Kevin Conroy Scott - Screenwriters’ Masterclass

TheSilenceoftheLambs 1991 Orion Pictures Corp./
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.

HighArt 1999 October Films

YTuMamTambin 2001 Producciones Anhelo

Rushmore 1998 Touchstone Pictures

RequiemforaDream 2000 Artisan Entertainment

Spider 2002 Sony Pictures Classics

28DaysLater 2002 Fox Searchlight Pictures

OutofSight 1998 Universal Pictures

Election 1999 MTV Films / Paramount Pictures

Together 2002 Sonet Film

SweetSixteen 2002 Sixteen Films Ltd.

LosLunesalSol 2002 Mediapro

UndertheSand 2000 Haut et Court / Arte France

DieAnotherDay 2002 Metro-Goldwyn-Meyer

AmoresPerros 2000 Altavista Films

After working for a Hollywood film studio in my early twenties and reading a lot of screenplays on the weekends, I tried my hand at writing a script. Why not? Everyone else in LA was doing it. What followed was a bit of a mess, a 140-page detective comedy about a forty-two- year-old bachelor who lives in his parents garage and thinks hes Magnum P.I. Sensing a foul odour, I only asked one friend to read it. He hated it. I put it in a drawer and it hasnt been seen since.

Six years, a different country, and hundreds of coverage reports later, I was still interested in screenwriting. I was curious to know how things were done, and Id been searching for the elusive answers for some time. I started with Syd Fields ubiquitous book Screenplay, I read Christopher Voglers clever review of Joseph Campbells ideas, I flipped through Robert McKees bible, I watched nine hundred films in three years, and I even earned a Masters Degree in Film History. But when it came down to writing a screenplay, I still didnt know how it was done.

Then 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 story charts or pondering mythical archetypes, the student could have a private audience with the professional screenwriter as they are guided through the creation process of the film. The screenwriter could have the space to comment on what worked and what didnt in the finished film; why that happened ; and how they handled the painstaking process of creating a three-dimensional world out of images previously seen only within the privacy of their own mind. The more I thought about the idea, the more it appealed to me. ScreenwritersMasterclass could offer an innovative approach to the subjective task of learning the trade of screenwriting. In the process, it could create a valuable case history of the films explored; offering film historians and enthusiasts a rare glimpse behind the scenes to learn about how these movies came into existence.

Of course, the quality of this book would depend on the writers interviewed. Thats why I then considered widening the spectrum, interviewing not only the top Hollywood pros, but also leading European screenwriters, whose relationship to the audience is inevitably different. Falling in love with the sound of my own logic, I also realized, selfishly, that if I could find a publisher then I could also get them to pay for my travels to call upon my favourite screenwriters in person. Imagine it! New York City, London, Hollywood (not so exciting, but still ), Paris, Mexico City, even Malm, Sweden.

I did indeed travel to some amazing places and, more importantly, met some amazing people. I sat in the window of a hotel bar on the southern tip of Sweden and watched passers-by gawk at Lukas Moodysson, the director of Together, which was more popular in Sweden than Titantic. I played basketball in Mexico City with Guillermo Arriaga, the screenwriter of AmoresPerros. He was like the mayor of his neighbourhood, challenging his young son and his friends to take him on (he won every game). In New York, I sat in Wes Andersons office, under the family portrait of the Blumes that you see in the opening of his film, Rushmore. Bill Murray in an oil painting. Where else can you see that but in Wes Andersons office? In Paris I spent a cold spring morning with Michael Haneke in his flat off rue Jacob. When I greeted him I was hungover and cotton-mouthed, and he offered me pretzels instead of water. The interview fared much better . I returned to Paris and spent a hot summer afternoon with Franois Ozon. He was both elegant and funny and made jokes about Eric Rohmer being a cheapskate. I liked him very much. In fact, I liked them all very much. I hope this book doesnt suffer as a result. Theres nothing worse than an interviewer who kisses ass.

What was very important from the outset was that we focus on one film in each writers body of work. This way, we could go deep into that films creation process and discover each writers individual working methods. The original concept behind this book was to watch one movie with each screenwriter. I did this in my first interview . The guinea pig was the Academy Award winner Ted Tally, the film TheSilenceoftheLambs. It was an amazing experience, sitting there in his hotel room as he told me what it was like to be on set with Jonathan Demme, Jodie Foster and Hannibal the Cannibal. His lucid comments brought this book to life. Other screenwriters elected not to watch their films for different reasons. I found that their interviews were just as fascinating as Ted Tallys as they travelled back in time and revisited a time of intensive writing and revisions (and writing and revisions, and writing and revisions and hand-wringing and, as a final kick in the teeth, crippling moments of self-doubt).

These interviews are here to both entertain and inform. They are meant to give film students hope, aspiring screenwriters knowledge, film enthusiasts the inside dirt and professional screenwriters a stick by which to measure themselves. More importantly, this book endeavours to treat screenwriters as artists, something that is often forgotten amid the translation of words into images and the never-ending battle for screen credits.

KevinConroyScott

London, April 2004

Ted Tally

There has never been a relationship between two main characters like this. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) intimidates Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster).

TheSilenceoftheLambs

Refrigerator Questions

After studying theatre as an undergraduate at Yale, Ted Tally wrote plays in New York for ten years. He transitioned into writing for TV and film, his first feature credit was the Susan Sarandon drama WhitePalace (1991). Shortly thereafter he won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for TheSilenceoftheLambs (1992). Tally has a reputation in Hollywood for making beautiful screenplays out of difficult adaptations , as witnessed in his work on Cormac McCarthys novel