[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
RARA-AVIS: Hollywood
"Tinsel Town corrupts good writers" (J. Kimura) not just due to the money,
which can be considerable, but because the process of writing screenplays,
and the environment in which screenplays are written, can easily rob a
fiction writer of his motivation and destroy his concentration. Screenplay
writing offers many of the satisfactions of writing fiction, such as the
development of plot, character, and theme, without the labor of writing
literate sentences. The screenwriter does not need to use language to fully
create scenes, impressions or ideas; he merely indicates what these
elements should be for the director to realize. This is not to suggest that
screenwriters don't sweat over their work, and that their work is not
skilled; rather, without the details of language and complete literary
construction, the effort and skill required is less than that demanded by
fiction. The first draft of a screenplay generally requires eight to twelve
weeks of solid effort, compared to one to three years or more for a work of
fiction - unless one is a Simenon. A fiction writer who temporarily stops
writing fiction in order to make a fast buck in Hollywood - and every
fiction writer I've spoken with has always sworn that the move is temporary
- usually underestimates the difficulty of returning to fiction, because he
or she does not realize that writing screenplays changes the writer's work
habits and attitudes toward the dramatic form. The writer must again
wrestle with language, and face the immense obstacle of time in creation.
If he wants to write fiction again, he will have to suffer, because to
write well is arduous work. It is more difficult to suffer when one is
accustomed to suffering far less for far greater financial reward.
If the writer has been successful in Hollywood, he has likely rewarded
himself for his hard work. When he wrote fiction, he lived in an attic
apartment and rode the bus. After his experiences in Hollywood, he has car
payments and a mortgage. The writer will have to decide if he can afford to
take a year or more off to write fiction, and to deal with the terror that
after an inactive year or two, everyone in Hollywood will have forgotten
him, which would destroy his chance to make any real money again. And if he
actually lives in Southern California, God help him. The screenplay is the
only literary form of importance in Southern California. He will be writing
something most of his friends will consider an anachronistic form, useless
except for the possibility of the underlying film rights. Those less
charitable of his acquaintances will privately suggest that his renewed
interest in writing fiction is attributable to his ice-cold status as a
screenwriter, because only a fool or the unemployable would give up the
movies for fiction. His income will plumet. Friends will consider him odd
at best, and deranged at worst. He will not be invited to those great
Hollywood parties. If he's single, the opposite sex will stop returning his
phone calls. If he's married, his wife will probably divorce him.
And all for the privelege of devoting as much of his being as possible to
the creation, over one to three years, with much suffering and doubt, of a
book which will most likely earn him about $20,000, and leave him
exquisitely vulnerable to the uncharitable remarks of reviewers who view it
as their personal responsibility to keep him out of the canon and out of
print.
This, by the way, is why I now choose to live in Prague, and write fiction.
-
# RARA-AVIS: To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis"
# to majordomo@icomm.ca
[Archives] | [RARA-AVIS]