[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]
RARA-AVIS: Chandler quoted...
The Sunday NY Times Book Review (3/2/97) offered a review by Larry
Gelbart of John Gregory Dunne's new book about being a screenwriter on a
Holywood project. Gelbart, who wrote MASH and other fine satirical
screenplays, uses a hard-boiled Raymond Chandler quote, which I assume
to be from the late Forties, about the ethos of being a screenwriter in
La-La Land way back then --- and it still applies:
"In his essay, "A Qualified Farewell," Raymond Chandler explained why he
was giving up trying to be a screenwriter. 'I have a sense of exile
from thought, a nostalgia of the quiet room and the balanced mind. I am
a writer, and there comes a time when that which I write has to belong
to me, has to be written alone and in silence, with no one looking over
my shoulder, no one telling me a better way to write it. It doesn't
have to be great writing, it doesn't even have to be terribly good. It
just has to be mine.'
What was true in Chandler's time and before, and is true with a
vengeance even now is that in Hollywood the play is not the thing at
all. It is the rewrite of the rewrite of the play that is the thing.
Which would, no doubt, have been news to Shakespeare. (You remember
Shakespeare. He was that schmuck with a quill.)"
(From Larry Gelbart's review of Dunne's "MONSTER: Living Off the Big
Screen.")
That book sounds like a good, informative read.
--steve kesten
-
# RARA-AVIS: To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis"
# to majordomo@icomm.ca
Follow-Ups:
[Archives] | [RARA-AVIS]