex Garland (28 Days Later), David O. Russell (Three Kings), Guillermo Arriaga (Amores Perros), and Carols Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien) to discuss their art, craft, and experiences.

These aren't shallow, unsatisfying USA Today profiles, but rather extensive Q&As that take the writers from childhood and early inspiration to the trials and tribulations endured while writing their signature scripts.

The anecdotes are rich and enticing, particularly when they reveal the lengths those who are bitten by the creative bug will go to for their art. Before he teamed with Alexander Payne to write Citizen Ruth, Jim Taylor was a contestant on Wheel of Fortune. In the event that he lost, he intended to use the footage in a short film, so he gave a fake occupation and invented a fiancé, confounding friends and family members who watched. Taylor ended up the champion and the film, alas, was never made.

Mostly, the writers focus on the nuts and bolts of what they love best -- screenwriting. Ted Tally describes the process he used to distill Thomas Harris's beloved novel The Silence of the Lambs into an Oscar-winning script. Wes Anderson used pocket-sized notebooks (up to seven per film) full of character sketches and designs and handwritten scenes for his first drafts. Adapting Hubert Selby's Requiem for a Dream to film, Darren Aronofsky kept track of the various character arcs on a color-coded chart.

If you're looking for glamorous red carpet premieres and dishy celebrity gossip, forget this book and turn on your TV instead. Scott isn't concerned with the imagined (and often imaginary) rewards of success, but the process of writing the script -- which, in many ways, no matter the country or language, is universal. These writers describe the long, solitary, often debilitating slog of sitting and writing, never certain if one is expending one's time on the next Best Picture nominee, or an incoherent muddle that will shame the writer when he's foolish enough to dust it off.

The issue of self-doubt and how to overcome it arises in every interview, and it's a bit astonishing to see how even the most successful professionals wrestle with it -- and what tricks they use to overcome their own fears of inadequacy and failure.

Scott has assembled an intriguing assortment of screenwriters - not just of the Hollywood persuasion, but also well-received foreign luminaries like Lukas Moodysson (Together), Michael Haneke (Code Unknown), and Francois Ozon (Swimming Pool). As with any such collection, each reader will find some subjects more interesting than others. I wasn't exactly chomping at the bit to read about the writing of Die Another Day, the most recent in a long line of woefully inadequate James Bond stunt shows that almost made me long for the days of Roger Moore -- but the screenwriters surprised me with their intelligence and insight, as well as their regrets at what didn't make it into the film. (It's also illuminating to learn what restrictions a writer-for-hire faces when working on a lucrative franchise ruled by iron-fisted producers.)
If I have a complaint about the book, it would be that the interviews aren't expansive enough. While Scott tends to be thorough with his subjects about their past and their screenwriting process, he usually confines the crux of the conversation to only one particular screenplay (I would have liked to learn more about Payne/Taylor's adaptation of Sideways, for instance, along with Election).

Possibly I'm just being greedy. These are some of the longer, more satisfying interviews I've seen in print, and I suppose it's only natural that I would want even more. Chances are I won't be satisfied until I sit down to dinner with these writers and have my own conversations. Considering the likelihood of that arrangement, I'll graciously take Scott's book.

Perhaps the best thing to come out of reading a book like Screenwriters' Masterclass is the encouragement to keep going. Woody Allen is fond of saying that luck is the only true element of success (an idea he illustrates quite lucidly in his excellent Match Point), but I like to believe perseverance and talent have something to do with it. If the writers profiled in Scott's book have only one thing in common, it's the love of the form that propels them to keep writing, despite countless obstacles (internal and external), until they've typed those final, fateful words: FADE TO BLACK.